Photo by Benjamin Ehrenberg

Last Monday at the post office I got chatted up by a lovely man from my part of the world. I saw him smiling at me from the corner of my eye and he knew that I knew so I smiled back. I let the exchange linger for approximately 2.3 seconds and then it was my turn to hand my card in and collect my latest online purchase. By the way, how annoying is it when you buy something online in order to not leave the comfort of your own home and then the bastards don’t even knock on your door even though you were home on the day and they just leave one of those ‘please collect’ cards? LIKE RLY.

Anyway!

I leave the postie, pop my earphones in and begin to make the journey home. As I stand waiting for the little green man to flash so I can cross the road and the good part of this one dancehall remix I am currently into fills my ears, I feel a tap on the shoulder. It’s the man from the post office. Oh God. Did he just follow me? So I take off my earphones and say hi. “Hi,” he says. “Where you going?” “Home,” I reply. Then there was the what’s your name, where do you come from palaver and I KNOW that the eight people waiting for the lights to change are listening in on this. It’s not like he was unattractive or anything, I use wasn’t in the mood… you know? And while you can’t judge a book by its cover, sometimes you just know when something is pointless. And me giving this guy my number would be pointless because it was very doubtful that I would want anything to progress further than an exchange of smiles. So I did what anyone would do in my situation and I gave him my number.

I half thought about giving him the wrong one but that is a pretty shitty thing to do to someone. It’s actually worse than just declining to hand over your deets altogether. Plus, I kinda suspected he was going to do what he did. That being, prank call me after I punched my number in his phone so that “I would have his.” IMAGINE if I gave him some random number? Oh my God the embarrassment. To be honest, it was kind of a passive aggressive move asking to exchange numbers in front of a crowd of people. Some chicks might find this romantic but I feel like it was putting on the pressure. How could I possibly say no? #awkward

Ok, he might not call and if he does it will be fine… I say to myself. But he did call – that night (twice), the next morning and then three days later. But when I say ‘call’ I mean ‘message’. I didn’t respond to any of them. I KNOW I KNOW – a bit of a bitch move but I felt kind of cornered into the whole thing. Well, joke was on me, because I didn’t save his number in my phone did I? And then he goes and actually calls me on Friday and I answered thinking it was somebody else and it was him! Aaarrghhhh! “Why have you not replied to my messages?”, he asks almost immediately after we exchange pleasantries. Umm, I’ve been busy? I just gave it to him straight because that is all that anyone ever wants even if they don’t know it. I told him that I am very flattered and I think he is really nice and all that but I’m not really interested in taking it further than showing teeth at the post office. He says that is totally fine and if I ever change my mind then I have his number. Cool! The end right? Wrong. Dude has left me eight messages and three missed calls over the weekend.

Now I ask you… if I were actually interested in going on a date with fella, would this still come across as too earnest or would it be considered romantic? I guess the guy considers me a bit of a cocktease because I smiled back and maybe held it for a little longer than necessary because I can be a terrible flirt, and then I went ahead and agreed to give him my number. This got me thinking about the number of times I have heard chicks go on about how dudes are ‘stalking’ them. I could spin this so that I have my own little stalker story in order to make myself appear more desirable but my conscience won’t allow it when I know I kind of encouraged it. And now I’m wondering if I had said yes to drinks and then yes to dinner and yes to coming back to mine all because I felt guilty about leading him on I would be in an even more tricky situation.

I guess the moral of the story is to say what you mean, mean what you say and avoid eye contact at Australia Post.

Keep up with The Obnoxious Owl’s weekly ‘Shooting from the Hip’ column here.