clicking. sparking. not hugging. (part three)

Let’s see. Where was I. Oh, yes, I was on the phone with my sister.
“I don’t know what to wear.”
“But is it a date? That’s how you’ll know what to wear.”
“I don’t know. How should I know?”
“Is he picking you up at your house?”
“No, we’re meeting at the theater.”
“Is it just a movie, or is he taking you to dinner after?”
“Just a movie. Although I have a sneaky plan for suggesting we go have a drink afterwards.”

“I don’t think it’s a date.”
“Maybe it’s a pre-date. You know, two people hanging out, and maybe if they like each other, it becomes a date, or next time there’s a date.”
“A pre-date. Uh-huh. Maybe you could wear a skirt, but not a casual one. Do you have a short denim skirt?”
“No.”
“It’ll have to be jeans then.”
“The hell it will. I’m wearing shorts. Do you know how hot it is in Austin in July?”
“At least shave your legs.”
“Well, duh.”
I met him at the Alamo Downtown theater. I tried to look nice without overdressing in any way that might indicate I thought this was a date if it was not. I wasn’t sure how I would tell and I didn’t want to worry about it so I told myself it was not a date and I should just have a good time seeing some old cartoons that I had wanted to see and that was that.
The cartoons were pretty entertaining. We watched them without anything remotely date-like going on between us. Afterwards, before I could slip in my daring suggestion for a drink at Gingerman, he suggested it himself. I saw a bunch of people I knew outside of the theater and waved at them hurriedly and babbled something incoherent and we headed over to Gingerman, which is only a couple of blocks from the theater.
It wasn’t too hot outside so we sat out on their back patio. I ordered a pint of Newcastle. He was impressed that I wasn’t drinking some girly beer or other drink. I don’t remember what he had. (My guess now is that it was probably Harp.) I think I had two pints. We took turns paying for rounds … see, not a date. We talked about all kinds of things and I imitated the little flea in one of the cartoons who kept singing, “There’ll be food around the corner for meeeee.” The backs of my legs were dripping sweat, since it wasn’t all that cool outside, but I didn’t care. I saw the people I knew from outside the theater, inside Gingerman having a drink, and I pretended I hadn’t because I didn’t want to get sucked into a conversation about the pre-date or whatever it was or wasn’t.
He walked me back to my car, and I made jokes about the shameful state of the exterior—as usual in the summer months, the birds in the trees above my driveway had been holding target practice on the car, and I hadn’t washed it. I tried to loiter around the car door a bit. Would he want to give me a hug? Would he say anything? But no. No indication of anything like that. Not a date, then. Maybe not a pre-date. Maybe I’d see him at the next Austin blogger gathering, although that was at least two weeks away.
I was pleased that he emailed me soon after to tell me what a good time he had, and that we should go to the movies again. He didn’t know which movie to suggest because he was intimidated by my film geekiness, and I was quick to assure him that I liked all kinds of silly and un-film-student-y movies. That might be why we decided on Finding Nemo. I believe he refused to see Charlie’s Angels or Tomb Raider with a woman because then he wouldn’t feel comfortable ogling the lead actresses. (Correct me if I’m wrong, sweetie.)
So we were going to the movies again. At night. Now, was this a date?
“He’s still meeting you at the theater and not picking you up. I say it’s pre-date again,” my sister advised.
“Look at it this way: if he were totally uninterested, he would not have wanted to see you again,” my friend Connor said. “It’s a date whether you like it or not.
“Maybe he just wants a movie buddy,” I replied.
“Typical guys do not bother to make new female friends,” Connor told me. “If he’s trying to meet new women, it’s because he’s fishing.”
I was slightly nervous on Sunday afternoon before the is-it-a-date. We had an Austin journaller gathering at the sushi place next to Momoko. The little cafe was lovely and everyone was in high spirits but I kept checking the clock to make sure I got home in time for a shower, and to figure out what to wear. Everyone was still having a good time when I made my excuses—not mentioning why I was leaving.
This time we were meeting at Gateway Theatre, which is in North Austin and very different from the Alamo. Alamo is small and cool and funky, and Gateway is a chain multiplex, the kind that shows commercials before the movies. I had found another nice pair of shorts this time, since I simply didn’t own the kinds of outfits my sister kept recommending.
By now, I definitely wanted it to be a date, whether it was or not. I leaned over close to him to whisper things before and during the movie, or to hear him better if he whispered something. I thought it was a shame we weren’t seeing a scary movie. You can’t exactly grab someone’s arm with the excuse that you were startled or scared if you are watching a Disney movie about cute little fishies. You can giggle a lot, and you can lean in to whisper little jokes, but that’s about it.
We both thought Finding Nemo was enchanting and had a very good time. After the movie, we walked over to North by Northwest for a spontaneous late dinner. Its main virtue was location. The restaurant was noisy but I endeavored to sit a little closer. The food wasn’t terrific but that way we could make comments about it. NXNW is a very hit-or-miss restaurant—I have had both excellent and atrocious meals there—but I have no idea what I ate there that night.
We walked back to the movie theater parking lot and he walked me to my car … the moment of truth, yet again. I was nervous and I didn’t want to rush things, but … but … I smiled and told him good night and moved in a bit closer without actually hugging him. In retrospect, I don’t know why I didn’t just give him a hug as if it were some spontaneous whimsical idea, but all I can say is that I had been burned one too many times and I didn’t want to ruin the good times I was having with him. And I believe that for once, I wanted someone else to make the first move. He didn’t.
I got in the car and drove home. Connor was wrong. Not a date. I suspected it wasn’t a pre-date, either. That was it, then. We would go to movies together and drink beer and have a good time and that would be as far as it would go. And that was fine. He would be a good friend. I shouldn’t knock that. Good friends were important, after all.
At home, I turned on my computer and checked my email and read some stuff on the Web and decided to get ready for bed. Work tomorrow, after all. I sent my friend Cindy an email telling her that no, it wasn’t a date, yeah, I was disappointed. And then I heard Eudora’s “you’ve got mail” chime and found an email from the guy, just home himself from the not-a-date.
After accusing himself of being “probably the biggest twit in North America,” he told me that he too was confused about whether or not we’d just had a date, and implied that he had hoped it was a date. (He also said he’d read one of my “I am not a huggy person” entries and that this had an effect, thus causing me to smack myself in the head and vow never to write one of those again. Why does everyone take those entries so seriously?)
I replied that it could not possibly have been a date because I’d felt comfortable around him and enjoyed myself very much, something that never happened on actual dates. But if a date like him would be as fun as the evening with him had been, I would like to go out on a date with him.
We agreed to go out to dinner on Tuesday night. We would meet at Central Market. It would be an actual date. There would be hugging.
My air conditioning went out on Monday night. In July. In Austin. I didn’t have anywhere else to go so I opened windows, turned on a lot of fans, and spent the night tossing and turning in my bed, too hot to sleep, and worrying. already wondering what in the world would happen on Tuesday night. I was already fretting about how much the A/C repair might cost and how horrible it would be and how I would pay for it (it turned out to be surprisingly cheap and easy) and that mixed nicely with nervousness about The Date. When was the last time I went out on a definite date with someone I liked, someone I found attractive, and someone who apparently felt the same way? What might happen? Most importantly, what did I want to happen?
This is a terribly mean place to end the story for today, isn’t it? I guess that means I will have to update soon with the rest of the story, before the suspense kills Toni. I will, I promise.