I know that bastard’s just doing it to, I don’t know, irritate me to no end. That’s got to be it; no one goes around whispering sweet nothings in a faux-Rambo voice just to impress the ladies. No, he does it because he knows it’s psychological warfare.
“Oh, you’re just shy,” said Martin.
“What the fu-?! What?!” I stammered, mid-keystroke.
“It’s not as if she’s gonna fall madly in love with you if you asked her out for lunch,” he said.
I was midway through describing a specific property when he laid that on me. That was about a week ago.
“What the hell are you talking about?!” I said, blinking.
“You know you’d like to have lunch with her. Especially now when she’s hurt,” he said, pulling on a face, “lonely and without love. She needs someone lah, and she’s good target practice,” he said.
“Huh?”
“You know, you’ve got to be the predator. You’ve got to be the animal!”
“Ok, so where are you going with this?” I asked, quite certain about where he was going with all that talk.
“I’m not doing you favours, dei, just go for it,” he said, grinning.
“Uh-huh. Like the way you like unloading your women on me. I’ll pass,” I said, waving him away. But bastards are persistent.
“You’ve just got to make the first move!” he continued, ignoring me. I suddenly saw myself making the first move for the sake of making the first move - the horror!
“Sir,” I said, “repeat after me. Chill Pill. Take one before meals. Swallow. Sit down. Or fuck off”. He laughed, of course.
“Are you gay or what?” he asked, half-serious.
“If I don’t go around wanting to hump every woman I see, I am, therefore, gay, yes?”
“You said it,” he said, laughing again. This is what I have to put up with, see? And this was just after our trip up north. I wonder when he drew those conclusions, but I couldn’t be arsed to ask him. So he now spends time making nice with the staff - well, just this one woman in particular. I mused about the perils of being a woman in an all-male environment and decided I wasn’t helping myself one bit, so I chose to ignore him.
And he continues laying on his macho-bullshit charm on her pretty thick… and she’s buying it. Dear Lord above, she’s buying it. And now it’s not just his sweet nothings that bother me; her responsive, eloquent giggles drive me up the wall. She giggles.