He'd stared at me from across the room, outside the window a setting so pastoral and autumnal and picture-perfect it looked like a painted backdrop someone had pulled down from the sky. I did all the secret things girls do when they know someone is staring at them across a room and don't want him to stop.
And he didn't stop. In fact, the out-of-town presentation we were all attending in the middle of nowhere sort of blurred and blended into the background. He stared and stole glances like he'd never grow tired of doing it; I pretended not to notice even though I could feel his eyes taking in every detail of my face.
Later that afternoon, I ran into him at a divey cafe on
"You look so familiar," he said.
"Well, you saw me this morning," I replied.
"No....that's not what I meant. I mean, I feel like I know you. From before today. I just can't place you."
It was a fairly typical approach, I'm told by protective male friends irritated by my swoon, but I was touched by his glasses and flattered by his earnest attempt across a crowded bagel shop in the middle of the afternoon with no alcohol involved.
Being flattered quickly accelerated to being charmed when he slid his business card across the counter and said, "Tell you what. You think about it. And if you can figure out where we've met email me and let me know."
Anti-game at its finest, it was direct/subtle. I emailed him one week later. He asked me out to dinner.
I wore herringbone gauchos, a velvet blazer and open-toed high heels. He wore a rumpled, navy-blue, three-button sweatervest. And while I've never been one to dismiss a man for clothing or shoes or bad haircuts, something about that worn, crumpled sweatervest...I didn't quite know what to do with.
To begin with, it reminded me of my junior high geometry teacher which was disconcerting. But also Werther's Originals which felt safe. Sure, I'd never met a man who made me lusty in a "God, I'd love to pin him up against a wall and rip off his sweatervest" kind of way, but then I also thought that men who wear three-button sweatervests without apology also probably don't cheat on their girlfriends three days before they propose. And that maybe, maybe woven into the threads of his worn, warm cotton outerwear there was an earnest decency and something to be said for giving Old SweaterVest a chance.
He wasn't all good, in fact. He liked my high heels which made him a little racy. [He mentioned it three times which catapulted him close to seamy.] He told me I was beautiful and when I blushed and looked down and fumblingly thanked him, he adjusted his glasses and said "That wasn't really a compliment, it's a matter of fact."
Anti-game game. (Though, not the anti-game I talked about here.)
We shared romantic histories over wine and cheese.
I was part-enchanted, part-wary. If the past year has taught me anything, it's that talk is cheap. Dropping the beautiful bomb is easy. So is paying a woman a weighty compliment. If every adult woman has at least two moves that she knows work for her, it's fair to say I think that every man has at least two lines in his arsenal that will not fail him when sexual tension is on the table.
I've also learned that enamored men do crazy things. And as most single women in their late twenties will agree, the goal isn't to make a man so enamored he does something crazy; the goal is to make a man so enamored he does something sensible: like choose to be with you. Forever.
I might have written Sweatervest off then and there but for his delivery which was bumbling, his glasses which were fashion-backward, and his dreams of being a high school English teacher which were as worn and comfortable as the tan leather briefcase he carried around that matched it all.
What was left to consider in that moment was the RipYourClothesOffFactor. If it wasn't high, would I be happy? And how would it feel, at the end of a long, satisfying life, to know that you were with someone who didn't feel that way about you?
I wasn't sure. What I felt, as we ambled home on that chilly October night in comfortable silence, the soft leather of his bag hitting my bare legs, and all I could think about was being curled up, safe and warm, in the right hip pocket of his comfortably worn cotton-wool blend dreaming sweet, buttery, toffee-flavored dreams.
