I was sitting at a table with a cute, slender, blond girl, and a guy who was a platonic friend of hers.  We seemed to be just getting acquainted.  She mentioned that she was friends with my sister’s husband, PJ, so I remarked, “Oh, you know PJ?! He’s married to my sister, Joan.  I’m Joan’s brother.”  I could see she was putting it together, and suddenly was pleasantly surprised, saying, “Oh, you’re DreamTrader…” and then added, “You don’t look that old.” I gathered that she was probably closer to my sister’s age, and assumed that since I was the older sibling that I’d show more age, and in this case I looked younger than she imagined.  More conversation ensued; it was light-hearted exchange, with goofiness and laughter.  Then she really started coming on to me.  She said her guy-friend there had made a comment about her body– something about her muscles always being relaxed, as opposed to being tense.  Then she intentionally drew my attention to her bikini area.  She was wearing a bikini bottom that was primarily yellow, with a small green strip in the middle.  She sat in the chair, opened her legs and pointed to her pelvic area, saying in jest “Does this look firm enough to you?!”  She was obviously confident in her physical condition looking good, objectively, as she was relatively fit.  I didn’t get overly excited or aroused by it– to me it was nice to see but the main thing was getting a sense of her type of humor and confidence/comfort in herself.

Then there was some casual physical contact under the table.  I had my hands in my lap, then reached to scratch an itch on my knee.  I brushed against part of her leg, noticing that it was soft, smoothly shaven, and had nice muscle tone.  Since there had been some obvious flirting beforehand, I let my touch linger for an extra moment.  She intentionally didn’t react right away, deciding to delay and exaggerate a response, to ‘use’ the moment as a way to escalate the flirting again. She let it linger, but didn’t want to seem like she’d already totally ‘fallen’ so she withdrew suddenly and vocalized a coy “Heyyyy…” as if she was just then realizing that I was deliberately touching her.  The conversation continued, then she started squeezing my right leg between her two knees.  It was a sort of interlocking thing that was possible just given how we were seated perpendicularly at the table.

I was very confident at that point that all the signals of interest were totally obvious. It felt easy-going and casual, so it was pleasing.  Suddenly there was a moment where I blanked on her name.  I wasn’t sure whether I had heard it at all before, or maybe I had a ‘brain fart’– but in this case it was akin to the record skipping on the turntable.  She stood up abruptly like all the fun was now OVER! I didn’t want her to leave with this negative impression of the situation, to think that I didn’t value or appreciate her or the quality of the interaction.  So I said, “Hey, wait a second!  You gotta cut me a little slack here.  All this half-naked, flirty, touchy-feely stuff just got me all doped up!  I’m on hottie-overload right now.  You got my hormones all jacked up and it just fried my brain for a second.  I got paralyzed by your beauty.  I mean, look at all this special attention you’re giving me.”  I think she realized that it was a positive sign, ultimately, so she felt better.

My memory fades about the plot specifics, but some time passed, perhaps several days, then the two of us were sitting at a table, having a conversation.  I was announcing the intention or proposal of sorts, to go to Australia, and my plan had something to do with developing or implementing a piece of technology that I was currently working on.  Her appearance was definitely more business-like than casual this time.  Her hair was pulled back tight and she was more fully-clothed in darker fabrics, more professional-attire.  She asked what kind of money it would take to make it all happen, and I replied that I wasn’t quite sure.  I noted that I wouldn’t be comfortable going forward with the plan unless plenty of funds were available; unless it could be done with relative ease then it wouldn’t be a ‘go.’  So she nodded in agreement.  I wondered in that moment whether she was passionate about the personal/intimacy side of the relationship, or whether she was interested only so long as her way was paid for.  My sense of her attitude was that the proposal was indeed attractive– it would be to anyone from an objective standpoint.  But it wouldn’t really be ‘worth it’ unless the whole thing had a lot of security baked in, and guaranteeing that in this case seemed like a pretty big stretch for most people.

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