The Great Slovakian Hope: How Girls I Don't Date Sometimes Help Me Get Over Rejection and Despair

Sometimes

it's hard for me to differentiate falling in love with someone versus falling in love with the idea of someone.

My sister once

met a British concert pianist during a business trip. I wish I was clever enough to make this stuff

up, but...

She returned,

ready to break up with her boyfriend of three years, and ready to tour the

world. I figured she was just ready to

get out of her relationship and this impossible dream guy was the excuse she

needed.

But after

a trip to Dewey Beach DE this past weekend, I found a way to relate to what my

sister had gone through.

Sadly, my

version of a "three year relationship" was just a girl that I was trying to

date who was simply having none of it. Around this time, I went to the beach

with my buddies and, at our favorite bar-- The Starboard-- I met this

incredible girl.

Well, I

didn't exactly meet her. I

stumbled into the bar's merchandise store drunk and hit on the poor girl while

she was at work. This raises another

question I have for you all: is it OK to

hit on girls at work? I have a problem: I

hit on girls at work often. But after

I've spoken to a girl at her job for a while I get nervous that her boss is

noticing her socializing with a patron, or that she's just annoyed that I'm

bothering her while she's trying to work. It's solidifying my theory that romantic comedies teach me bad

things. In a romantic comedy, it's

perfectly ok for a guy (albeit a cute and unthreatening guy) to linger around a

girl while she's at work, or stop by her work intermittently to brighten her

day—even if she doesn't know him well. But when I try to do it, I am

awful. Ok, so I was leering and drunk at

the time. Couple this with the fact that

the girl was from Slovakia

and barely spoke English—adding the ignorant drunk American factor to me.

The girl

did everything I mentioned in my "4 Easy Pieces" post—she smiled the whole

time. She told me about how Slovakians

hate Russians, she was gorgeous but very down to earth. I managed to get the name of her town in Slovakia and

her email address written on a piece of paper...that I still have in my memory

box under my bed (I promise I'm not psycho).

When I got

back home, I looked up her town and fell in love with it-- with its cobblestone

streets, and castles. I couldn't get her off my mind...at least until I wrote her

an in-depth, too-much-English, teetering-on-the-edge-of-stalking email about

how great it was to meet her and how beautiful I thought her town was because I

had looked it up. Of course she didn't respond—she

was either confused or scared.

After I

recovered from my stupidity, I realized that this girl had put me in a great

mood because she had shown me that it was possible to find someone who was

attractive. After dealing with this

other girl who was difficult and not responsive, meeting the Slovakian was

exhilarating.

This past

weekend the bartender at the Starboard told me she'd be back this summer. He agreed she was gorgeous but made a bigger

point about her being very nice. It

dawned on me that the poor girl was nice to every single person she met and

that she had been hit on by hundreds of other drunk, transient beach town

Americans like me. So, I can't give

myself much credit for thinking I did well with her.

At the

time I was vulnerable, feeling rejected and loving any positive attention-- even

if it was from a gracious girl who happened to be at work.

The

Slovakian was as close to anyone I've ever met that represented sheer beauty inside

and out. No, I didn't date her, never

heard back from her, and I'll probably never see her again—but I'll never forget

her. And, sometimes, these types of

people are important to meet because they shepherd you from despair to hope.

So this

brings up more questions than answers, unfortunately. Do you ever get hit on at the gym or at work,

or a place where you have a specific agenda, and what do you think when this

happens? And, in moments of desperation

or disappointment, do you find that you cling onto things that can never

happen? Do you have anyone in your life

that you didn't really know or date, but that gave you hope that there are good

and attractive guys out there?