Thursday, March 19, 2009

Failed Date #2

Well, you must know first of all that the "failed date" series is not in chronological order.

A few months ago, I believe it was early-December, I was coming home from class in the afternoon. So I go into the building, and step into the elevator, and a pretty brunette followed in. She uttered a small "thanks" as I held the door out to her. I press on the button for the 3rd floor, she presses the one for the 5th. The elevator urged upwards, and midway between the 1st and the 2nd, the elevator suddenly stopped and the lights went off. It was a power cut.

Now as you may know, power cuts are pretty common in Lebanon. About 8 hours a day are spent in the dark for the few who don't have a backup diesel powered generator.

Back to my story.

The building I live in does have a power generator, but for some reason, the elevator wouldn't start and we had to wait for the elevator repairmen to come over. Any amount of button-pushing wouldn't do us any good.

In good humour, I said in English "lucky day, huh?"
To which she responded "tell me about it"

Now you must put yourself into my position. I meet this girl, very pretty, kind eyes, slim, a bit shorter than me (which doesn't come along very often, I'm afraid to admit) and to top it all off, a perfect American accent. In a nutshell, she was a catch.

So we start speaking for a while, waiting for the repairman to come, and I learn that she's an English major, sophomore, and an aspiring writer. So after the elevator lurched upwards again, as I was getting out of the elevator, I ask her if she'd like to have dinner with me at a nearby restaurant, to resume our interesting conversation (smooth, I know). She graciously agrees. I then proceed to say "I'll pick you up at 8" (get it? I'll pick her up from 2 floors above me, har har).

So we go to this cozy Italian restaurant on Hamra street, barely a 5 minute walk from our building. We sit down, glance at the menu, and start talking. Turns out she's been dabbing with writing for a while, and had written about 50 pages of a prospective book.

We're interrupted by the waiter. This is our conversation. I'm E, she's S, and the waiter is (you guessed it) W.

W: what would you like?
E: I think that I'm in the mood for pasta.
S: Ooh pasta?Are you sure? It's awfully fattening.
E: Umm you might be right I think I'll stick with goat cheese salad or something.
W: Good choice sir but you must also know that all our pasta is made out of whole grai-
S: Yes, yes whole grain wheat. Anyways, I think I'll have cheese stuffed raviolis in creamy tomato sauce. Oh and I'd like some garlic bread to start with please.
...

Right so besides that odd conversation (in which she basically called me fat) we start talking a bit. I ask her who her favorite author is. She says J. K. Rowling. Now, I know what you're thinking, another hardcore Harry Potter fan, but at first I tried to be sympathetic. So I ask her what she likes about the novels. She says she loves the plots in the stories, the deep character developments, and the imaginative magic (imaginative, right, Latin words and a wand. Oh my! she's the first to have ever done that!). Now I'm not ashamed to admit that I have read all Harry Potter books, yes. But it's not quite something you advertise.

So I try to steer the conversation away from Harry Potter, and she goes on by saying "yeah, remember that book I'm writing? The one where I've finished 50 pages already? It's Harry Potter fiction, maybe I can continue the series one day..."

There's when she went brain dead to me.

The rest of the date was devoted to small talk and trivial conversations.

She did call me back at one point, to invite me to her parent's chalet in Faraya. But it was a no.

I'm cursed, I know.

3 comments:

  1. j'attend impatiemment le prochain épisode !! GOOD LUCK !

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  2. Well too bad, it could have been the start of an almost cinematographic love story (the goofy harry potter loving stuff put aside)
    better luck next time mate
    alain

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  3. Hahahaha! I would've said "who?!?!" :P

    ReplyDelete