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.
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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?
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