I am awkward, horribly awkward when it comes to dealing with my crushes. Contrary to popular belief, I do have male crushes, thank you very much. Most people — normal ones, that is — would find it exhilarating to actually have a human conversation with the ONE who gets their heart racing. I, on the other hand, would rather swallow myself whole and disappear from the face of the earth rather than make small talk.

Yes, I refuse to conduct anything that requires eye contact with the object of my attention.

People at the office have been witnesses (sniggering ones at that) to the horrendous manner by which I deal with my crush. There is only one person in the entire 18th floor capable of reducing me to a bubbling puddle of shame and worthlessness, and for all intents and purposes, that person shall remain anonymous behind the name “Peachy”. Yes, he is male. No he is not fruity.

Suffice it to say that I am reduced to an illiterate, incomprehensible dummy when in his presence. In rare instances wherein I am forced to share proximate space with Peachy, I turn into a blubbering mess squeaking out a mix of half-coherent grunts and syllables. I refuse to look at him at all, prefering to watch my beautifully deconstructed Chucks shuffle uncomfortably as I wait for him to get it over with and leave.

Every encounter never fails to remind me that I am, first and foremost, a highly pathetic social failure. I’ve been this way since God knows when; I get so flustered I forget how to string sentences together. It is rather disconcerting, however, to realize that my pathetic attempts at socializing bring much joy to the people around me. Seeing me reduced to a speechless babboon must be more interesting than I thought.

Today, however, marks a breakthrough. At approximately 10 minutes before 4 in the afternoon, while waiting for the elevator, I found myself alone (technically — nobody’s counting the guard, right?) with the current apple of my defective eyes: Peachy.

So I was there, fiddling with my iPod, when he turned up and greeted me. I froze and had no choice but to smile awkwardly and acknowledge the greeting. I, or rather my boss, had been trying to sell him a Yellow Submarine shirt. It was supposed to be mine, but the cute and cuddly tindera at Happy Days gave me a size L — for men.

I think he was apologizing about not having enough money to buy the shirt, but I was too busy not being too obviously awkward and self-conscious to understand what he was saying. I don’t think I even heard most of what he said; I suppose half of my responses made no sense either. In any case, I got roughly four grammatically correct sentences out during that brief conversation, and it was the first time I actually looked at him directly (not via stealth mode, which is how a modern stalkerish ninja usually does it).

I think it was easier talking to him this afternoon since, again, there was nobody there, and it would look incredibly weird if I feigned deaf all the while. Not that I’m above doing that, considering I’m a pathetic example of social suicide. I’d probably go back to stealth mode tomorrow, and he’d be none the wiser. Most of my friends, however, think otherwise.

Pam, in particular, thinks I’m too obvious and insists that Peachy’s probably realized a looong time ago that the strange person with messy hair has a massive neanderthal crush on him. Whether he knows it or not is a problem too ginormous for my neanderthal brain to consider. It won’t be a problem for long, anyway, since he’s leaving for HK soon enough.

I’m going to need some new guy to turn me into mindless mush soon.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 24th, 2007 at 10:05 pm and is filed under fangirl, nonsense, relationships, work. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.