So the other night I went to see John's show. It was supposed to be him and his bassist, but his bassist punked out and John wound up doing his usual solo acoustic stuff. The place his shows are at always puts huge sheets of paper down on the tables and leaves a mug full of crayons at each one for the visitors to scribble with. Before the show started I had chopped out a scottish space explorer using blue and red. Not too soon after, more people showed up including John's roommate, a girl we both work with, and one of her friends.
She sat down at the opposite end of the table, so that she was just to the right of my view of the stage. As I watched John set up his show and him reacting to his roommate's heckles, I noticed that for what was probably a full two minutes at least, this girl was very obviously staring straight at me, wearing this completely mysterious grin. Kind of like grinning wasn't something she had much practice at doing, but she was putting up a hell of an effort. Her goal was then accomplished, she had my attention.

A dude like me Isn't usually one to attract the attention of anyone, I tend to sit in corners and not move much, especially in crowds, but here was different. i'd say about a dozen people were there, and the guy that invited me was putting on a show. So I picked a seat that wasn't one i'd usually pick, leaving me wide open to a situation such as this.

She laughed a little, probably at how long it took for me to acknowledge her, and asked my name and she told me hers. a handshake was extended, and it turned into one of those. The contest handshake. The kind of handshake me and my close friends have when we finalize a plan. grab each others hand, and shake like hell, until one of us has to stop in fear of permanent tissue damage. Kind of like the bloody knuckles disguised as a friendly greeting. She asked what In college for, (art if you didnt know), and I showed her my spaceman drawing, which led to her handing me a pencil and asking me to draw something for her. This fucked me up. Because of this, I didn't ask what she was in college for or anything of the sort! Damn! She asked for a horse with a ridiculous smile on its face (not the one she flagged me down with), and from there my imagination grabbed hold and i wound up drawing a horse in a vest at a cocktail party holding a martini, creeping out all the guests. Must have taken 10 minutes or so to draw, as John belted out a few tunes in the time it took to complete. Ten minutes of me being too wrapped up in doing what I was doing to talk or look away from the paper. Right as I finished, a guy she knew sat down at the table with us, which gave me hell of paranoia, and I directed my attention once again to the stage. He moved on to another table after a while, but the damage had been done. I was hell of nervous from that point on, and clammed up for the rest of the show. She began talking to one of her friends at the adjacent table and then left a song or two before John was done. It's been eating at me since then, so I figured "fuck it, man. bitch about it on the internet."

Thinking back over things has helped. I've got a plan next time this sort of thing happens. It goes as follows:
1. everything is awesome
2. you are one of everything
3. act the part, dipshit!
4. steps 1-3 are vitally important if you meet this girl again.

- Aquas <- 12:42:04 pm, monday, november 12th, 2007 pst