Flirtation

What is it that makes flirtation so intoxicating, ... so irresistible?

I have said recently -- several times -- that I don't want another relationship any time soon.  I think I have good reasons for saying so.  All the logic and evidence I can muster support this decision.

But it seems like I can't stop myself from flirting.

A few weeks ago my home e-mail account was attacked by a virus.  I got notes from several people I know -- some of whom I hadn't heard from in a long time -- telling me they had gotten a suspicious e-mail from me and asking about it.  One of these notes was from a woman I used to work with many years ago.  In fact for several years I worked for her.  She lives in Europe now, so it's not like there's any chance of us idly meeting for coffee.  But at the time we got on very well: we collaborated on several important projects, we joked with each other quite a bit, we relied on each other's work implicitly: "No, I didn't look into that, you'd better ask Elly." "Sure, I took care of that, but for the other thing you'd have to ask Hosea."  Then time passed, she had two children (while still working), she and her husband moved to Europe, her husband started fucking someone else and they divorced, ... and so on.  I hadn't heard from her a lot -- maybe once every couple of years -- until this virus attack.  Anyway, she sent me a note; I replied; a few weeks later she sent me a follow up with a little more news; I replied again.  And part of me is standing to one side watching the progress of the conversation.  For one thing, it is speeding up: where it took a week or more to exchange one iteration at first, I got two different e-mails from her both today.  And I can tell that I'm opening up my letters just a little more each time: talking about my relationship with Wife, alluding to the breakup with Debbie, trying to utter a few comforting words about her own failed relationships since her divorce.  Long-term readers will recognize this pattern.  So why am I doing it?  I could write differently.  I don't have to nudge the conversation -- gently, I hope! -- in this direction.  And in reality I've said over and over that I don't want another relationship right now.  So why am I doing this?

Partly I think I enjoy the sense of power and skill that comes from being able to manipulate somebody else in this way.  That came out sounding a little harsher than I meant it, but in one sense what I am feeling is not at all admirable and deserves to be talked about like that.  And of course it's all uncertain: maybe the whole thing goes off the rails with the very next e-mail.  Elly is smart, and so nothing about it is a sure thing.  But I was so shy around girls for so many years ... and then all of a sudden I was married and faithful and therefore off the market ... that I'm only now really getting a sense of what I can and can't do in this arena.  It's a challenge.  It's fun.

And beyond all of that, there is something absolutely intoxicating about flirtation.

At the same time, ... well, I'm writing this from a hotel room in Weather City, far away from my home.  I'm here on business, called in more or less at the last minute to support a project that's spearheaded by a woman in one of our European offices.  (Not Elly!)  I worked with her for about a week last year on a different project, and when her planned collaborator on this one fell through she straightaway asked me if I could fill in.  I said Yes just as fast.  Anyway, here I am now.  We met at the airport, got a car, got lost en route to the hotel but are here now, safely ensconced in different rooms ... why am I bringing it up?  Only because I watched myself (and her) the whole time from when we met at the airport.  I could see myself striving to be my most charming, my most entertaining.  I could see her laughing at all manner of things I said, just as if they were really funny.  I listened to both of us making references to our work together last year, as if to a shared private joke of some kind.  And then I thought ....  I've said over and over that I don't want another relationship right now.  Even if I did, she's not available: she's got a boyfriend back in Europe, and two little girls as well.  (Her ex-husband, the father of the two girls, is apparently no longer in the picture.)  It's silly even to imagine anything going anywhere.  Only ... in that case why were we both being so funny, so charming, so bubbly at seeing each other?  Is it just because we worked well together last year?  Really?  Or is it because I'm a boy and she's a girl?

Is it because there is something absolutely, deliriously, bewitchingly intoxicating about flirtation?

Honestly, that's my bet.  But I had really better watch it, lest the intoxication get the better of me and take me somewhere that's bad for all of us ....