I try to be a gentleman.
It rarely happens, being that I'm a bumbling idiot whose mind seems to "work" independently of the rest of his body; each part of which seems to work independently of every other part. But I try, in spite of myself, to be as gentlemanly as I can be and during such efforts my feeble flirting is often to be found. I favour a polite and cheeky charm, rather than the innuendo fuelled, sexually confident approach that in the past has caused numerous women to eye me with the sort of wariness usually reserved for those wandering the streets with their gentleman's area wilfully exposed, and I can occasionally muster whole minutes worth of passable charm and wit before my natural, crippling idiocy takes charge of my brain or tongue or a limb, an eye; you name it, I can't control any of it, and brings my efforts to a crashing, shameful halt. It's akin to watching a child run: they may make good their efforts for 10 or sometimes even 20 meters, but you can see from the moment they set off that their momentum is driving their upper body ever further beyond their feet and it's only a matter of time until it all ends in a grubby pile of grazes and tears.

So it was that when I noticed a beautiful Spanish woman struggling with a weighty case about the unforgiving flights of underground stairs at Green Park, I seized the opportunity not only to perform a karma boosting good deed, but also to seek instant return via a spot of harmless, ego boosting flirting. I proffered my assistance (not too eagerly) and she greedily accepted with a smile that wobbled my legs. I unplugged from my ears the headphones that had previously been pumping music directly into my head at the expense of all other sound and grasped the wheeled end of her case.

I knew instantly that I'd made a grievous error. I will never be described as big or strong and I certainly didn't have the power to lift this case for any meaningful length of time with the one feeble arm that wasn't otherwise holding my headphones away from wrapping themselves around my legs. I considered letting them swing freely on their overly long cables in order to afford me a second case-carrying arm, but they were new, expensive and really very good, and besides, such an act would be like a red rag to the blundering bull that was my inescapable mongitude.

The first set of stairs were blissfully small and I survived my one arm lift long enough to breach their peak. Knowing there would be further steps to conquer I decided to accompany this young lady on her passage through the station. She wasn't going my way but I could pretend she was for a while, after all, I do try to be a gentleman at times. I was in rare form and she was all toothy smiles and sparkly eyes as we strolled together through the long mazy corridors. I’d cursed the vastness of this station almost every other day but now I wished its white tiled walls would go on forever so I could spend eternity talking to the beautiful eyes that shone into mine and cast a fuddled web about my mind.

They didn't. We soon reached another flight of stairs and, with the earlier lesson unusually learnt I plugged the phones back into my head and lifted my end of the case with two arms as I should have done in the first place. We dispatched the stairs quicker than I'd expected and my sole sought a final step that had never existed, meaning I lurched forward quite unexpectedly as I arrived at the top. Since I was still holding the wheel end of the case my sudden lunge propelled the other end, still held by its owner, away from me. Meanwhile I'd controlled myself and stopped, meaning the case was yanked from my hands and two heavy wheels landed noisily on the shiny floor and sped the case towards the unsuspecting owner. The handle shamefully planted itself firmly in her beautiful midriff, immediately turning the olive coloured skin an unfortunate shade of red; one which matched my face which, with music filling my ears, simply shouted "ALRIGHT? THERE YOU GO." at her swiftly retreating form before turning tail and making good an escape back along the corridors that now stank of shame.

I don’t flirt often, I can take bruises to my pride, but I have no excuse for bruising innocent bystanders.
( Moey, Mon 22 Feb 2010, 18:17, Reply)