Put On Your Red Shoes and Dance the Blues

Okay. It's time to start drinking again. Possibly in some kind of bender situation.

This afternoon, I gathered my courage and went over to the restaurant where my salsa teacher bartends at lunch. At first, he didn't seem that excited to see me, and I felt awkward, but he warmed up quickly before I had a chance to escape without asking him to my friend's party. We chatted about a wide range of subjects: my recent trip, work, how he always wanted to be a lawyer, money and why it should be saved, and some other stuff. Finally, I just said, "If you don't have any plans on Saturday, my friend is having a party, and you should come." And his response was, "I do have plans." He's going with his co-instructor for salsa to something, which he proceeded to tell me about in great detail and basically reveal he was a little leery of going. However, at no point did he suggest that even though he was unavailable to hang out with me at my suggested time, we could hang out another time. I completely believe that he has these other plans, especially since it would be pretty retarded of him to invent fake plans with someone I also know that I could easily verify if I were so inclined. But I felt like he was horrified that I asked, and then I felt overwhelmed with awkwardness. Like, he's always so nice to me and acts excited and happy to see me, so why is he acting so appalled that I would invite him to a party? I mean, it's not like I asked him if he wanted to elope.

And then things got even weirder. After he finished telling me all about the plans he has that preclude him from being my date for the evening, he said, "There's something different about your eyebrows." Just take a minute to soak in that statement. There's something different about my eyebrows? Then he was like, "They look thinner." As my face increasingly displaced a "What the fuck?" expression, he added, as an after thought, "They look good though." What the fuck? Obviously, that means he thinks they looked weird. If he thought they looked good, he would have led off with, "Your eyebrows look nice," or some such thing. I wanted to kill myself. Especially since I haven't done anything to my eyebrows beyond routine maintenance, and I'm now wondering if Teh Doggeh is messing with them while I sleep.

So, I totally did not want to go to salsa class tonight or, indeed, ever, ever again, but everyone I told this to acted like: (1) he was giving me a compliment with the eyebrow remark, unusual as that compliment may have been, (2) he probably just didn't think to suggest alternate plans for Saturday, and (3) not going to class would make me a giant baby. I debated with myself until the last minute what to do but ultimately chose to go.

Class was not overtly awkward, but I felt weird anyway. I didn't say hi to him when I came in. Instead, I glued myself to my Blackberry and refused to look at him until he chased me out of the waiting room and into the studio a full ten minutes before class began like an imperious jackass. He flirted with me a little in class, but he mostly flirted with his co-instructor. I am trying not to hate her because she is actually very cool and nice, but between the fact that she already nabbed him for plans on Saturday and the fact that they have such a playful relationship and the fact that I am immature, I am really having trouble maintaining warm, friendly thoughts toward her.

I don't even know what to do with myself at this point. I have gotten much more invested in this man that I ever intended to, and now I feel like he's blown me off and criticized my appearance, and I feel like I'm too ugly to live and too lame for him to hang out with. I pretty much want to throw up, then cry.