CHOOSE RANT

Title:   Silly Girls Day:    August 14th, 2000 Author:  Ruiner				Originally I was gonna call this rant Stupid Bitches, but I figured I'd keep the title nice and misleading. This is a crazy little story that happened to me back around the beginning of the year. It proved some things to me, and I just feel like relating it now. It's about this girl, we'll call her Darlene. I change the name mostly to protect myself because I think I had something to fear from this girl. Had I made the wrong step, I could have lost my job. Yep, I work with her. Not up close. In fact, thankfully I don't have to interact with her at all. The tough part is that I see her in the hallways occasionally, and memories still spark up. See, Darlene is very cute. She's a bit young for me, somewhere around nineteen or twenty years in age. She's got a firm little figure on her, a bit of height, and straight brunette hair that falls down evenly with her jawline. Very pretty eyes too, I'll admit. Well I try to stray away from coworkers these days, but let me tell you it can be difficult. The building I work in is ninety per cent female, and there are a number of attractive ones to look at. But most all of them are married, or they work too close to me to pursue. But this girl was new to the company, I talked to her once or twice and she was friendly enough. Seems she even lives near me, doing that hour-long commute every day just like me. I was intrigued, but my poor amount of courage wouldn't allow me to go. Coworkers talked to me about it, saying I should go for it, but never would I make the move. I was nervous. I would see her, admire how cute she was, but I couldn't go up and start a conversation. So I dug around for a little bit of information from her friends. I couldn't do this with her main friend, her smoking buddy, because she's a bit quirky. Some say insane. And I could just see her taking the wrong spin on this and screwing things up worse than I could by myself. I wanted to find out if she had a boyfriend, simply put. If she did, I wouldn't ask her out, no harm, no foul. And luckily when I first asked, she was trying to date someone. Game over. But soon I heard that things didn't work out. I hated it, but you know I decided that I should try to pounce while the girl was single. So it still took me a few days, but one day I got the gusto. I saw her walking down the hall, so I sped down and called out to her. She turned, we talked for a minute, then I asked her about going out to do something. She said her schedule was tough, but sure we'd try and do something. I tell you, I can imagine how I looked when I went up to her. I was scared out of my wits, and I don't know why. Maybe because I hadn't talked to her enough to get comfortable, I don't know. Still that preternatural fear of rejection looms. But she said yes, and seemed reasonable about it. Cool! I went back to my friends' office and sat there until my hands would quit shaking. (loser!) So anyways, I tried not to ponder over it too much, trying not to over-anticipate things. The next day I come to work, and things are so-so. No word from this Darlene, but given how work goes, no surprise. Her quirky friend comes over to meet with my boss, but I think nothing of it because we have meetings all the time. I go to lunch with one of my good friends and he has something to tell me. Darlene is not going to go out with me. Okay, so I have to wonder how he got the information. Seems that the meeting between the quirk and my boss had to do with dear Darlene. I apparently scared her. She told my boss that she thinks I'm a stalker and doesn't want me coming near her. Hrm. Well I guess I took it hard. First off, there is the rejection after someone has said they'll go out with you. That's almost vindictive in a way. But beyond that was the idea that I could harm someone. That I could be a stalker? At times, I'm proud of my imposing demeanor and presence. But I don't flount things like that at work. And I consider myself to be a generally friendly person as long as the one I'm talking to doesn't work at Wendy's. This hurt me, and threw in lots of self-doubt. Were people truly concerned about me, that I could hurt someone? Sure I can defame them on the Internet, but... hurt someone? No way. Luckily for me, my boss took my side of things. She wasn't pleased that this was in the workplace (there is kind of a rule against it), but she's known me for several years and thought it was ludicrous that someone would think that of me. This could have been bad. I could have faced some sort of harassment charge just for asking someone out to dinner. With the way things go todays, I could have seen it. Thankfully I didn't. She basically told this quirky one that they were sadly mistaken. Now I see them in the halls and I burn with a severe dislike. I don't let it shine too much, less they think me a angry, dejected stalker. I'm sorry, I get this really goofy picture of myself, creeping out by someone's window waiting to see the undress or maybe hanging out in a parking lot for hours until someone comes to their car. Puh-lease! I'm a pretty damned normal guy, and I'm much more likely to laugh at you when you're down or talk bad about you on the internet than to actually intend to do your harm. Speaking of talking bad about someone, anyone remember dear old Ashley? We saw her dumb, drunken ass at the Motley Crue concert two weeks ago. Yeah, she was there as always surrounded by guys. Dave had thought he saw her, but he never hung out with her much, so I didn't think anything of it. Later on though, she was there. Same long legs. Same perpetually dense look upon her face. And some feelings came welling up inside me. Part of them, sure they were of old times, hanging out and all that. But also, there was that seething aggression from when I found out she was sleeping around on me. I'm so glad that happened, in hindsight. So me and Art are joking, toying with the idea of going over there. Acting all genuine and saying " Hey Ashley, how ya doing? Hey, did you ever get that 'problem' taken care of? Heard they've had some breakthroughs with medication." But we were good boys, because I just didn't want to speak to her. I probably would've said things that would have gotten me beaten up by her redneck followers. There was a reward for our patience, however. The concert happened a day after it had been raining. In fact, the ground outside was rather wet because the rains had continued for a few days. That day, it didn't rain, but you had to watch where you sat. Well, Ashley, drinking and naturally clumsy, she fell down. And I saw her, slide down the hill some in her jeans, getting them all nice and muddy. I didn't get to see if anything else got dirty because of the other people, but given some of the laughs from that part of the crowd, I'll bet she did. Ah, it was priceless. Well that's enough for now. I'm trying really hard to find me someone new (or someone old) who's worth a damn. Someone who won't mistreat me and someone who can beat me in shape when I start to act stupid. You know how it goes… B.Mooney