Game Theory

There’s nothing more amusing than watching a fellow bachelor crash and burn, especially when he’s hollering in a place where hollering should be the last thing on his mind (i.e. the office of his child’s school). But as he studies the long stems protruding from the very short skirt of an East Indian teacher to be, he just can’t help himself.

So he starts out with the “Are you a teacher here?” A respectable open in my book. She explains that she’s here for an interview. The audience cheers inside of his head. Good show, player. You got the ball rolling. But there are things this boricua can’t read about her that I can.

First, everything about her screams Ivy League. Her decision to teach inner-city youth during her grad school years will be looked upon with favor when those prospective employers begin to peruse her resume in a few years. Second, she’s most likely into white boys. I can tell. So he was a 100 to 1 underdog before he ever decided to spit.

There’s something about the way she looks at all of us, he the Latino, I the Negro and my Greek co-worker who can easily be confused for a Cuban or the like. She’s enjoying the feeling of ethnic eyes all over her slim frame, even though it’s the big guy with the piece of pollen stuck in the top of his hair (that he doesn’t know about) that’s doing all the talking. I could inform him that he looks like he just fell of a turnip truck. But that would spoil the fun. She sees me fighting a chuckle attack from my sitting position at the back of Bachelor Number One and finds herself struggling to keep from smiling.

From there begins the fall from grace. He decides to pontificate on the life and culture of his home island and how they have the best pork sandwiches in the world. This is when she announces that she’s a vegetarian. Strike Two. And while others might be able to talk their way out of the faux pas he just keeps going, stressing the methods of preparation and just how good and greasy they are. My co-worker, having has his fill of this debacle, excuses himself to make a run to the rest room. Her eyes slide directly from Pollen man to me.

“Are you a teacher here?” she asks me. Deja vu washes over me. Transference takes place. Now she wants to know about what I do, what my program is, why I am sitting in this office a few feet away from her dripping with sarcasm.

Her smile is seductive. I find myself caught in its welcoming magneticism. When my co-worker returns he finds she and I all up in each other’s grill while ole’ boy is looking like “What happened?” Turnovers are an occupational hazard.

My Latino brother throws a set of words into the air that the rest of us ignore, engrossed in our ménage trios of flirtation. This is when she strategically inserts her boyfriend John and what he says the two of their kids would look like. I casually holster my weapon. Pork man instantly does the same. The game I wasn’t even playing has come to an end.

She crosses her legs so that I can get a good look. Then the bell rings. I have the kiddies to attend to. But she says goodbye to me twice, her face stuck in that smile as her dark brown eyes follow me as I push the TV/DVD on wheels out of the room. I spend a single moment thinking thoughts that I shouldn’t, picturing a life that could have been in some other time stream, my higher self tapping into the nonstop router of endless frequencies and wavelengths. But here and now we are not meant to be, perfect strangers with wants we can’t have. These are the little moments real life is made of. Out.