Saturday, as me and my bike approach the restaurant, I see the truck parked across the street. I know Eyebrow Man doesn't work on Saturdays, but I can feel my balls sweating nonetheless. Of course he's not there, and it's an ordinary, uneventful day at work. I do the usual, get some food to go to take home, and have my usual Saturday night - at home, eating, music, surfing the web a bit. Sunday I'm riding to work, semi-rehearsing things to say - "hey, didn't see you at the party" "hey, you like my hot rod?" (with my eyes looking down at my bike) "hey, can I lick those freshly sweaty pits?" But when I get there I don't see the truck anywhere, and I park my bike. As I'm locking up, I see a small white truck about a block away, stopped at the traffic light. As it passes, I see that's it's not our truck, and I sigh, but then laugh at myself. Once I get inside, and start setting things up, I can see the truck is parked across the street - it must've come while I wasn't paying attention. I need to go downstairs anyway to get some supplies, and head down the stairs. Nope. Not to be found. Two guys going up and down the stairs loading stuff into the truck, but not my guy (oops! when did I start calling him that?). Oh well. Another boring day at work, and I begin to do the mechanical stuff to have things ready. A couple hours pass, and I am resigned to not seeing him.

Sometime around 2pm, I give in to the urge to have some coffee, and go around to the bar to pour some, and as I'm standing there doing it, I hear a "heya man!" Gosh, I can be so blind. He's sitting there, on the other side of the bar, looking at a menu. The restaurant has huge windows, so behind him is quite a bit of light, framing his swarthy head as I smile and cough out something about him not showing up at the party. He asked how it was, and none of my clever lines came to me about how it would've been better if he were there, or how I got so drunk he coulda... Anyway, we chatted a bit, I couldn't think of any excuse to stay away from my station any longer, so I smiled and returned. After a few minutes of smiling to myself, and hoping like an idiot that he'd come over and talk some more, I poked my head around the corner, but he was gone. No sign of him, no food at the spot where he was sitting, nothing. Sheesh! Maybe he got his food to go again.

I walked around, looked for the truck, and the truck was still there. I maneuvered around to see the cab, and he was in the driver's seat (where else? - hehe), and appeared to be talking on a phone. I just sorta watched until my phone rang, and jumped to take a delivery order. Thankfully, a few minutes later, he was back in the restaurant, trying to figure out where his food was. I just leaned against my counter, giving him a mild "hey buddy" smile, which he returned. Then I noticed this puzzled look on his face, and I was continuing to have this come-over-and chat-with-me look, and he walked over, his face fuzzy and scruffy and hairy and lickable, and asked if I knew of any apartments for rent. I mentioned that my landlady seems to be showing apartments lately, but they wouldn't be cheap, and he said was looking for under 700 bucks. I laughed, and so did he, saying "maybe the Bronx, eh?" Then he said - "or do you know of any available room for rent?" "Well, I could always kick my roommate out." His reaction was hard to gauge, but somehow, I was happy that I was being a bit more myself, flirting a bit more directly. We continued talking, his food was ready (which of course I grabbed and packed for him), and I asked "So, what're you doing for Christmas?" At this point, he was behind the counter with me, about a foot away, and he turned and said, "No plans, just probably do some of this somewhere" - as he gestured a whacking off motion with his right fist! OOOh baby! I bite my lip and only laughed, saying nothing aloud, as he passed by me to grab the package, then he turned and said "Hey, what about you?" "Oh, I don't have plans, I usually see the family in Chicago, but thought it best I be smart and not spend the money, so nope, nothing planned." He paused, scrunched up his eyebrows and seemed to be thinking (hence the scrunched brows), then said "hmmm, you working tomorrow?" I told him yes, at 6. "Oh, you work til 6?" No, at 6, I work nights during the week. "Oh, okay buddy, I'll talk to you then." He puts his hand out for his good-talking-to-you-buddy handshake that I've grown so fond of, grabbed his bag of food, and we shook hands, and he left.

Oh gosh. Even though I know it's a bad idea to get my head going in that direction, and I know enough to be able to tell it's terribly unlikely that he'll stick around til 6pm tomorrow just to talk, or plan something with some guy he barely knows, I figured, WHAT THE HELL. I am going to enjoy the 24 hours of nervous anticipation and allow my self to imagine the most ridiculous possibilities, give myself over to thinking - he looked just as eager to talk to me today as I did to him, but neither of us knew how to do it, what to say, and that's very cool. It could go nowhere; I might not even get my 5-minute visit again til next Sunday, but for now, I can pretend it's one of those awful Christmas specials on TV where the guy gets the guy for one great day together (oh wait, they don't have TV Specials like that). And talking about it and writing about it certainly will jinx it, but who gives a shit. It's fun; he's just so fuckin' munchable - and honestly, the little tidbits I'm picking up about him just make me more and more curious, wanting to learn more, and hopefully (yes, I'm from the Midwest, I say "hopefully," and I end sentences with prepositions, too; now where the hell was I?) just seeing if a friendship, or hot sex, or ferchristfucking sake, both, happen. Wouldn't that be cool?