G.w.b. jr. finally got elected, and I had my worst day in a while yesterday.

I don't want to bitch and whine. That's not me. It makes me as uncomfortable as an internal heroin smuggler in the INS office, with thirty balloons of smack pressing on the abdominal wall, churning up stomach acid, and praying to God that the balloons don't break.

I don't like to whine, and I don't like whiners. Suck it up.

However, yesterday sucked balsac.

Let me talk about the bike girl. Its gotten a little more strange. (I mentioned her before...don't remember when, and am too lackidasical in my efforts to provide quality references)

To review: gym wed. bike girl. teaches class. hottie. weird flirtations.

So, two weeks ago, things just got even more weird. She was there early. I walk in, and instead of just plowing striaght through to the locker room, I casually glance around. We make eye contact, and she seems glad to see me. Y'know, her eyes get big, resps increase, yadda, yadda, yadda. (Yeah, I take in a lot really quickly. Group therapist training. You learn to read people quickly when you provide therapy in threatening situations.)

So I think to myself:"Cool." And go change.

I start my workout, she's around stretching.(oh my!) I catch her looking at me. No biggie. We're all in a room, with a ton of mirrors. I Don't Read Much Into It.

Throughout the workout, I catch her watching me, while she's teaching her class(leading a stationary bike class doesn't take a whole lot of mental effort, I'm guessing.)

Every time I turn around, she's watching. I look up into the mirror, She's Watching.

Okay. Cool. Psycho, but cool.

She's also comisserating with her class. Especially after I turn around and catch her. It doesn't look good, though, how she's doing it. Instead of 'he's so cute' comisseration, it looks like 'lookit THAT freak' comisseration.

I'm non-plussed at this point. I figure I might want to go say 'hi', just to keep things on an even keel. Things are getting too weird.

So I go to sit on the stretching carpet place, and mull over how to approach this situation.

While I sit and stretch, I get this feeling at the base of my neck, that old feeling, that someone is watching me. So I look up. Its her, staring straight at me.

Immediately, she turns to her class, and says very loudly,"OH MY GOD! HE'S STARING AT ME AGAIN."

What?

Why do I feel like I just got my ass kicked?

She comisserates again with her class loudly. About me.

I go to the locker room and change. Things are just a wee bit too strange. All girls, unfortunately, seem to play games at some point and time. Okay, a lot of guys ,too. Some are benign, like the "I'll call" game. You know, where girls say they will call, but don't, to see if the guy is truly interested and will call her.(or vice versa) Some are malicious, like 'let's you and him fight' where a girl will attempt to gain power by having to guys fight figuratively and literally over her. (Triangulation is classic. Here are the roles, you figure it out: Girl-victim; Old Boyfriend-oppressor; New guy-saviour.) Then, every once in a while, along comes a game I don't know, or haven't seen for awhile. This is one of those times.

So I walk past and out. And she's STILL watching me. I could feel it, even though I didn't look.

I guess there's a number of ways I could have handled this situation, and maybe turned it to my advantage. But one thing stuck out at me: High Maintenance.

Some guys will say they don't notice. Others will say they don't care, or in fact, want a High Maintenance woman. Believe me now, these are all cheap lies.

No guy ever wants a High Maintenance girl. Some will tolerate this for a roll in the hay. But as we all get older, these are the women who lose their looks, don't get married, and end up living with a lot of cats.

Typically, I never get embarassed. The only way to do this is when I'm already uncomfortable with my surroundings, catch me off guard, and totally blindside me.(almost never happens. I walk across this earth as if I own it, and make myself at home wherever I am, however I politely can) She managed to do this with the sure swiftness of clubbing someone between the eyes with an axe and the preternatural instincts of a thirty year lumberjack. So maybe the High Maintenance conclusion came later, and the initial response was Embarassment.

So, what to do? Several ideas come to mind, but the simplest, and possibly most effective, is Not To Play.

Nothing. Not a word. Not a look. NADA. Nien. Niente'.

So I go to the gym yesterday, and follow through. And I feel her looking, now, not so much watching, but definitely looking. Repeatedly. I know it. My instincts are finely tuned. I've done this before, and actually can be quite a bastard with it.

Digression: When I was in college, there was a girl on the sister floor who was cute and with whom I became close. We spent a lot of time every day together. And I knew she played games, but I thought it was a tolerable level. So Valentines day rolls around, and neither of us has a date. So, I give her a silly romantic card(I might have written her a poem in it, but then i wrote a lot of poems at that time...still do.), some flowers, and tickets to a dance show. She freaks. Gets real uptight. I think she might have gave me the 'I just want to be friends' speech , which I hate.(I've learned the in's-and out's of that one since then...no pun intended.) And I cut her off. Done. Buh-Bye. She called me later balling:

Michelle:(Sniff, sniff)"Can we stil be friends?"

Me:"Yeah. I guess. When I'm ready."

Michelle: (happy, but still crying),"Really? I thought you were never going to speak to me again. When will you be 'ready'?"

Me:"In a couple of years, maybe. 4 or 5. I don't know."

C'mon. She could've went to the show, and then given me the speech. Utterly classless on her part. Then a few weeks later, she 'hooked up' with my neighbor. (she was a virgin, and didn't have sex with him, or anyone, as far as i knew in college. What a waste.) She brought him into my friends room, where i was getting stoned to the bejeezus bells at the time, in an attempt to brow-beat me and provoke me into a fight.(You're not going to get VIOLENT, are you?) I think she was abused as a child, or her mother was getting her ass kicked by her dad, 'cause I had never once displayed or indicated that type of behavior around or towards her, ever.

Anyway, we lived on the same floor and had some of the same friends for something like three years or more after that. I never had a conversation with her again. Fuck You. On Valentines Day? And you don't have a date? Gimme a fuckin' break, princess.

She would come up to me everywhere, repeatedly trying to engage me in conversation. Nada. She came up to me in the cafe. It was us, and a handful of other people spread out in a huge assed cafeteria. No one within 20 yards except her and me. She sat at my table, right next to me. And spoke. And honestly, I had so tuned her out by then, I didn't even hear her until she grabbed my arm.

Anyway, she was ostracized for what she did for a while. And I admit, it turned into a type of game with me. She'd come into where I was, and say 'hi' to everybody, be in the niddle of a conversation, and I'd whisper something very, very quietly at her, and she'd cut off who she was talking to, crouch near me, ask me to repeat what I'd said, crane her ear to my mouth, and talk very politely and lovingly to me. I would repeat it, sometimes. And I wouldn't say another damn thing. Nothing of substance, ever. It got to be a weird sort of pennance/truce. But it never got any farther than what I just described. And she really didn't date much after that year, after the story spread.

She did manage to almost turn the girls of the clique against me senior year. A couple of them half-heartedly complained that I was being rude, and one went off, but they all wanted my cock,were quite open about wanting my cock, and tended to look at the whole deal as,"Well, She fucked up." A little flirting here, a hug and a kiss there, and everything was cool. They were also like my sisters(at least the way I looked at it), and some of them were going out with my friends at the time. No...I never fooled around on the sister floor. Not really. Its just bad business.

Anyway, back to the bike girl story:

So now bike girl comisserates loudly with her class about me, specifically my physical features, more specifically my ass.