We've met in a crowded room and her smile (or was it her ROTFL?) temporarily blinded me. I don't know why I find her so ubercool - maybe it's cuz I met her in the middle of winter and she’s such an all-around solar experience.

I went to talk to her and there was this explosion of laughter and humor and coy flutter of eyelids and before I knew it, I’ve found myself flirting.

I confess, I have a flirting problem. I can’t wait for the evening, I gotta start the day with a flirt. One flirt over lunch and a few after dinner have never been enough for me. I got bottles hidden in secret blogs, some password-protected, some in the open, for the world (the 2 ppl reading) to see. I start my day flirting almost daily and when I don’t, I kinda feel sad. A few days without flirting and I experience withdrawal symptoms.

Turns out that in her own way she might be a bigger flirt than me. I prefer ambiguity, sexual innuendo and double meanings, but she has this way of extracting the shiniest gem, pulling it down to earth from the loud cloud surrounding the ivory tower, blending in Melbourne-hispterish colors and making it accessible even to those less fluent in this ancient vice.

As always, there are two voices inside my head, offering unsolicited advice. One is Berlusconi – the short, fat Italian who lives inside every man and who wants to bunga-bunga with all the women in the world – I’m sure I don’t have to translate or expand upon it (FUTE-O, BA!). Then there’s another, a calm, centered fellow (Moby?), most likely Buddhist, who tells me silly wabbit, 19 year-olds (“21”, she corrected me) are for 20-somethings.

I’m more inclined to go with Moby – I’m a creature of comfort and shave with Occam’s razor, always trying to keep it simple, and mostly failing. It seems that every time I respond to such an appeal, the edifice of dreams collapses sooner or later and I end up being accused of, well:

(..) here I have nothing I can change or blame on you, I’m just sorry that you’ve never been patient with me, not even in the small things, let alone waiting for me to grow up (..)

She’s perfect the way she is, but she fears zombies and I have a feeling she needs a bodyguard especially at night, when father winter mutes even the moon breeze. She’ll surely make friends (a ton at the very least), she’ll conquer Waterloo and get everybody to love her even more than they already do after simply seeing her. Soon enough, Justin Timberlake, Justin Bieber and whichever Justin her generation has in store for her will discover a new interest in anything she might be taking and will take her courses. And when she, bored and somewhat intimidated by all this attention, will refuse them magisterially with “I’m too old for this shit”, the Bieber might just burst out in a scornful but Braveheart-like eruption directed at all the men who are too dumb, too coward or just plainly too stupid to let such a hottie fly by:

So what if she has braces?! Who here would ever kiss someone’s teeth and if you do, what else do you enjoy – licking eyeballs?! You kiss the soft parts – you might gently pull on the upper lip, give the lower lip more mileage, trace her tongue with yours and get dizzy with her perfume. You call yourselves men?! Bleah!

(And then Jack Nicholson and Kevin Costner might come to town, who knows?)

I don’t know how to perform a self-confidence transfer that doesn’t involve an exchange of body fluids, but for her I’m willing to invent one (hugs are for kids and / or inner children, right?). On this point, Frank Zappa knew a thing or two.

Our almost father-daughter rapport was recently cemented when I walked her to the train station, and an overly ceremonious VIA Rail employee refused to accept an Australian number for emergency contact. She asked me sheepishly if I want to be hers, and overcome with chivalry, I accepted. As I was spelling out my name and my number, I felt like a deeper union was being formed, and that now I had to always serve and protect her. Ummm, maybe more protect than serve.

It thus makes far more sense to be just friends, yet that’s so fuckn hard.

As expected, this kind of talk from Moby makes Berlusconi very agitated. He says that I’m a pussy (but wait, is that so bad? I like..), that this is just the way of the coward, that as long as I see even a teeny-tiny reflection of my desire in her eyes I should go for it, that being just friends never works and often leads to the same results as not being just friends, just on a more tortuous road, that I am simply rationalizing my fear of rejection / failure, that you never win unless you play and you should always play to win, and at this point I start wondering whether it is really Berlusconi talking or just his spokesperson.

When (if?) we meet again, I’ll plant a fatherly kiss on her forehead, then leave quickly before my happiness to see her becomes too obviously protruding.

Sources / More info: the photo’s mine + a painting