So I had a funny little experience today. There's this guy at the coffee shop that - even this early on - had kind of been eying me. Now admiring or hitting on baristas is one of the oldest traditions in coffee. There was probably some adorable little Ethiopian girl serving coffee that got proposed to by a prince and thus escaped a lifetime of poverty, as I'm convinced that those who deliver your coffee are quite often the people you're most attracted to. So I'm not oblivious to these things, I just typically try to ignore them and hope they go away (which, as in many other situations, doesn't often seem to work), and even sometimes, as in this case, do my patented "not interested" smile tactic. That is to say, I walk past, see the eying as it's going on, give my too-brief no-teeth smile and look down at the floor. All business, people, all business. That's supposed to work on everyone, but I'm starting to think that it quite possibly might have the opposite effect. I need to work on that.
Anyway. He'd introduced himself before, but tonight on the way out, seeing me alone behind the counter and thus vulnerable to his advances, he took a moment to chat with me. Coffee shops walk a very fine line - talking to your barista is good. Discussing where your barista is from, how they ended up in New York, blah blah blah, all good. If you intend to stake your claim on a cafe, go ahead and get to know the people who are pouring your lattes. Odds are it'll end up saving you some money down the road, or at the very least getting you better coffee. He asked my name again (I'm calling bullshit on that one, I bet he remembered just fine) and proceeded to ask me where I was from. He said he was actually an L.A. guy, but that he was here "for a couple of projects," and was very vague about it. He asked if I'd just moved into the neighborhood (be real, could I afford that neighborhood?) and told me his mother had gone to Puerto Rico for the summer, and that he was staying in her apartment just up the street for part of the summer. All well and good. "You Facebook, right?" he says. Yeah, okay, Facebook is fine. He's got no creepy-stalker vibe on him.
But then he comes out with it: "so gimme your number," he says, and I say something slightly less than smooth like, ohh, just Facebook me, I only have my phone on about half the time . . . This tactic? Also supposed to work. When you decline to give someone your number and tell them to Facebook you, that's basically a "let's not be gettin' crazy" that asks them politely to make no further advances. I don't want to walk around wearing a "screw off I'm not interested" sign on my back, but . . . yeah, that's pretty accurate.
Anyway, less than an hour later, I get the two-sided strike. He wrote me an e-mail and a Facebook message. The Facebook message says "I'm an ex-chef and I want to cook you dinner. What do you like?" And the e-mail - even classier - leads off with "I have some bomb-ass medical marijuana if you want to smoke some. (:" To which my first thought is basically . . . what? Are you not getting my drift over here at all? Also, I'm no traditionalist, but I definitely think you should give a little breathing room between getting the name and actually putting it to use. An hour is sincerely not enough time for you not to come off as overwhelming.
But yet something's still not adding up. He's too confident, he makes the attempt too soon, he looks too . . . something. I couldn't put my finger on it, but I knew there was something strange about it. So when I get home, I take a look at his profile. This, ladies and gentleman, is the guy who wants to cook me dinner: John Bryant Davila. Someday, when homeboy is famous for playing "Blackbeard's Crew" in "Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides," or when "Latin Boys Go to Hell" becomes a gay/lesbian cult classic, I can say that, back in the day, that guy asked me out. Young Jim Caviezel wants his barista's body. How about that, right? That's my first brush with anything resembling star power, and I find it wildly amusing.
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