This is the first in a series of dating stories I’ll be sharing as blog posts. Names will be changed, for privacy, minor details switched, etc. The women I’m courting will no longer be in the picture, and I’ll observe some sort of cooling off period. I’ll play this whole thing by ear. I don’t really talk to friends about these dating stories -- I write about them. This is my way of sharing the fun, often overzealous romantic things I attempt. The point is: dating sucks, but it’s worth it. Case in point: I post some damn depressing blogs about dating, but I’m still out here in these streets on my Ted Mosby.
[“Run To You” by Bryan Adams]
It was a Monday in early December. The last meeting of my Community Development class. I had ridden the elevator up with the professor, talking about the unseasonably cold weather DC had been getting over Thanksgiving (our scene is set the week after Turkey Day).
We walk into our class, a conference room in the floor reserved for my grad school program’s offices and said cramped conference room. Because the IT person -- our masterful, jack-of-all trades program director -- was on her honeymoon, the projector and Jurassic-era school laptop needed to be set up. Cue me, who made the unfortunate choice of sitting next to the prof, and therefore roped into IT duty.
So I’m at the head of the conference table -- standing closest to the door -- and an unfamiliar face walks in the doorway. She walks up to me and asks “is this Community Development?” An odd question, because this was our last class of the semester. Favorable timing for me, however, because final group presentations were that night. I was swaggin out, in time to chat up the beautiful woman who had just come into my life (or at least my class. A man can dream…).
Long story short, I answered and she explained that she “was just here to talk to the professor.” She went on to say that she was an undergraduate senior who wanted to take this (graduate level public policy) class, but she only had the spring semester left and this class was only taught in the fall. She wanted to independent study the class, had emailed the professor, and was following up.
At this point she was standing next to me, waiting for the professor to end a conversation with one of my classmates. I chatted her up, saying that she should stay for our presentations. I was really taken aback that an undergrad student would follow up in person to an email. With high-stakes final exams just days away, no less.
Anyway, she talks to my professor moments later, and I pick up her first name. She walks out of the room and class is a few minutes away from beginning. For a hot second, I vacillate between extreme self-hatred for not being more flirtatious and the early stages of trying to forget the moment never happened so as to limit that hatred. It WAS a moment, okay!
So I decide to chase her down the hall -- to run to her, in the words of Bryan Adams. Oh, and the conference room has glass walls. So, it was one of those walk-briskly-until-you’re-out-of-frame-and-then-haul-ass moves. I caught up right as she turned a corner and called her name. “Hi, I’m Gordon.” We shake hands. “This is forward, but would you like to grab a drink?” Pause. “Sure!” I ask her number, and end up taking it down on one of my business cards because her hands were too full to put it in my phone.
As I write her number down -- adrenaline racing through my nervous fingers -- she asks “what made you want to have a drink with me?” I was not in the best mental state to answer that question with confidence. I had never gotten that question. I paused. I stood there mute for what felt like a million years. “Because you followed up in person after emailing the professor.”
Important to remember here that my instant thought was “because you’re gorgeous.” She was. I sprinted over to her *before* I had definitively decided to ask her out. It was one of those, “well you’ve got to ask her out now, dude” situations. I paused for too long to answer that question. I know it. But God damn, I had just ran after a woman in a hallway with offices occupied by professors who see me (or now, use to see me) as a young professional crazy enough to do grad school at night after work. Sometimes, I’m also crazy enough to sprint down hallways for a woman I fancy, it seems.
Anyway, I follow up with her after class. I ask her out with specific time and place. She responds that she’ll let me know. It’s finals and she’ll be busy. Understandable. Heck, I had a term paper to work on that week.
The time/place I suggested went by and no word. I follow up a few days later, with something witty. Something about highlighter-induced color-blindness with the only treatment being a drink with me. She shoots back that she’s busy.
10 days go by after that. I wait until the end of GW Registrar’s Final Exam window in the Academic Calendar. And I text her “How did finals go? Have you exhausted your #2 pencil inventory?” No Response.
Ah, well. A friend told me that a woman of her caliber probably gets asked out a lot. Indeed. But I was going to be damn persistent. That’s what I do, after all. A woman with that level of drive -- to show up physically in class by way of following up -- is very rare. That class is really just a series of arcane affordable housing tax credits. And I’m a wonk in search of a wonkette, after all.
A woman such as she is worth real chivalry. I mean, I never saw Humphrey Bogart run after a woman in a hallway, but he totally would’ve. Of all the classrooms in all the buildings at GW, she had to walk into mine.
We walk into our class, a conference room in the floor reserved for my grad school program’s offices and said cramped conference room. Because the IT person -- our masterful, jack-of-all trades program director -- was on her honeymoon, the projector and Jurassic-era school laptop needed to be set up. Cue me, who made the unfortunate choice of sitting next to the prof, and therefore roped into IT duty.
So I’m at the head of the conference table -- standing closest to the door -- and an unfamiliar face walks in the doorway. She walks up to me and asks “is this Community Development?” An odd question, because this was our last class of the semester. Favorable timing for me, however, because final group presentations were that night. I was swaggin out, in time to chat up the beautiful woman who had just come into my life (or at least my class. A man can dream…).
Long story short, I answered and she explained that she “was just here to talk to the professor.” She went on to say that she was an undergraduate senior who wanted to take this (graduate level public policy) class, but she only had the spring semester left and this class was only taught in the fall. She wanted to independent study the class, had emailed the professor, and was following up.
At this point she was standing next to me, waiting for the professor to end a conversation with one of my classmates. I chatted her up, saying that she should stay for our presentations. I was really taken aback that an undergrad student would follow up in person to an email. With high-stakes final exams just days away, no less.
Anyway, she talks to my professor moments later, and I pick up her first name. She walks out of the room and class is a few minutes away from beginning. For a hot second, I vacillate between extreme self-hatred for not being more flirtatious and the early stages of trying to forget the moment never happened so as to limit that hatred. It WAS a moment, okay!
So I decide to chase her down the hall -- to run to her, in the words of Bryan Adams. Oh, and the conference room has glass walls. So, it was one of those walk-briskly-until-you’re-out-of-frame-and-then-haul-ass moves. I caught up right as she turned a corner and called her name. “Hi, I’m Gordon.” We shake hands. “This is forward, but would you like to grab a drink?” Pause. “Sure!” I ask her number, and end up taking it down on one of my business cards because her hands were too full to put it in my phone.
As I write her number down -- adrenaline racing through my nervous fingers -- she asks “what made you want to have a drink with me?” I was not in the best mental state to answer that question with confidence. I had never gotten that question. I paused. I stood there mute for what felt like a million years. “Because you followed up in person after emailing the professor.”
Important to remember here that my instant thought was “because you’re gorgeous.” She was. I sprinted over to her *before* I had definitively decided to ask her out. It was one of those, “well you’ve got to ask her out now, dude” situations. I paused for too long to answer that question. I know it. But God damn, I had just ran after a woman in a hallway with offices occupied by professors who see me (or now, use to see me) as a young professional crazy enough to do grad school at night after work. Sometimes, I’m also crazy enough to sprint down hallways for a woman I fancy, it seems.
Anyway, I follow up with her after class. I ask her out with specific time and place. She responds that she’ll let me know. It’s finals and she’ll be busy. Understandable. Heck, I had a term paper to work on that week.
The time/place I suggested went by and no word. I follow up a few days later, with something witty. Something about highlighter-induced color-blindness with the only treatment being a drink with me. She shoots back that she’s busy.
10 days go by after that. I wait until the end of GW Registrar’s Final Exam window in the Academic Calendar. And I text her “How did finals go? Have you exhausted your #2 pencil inventory?” No Response.
Ah, well. A friend told me that a woman of her caliber probably gets asked out a lot. Indeed. But I was going to be damn persistent. That’s what I do, after all. A woman with that level of drive -- to show up physically in class by way of following up -- is very rare. That class is really just a series of arcane affordable housing tax credits. And I’m a wonk in search of a wonkette, after all.
A woman such as she is worth real chivalry. I mean, I never saw Humphrey Bogart run after a woman in a hallway, but he totally would’ve. Of all the classrooms in all the buildings at GW, she had to walk into mine.
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