The End of A New Start

I met him on 27 Feb 2010, while in transit in Dubai airport. It was a strange route for me because I usually take Air France and would never transit in Dubai then. This time round, Chinese New Year came by early and I decided to chance with Emirates instead and chose to transit in Dubai instead of my usual Paris.

Anyways, we struck up a conversation which lasted about 2 hours. He said goodbye when his mate said it was time to leave and I continued with my remainder 4 hour vigil at the pub with my ciggies and mineral water. When he came back shortly thereafter, I was pleasantly surprised. He asked for my email and I had expected us to keep in contact for a couple of months, with the conversation dying a natural death soon enough, or we would meet up if we ever traveled to countries in common.

When I got home and finally checked my email couple of days later, I was a little surprised to see an email from him. We chatted over the next few days and it seemed like there was an inexplicable attraction between us. However, being as cautious as I have become...I was hesitant to return the 'like' and when he commented that it would be cool to go on a date with me, I was non-committal. I had a thousand thoughts running through my head... thoughts like he is in Iraq now and would be able to travel only in October. His home country is in USA. Where would a singular date lead us even if it went well? Too many improbables and I hesitated. I did say he was welcome to visit Singapore and we would have a great time meeting up then. I never really answered him on whether I would be interested in a date with him. I merely said let's be friends and see where that takes us.

A couple days from then, I think my heart sank when he mentioned about this girl he had asked out. I mean... I do understand that when you are casually dating, it is alright to date a few others but to tell one date of an impending date you were excited about? My gawd...!

I mulled over this for a couple of days before I decided: "Fux sakes! I need to tell the jerk that he's being a jerk even if that means the end of a friendship." When I mentioned it, he was taken aback. He claims he had the impression that I wasn't really interested and that was when he asked the girl out. He said the girl is a uni mate from waaay back and they always have tons to talk about. He said he was gonna pursue this date with her and see what happens from there.

Hogwash! For someone as intuitive and book-smart as he is, there was no way he couldn't tell I was interested. He probably found a better prospect in between and decided to pursue that instead.

As pissed off as I was, I was also mollified. His actions further convinced me that people rarely say the things they mean these days and well... there was no point to this. He was quite adamant that we talked about things and for the weirdest reason, I didn't want things so clearly defined that we would never be able to return to this point. My usual style would be to talk things out to a certainty and from there, we would continue to move past the romantic stage into an asexual friendship of which, there would be no hope of ever returning to the romantic stage. I can't explain why I didn't want things clearly defined... I just knew at this point in time, I do not want to kill this. Silly I know... why waste time on a guy who is just... not very into me?

I told him I understood what he was saying and I am ok for us to remain as friends. No need to talk nor explain further. He said he made his life 2000 times more complicated. He also revealed then that were he ever in Asia... there was a Korean girl that he saw while he stayed in Korea for 6 yrs. He said theirs was a complicated relationship and the girl didn't seem able to commit.

I have the awful feeling that he is doing everything he can to make me not like him but well... he doesn't know me all that well and how much it takes for me to reveal that I like a person. Yes, I am the doofus who believes that saying things out loud makes it real.

Anyways... in the following weeks, while I made reasonable efforts to talk to him as a friend would, he got increasingly snarky. At some point, I decided to just shut him out completely. He created mixed feelings in me. I wondered often if things wouldav been different had I answered positively when he first asked. Right after this thought, my next thought would be how lucky I am that we never started because he seems to have a lot of unresolved emotional ties to girls.

It is strange that though we are no longer talking... I still think about him from time to time. I mean... we are talking about a guy I haven't known longer than a few months. We never even hung out! Sheesh! I must be aging ...