"Nothing ventured, nothing gained"
I'm still not entirely sure what happened - except that I asked someone out and got rejected. But I suppose everything else is window-dressing.
She is a journalist and a writer with a certain degree of name recognition in certain parts of Chicago literary community. I'm not going to say who it is - it just doesn't feel right - but since i have to call her something, for the purpose of this post, I'm going to call her "Maya." [*](a very deliberately obscure Soviet cultural reference)
Anyway, Maya and I met at a literary event over a year ago. We chatted, exchanged Twitter handles, and she was one of the handful of people who followed me back. Sometime later, I sent a friend request on Facebook, and she accepted it. But, through it all, our interactions were casual and sporatic - mostly some political commentary and complaining about deadlines and some ins and outs of freelance life. And, even now, the number of times I've seen her in real life can be counted on the fingers of a single hand.
THrough it all, I can't really say I got to know her all that much. Social media revealed bits and pieces of her life, hints of personality that ultimately left many bits out. But I was intrigued by the bits I saw. She was a writer who clearly knew her stuff and was passionate about what she believed in. I got enough sense of her politics to suspect that we'd be more than a little apart on the question of socialism (both the way it would be understood in the Soviet bloc and the way it's understood in the wider world), but my position on socialism is complex and contradictory on the best of days, so...
I didn't really think that much of Maya anything approaching romantic sense until I saw her at another literary event, and what kept nagging at me was that she looked awfully pretty standing near stage area, wearing a dress. Even then, it wasn't like with Dana (when, in a scene straight out of a romantic novel, I saw her lit by an evening sun and realized that she looked really pretty, and was heartbroken when I found out that she was dating someone). This was more "this is an interesting information, not sure what I want to do with it." Just like the bit where, after looking at her career history, I realized that she had to be a few years older than me.
All this was happening while I was thinking of asking "Ellie," [**](because I got the Soviet literature theme going with these aliases) who I also knew from a writing-related thing... only to find out, a little over a week after the aforementioned event with Maya, that my suspicions were correct and she just started dating someone (As I've written before, I try to recognize foreshadowing in my life, and this is one of the few times I actually managed to correctly read the signs - but that's a whole other tangent).
When I visited Randi and Don over Christmas, Randi wanted to know about what was going on with my romantic life, I told her about Ellie - and Randi pointed out that this sort of thing happened not long before the last time I visited them.
It got me thinking about missed opportunities. There was a period between when Dana and her husband divorced and when she got another boyfriend who would become her husband. It's not as if I didn't have an opportunity to tell her how I feel. Now, honestly, if I did, I have a feeling I would have gotten a gentle rejection... but the fact that I at least had a chance to tell her how I felt and didn't still haunts me. And while the thing with Ellie didn't involve nearly as much pining, I felt like Randi was onto something. It's the principle of the thing. When you ask someone, there's always a chance you'd get rejected - but if you don't ask at all, you would definitely not get a date. And I really should start putting myself out there, even if it means getting rejected. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
Thing is, I still didn't feel like I knew Maya all that well. And I wondered if, once I get to know her better, I'd realize that she isn't as romantically interesting as I thought. It has happened before. And I did wonder if I I did think about asking her in a more casual way, one freelance journalist working on a novel to another. I definitely entertained the thought of asking her on Schrödinger's Date - it could be a date, or a casual meeting between acquaintances, whenever she wanted. But two things kept nagging at me. What if I wait and we'd have a repeat of the Ellie situation, and I'd regret What Might Have Been. And two, in recent weeks, Maya has been posting a lot about how she's single and no men want to date her.
(While that didn't personally strike me as foreshadowing, if this was a romance novel, it could have so easily been foreshadowing).
So, a half-baked plan formed. I would take the risk and ask her out. And I would do it in person, because it seemed more meaningful (and, unlike with Dana, distance wasn't a factor).
I knew that, this week, Maya was doing a few public events. The first one was out because I was covering another meeting, and there was no way I'd be able to make it to the event in time unless I teleported. I agonized about the second one, because it conflicted a police meeting that seemed pretty damn newsworthy for Austin Weekly News. I was legitimately thinking about simply not pitching that and going to Maya's event... Until I found out that she was attending another event on Friday, and that didn't conflict with anything.
So I went to that event. In an ironic twist, I wound up spending about half an hour leading up to actual event, when I could have been socializing, finishing up the article about the aforementioned meeting (but I figured that, given her own commitments, Maya would understand). I did try to talk a little bit during the de facto intermission, and try to be social... but I figured I should let Maya do her thing, and actually watch the entire event, before approaching her afterwords.
As Maya was about to head out, I went up to her. Whatever clever lines I thought I might have had vanished, and what came out was something along the lines of ([***]In the interest of journalistic integrity, the following are not verbatim quotes - but I believe they are close enough to the substance of what happened):
"So I'm not sure how to ask it, so I'm just going to ask it - would you like to grab a cup of coffee or some other beverage sometime?"
Maya looked at me, clearly caught off guard, responded with something along the lines of:
"I mean, we can meet and we can discuss writing."
Which sounded to me like a polite 'I'm not interested in you in that way.'
We exchanged a few more sentences, and Maya made a hasty getaway.
Now, at this point, I was disappointed, but also kind of glad that I took the risk for once. And it did seem like Maya might have been interested in being friends. Which suited me fine - like I said, I didn't know her that well, and I would have liked a chance to get to know her better regardless, if she was up for it.
When I got back home, I uploaded the pictures from the event on Facebook - I mean, that's what I would normally do, and I figured that, if Maya did want to talk as friends, it was important to act normal - and promptly went to sleep.
Now, as all LJ users know, if a mutual friend unfriends you and doesn't block you, you can still see their posts - you'd just lose access to all of the f-locked posts. Facebook is different. If someone unfriends you, it is, as my mom put it, a two-way street - it's as if you both unfriended each other and you both lose access to the Facebook equivalent of F-locked posts. Which is why I was confused by what I saw this morning. Facebook listed Maya and I as friends, but all I saw were public posts. And our accounts seem to be treated as unfriended for mutual friends purposes. I didn't know Facebook could even do that.
As of this writing, Maya still follows me on Twitter. And she has tweeted since last night, so it's not like she simply hasn't had access to Twitter. I did wonder if the fact that I don't use my real name on Twitter might have thrown her off... But she also knows who I am on Twitter because, again, we exchanged Twitter handles over a year ago. As my people would say, devil only knows.
In a bit of "This was probably a bad idea, but what's done is done," I sent her some messages via Facebook Messenger - the first one just to test whether the messages would get through in a quasi-FB-friend state. Basically, I said that I did try to ask her on the date, but I would still be interested in meeting as colleagues to discuss writing and what have you. And that I was sorry if I made her uncomfortable, and I wouldn't begrudge her if she didn't want to talk to me at all.
Messenger indicated that she saw the messages, but she hasn't responded as of this writing.
I think not saying anything unless and until she messages me herself seems like the best course of action.
Since then, I have wondered if I should have just suggested a casual meeting... But then, would it have made a difference in the long run? If she was going to reject me, politely or otherwise, did it matter when it would happen? And part of me feels like, at least this way, I was upfront about it.
In the end of the day, I suppose you work with what you have. And next time there is another potential someone... keep on trying.
Edited to add (09.02.2020): Maya unfollowed me on Twitter sometime this evening. So I'm thinking she simply hasn't gotten around to it before. Or remembered she followed me once I started tweeting about the Oscars. I'm sticking with the "not saying anything" plan, but at least this removes one confusing bit in this whole fallout.
She is a journalist and a writer with a certain degree of name recognition in certain parts of Chicago literary community. I'm not going to say who it is - it just doesn't feel right - but since i have to call her something, for the purpose of this post, I'm going to call her "Maya." [*](a very deliberately obscure Soviet cultural reference)
Anyway, Maya and I met at a literary event over a year ago. We chatted, exchanged Twitter handles, and she was one of the handful of people who followed me back. Sometime later, I sent a friend request on Facebook, and she accepted it. But, through it all, our interactions were casual and sporatic - mostly some political commentary and complaining about deadlines and some ins and outs of freelance life. And, even now, the number of times I've seen her in real life can be counted on the fingers of a single hand.
THrough it all, I can't really say I got to know her all that much. Social media revealed bits and pieces of her life, hints of personality that ultimately left many bits out. But I was intrigued by the bits I saw. She was a writer who clearly knew her stuff and was passionate about what she believed in. I got enough sense of her politics to suspect that we'd be more than a little apart on the question of socialism (both the way it would be understood in the Soviet bloc and the way it's understood in the wider world), but my position on socialism is complex and contradictory on the best of days, so...
I didn't really think that much of Maya anything approaching romantic sense until I saw her at another literary event, and what kept nagging at me was that she looked awfully pretty standing near stage area, wearing a dress. Even then, it wasn't like with Dana (when, in a scene straight out of a romantic novel, I saw her lit by an evening sun and realized that she looked really pretty, and was heartbroken when I found out that she was dating someone). This was more "this is an interesting information, not sure what I want to do with it." Just like the bit where, after looking at her career history, I realized that she had to be a few years older than me.
All this was happening while I was thinking of asking "Ellie," [**](because I got the Soviet literature theme going with these aliases) who I also knew from a writing-related thing... only to find out, a little over a week after the aforementioned event with Maya, that my suspicions were correct and she just started dating someone (As I've written before, I try to recognize foreshadowing in my life, and this is one of the few times I actually managed to correctly read the signs - but that's a whole other tangent).
When I visited Randi and Don over Christmas, Randi wanted to know about what was going on with my romantic life, I told her about Ellie - and Randi pointed out that this sort of thing happened not long before the last time I visited them.
It got me thinking about missed opportunities. There was a period between when Dana and her husband divorced and when she got another boyfriend who would become her husband. It's not as if I didn't have an opportunity to tell her how I feel. Now, honestly, if I did, I have a feeling I would have gotten a gentle rejection... but the fact that I at least had a chance to tell her how I felt and didn't still haunts me. And while the thing with Ellie didn't involve nearly as much pining, I felt like Randi was onto something. It's the principle of the thing. When you ask someone, there's always a chance you'd get rejected - but if you don't ask at all, you would definitely not get a date. And I really should start putting myself out there, even if it means getting rejected. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
Thing is, I still didn't feel like I knew Maya all that well. And I wondered if, once I get to know her better, I'd realize that she isn't as romantically interesting as I thought. It has happened before. And I did wonder if I I did think about asking her in a more casual way, one freelance journalist working on a novel to another. I definitely entertained the thought of asking her on Schrödinger's Date - it could be a date, or a casual meeting between acquaintances, whenever she wanted. But two things kept nagging at me. What if I wait and we'd have a repeat of the Ellie situation, and I'd regret What Might Have Been. And two, in recent weeks, Maya has been posting a lot about how she's single and no men want to date her.
(While that didn't personally strike me as foreshadowing, if this was a romance novel, it could have so easily been foreshadowing).
So, a half-baked plan formed. I would take the risk and ask her out. And I would do it in person, because it seemed more meaningful (and, unlike with Dana, distance wasn't a factor).
I knew that, this week, Maya was doing a few public events. The first one was out because I was covering another meeting, and there was no way I'd be able to make it to the event in time unless I teleported. I agonized about the second one, because it conflicted a police meeting that seemed pretty damn newsworthy for Austin Weekly News. I was legitimately thinking about simply not pitching that and going to Maya's event... Until I found out that she was attending another event on Friday, and that didn't conflict with anything.
So I went to that event. In an ironic twist, I wound up spending about half an hour leading up to actual event, when I could have been socializing, finishing up the article about the aforementioned meeting (but I figured that, given her own commitments, Maya would understand). I did try to talk a little bit during the de facto intermission, and try to be social... but I figured I should let Maya do her thing, and actually watch the entire event, before approaching her afterwords.
As Maya was about to head out, I went up to her. Whatever clever lines I thought I might have had vanished, and what came out was something along the lines of ([***]In the interest of journalistic integrity, the following are not verbatim quotes - but I believe they are close enough to the substance of what happened):
"So I'm not sure how to ask it, so I'm just going to ask it - would you like to grab a cup of coffee or some other beverage sometime?"
Maya looked at me, clearly caught off guard, responded with something along the lines of:
"I mean, we can meet and we can discuss writing."
Which sounded to me like a polite 'I'm not interested in you in that way.'
We exchanged a few more sentences, and Maya made a hasty getaway.
Now, at this point, I was disappointed, but also kind of glad that I took the risk for once. And it did seem like Maya might have been interested in being friends. Which suited me fine - like I said, I didn't know her that well, and I would have liked a chance to get to know her better regardless, if she was up for it.
When I got back home, I uploaded the pictures from the event on Facebook - I mean, that's what I would normally do, and I figured that, if Maya did want to talk as friends, it was important to act normal - and promptly went to sleep.
Now, as all LJ users know, if a mutual friend unfriends you and doesn't block you, you can still see their posts - you'd just lose access to all of the f-locked posts. Facebook is different. If someone unfriends you, it is, as my mom put it, a two-way street - it's as if you both unfriended each other and you both lose access to the Facebook equivalent of F-locked posts. Which is why I was confused by what I saw this morning. Facebook listed Maya and I as friends, but all I saw were public posts. And our accounts seem to be treated as unfriended for mutual friends purposes. I didn't know Facebook could even do that.
As of this writing, Maya still follows me on Twitter. And she has tweeted since last night, so it's not like she simply hasn't had access to Twitter. I did wonder if the fact that I don't use my real name on Twitter might have thrown her off... But she also knows who I am on Twitter because, again, we exchanged Twitter handles over a year ago. As my people would say, devil only knows.
In a bit of "This was probably a bad idea, but what's done is done," I sent her some messages via Facebook Messenger - the first one just to test whether the messages would get through in a quasi-FB-friend state. Basically, I said that I did try to ask her on the date, but I would still be interested in meeting as colleagues to discuss writing and what have you. And that I was sorry if I made her uncomfortable, and I wouldn't begrudge her if she didn't want to talk to me at all.
Messenger indicated that she saw the messages, but she hasn't responded as of this writing.
I think not saying anything unless and until she messages me herself seems like the best course of action.
Since then, I have wondered if I should have just suggested a casual meeting... But then, would it have made a difference in the long run? If she was going to reject me, politely or otherwise, did it matter when it would happen? And part of me feels like, at least this way, I was upfront about it.
In the end of the day, I suppose you work with what you have. And next time there is another potential someone... keep on trying.
Edited to add (09.02.2020): Maya unfollowed me on Twitter sometime this evening. So I'm thinking she simply hasn't gotten around to it before. Or remembered she followed me once I started tweeting about the Oscars. I'm sticking with the "not saying anything" plan, but at least this removes one confusing bit in this whole fallout.