The work date I wanted to turn into a date date

So...cute guy that I know from work-related stuff runs into me twice in one weekend. Hmm...common interests. This should be investigated.

Figuring that we have enough work-related stuff to talk about, I invite him out to a work lunch, hoping to leave it open to being a not-so-work-oriented-and-I-think-you’re-really-cute lunch.

So here’s the problem with dating in the real world versus the virtual one: I know nothing about this guy. Nothing! No profile to read. Was he single? Was he straight? Does he want children? Am I just supposed to find all of these things out on my own? Like, get to know him? That seems incredibly risky. And a potential colossal waste of time. As opposed to the rest of my dating life...right...so....

Our work lunch started off by talking about what we did on our respective weekends. I chose to believe this was more date-ish than work lunch-ish, this choice not based in reality but in sheer eagerness. Then we turned to work.

We do similar work although in slightly different fields, and it was like the veteran reporter talking to the gumshoe. He kept asking me questions that began with, “Have you done...” “Have you thought about...” and “Are you planning to...” I walked the fine line between truth and trying to slightly mask that I was feeling more and more inept at my job. He must have sensed this because he said, “I don’t want you to feel I’m attacking you. I’m not doing all of these myself. I just want to see where I might be able to help you.”

Okay, he’s just super enthusiastic. No offense taken. In fact, he gets points for that. But it didn’t stop the onslaught of questions. At one point he asked if I had “planned when to do a tracking flipper mooga mooga mooga.” I looked at him while three thoughts battled for my next move: should I ask him if he could repeat that in English, should I pretend I knew what he was talking about so I didn’t look like the one idiot who didn’t have her tracking flipper mooga mooga mooga set up, or should I simply look at him and say, “You’re now making shit up to see if I’ll go along with any crazy word collage that comes out of your mouth.” I went with admitting that I didn’t know what a tracking flipper mooga mooga mooga was, while admitting to myself that this wasn’t even slightly resembling a real date.

We did get on some more neutral topics and I was impressed by his passion, a rare trait in the online dating world in my experience. And just as we parted he put forward that we should get drinks after work sometime. Hmm...is that date-ish?

I haven’t been on a real-world, offline date in a long time. How does this work? I just let this naturally go where it goes? And along the way, if it comes up, answer those big questions about relationships and kids? That seems...inefficient.

Hrumph.