Well, there you have it. Stupid is as stupid does and tonight, stupid did just that.
My best intentions not to contact Lara lasted less than 24 hours. Although, I have to add, she SMS’ed me this afternoon. So I thought, “Ha! Now I have the power”.
I took my sweet time in replying, thinking of course, that she would be nervously on edge, watching her mobile phone the whole time, periodically checking if it was still working. All in anticipation of my all important reply.
Instead of my usual lightning fast, desperate-written-all-over-it reply of 5 seconds, taking my time I took a whole 15 seconds on this one, really working the suspense.
And then she didn’t reply. So I thought it warranted another SMS… and another. A victim of my own emotions, see?
In between my two classes this evening I fired off another SMS asking if she wanted me to go there (The Restaurant), but no reply. After class, sitting on the edge of my bed, pondering the perplexities that is woman, I thought screw this, I’m not Tom and she’s not Jerry, so I refuse to play these cat and mouse games any longer.
So I typed her a nice SMS saying, I don’t understand her, she doesn’t understand me, we should maybe just leave the whole thing alone, and then fired it off thinking what must be will be.
What was to be was that at that moment my phone indicated that I should check my service provider, because the message could not be sent. Checking revealed that I had run out of airtime. A sign?
Ever the optimist, I thought that’s why I haven’t had a reply from her earlier and that she probably did SMS me to say “come here”, but without airtime I couldn’t receive it.
So I scarfed and gloved myself and set off on my quest, as so many times before, to Liuyan. On the way I thought to myself what am I thinking, why am I doing this, obsessing like this, making such an ass of myself. The thoughts were impaled by Cupid’s arrow as I arrived at the bus stop near The Restaurant and walked my way in.
From the street level there are maybe 15 steps down to The Restaurant, so you can see who’s coming before they actually arrive. Lara usually cover’s the front desk as I think officially she’s the hostess. Anyway, as expected she was near the door with a colleague, but I saw her before she saw me.
I looked down to find my footing on the steps, but as I looked up again a moment later, I saw her running away into the Restaurant. I froze… shocked at first, confused a second later. Then I caught the eye of two of her colleagues, felt myself going red, turned around and left.
I decided to walk home. It took me 40 minutes which is the pace of a brisk walk. For the first few blocks I was fuming. Angry, humiliated, defeated in my quest for love.
After another few blocks I realised that her actions tonight is what I wanted – a clear communication. I can handle rejection, what I can’t handle is being kept in the dark and being non the wiser either way. Of course, my ego hopes that she would have tried to phone as soon as she realised I had turned around. My ego would be laughing thinking that she would hear the message that says my phone had no credit and would feel sorry for what she did and would spend the night lying awake, perhaps shedding a tear for the hurt she caused me.
My ego is mean and self-centered.
So here sits stupid, having over-played his hand, having made the classic primary-school mistake of being too eager. Putting too much paper shreds on the fire at one time can kill the fire.
And of course now there will probably also be no friendship. In fact, I have now veiled the whole restaurant in awkwardness and even the dynamics with Uncle W and T will maybe have changed.
What says the old adage – don’t piss where you eat… or sleep, or work.