I Knew What He Was When I Let Him Pick Me Up

I don’t really know how to explain my actions. I’ve done it again. The opportunity was there and I took it. In my defense, it has been a while and sometimes mama needs a good old-fashioned snog. I’m not saying it justifies the following story, but at least it makes it a little more understandable…I hope.

Anyway, the story begins about a month ago. A couple of friends invited me to go to Pizza Hut one evening where they were meeting a couple of guy friends and, despite the fact that I was feeling particularly not cute that day, I decided to go. That, in and of itself, was not a bad decision. What happened at Pizza Hut might have been. When we first arrived, the guys were not there yet and we had a good bit of girl talk about boys and marriage and so on, as you do. When the guys arrived, the conversation continued, though without the marriage talk. Little did I know that the information divulged that night would come back to bite me (though not literally; he was very gentle.) During the conversation, it was revealed that I like a bit of the non-committal make out and am not averse to kissing a guy without actually dating him and then never seeing him again. Well apparently one of the guys there, Crocodile Dundee Too (he’s Australian, which has added to my list of nationalities kissed while living in England that aren’t English), liked what he heard. We spent a fairly flirty hour or so discussing our philosophies of love and snogging. At the end of the evening, I felt pretty proud of myself that I rejected his offer to walk me to my door, knowing full well what he meant by that. I may be a lip-whore, but I’m not that easy. I can honestly say that I have never kissed a guy the first time I met him. That may not really be anything to be proud of, but I’ve got to work with what I’ve got here.

So fast-forward a month to last week. I decided I wanted to throw a Thanksgiving party at my house because you can never have too much Thanksgiving. I invited loads of friends, but only a few were able to make it. To my surprise, one of those friends invited Crocodile Dundee Too and another one of the Pizza Hut crew. I didn’t mind, or think another thing about it because we had only met the one time and hadn’t had any interaction since then. Well, apparently, CD2 remembered our conversation from that evening and felt duty bound to provide his NCMO services. (I actually have no idea what his thought processes were, but suffice it to say, he didn’t come for the turkey.) This was made abundantly clear from the moment he crossed the threshold of our flat. I gave everyone a hug as they entered and he took the opportunity to nuzzle my neck. So that’s how it’s going to be, I thought. At that point, I hadn’t yet decided what I was going to do, but we all know I don’t have a lot of will power, so you can probably guess it didn’t take long for me to decide that the evening would mostly likely end in a snog, though I couldn’t let him know that.

Although dinner was ready when they arrived, we were still waiting for another couple of friends and it gave CD2 an opportunity to lay it on thick. I really don’t know where he gets off thinking he can behave that way, but I did nothing but reinforce it. He took every available chance to have his arms around my waist or his whiskery face as close to mine as possible. I rebuffed him gently a couple of times, but without destroying the possibility that I was open to a little action. I just thought he should have to work for it a bit. After about an hour of flirtatious, innuendo-laden banter and quite a bit of not-so-innuendo laden physical contact, my other friends arrived and we settled down to eat. Luckily he kept himself in check while we ate and limited himself to sneaky hand grazes and more publically appropriate behavior.

After dinner, we all sat around and chatted for a while before dessert and it was lovely. Then the dishwasher finished its cycle so I went to the kitchen to get out the dessert dishes and begin cleaning up. Unbeknownst to me, this was the signal Crocodile Dundee Too had been waiting for. He followed me to the kitchen, which by the way is mere feet from the living room and without a separate door, on the pretense of helping me with the clearing up. There was some publically-inappropriate interaction for a few minutes while we unloaded the dishwasher and then I allowed him to turn me around to face him and he went for it; right there, in the kitchen, within hearing distance of the rest of my guests. Now, say what you will about me, but I tend to prefer my displays of affection to be less of the public variety, but I was caught up in the moment. I tricked myself into believing that the rest of the people sitting only a few feet away had no idea what was going on. (I was dead wrong, by the way.) So we kissed for a little bit and it was good and I remembered why I like kissing so much. This time I think it was partly to do with the feeling of reckless abandon and partly because, for all his arrogance, Crocodile Dundee Too can flat out kiss a girl. From what I can only imagine has been LOADS of practice, he knew just what to do and how to do it for maximum effect, and I liked it. We kissed for a little while and then finished with the dishes and then kissed some more at which point he invited me to come spend the rest of the evening with him ‘watching films.’ I decided that was probably not a good idea and put him off for the moment by serving dessert. He brought up the plan again in front of everyone and I dodged it by lying that I had to be back for Sunday and without a car, there was just no way it was possible. After my rejection, he seemed a bit put out and pouted a bit in an effort, I suppose, to make me change my mind. I didn’t. Eventually, it was time to leave and I walked them out. Crocodile Dundee Too had apparently sufficiently recovered to muster a prolonged good-bye make out in the stairwell, complete with hands in the hair and whiskery neck nuzzles, and then he was gone without reference to any future together, which is just the way I like it.