sometimes it just feels slimy

Two things, recently, made me feel slimy. Here they are:

1.) Even though I had a good time out with Dreadlock the other night, I ended up in a straight-guy meat market and it grossed me out. Dreadlock and I were there having an unusually animated conversation when another coworker, Fat Tony, showed up. I love Fat Tony. Sort of. In my secret little mind I call him my pretend boyfriend b/c he used to make me fried egg sandwiches at work. I don't want to "get it on" with Fat Tony, but I like thinking of him as a nice, relatively benign (and cute) specimen of the male species.

So Fat Tony sat down with us and soon a whole bunch of his geeky, awkward guy-friends constellated around us. They were all nice enough, but they were all there to meet girls, in their creepy, cruising-guy kind of way. Fat Tony openly acknowledged it when he sat down with us. He said "I'm here for dollar Pabst and to meet the ladies!" And he said it w/ such a creepy zeal it was obviously not a joke. Soon a very simple, sort of dumb, sort of cute girl sat down w/ us and started flirting with the guys. It created this weird, disgusting dynamic between the three guys and the three girls. It was like I could *see* the little adding machines hovering over each man's head -- calculating which of us was most attractive divided by which of us seemed most likely to accept advances minus which one of us was a big ol' dyke. It was grody. I wanted to make an announcement: "Don't look at me like that! I don't need to see your calculation of how I look too dykey or too old or too whatever! I'm off the menu!" Yuck.

As soon as the cute girl started talking about split ends (and all the guys leaned in to listen as though they were all working on their doctorates in split ends) -- I walked out. Yuck.

2.) Women can make me feel slimy too. Take, for instance, Gray. Remember, Gray is my coworker who manipulated me into a surprise "date" a few weeks ago w/ her and a friend I was hoping to mine for career advice. Well, Gray has been laying low since I clarified that I'm seeing someone. Today, however, she was in my office making copies and we started chatting. I noticed, more than usual, that just a normal conversation with her automatically started feeling creepy. I wasn't surprised, then, when the conversation took a turn for the objectively creepy. She explained that she had been on a coffee "outing" (not a "date" she insisted) with "T the Mover" -- this guy who moves people for our company. I've never met T the Mover, maybe he's a nice guy. But he asked Gray on a date so he could explain that he and his girlfriend were looking for another woman for the two of them to "date." Wow. She politely declined, but then, inexplicably spent an hour chatting w/ him on the phone last night. Hmm.

Whatever, Gray is crazy and obviously confused socially, but here's where it gets personal. I have to admit, though, that I walked right into it. In the middle of her explanation about why she wasn't interested in dating T the Mover (besides the obvious) -- she said he wasn't the kind of guy she would typically find attractive. So, foolishly (so, so foolishly), I asked what kind of guy she would typically find attractive. I thought I was safe since we were talking about GUYS and I am mostly not a guy. But no. She blushed like a school girl and said, breathlessly, "You are."

AUGH!!!!!!!!!! SQUIRMY, GRODY, YUCK, YUCK, WHY?????????????????

I thought I was safe! I wouldn't have asked if we weren't talking about GUYS!

So, I literally did start squirming when she said that and I made some spontaneous sounds that go with the feeling of being grossed out and she immediately started backing down. "I only said that to make you uncomfortable," she said. "Mission accomplished," I said.

What a fruitloop. What's wrong with people???