aha

Ahahahaha. I've figured it out.

Turns out Boy is not disinterested, and sudden squirreliness had little to do with politics. I heard from a friend of a friend who is a friend of his that he rabbited away because he thought I was getting too serious.

Figures, I said. The one time I'm NOT serious about a guy I get punished for it anyway.

Just play it cool, said the friend. And date. A lot. Play the field.

Now of course, my life being what it is, before my blind date with Boy I had never seen him before, even though it's a small town, so when it all seemed to be going up in smoke I thought, No biggie; I didn't run into him before, I probably won't run into him again. Wrong. Suddenly I'm seeing him EVERYwhere. Bank. Grocery store. And every road I'm driving on. Ridiculous.

But I employed the Play It Cool strategy and carelessly waggled fingers at him whenever I saw him and went about my business.

He stopped by the house yesterday. I was sitting on the porch with a friend, getting ready to grill, when a truck that I knew was his even without my glasses (I memorize vehicles quickly) drove by, honked, then turned around and came back. An hour of his telling stories ensued.

AHA! I thought. The strategy works. And my brain started outputting an analysis of the new situation.

See, I've known my own tack of desperate earnest eagerness hasn't been working -- it's never worked at all. But I've been clinging to this romantic notion that when I meet That One Guy everything will fall into place like the first five minutes of Enchanted. So I never changed my tactics; I figured when I met the right person, my tactics would be fine.

But when a strategy doesn't work, an intelligent person must learn to adapt. It might be uncomfortable -- I'm a homebody, I like cooking and grilling and watching movies and reading and sitting around with people I know well talking for hours over beer about the abstract problems of the world. I forget, though, that the people I know well took time to know well. I can't expect anything different in my dating life. And in order to meet people, I have to Get Out There. Prince Charming isn't going to consult a crystal ball and come charging up my driveway; I have to learn to do something new, so I can be seen.

Uncomfortable, yes. Unnatural, a bit. But it will get easier with practice, like learning a new technique on the piano. And if I view it as a fun mental exercise, I can enjoy what everyone but me has always known is a game. I've always hated games as phony and gilded, but it looks like I have to learn to play or sit life out on the sidelines permanently.

So I'm going to experiment, with all those things that women over time have said work, to see how effective they really are. Playing it cool. Playing hard to get. Playing it casual. Playing the field. (See how all these things start with "play"?) It's like chess. If I jump my knight completely over his bishop and pretend to be going after his rook, I can get his queen. And if that strategy doesn't work, I can try a new one. Lost this game? Onto the next opponent. Won this game but bored with the opponent? Time to move along. Play a few games at once? Better than playing solitaire.

I'm interested. My boundless curiosity is piqued. I'm going to look at it like a scientific enterprise, and I'm going to (finally) have fun with it. Lots of other people have said that dating is fun -- I want some of that fun, thank you! My life as it is is unbearably boring. And I used to be pretty good at chess. Looks like it's time to brush up my skills and start assembling the pawns.