An Office Affair: I

One day he never existed, the next he was a couple of cubicles away. 6 feet tall, brown/brown, quiet, obviously attractive (in the way that would make girls’ heads turn and cause them to giggle and stare at this good-looking angmoh creature) — and we largely ignored each other. I was feeling too jaded and unhappy about my recent luck with romance (as with P, the ex, and the Shahrukh-Khan lookalike, who turned out to be a royal arsehole, by the way) to even look at him.

But then my only friend in the office quit, and there were no more distractions from work, and he was the only other person my age. My self-esteem was having better days as well. So when we met in the pantry one morning, I smiled and said hi. And he said hi back, and then we were chatting easily. I started realizing he was pretty cute when he lingered awkwardly and I had to tell him to go back to his desk.

So that’s background for you. I had the following text exchange with a girlfriend a couple of weeks later:

“How have you been, Dulcinia? Haven’t seen you in a couple of weeks”

“I’m good, work is good, there’s a cute Dutch intern here.. I need to get into his pants”

“Haha Dutch intern? How old is he? Details!”

“I don’t know. I don’t have details. His name is Christiaan. And he dresses like a GQ model.”

This is not entirely true, of course. He dresses exceptionally well, but not exactly GQ-worthy most days. However, he does have excellent posture – a quality possessed by shockingly few men in Singapore.

“Lol yes. Ask him out!”

“I don’t know. I don’t think we have much to talk about. I just want to do him before he leaves in Dec.”

Yes, I assume (usually correctly) – though happy to be proven wrong – that good-looking guys are largely himbos, or at least uninterested in the nerdy little things that make me feel warm and fuzzy.

“Haha okay, ask him out to sleep with him. Do you guys talk?”

“We bump into each other a lot (only sometimes deliberately on my part) but it’s so hard to talk when everyone else is around :-(“

“Do you at least have his number?”

“No lah damn fail right. I gotta tap that ass before it goes back to Holland!”

“Yes please do, and in the process find out if he has other fine friends ;)”

“Okay. Here’s the plan. 1) Walk past his cubicle casually and inquire about weekend plans, 2) Say we should hang out and get his ph no, 3) If faced with rejection, cheerfully walk away. OMGggg”

More background: I have never made the first move towards or dated head-turningly good-looking people. I’ve never made the first move on anyone, in fact – I am an amazingly dorky chickenshit when it comes to approaching people I actually like.

“Yup. Are you in nice heels today? Okay, I’m sure you are. GO FORTH AND BE BRAVE! And in the unlikely event that he says no – work the walk back okay!”

I did a quick check. Hair carefully arranged to”naturally”  tumble over my shoulder just so; fresh slick of lip gloss, no treacherous food stuck in teeth or anything gross. Everything had to look unintentionally good. I was satisfied. This was about as hot as I was going to look without immediate access to my hairstylist.

I inhaled deeply and walked.