shoulda woulda coulda

Before Frodo Baggins and the Gingerbread Man, there was him.

My first office crush. *sigh* Well technically, one of my first office crushes. In that dratted call center technical support account I worked with for eleven months. Hehe. Hey, for those who had worked/are working in a call center, y'all can attest to the fact there are lots of cute guys with fake "neutralized" accents (pronounced /eg'zents/) romping about the floor. Anyways... so yeah, he was one of my first office crushes. Along with four or five other [straight] guys, all of whom I just like to stare at or listen to their voices as they give instructions on how to create a manual dial-up connection for Internet Explorer (pronounced /In'rnet Igzplor'r/). I guess what set him apart from my other bettables was that we're sort of buddy-buddy with each other. ^_^ He laughs at my antics, for one. And we sort-of danced at our Christmas party.

Apparently, though, first-office-crush (FOC) is not really what I thought he was. No. Scratch that. It seems that he is what I partially thought he was: a couple of days before Christmas, call-center-bading-friend #1 (CCBF) made chika that our CCBF #2 found out that FOC has a user account at a certain gay online dating Web site, marketing himself as your average bisexual guy-next-door (hmm... "bisexual"... riiight).

While the news is a bit of a shock, CCBF #1 and I both agree that in fairview, there was a point when our ever-active gaydars bleeped at him. I silently counted my own "signals": he prefers to eat bread. I remember him saying that he used to be bulimic. He wears shirts one size smaller. He wears shirts made of some shiny material. It all points to that direction that even FOC's own circle of friends has supposedly concluded that he is definitely gay (or bi... whatever).

Which made me wonder what the fuck's wrong with me for not catching up. And realized that maybe I didn't want to believe it in the first place. Maybe I wanted him to be straight, because if he is, he'll be unattainable. Just one of crushes. Like Frodo Baggins and the Gingerbread Man. Buddy-buddy.

If he's straight I won't be entertaining any "what if" scenarios... of what might've been, or could've been. Which is precisely what I have been doing amidst the festivities: imagining him having a more active [gay] sex life than me. Wishing that it was me he's having sex with, and not some random guy I imagine he met online. Hoping that the sex grows into something... deeper?

If he's still straight then I won't be having any of this mixed emotions of shock and fear and insecurity. And senseless jealousy. And regret. If he stays straight I won't have to face the fact that I might actually have feelings for him.

Grabeh. Ever. I wonder if this qualifies me to Ina's Jesus List?

Anyway, this bit of news still remains a sort-of reliable piece of information that's yet to be proven (FOC's supposed user account cannot be found/probably deleted -- I checked it out myself recently... hehe). Whatever. Whichever team he decides to play on, he is and will always remain one of my crushes. Buddy-buddy. Unattainable.

It's a classic Westlife song: you can't lose what you never had.

Meanwhile, allow me to enjoy what's left of the holidays. ^_^