Strike One!

 (The scene of the crime)

I completely struck out last night.  Completely.  In that "oh my god, let me crawl under a rock" sort of way.  I go to Equinox, hand's down the best gym in New York.  It's clean, spacious and most importantly, filled with amazing eye candy. Amazing.  I don't go to the gym so much because I'm neurotic (I'm a little neurotic), I go because I can just spend hours ogling good-looking men pumping some iron (totally cliche, I know).

The past couple of times, I've bumped into this guy who looks like Anderson Cooper's half-Asian brother.  He rocks the glasses while he works out and always dons a pair of Adidas track pants where the material drapes just right over his glutes.  We tend to exchange glances and always pass each other just a little too closely.  There's always a moment when I think he's going to talk to me, but then nothing.  He'll suddenly turn away or just disappear.

Well, I had had enough, I was tired of this sweaty game we were playing (I mean, I love most sweaty games but definitely not this one).  I decided that yesterday was going to be the day, the day I was going to suck it up and make the first move.

The gym is a tricky place to pick up people.  You're sweaty, probably smelly and you're flushed.  On the other hand, if you're perfectly coiffed and made up, you look like you're there to pick someone up.  I haven't quite mastered the gym pick-up yet and what follows is definitely an interesting case study in it.

Half-Asian Anderson Cooper had just finished his work up and headed the direction of the locker rooms.  I quickly hopped off the elliptical (I had been there for an hour anyway) and grabbed my things.  The men's locker room is upstairs and there's a small seating area at the bottom of those stairs.  I decided to stand near the seating area and return some emails on my blackberry.  

He came down the stairs, saw me and decided to take a seat in the seating area.  I pretended not to notice and started heading towards the door.  The staircase to the exit was right behind where he was sitting, so I saw him turn around to look for me.  I had reached the landing and decided, what the hell, if he wasn't going to do anything, I was.  So I marched back upstairs and introduced myself.  Here's a short transcript of the disaster:

Me: Hi, I see you here a lot. 

Half-Asian Anderson Cooper: You do?

Me: Um, yeah...anyway, I just wanted to introduce myself (in my head, I'm screaming "red alert, bail!"

Half-Asian Anderson Cooper: Hi, nice to meet you.

Me: Ok, great. Have a good night! (oh my god, I could have DIED)

I would have stayed but it just seemed like he had never seen or even thought about me before in my ENTIRE life.  I was mortified for a brief 5 minutes and then called my best girl friend and laughed about it.  Everyone needs a swift kick in the ass sometimes.  I'm sitting here laughing while I'm thinking about it.  We're not going to bat 100 all the time and sometimes I'm going to read signals wrong.  But I'd rather go on knowing that I gave it a shot, rather than sit around and wonder what might have been.

Lesson Learned: Nothing ventured, nothing gained. And you should probably brush your hair before you try to talk to someone of the opposite sex.