Reading Elaina

It wasn’t hard to understand the confused glances I was receiving from Elaina on the couch across my coffee table. As clearly as I’d explained to the lady I’d spoken to when I called the escort service that I wasn’t looking for sex, that information hadn’t been relayed to the timid East-European woman staring bewildered at me upon hearing the question I’d just presented.

“You heard me right, my dear, I’d like to take you out,” I continue to push. “What kinds of things do you do for fun?”

I’d assumed it ought to be possible. After all, she was from an escort service; and all I was asking of her was to escort me somewhere, anywhere she fancied. Without seeking too much pity, I briefly chronicled to her the social handicap I was attempting to overcome. I believed I’d gotten through; hoping that interacting with her over a delightful dinner, or shopping for fancy shoes together, or ridiculing the production values of the cheesy movie we’d just watched, or anything else, really, would provide me a relatively anxiety-free opportunity to carefully observe—and hopefully make sense of—how a woman responds to varying social cues. Like I tried explaining to her, “… to get a handle on the social dynamics associated with dating.”

But it wasn’t to be.

Her top faded soon thereafter, along with her timorous demeanour.

I’d just like to point out that this entry is entirely a work of fiction, and is, in a sense, a set up for the next. You see, with the structure of my doctoral dissertation slowly beginning to crystallise, I’m beginning to spend hours working on serious, scientific and technical content. My brain was itching to pen something fictional.

There, I’m glad we cleared all that up.