the gods don't give a damn

(This entry could also be called "About A Boy, Part Three")

A while back, some women friends suggested I put a notice in the "Shot in the Dark" section of the Chronicle, the listings just after the personals where people say "I saw you at such-and-such a place; did you see me?" I was talking about D, the boy I met nearly two years ago at El Chile, where he worked waiting tables. I had a big crush on him, and he seemed to be at least somewhat interested, but I didn't handle myself in the best way. I wrote a note to him and walked it to the restaurant, but was too shy to walk in and give it to him, so I gave it to a waitress outside the restaurant who was opening up the patio windows. I had practiced writing the note a couple of times before I put it down on the card I'd made for him. But I didn't practice my phone number, and when I got back home, I couldn't for the life of me recall if I'd actually put my number in the note. What an idiot!

So I couldn't go back to that restaurant. (That's the way it works for me...)

So about a year later, I saw him at CampCamp, the monthly lesbian-run talent show that takes place at Bouldin Creek Coffeehouse. He seemed very interested in me, but I was too flabbergasted by having run into him, him seeming so interested, to do anything about it. Somewhere in the conversation I found out that he was no longer working at El Chile ("That was the worst job ever," he told me), but that he was at The Clay Pit.

I went there with a friend shortly after that but he wasn't working. And then the following week, another friend invited me to her birthday dinner which was going to be held at the Clay Pit. I responded to her email, "Ooh! Ask for D to be our waiter!" Which she did, and perhaps we got a D, but not the right D. I don't know the name of our waiter that night, but I found out later that there were two D's who worked at the Clay Pit.

My D was working at the Clay Pit, but he was downstairs. I had had a beer and had the encouragement of two (different from the above mentioned) female friends to get the balls to walk over to him and ask him if he wanted to go out, and he said, "Well, yeah," in a way that sounded to me like he'd been waiting for me to ask about as long as I'd been trying to work up the nerve. But I'm not good at these social situations; I know now that I should have gotten his number, but he asked for mine first, and that seemed sufficient. In fact, I was kind of happy that he had my number instead of the other way around, because then I would have to ponder the proper amount of time to wait before calling him.

He grabbed a pen, said, "Give it to me," and wrote my number on the back of his hand. I had caught him doing his cleaning-up duties, sweeping the restaurant floor; it's likely he did some other, dirtier chores, and he probably washed his hands, and with the dirt away went my phone number. That's the best-case scenario I can think of. A month went by; he didn't call. It didn't bode well. But what could I do?

Friends were full of advice about how to follow up, and eventually I went back to the Clay Pit -- three times: the first because I just happened to be in the neighborhood and had time before a movie I was going to see started (but he wasn't working); the second time, after I called to ask if he was working, was interrogated a bit by the phone-answerer, and then got there to not see him there (though the waiter who had worked my friend's birthday dinner was working, and that's what made me think that perhaps his name was D as well); and the third time, when I got the bad news (I asked the bartender if D was there, the bartender said, "No, I'm sorry, D lost his job two nights ago."

So, maybe the gods are telling me he's a bit flaky. Whatever. I don't care about his employment history. I have dreams about him now and again; in some ways I want to see how this story plays out, in other ways I just want to get the inevitable heartbreak over with!

I forgot that I'd put an ad in the "Shot in the Dark" section of the Chronicle. In fact, I just picked up the current paper today, which will be replaced by next week's in three days (so it's more than half a week old); if somebody were going to respond to my ad they would have by now, right? The thought of my well-intentioned girlfriends a week or so ago at La Dolce Vita over cognacs and cappuccinos was that at least one of his friends would see it and alert him to it. But like I said, I forgot I'd put it in there. I had just noticed that the cover story was about the Museum of Ephemerata, which I took my friend R from Wisconsin to when he was here a while back. So I was pulling the paper apart to send the article to him, when I noticed the "Shot in the Dark" section. And I remembered writing the ad, though I didn't remember writing it quite like this (read carefully and to the bitter end):

DANIEL, WHERE Y'AT?
First it was El Chile, then Clay Pit. You
wrote my number on your hand. Did
you wash it off? I still have a crush
on you. When: Thursday, April 10.
Where: Clay Pit. You: Man. Me:
Woman. #903108