the difficulties of the friend zone

So it's Friday night of a three-day weekend. The excitement level that I'm feeling about said three-day weekend is somewhere between winning a Grammy and being a seven-year-old on Christmas Eve. I have taken to referring to Sunday as "Saturday 2." We're at a fever pitch.

Megan and I are doing the usual thing -- heading to the local, where we will hang out with our friend, The Broz. He's actually the owner of the bar who we made friends with a few weeks ago (read: free shots and extra champagne in my mimosas), and we call him The Broz because I once may have mentioned to Megan that I thought he resembled Pierce Brosnan. Thus, The Broz was born.

So we're hanging out with The Broz and his coterie of old Irish dudes (who are all super inapprops all the time and named things like Dickie and Johnnie), the bar is packed and I drink a lot of Ghost River Golden on a fairly empty stomach, mostly because in all my primping and prepping there wasn't really time to eat dinner so I scarfed some stale old Tostitos and called it a balanced meal. It happens.

This did, of course, result in multiple ill-advised text messages and a chance meeting with a skeezer guy from Southaven who saved his number in my phone -- the next morning while I was sitting in the drive-through line at the bank scanning through the debris of the previous night I spent a lot of time swearing at myself over my sent texts before discovering this saved phone number, under the name "Greg," with its grand total of 11 digits.

But what's more important than all of this is that when I stumbled home with Megan somewhere way past the witching hour, I found an e-mail from Mr. Risky Business inviting me to have lunch or coffee or brunch or something the next day, before I headed to my parents for family stuff since my brother was in town. I spent a good five minutes very earnestly trying to tap out a response before deciding that clearly what would be easier would be to chat with him instead of typing out some long e-mail. Right? Logical, I know. And so I g-chatted him. And he was there. And thankfully, the next morning when I reviewed the contents of that conversation I didn't have any reason to cringe or swear at myself. But I did make plans, while drunk, to get brunch around noon.

He comes to my place and picks me up, and we head to this beignet place on South Main, where we notably did not eat beignets. I was post-drunk hungry and they had a breakfast that came with grits. Hello? There's no other option.

So we brunch, and we chat and next thing I know it's been almost two hours. And then we're back in the car and in those close quarters I'm thinking the same thing I was thinking when I first got into the car, which was good sweet everything almighty, he smells SO GOOD. Like, hot and bothered good-smelling. I need to get out of this car lest I explode, good-smelling. That kind of good-smelling.

And where things have been anything but awkward during brunch, now the awkwardness is creeping back in. Because that sexual tension quicksand? Yeah, it's back. And I invite him in to listen to a few bands I'd mentioned that he hadn't heard before, only he still smells really good and it makes it very hard to concentrate on most anything except for the high level of focus required to behave oneself.

He heads out shortly after that, and we hug before he goes and that's when I noticed something I may not have mentioned before. OH MY GOD THE SMELL. Oh my god, y'all. In my brain, I'm thinking, just get out. Get out right now before I start aggressively breathing in your scent and once I'm all stoned on cologne I cannot make any promises about what I will or will not do. GET OUT. For your own safety, please.

Because at this point -- despite the good smells and the sexual tension quicksand and the awkward -- we're still in the friend zone. And as far as I know, that's where we're staying, at least for the time being.

And next time, I'll let you in on exactly how long "the time being" actually is.


cheers,
elizabeth