My heart is aflutter. It may be the asthma medicine I just inhaled that always makes me jittery. On the other hand it may be my nerves. You see, I just had a thought. And, well, that in itself is an accomplishment, but even more aflutter making, is what the thought was. But I’m getting ahead of myself a little. Let me share with you something I wrote six months ago on an old blog:
“Hi. I’m Jesse. I’ve been assigned to walk around with you during the fire drills” he said. He’s a rookie firefighter. Been on the job for three years. Can’t be much more than 26-27 years old. He’s 6′2″ ish with piercing blue eyes the color of the sky.
I work for the Facility Management office of a 25 story high-rise building in the Lake Merritt district of Downtown Oakland, California. Twice a year we conduct Fire Drills and we always invite a crew from the Fire Department to come and observe. My boss always assigns a fire fighter to the staff members and today I got Jesse.
In the fourth and final segment of today’s drills I was assigned to the fourth floor for observation where I saw an old acquaintance of mine searching the floor for stragglers. Her name is Connee and she’s from Niagara Falls, NY. I LOVE her. She’s a sweet little older lady who has always been very nice to me. After searching and then evacuating the floor we met up in the park across the street where we waited for the announcement that it was time to return to the building. I was chatting with her when Jesse returned to my side and she asked, “What’s your name Mr. Gorgeous Blue Eyes?”
“Kevin.” Jesse answered. “Just kidding. I’m Jesse.”
Connee laughed. “Oh I thought you were going to tell me you both had the same name.”
“Wait,” I said. “Does that mean I have Gorgeous blue eyes, too? – Never mind.”
“Yep. That’s what I was saying.” He replied.
Now you see, this is where I fall short as a “newly” gay man. This guy was cute. I liked him. I’d have been interested in talking to him more. But I never thought he was gay. Still don’t know that he is. But here’s what his comment suggests to me. He thought I had nice eyes. Had been thinking it all along, and Connee gave him an opportunity to bring it up and see what happens. But because I’m insecure, and an idiot nothing happened. I don’t know how to react in a situation like that?
So I’m looking for advice. What should I have done? And I’m seriously asking, so no smart ass, “You shoulda jumped on top of him” kind of responses. How could have I have conveyed to him that I was interested without making the scene crunchy if I had misinterpreted his statement?
What, Mr. Reader, would you have done?
I was so caught off guard when he said what he did. I couldn’t believe it was happening and was sure I was misreading something. That night I had a therapy session and I talked about what happened. My therapist said to me, “For future reference, when a guy says you have nice eyes, he is flirting”
So what is it that set me aflutter? We are due for our semi-annual fire drills next week. As I mentioned in the post above, my boss always pairs one of the fire fighters with one of his staff members for the drills. It’s almost always a different set of guys (occasionally a gal) so there’s no reason to think Jesse will be here and if he is, I may or may not get paired up with him again. But the thought suddenly occurred to me, a moment ago, that I might see Jesse again.
What set me aflutter is the idea that I might get a second chance at this, and the realization that I’m not any more prepared to handle it now than I was then.
Also, what might have me aflutter is the fact that I’ve used the world “aflutter” six times in this post.
Riggledo 