trying to pluck the low-hanging fruit

About a year ago…

A couple of jobs ago, I worked in a building on the other end of downtown, with a suave and charming guy who always had a bit of a thing for me. Despite not really being my type at all, we had chemistry. When I was feeling neglected in my marriage, I sometimes fantasized about running into him in the library and making out among the stacks.

He went through a divorce around the time I was moving on to my next gig. But we stayed loosely in touch, occasionally catching up over coffee. He changed jobs, too, and was now a lobbyist. I ran into him downtown one day and he hugged me longer than was comfortable. Pretty much everyone described him as “smarmy.” But that was all years ago…

Now I was newly single again and on the prowl — and Brendon should have been an easy target. Smarmy and lobbyist are irrelevant terms when one has a specific mission in mind. I had absolutely no interest in a relationship with him. In fact, I wasn’t even interested in him as a human. But sex, yeah. Think of Aaron Eckhart’s character in Thank You For Smoking. So I texted him, “What happened to that coffee date we had planned? Let’s upgrade to a cocktail to celebrate my being single and fabulous!”

“Well you’ve always been fabulous!” he replied. “Sorry to hear about your divorce. Pick the coziest place you can think of and you can tell me all about it.”

So you see, I thought this would be easy. Incredibly easy. The low-hanging fruit is always easy to reach and usually ready to be plucked, right?

But apparently smarmy lobbyists have an entire season of fundraisers to attend to, and his work demands kept getting in the way of any plans we’d made. When he cancelled on me for the second time via text, I ignored him. Note to men:  you may be able to cancel a date via text once. But if you have to cancel the very next one, it merits a phone call and apology.

He began texting me again while I was out of town on vacation with my children. We vowed to make something work when I returned.

One day, as I was walking downtown, I saw Brendon coming from the other direction. He excused himself from the work colleagues he was with and embraced me in the middle of the street. I felt butterflies in my stomach and weak in the knees — classic crush symptoms, which were even more pronounced than they’d been back in the day. Brendon had to endure a work dinner with an out-of-town colleague, who would soon become his boss. After the sexual tension I felt right there in the street, I was sure Brendon would call after dinner …but he didn’t.

Brendon’s inaction was not helping me achieve the mission my counsellor set me on. And it was killing my self-esteem that someone I thought would be so easy and seemed to be interested in my charms was not motivated to take action! In the end, I never did hook up with Brendon.

And, looking back, I’m okay with that.