An Awkward Conversation

I blush. Not proud of it but I can't deny it. I blush at the way he says that because I know what the meaning behind it is.

And for the record it's not a cute blush. It's not flirtatious.

It's a blush of embarassment, of shame. Because he's judging me right now and I am half expecting him to just sneer and put me down.

That's not without grounding, without foundation. It's the experience that I'm most used to. I haven't had the best go of things.

"That's cool," he says, sitting back a little, "I didn't know you could... play an instrument."

I shrug, "No reason you would."

Because we don't know each other. And sure maybe he could surprise me by not playing into stereotypes but maybe he could be just what I expected. Big guy. Football player. Do the math.

"True crime?" he asks, "Like **** and stuff. You like that?"

He's looking at me like he is trying to suss out whether I am going to disembowel him right here and now. I shrug and try to make it look reassuring.

"Not for myself," I say, "But it's fascinating. I don't know. I think the stories are... interesting."

Well I succeeded in not saying cool, which is good. In my experience when you tell people that you think **** is cool they tend to get the wrong impression.

But for the record, and I think that I need to state this here, it's not about the **** itself. I mean the details are fascinating in a gruesome and grotesque sort of way, but people who are 'into' true crime are more interested in how someone could do that. I am, at least. The motivations behind such a ritualistic killing, the compulsions that could lead a seemingly ordinary individual to be utterly broken that they would have the capacity for such stunning evil. And the systems, expecially in the past, that were so fundamentally flawed that they would let such a person not only come to existence but usually operate with impunity because they targeted overwhelmingly underappreciated and ignored segments of the population that the powers that be had no interest in protecting. I mean you wonder why serial killers don't usually kill co-eds anymore but then you find out that they're just targeting other convenient groups that society-

I should stop. Not the point. The point is that people who are 'into' true crime aren't usually weird. Not always at least.

Don't get me wrong even Bundy had groupies but those are outliers.

And the more important and salient point here is that saying any of that outloud would only elicit and misunderstood stare from Jake and no doubt an admonishment from Rachel and that I was failing at this whole first date thing. I was failing at this whole dating thing.

And that was perhaps the most unsurprising part of all.

"So board games and ****," he tries to quip but only looks a little overwhelmed and uninterested at the same time.

"Music too," I try to salvage things, shifting it around into a joke, "I like to listen to it while I'm killing and then play a game afterwards to unwind."

Briefly I entertain the possibility of quoting the serial killer from that movie series where he traps two people in a basement and makes them play horrific games that mutilate him to see which of them lives and which dies and then I remember that the movie in question won't come out for a few years yet and so I bite my tongue and save myself an even more embarassing end.

"That was a joke," I say to him, trying even more to salvage things, "I couldn't even hurt a mouse. Even on the farm back home I was never any good at any of that."

As a boy that was a problem. As a girl, well at least it was playing into expectations.

But Jake doesn't see the virtue in that, and I'm starting to think that maybe he doesn't see the virtue in me anymore. Because he's looking at me like he needs to be careful around me.

He isn't looking at me the same way he used to.

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