I am a romantic. I am very romantic. Not all the time, but most of the time. Well, that might be a little bit of a stretch, I am romantic some of the time. At the very least I know how to be romantic. Actually it does not come very naturally to me so I can not call my self a romantic, but I can be romantic, with a little bit of effort. It is such a pain in the ass to be romantic and I hate it so much that I say it takes a lot of effort. A tremendous amount of effort, it is the most exhausting undertaking known to man. That's why it is so unusual that I have been in a romantic mood the past week. It is such a waste because I am in a committed relationship and everybody knows that romance has no business being in one those things. Oh bother!

     It's not just some random feelings or thoughts that came out of nowhere. I can easily pinpoint the trigger. It was a girl. A girl that I first stared interacting with two years ago. She is very pretty with dark eyes and long curly hair. She has sharp, delicate features that rarely betray what she is feeling or thinking. She seemed very serious. She also didn't know a word of English when I first met her. My first attempt at talking to her turned into a lot of head shaking, wild gesticulating and funny faces. I've seen her about once a month since our first encounter. I never tried talking to her again, but I always made a point to look her right in the eyes and smile. I would hold the gaze just a little bit longer than normal, right at that borderline between the hey I'm interested in you look and the hey I'm really creepy and I'm staring at you look. She always politely returned the smile, but still seemed very serious. I recently heard her talking to somebody in English. It was very poor English, almost incomprehensible, but it was still English. What really struck me was her voice. It was the most unpleasant, screeching, cracking sound that I've ever heard from a human throat. It sounded fake, like a parrot talking. Not one of those good talking parrots, more like a parakeet. A warbling, high pitched, stilted imitation of the English Language. A horrifying union of a small dog's incessant whine and the prepubescent voice of a young boy. I was stunned. Now I really liked her. Oh joy!

     The next time I saw her, before I could think of or do something impressive, I stopped what I was doing looked down, then while my head was still tilted downwards, my eyes looked at hers, I did a little half arm wave as though my elbow were connected to my body and I said hi. She gave me the biggest, brightest most beautiful genuine smile and said hi. I quickly looked away and jerked my body in the direction opposite of where I was looking and lumbered away. I felt like a malfunctioning robot that suddenly couldn't control its parts anymore. None of that was the romance trigger. The trigger came the next month, which was our most recent interaction. I was sitting down looking at something in my hands. I glanced up at somebody who was walking towards me. A girl. A girl who was staring at me. Staring at me like we knew each other. Before I even realized who it was she smiled. A very expressive smile. A come and talk to me smile. I returned a closed mouth smile and nodded my head. She walked past me. My heart was beating fast, I felt nervous and jittery. A couple of years ago I would have stood up and talked to her, never giving her a chance to walk by me. Not this time. I sat there. Trigger. Thoughts of poetry, flowers, hand kissing, giggling, eye gazing, whispering, hand holding, love giddy.  I don't want to talk to her. I don't want to see her ever again. I like the way things were. When I would stare at her and smile and she would get a little nervous. Now I have a very short time period to do something, anything that shows I'm interested, or before you know it, no more gazes, no more smiles, no more warbling. Like I don't even exist, not even a dirty look. I shouldn't do it. I know I will regret it. But I probably will do it. Oh shit!