monday crush

on saturday, in the age good weekend magazine, there was an article which featured several men of different ages being interviewed about their lives, and specifically about the male experience.

now, i've always liked danny katz, but i've never fancied him before. i've enjoyed his wry form of observational humour, in his columns, for several years. but in the paper, there was a photo of him, with very nice, smart glasses, that gave me a small frisson of something-or-rather. and he wasn't holding his chin. you look. most photos of him, he has his chin in his hand. don't know why. but if i ever get into conversation with him, i will ask him and tell you straight away.

when princess moved schools last year, she moved into the grade of mr katz's son.

earlier this year, i went to a parents' morning tea, held at the house of the writerly one. he wasn't there. i'm sure he shipped out, expecting it would be insufferable with all these loud women standing around eating cake and gobbing like turkeys about school and the like.

or maybe he was there, listening at an ajar door, gathering material.

anyway, i cooked this to-die-for chocolate torte, and then gave out the recipe at school the next week. i went up to him, as he was standing with someone who had been at the morning tea. i was introduced to him as danny, and he proceeded to prove the following:

what do you like most about being a man?
i adore women. i adore flirting with women. in fact, i don't think i can talk to any woman without flirting, even if i'm not attracted to her.

and he was a bit flirty. kind of just looked right at me, big smile, handshake. i even made a joke that he chuckled at, i can't remember now what it was, something about the torte. you know, tortes are hilarious. and he made a crack back. can't remember his either.

anyway. he's often at school for pick-up, more often than mitch, his loverly wife. and she is tall. something he referred to in the interview, in a most charming way:

if you could make a major life change, what would it be?
i need to become a better partner to my wife. we're best friends, we get along famously but i'm absolutely appalling at romance. i have no sense of romance whatsoever. i know she needs it because she says it to my face, not even hinting. it doesn't come to me naturally. i'm not a hand-holder, i'm not a hugger. i'm not an intimate person. i wish i could be like that for her, and yet i can be like that with my kids. i don't know why. part of our hand-holding problem is that mitch is considerably taller, so i always feel like i'm holding hands with my mother.

so in a slightly stalkerish way, i look-but-don't-look at him at school, as he lingers mostly on his own, the creative, wordy smallish man, the loner. i usually am on my own too; not being there from prep means i have kind of missed establishing myself as one of the gobblers at the gate. but we have about two degrees of separation, as one of the mothers who chats to him sometimes also chats to me. but not at once, so i can't engineer an opening for that question about the photos and the chin.

have you ever met someone, and pretended not to know who they are?