I smell trouble

Saturday I had the great opportunity to hang out with some people my age who participate in a local service organization. We spent the morning doing community service and I've had two additional meetings to observe their behavior so I decided to accept their invite to hang out later. After all, I'm still on the mission to find another really good guy friend...

Turns out the party, which had I been forewarned was being thrown under the guise of "whatever happens, happens," was extremely fun.

I felt that the people were my equals intellectually and in terms satisfaction of geeky entertainment.

There was one disturbing part to the night however, and that was my attraction to a guy who has actually been nice since we met a few weeks ago. We'll call him Mr. Banker. Coincidentally, the night before my second meeting, he attended an MBA event and while we never spoke that night, we saw each other and recognized one another the next day. So we traded information and called. He was extremely chatty and I was myself. He invited me to a fight party that his friend was throwing and then added that he would be attending with "his girl."

I didn't mind that admission (ok, so I did a little because he seems very promising) but I was unable to make the party that weekend because I had previous plans.

When I arrived at the party on Saturday, I was sure his girlfriend would be in attendance so I played it cool on talking to him until he would introduce her to me.

The introduction didn't happen before we all played "Truth or Dare Jenga" so I found it safe to assume she wasn't there when he was dared to "rub noses with another player" and chose me. I was embarrassed, awkward and therefore thankful the picture another player decided to snap did not catch the action. Equally mortifying was when I picked the piece that instructed me to "blow a rasberry on another player's stomach" and he choose to explain what that was to the entire group so that I could do it. I declined and opted to blow a kiss to our gracious host.

The best part of that game was when the girl next to me knocked over the tower. Of course then, that led us to Mr. Banker's game of "questions." Previously we were instructed to write down a question on a scrap of paper and put it in a bowl. The bowl was shaken and each person would remove a question and ask it to the group.

The questions were surprisingly (to me anyway) mostly about relationships so I then learned more than I probably would have cared to know, but am happy I did about Mr. Banker and women.

In the end, I decided he was handsome, had tremendous potential, but was too much of a player, had too much "experience"-in fact the term "slutbag" really came to mind first- and therefore would be more trouble than he's worth.

Isn't that the way it always is? I'm glad that despite the attraction, I'm happy to see my progress in spotting a man who would bring me trouble before it all goes down. Maybe I have learned something this year after all.