A mini life goal is sort of complete; I finally had an awkward face to face small talk with an older man who was somewhat into me. Maybe small talks aren’t a big deal if you’re a regular chick who’s aware of the big picture. But for people like me who grew up with big biases and assumptions around how the opposite sex may be, small talks, especially around men… actually, small talks with ANYBODY, is difficult.
Frankly, it’s because I find it boring. I’m not an introvert and I think that I’m pretty fun, active, and outgoing… ten percent of the time. It’s just that there’s nothing interesting about how their day was (unless it was unique) or how the weather is. I tune out pretty easily. Unless you want to get deep, weird, or goofy, then I might either get weirded out or super interested in you. There’s no winning here. I used to put up with it, but small talks are getting harder and harder to make.
Yes it was still awkward, but I finally managed to have a small talk with an older man. The key point here is an older man, and not the small talk. First of all, I’ve always been into older guys. I used to think that I was older than my age in my mind when I was younger (although it turns out I’m actually quite immature and I love it now that I myself am older. Yeah!).
Anyway, I’ve been rejected by older guys for being too young for most of my life. I mean, so what if I was fourteen and you were… wow never mind.
As I was saying, the time it hit hard was when I was nineteen and got rejected by a thirty-two year old true love that I met within an hour. You can read about it here.
I fake rejected him, hoping he’d turn around, but he never came back.
After college, I was desperate for a job and was having a hard time getting employed. I just wanted a sugar daddy at that time. I just wanted to look good, be somebody’s arm candy, and lead an easy life where I could buy face creams, maybe be somebody’s secretary, and only worry about wrinkles when I get old.
That failed; I ended up having a successful career and pretty much became a self-made independent woman. I myself can be a sugar mama now if I wanted to, and there’s really no need for a wealthy older man.
The weird thing is; as I got older, the older men that I liked started getting older too. Soon enough, I was into slightly out-of-shape balding guys. That hit me in my early career; I was freaking out because the town where I was living in at the time had no college-aged guys around, and then it dawned on me that my demographics of interest were now aging family men that were standing outside cleaning up their yards.
Now that I’ve finally realized that I’m officially deep in my thirties, I can no longer keep saying “that middle aged guy over there” as if they were some comical alien breed. It’s hitting me again; middle aged guys are actually not older guys anymore…. they are within the legit socially acceptable sphere.
Back to talking about this specific older man. I’ll keep it short…;
I’ve seen him for years and we have nodded hellos to eachother. However this time, we finally talked while he was working at the counter. I casually said something along the lines of something about him working there, and he said something along the defensive lines of, “Working here? I own this place!” He insisted that I have a free protein shake and sat me down. We had a small talk; it was really boring. He was really keen on asking me questions about my relationship and my romantic life, while I tried to just answer questions about politics and to keep it sort of “normal.” It sort of didn’t make sense. I kept trying to gauge how much older he was to me; turned out it wasn’t bad at all. Twenty two years. Yesss, less than thirty. What am I cheering about? Anyway! It was awesome to have an older man flirt with me, like legit flirt, albeit underneath the small talk. It’s what I’d always wanted. I thought maybe it’d never happen, because as I age, I’m getting right in their sphere. It’s what I’ve always wanted minus that long stream of awkward talk… I mean, what do you talk to an older man about? Like, there was nothing to talk about; first of all, because I’m bad at small talks, but also because what does a liberal environmentalist like me have in common with a capitalistic, conservative, Republican, married old man? Like nada. So I just listened to him complain about how this one woman that used to work for him won’t stop calling him because he was so awesome, and secretly wished that he kept talking so that I wouldn’t have to. But he stopped talking, and often, and I couldn’t fill that silence with words so then I’d begin with another boring jolted topic like FOX news versus CNN.
Anyway, the key point is, at least we finally talked. Using boredom and loneliness as a premise, that one rainy cold night when he had no customers… I’ll see him again, and maybe we’ll have some sporadic small talk here and there, but I’m pretty sure mentally, we both went there. By there, I mean like, “With a red… garment on, slowly crawling on top of the counter towards him” there. Anyway, I hope he’s excited, because I was, and am, thinking about the fact that it finally happened; that I had an awkward flirty encounter with an older powerful man who became really interested in me and made me feel like an arm candy.
By the way how funny that his name is Terry, the same name of the guy that rejected me over a decade ago. Nothing really significant about this though; I actually had a crush on That one.
The end.
Samasya Tapasya 