Just a tip.

Very few women will tire of hearing her significant other say to her, "You're beautiful."

Not "You're cute." Not "You're attractive." Not "You're pretty." But "You're beautiful."

Most effective when it's unexpected and, of course, sincere.

Ointment

A middle-aged, portly man stood in front of me, donning a striped t-shirt and cargo shorts. As we waited for the light to turn green, he reached with his left hand to scratch his back. Now, watching a middle-aged, portly man scratch his back is one thing. But he lifted his shirt to scratch his back. And I couldn't help but look and see what perhaps no one should see only five minutes after having lunch. There were rolls of blotchy flesh covered in an uneven layer of gray curly hair. I was additionally englightened on the source of his itch -- a bright pink boil the size of Rhode Island. It literally shined at me beneath the sunlight, as if cheerily alerting me to the fact that it may explode any second.

I reflexively looked away, but could still see the pink boil and the man's furry hand scratching it in my peripheral vision.

The light turned green, and I stood there for a second to give extra distance between me and the Boil Man.

Now seriously.

Without visions like these, I do not think humanity would be able to appreciate the beauty and wonders of the world.

Weird

Is it weird to be weirded out by the fact that you're not weirded out?

Okay people. Usually I am overly neurotic, analytical and more or less crazy when I start dating a guy, and subsequently blog/obsess over seemingly foreboding minutiae. But so far -- and I say this with tempered hope and wary optimism -- the shy guy hasn't triggered any of these tendencies. I actually feel...normal.

For now.

I can only hide the craziness for so long.

Ifs

I love hearing about how people meet. It fascinates me every time I hear a new story and reminds me of how fantastically random people's encounters with one another can be. A girl can sit at home after a shitty day at work and wonder whether or not she should go to her co-worker's birthday party. She hears the siren songs of her PJs and bucket of chocolate ice cream, and is just about to head to bed, when for some reason, she thinks to herself, "Why not?" And so she goes. And there, she meets a somewhat cute guy, a friend of a friend, whom, three years later, she marries. And perhaps that very guy, the week before, happened to take a later train than usual and happened to bump into an old college buddy who happened to invite him to this party.

So if he had taken a later train, or if she decided to stay in, they never would have met. Yet for some odd reason, an entire sequence of disconnected events through people and objects and time and chemicals in that person's brain amidst the circumstances led the guy and the gal to meet.

It fascinates me. And I think this fascination is the basis for about a million movies. People may attribute certain events to fate. Yet, while I appreciate how eerily well-timed events can lead to something wonderful, I won't relegate love to fate. It seems that the randomness of it all is even more supernatural and magical than fate.

I realized all of this as I perused the wedding section of the New York Times. I've scanned that page a few times to see if I'll recognize a name or two, and sometimes a particularly unique surname will compel me to click onto their story and how they met. An elevator. A get together. A work event. A friend of a friend. Totally random.

People (including me) look and look and look. And sometimes, people do meet and marry people they met after making their efforts, for example, match.com, a church social, and speed-dating (all of which I know for a fact have led to many marriages). Yet even in those settings, I believe the laws of randomness still apply.

It turns out that the shy guy (whom I'm still dating) and I were on the same exact online dating website. As some people may recall, I did a brief stint with online dating December 2005-January 2006. Yet his account was deactivated at the time I was on, and active before and after my stint. So apparently, we 'missed' each other. And for some reason, almost two years later, we happened to meet at a bar.

Random. Isn't it?

Not guilty

I was sitting in a pew in court. The courtroom was cavernous with high ceilings. And numerous lawyers sat with their brief cases, donning their charcoal, pinstripe or navy suits. As we all waited for the judge, it was silent, save for the sound of hushed voices and the clicking of keys on Crackberries.

Then my stomach emitted a growl.

Now normally, a stomach growl in a huge cavernous courtroom is only a bit embarrassing. "Wow someone is hungry" is the first thought a person will have upon hearing a stomach growl.

Except this single growl wasn't a normal typical growl. It was a humongo, low, deep, guttural growl.

In other words, it sounded like a fart.

The growl echoed throughout the room for probably about twenty seconds straight. People shifted uncomfortably in their seats and the man next to me avoided eye contact with me. It was pretty bad. I had actually felt the wooden pew vibrate as my stomach unforgivingly made its faux fart.

At that moment, I flipped open my phone, hoping I could pass it off as my cell phone ringing in vibrate mode. Maybe they'll buy it, I thought delusionally to myself.

Maybe not, as I heard a young male attorney snicker in the next row, peering at me over his shoulder.

And so I did what any other person in the wake of a recently emitted fart, growl and/or faux-fart-growl would do. Pretend that it didn't happen. Remain composed. And look around innocently as if to proclaim to the world: "It wasn't me."

A yellow gal walks into a bar

So the question arose, how I did meet the shy and slightly nerdy guy? No, it wasn't at the public library, a bookstore or Internet cafe. It was in perhaps the unlikeliest of places to pick up the shy and nerdy types: a bar.

But first off, he never came up to me. And I never went up to him.

I was in the ladies room, powdering my nose, when I happened to chit chat with a random girl. We totally hit it off. She was here for a birthday party, and as we exited the ladies' room, she brought me to the party area of the bar to introduce me to her friends. One of those friends was the shy guy.

When I first met him, I instantly thought he was cute, and was pleased to discover he could carry an intelligent conversation (rarity in a bar setting) and didn't give off that rico-suave-player vibe (another rarity in a bar setting). He was unassuming and easy-going. We exchanged numbers and actually ended up meeting up later to have one of those talk-til-the-sun-comes-up conversations about religion, science, God and the existence of Donald Trump's toupee.

It was in one of our later conversations that I learned that on that very night in that bar in which I met him, prior to the girl introducing me to her friends, a couple of his guy friends had spotted me across the bar and egged him on to talk to me (both of his guy friends were attached). He of course couldn't, due in part to his shy nature and also because I was chatting with another guy at the time (I was ordering a drink and happened to strike up a conversation with a random guy there).

One of his guy friend's girlfriends happened to be nearby while this occurred. And she happened to visit the ladies' room at the same time I did not too soon thereafter. And she happened to chit chat with me and we happened to hit it off.

Upon learning this latter sequence of events, I looked at my shy guy. "Wait a minute," I said, "so this was all a ruse? A ploy?!"

"No," he laughed. "I don't know what her motivations were for talking to you. I'm not even 100% sure she overheard her boyfriend egging me on. Either way, it worked out."

I laughed. How ingenious. IF it was all a ploy, it was pretty clever of the girl. I myself have approached girls in bars and did the junior-high-school "Hey, my friend thinks you're cute"-thing, to little success. To make the effort to talk with me and befriend me -- that takes it to a whole new level.

Yet neither of us are sure if she did chat with me intentionally. My shy guy indicated that he would never have been able to approach me in the bar anyway, even though he thought I was cute.

"What?" I asked. "Even if you think a girl is cute, you won't approach her?"

"No," he replied. "I'm way too shy."

"So what can a girl do to be more approachable?" I asked.

"There just needs to be something there. If a girl and I were in a same class or ran in the same running group, that'd be something. But in a random bar, there's no connection. No commonality. So I can't just walk up to a girl and chat with her."

"Interesting," I said.

Either way, it worked out. So far. For now. Remember, my goal is to contain my hopes. Poceed with caution. And take things one day at a time.

Ibuprofen

Right now, my neck is sore. Specifically, the left side. I think people have a preferred side to tilt their heads when they kiss someone for a really really long time, and it appears that I tend to tilt my head to the right, thereby over-utilizing my left neck muscles. Of course, sitting sideways on a park bench doesn't help that much either. So it was a good thing the cop slowed down to a halt next to us last night when it did to tell us that the park was closed. Otherwise, my neck would be really sore.

Oh by the way, I met a boy.

I know my m.o. is to regale the virtual blog world on how I met the boy, how it all started, every subsequent date and so on. But I won't. Because there are way too many details.

Suffice it to say that he's pretty cute, articulate, profound yet silly, and...shy and slightly nerdy.

Okay, there's something about the shy-and-slightly-nerdy guys that makes me pursue them a little more than I would a "normal" guy. So I admit. I broke all the Rules. (I called him instead of waiting for him to call me.) And so did he. (He called me less than 24 hours of first meeting me instead of waiting 3 days to call me. Then he called me the next day.)

Upon listening to the trepidation and excitement in my voice when I described the shy guy, my friend smiled and said, "Hmm, I want to meet this guy who makes you so nervous."

"He's kind of nerdy," I warned her as I remembered his occasional corny jokes and awkward demeanor.

"That's your type," she said.

"What?"

"Look at Love-of-your-life #1. Look at Love-of-your-life #2. Both nerdy," she explained. "It makes sense."

"Oh," I said.

And after she met him, she nodded to me, "Yep, he's nerdy. Not as nerdy as #1. But on par with #2. Still, he's pretty cute. And he seems like a good guy."

Both Love-of-my-life #s 1 and 2 were somewhat quiet and nerdy. And with both of them, I suppose I broke the Rules. Because something about the quiet nerdiness makes me more proactive, bold and confident. Also, they probably wouldn't have done anything unless I threw something out there like a phone call or an open invitation.

So last night, I was with the shy guy. He was leaving for business this morning and would be gone for three weeks. As a result, we talked on the phone virtually every night and saw each other five times in the one week we knew each other, just after first meeting each other. (Rules? What Rules?)

And all that time, he hadn't kissed me. And I really really really wanted him to. Even with #s 1 and 2, I made the guy make the first move. (Though with #1 I resorted to saying, "So are you going to kiss me or what?" after dating for three weeks. In #1's defense, he had never kissed a girl before.)

Anyhow, I was with the shy guy last night, sitting on the park bench, leaning my head on his shoulder and gazing at the trees and grass and moths flickering by the park lamps. At one point, the moment was so there, I was literally hollering in my mind, "Hello - I'm waiting! Just frigging bust a move and kiss me!"

And finally, what felt like eons later, he did. Finally.

And it was nice.

And so today my neck is sore. I wonder if his is too.