He was beautiful.
My second week of my new job he took over the publicity department. I didn’t fall immediately. It was slow. Gradual. At first glance he was a snappy dresser wearing wide, colorful ties and sporting a huge smile. After a week, he was an organized, no nonsense PR guy who had been in the trenches and whom I admired professionally.
After two weeks he was the charming Italian, New Yorker with a slight Queens accent who accompanied me to the coffee shop every morning. After three weeks, he was my reason for looking pressed and perfect in full makeup and heels in every morning staff meeting. After a month, he was making nightly appearances in rated-X, multi-orgasmic sex dreams rendering me incapable of meeting his gaze without blushing a shade of red that put my own hair to shame.
Eventually it was taking every ounce of will power I possessed not to walk into his office, shut the door and crawl across his desk as if channeling some big haired, cat-like, temptress dancing on a mustang in a hair band music video.
It was agonizing. He wasn’t the sort of beautiful-and-knows-it, arrogant political asshole that frequents the political dives of Capital Hill and the networking dens of downtown. In fact, he wasn’t the sort of good looking man that makes you look up from your Cosmo or take notice from across the bar. He’s the kind that sneaks up on you. He’s the kind of man that may not truly knock a girl off her bar stool until you talk to him. And then BAM! Five minutes of snarkey, intelligent banter while he flashes those dimples, waxes philosophical on the Yakees, all things New York, Opera and politics and you’re done for.
I have to admit. I was obvious. I smiled too much. Asked too many questions - lingered a bit too long in his office perhaps. During the Christmas party, I even put myself in charge of desserts, baking 8 dozen cookies of various shapes, sizes, colors, textures, themes and flavors in my itty bitty kitchen. I then bought myself a new suit of beautiful black and red, had my hair blown out and visited the MAC counter at Macy’s for a 40s Marilyn, cat eye/red pout look that was truly, irresistible.
I then skillfully strutted into his office, both red pout and Christmas cookies perfectly presented and beautifully arranged as if to say “not only will I bake cookies for our children, but I will look AMAZING doing it.
While he did do a double take…it wasn’t quite the “throw the cookies in the air and take me now” response I had imagined.
Never have I ever put so much time, effort, MAC, Calvin Klein, Victoria Secret shaping or Jimmy Choo discomfort into unsuccessfully seducing a man! 9 months I spent on this man - and to no avail. Sigh.
Utterly disheartening. My one hope was that after the change of Administration, he would no longer be my boss. He would no longer have a position of authority over me (professionally speaking anyway) and he would be free to express his desire with wile abandon befitting a Fabio bedecked romance novel.
No such luck - this Republican politico is as utterly unseduceable as a Pope after Mardi Gras. I’ve learned to live with disappointment. Win some loose some.
And tonight, we’re having dinner. We’re just two old friends having dinner. He still makes me nervous, but I will do my own hair and make up and hopefully keep my rather vivid imagination in check.
Frankly,
