klutz

So I went with Lindsey to Shabbat services at Emanu-El, which I've probably meant to do since I moved to the City, but never actually have. Even before I moved here I had heard about the young adult after-Shabbat kegger, which I can't say was quite a kegger, but definitely a good place to meet people.

Services were really nice, and by nice I mean like being at an intimate Fleetwood Mac concert, if Fleetwood Mac sang in Hebrew. Wow. I didn't expect them to be that talented. It didn't quite feel like services without the melodies I know, and occasionally spacing out and wondering how many pages we had left, but it was very cool.

Afterwards we're downstairs eating cookies and drinking He-brew from the keg, talking to people, and who do I see but Mr. ADD - who I last saw when he asked for my number outside the bar, and I figured I had nothing to lose by telling him I preferred his friend. Yikes. I am so horrible. I felt kind of bad about that, but figured I should go over and say hello, clear the air. I mean he was a nice guy, just not someone I wanted to date. I go over and we make eye contact as I am on my way up. He frowns and says "hey," and begins turning away, so I look back at Lindsey bewildered. I guess we're not going to have that nice 3-min conversation after all. I couldn't blame the guy, but ouch.

As we're leaving, one of the guys we sat with at dinner asks us if we want to go swing dancing in SOMA, but we are exhausted from work, and me from daylight savings-induced insomnia. He asks if I like to dance, and I tell him about how I used to take dance when I was younger. He says, "Come on, you should come out tonight!"
"Oh, thanks, but I'm too tired."
"Really, you should come dancing, it would be fun," he says.
"Ha, sorry, I'm too sleepy."
"No, seriously, I would really like to take you out dancing sometime. Would you come out dancing with me sometime?"
This seemed to come totally out of left field, and it didn't occur to me that he so quickly transitioned from a friendly invite of all of my friends to asking me out. I looked at him to try it on for size. Just couldn't get past the beard. And we didn't quite click. I realize that I have paused too long and my friends tell me later that apparently the shocked look on my face was "a really bad look."
"I'm really not a good dancer," I say. Really, even if I were into this guy, a first date to go out dancing with someone I hardly know is super awkward.

He says he'll give me his business card, so that I can e-mail him. The business card is in glossy full-color, 1/3 of it taken up by a picture of him wearing a huge grin. The business card says he is a comedy magician, and voted best comedian by an SF Weekly reader's poll or something. I am so floored by this (I guess I'm so corporate-world-centric I assume that everyone else works nine to five, and are not magicians) and I laugh, spitting everywhere, so that he looks at me like he needs a towel. I apologize profusely.

As I am retelling this on the way out, and my friends are recalling how I made "a really bad face," this really sweet girl from Marin who had sat with us says she is shocked that I say I am awkward and clumsy. "You seem so graceful and elegant!" This was the nicest thing anyone had said to me in a while, yet so oblivious of how my entire life is a series of missteps, wrong words and embarrassing clumsy moves.