Conversation Dehydration

I know this woman. We’ll call her Sunshine. I met Sunshine while I was on a date with her friend some time ago and I was … impressed. But she had a boyfriend (kind of… maybe… I don’t know) and I was on a date with her friend.

Fast forward several months. I’d not been on another date with her friend. She’d become fully single. I sent her a message on Facebook, asking her out for a drink and she demurred.

("To demur" means, by the way, to politely refuse a suggestion… and she was very nice, very polite, and very classy about saying “no”... but I didn't take it as her saying “never".)

A bit more time passed, and this past weekend I was at a club with friends. Sunshine was there and I had an opportunity to speak to her a couple of times. She looked great and I think I successfully managed not to stare too much in our first conversation. She talked about how she preferred to hang out in person, and that she used Facebook for work. She also managed to slip in, though, that she sometimes is amused by my Facebook wall. And she repeated “sometimes” with a smirk. I tried to keep my poker face on a bit but nodded and said I’d see her later and took my drink (which I would shortly thereafter drop in its entirety on the floor) and headed off.

The second time when we spoke, then, I was feeling pretty good about things. Maybe it was merely that I’d had enough alcohol to be incapable of reliably grasping a full glass of rum and diet, but I felt good.

Sunshine and I bumped into each other in line for the restroom and we’d said one or two things when another woman came up. We had a conversation that … could have gone better. It went something like this:

Woman: Hi Sunshine!

Sunshine: Hi. This is my friend Ed.

Woman: Hi Ed!

Me: Hey there.

Woman: (to Sunshine) Ooh… he’s great!

Sunshine: OK… ?

Woman: So… why haven’t you introduced me to him before?

Sunshine: Um…

Woman: How long have you guys been going out?

Sunshine: ...

It all happened in slow motion. It all happened so fast. The woman had not only forced Sunshine to deny everything (including, but not limited to, any interest in me) but also forced me to watch Sunshine’s face as she did so.

It went something like this:

"Hi, Sunshine!"

 

"Ooh… he’s great!"

"So… why haven’t you introduced me to him before?"

"How long have you guys been going out?"

Yes, Sunshine went from a plump emotional grape to a shriveled social raisin over the course of that brief conversation. It was conversation dehydration.

For better or worse, it was my turn to use the restroom. I stepped in and didn't see Sunshine the rest of the night. I'm sure she was back to her normal grape-y self in no time. 

As for me? I shrugged and got some more rum and told myself that at least I'd gotten a blog post idea out of it...