New York is famous for it’s love stories, it’s over the top grand gestures which inspire songs and movies. This, Ladies and Gentlemen, is the story of mine.
Let me give you a little background to the story. There is a girl from work (I won’t name her, too many people seem to read these now!) who I have hooked up with many times and, I am a little ashamed to say, I have not treated her particularly well. You see unbeknownst to me this girl had a thing for me (this is where my Mother chimes in and says ‘who wouldn’t’). I was blissfully unaware of this fact and behaved in a manner as such. I would talk about other girls in front of her, try and hook up with other girls in front of her and generally behave like a guy who thought he had stumbled across a nice girl who enjoyed a drunk hook up. Let’s just say I kinda upset this girl.
This went on for 3 months until one day the tables started to turn and lo and behold I started to have a thing for her. Of course as is the way in these things she no longer had a thing for me. Unlike her I decided to do something about it and told her how I felt, she declined my advances and said she no longer had feelings for me (you can all pick your jaws up off the floor). It wasn’t long before I realized why, I had never done anything nice for this girl ever. So I concocted a plan, I was going to give her the greatest Valentines Day gift ever.
Project Valentine:
Phase 1.
At work there are more and more TV’s by the day cropping up on the walls. You can’t blink for some high def’d sports presenter beaming down from a screen telling you his pick of the week. As with all American TV’s there are a plethora of adverts, every five fucking minutes we have to watch ANOTHER advert. One day one of these caught my eye, an advert for a flower company. I took a note of their details.
At the end of my shift I checked to see when my girl was working during the coming week and formulated my plan.
I trotted off home and ordered 12 red roses to be delivered to work on Feb 15th with the following note; “Sorry theses are a day late, happy Valentines Day, ?”
On Monday at work I sat quietly in the back before my shift as every girl fawned over this mystery note and red roses trying to figure out who the admirer was, only one girl asked if it was me, I of course denied it before sneaking off to the toilet to have a giggle and congratulate myself. Then the actor in me struck, I swanned up to the host stand to talk to the girl and gave her about 5 options as to who could have sent her the flowers. She bought it. Later that night as she took the note home with her everything was perfectly set up for phase 2.
Phase 2.
This phase was all about upping the mystery and in order to do that I had to have a note delivered by hand to work. So after my lunch shift I ran to the print shop and printed out a note that said “I hope you liked your flowers, but they were just the start. This week I will be taking you for a drink, call this number at 2:00 tomorrow.” At the bottom of the note was my new roommate (who no one from work has met in order to maintain his anonymity) Dan’s number.
I needed a random member of the public to bring this note to work and then leave, however finding someone to deliver the note was harder than I thought. I first approached a group of kids, but as I started talking and said ‘excuse me, can you do me a favor?’ I realized I looked like a pedophile and aborted that attempt pretty quickly. I must have asked about 10 people with everyone just passing me by, I tell you something from now on I will stop when Green Peace ask me for a minute of my time.
Eventually I managed to convince a nervous teenager to deliver the note. In order to cover myself I spoke to her in an American accent, gave her the note and left.
We all went drinking that night and once again I sat for about twenty minutes coming up with possible answers as to who the admirer could be. She didn’t suspect me at all.
Phase 3.
At 2:00 on the dot she called. Dan answered gave her a time and a place to meet and hung up. Now in order to fully get an idea of what was going on I needed a mole on the inside. Luckily unbeknownst to everyone my friend Nicole was playing for Team Rob. Ten minutes later I received a call from Nicole saying that my girl was completely flummoxed and thought this was the most romantic thing ever. In true Gilbert fashion I clapped my hands together and gave them a rub.
Phase 4.
An important thing to know for this phase is that this girl often calls me Dimples.
Everything was set, all I had to do was call this cool little bar at 3pm on Thursday to make a reservation so my girl could meet there and explode from the shock. So I waited and waited and called, engaged.... I called again.... engaged... and again... engaged. This went on for a good half hour until someone picked up the phone and told me they were full for the night. Oh Shit. The whole plan was starting to fall apart, without the bar there was no reveal, fuuuuuuuucccckkkkkk. I needed options and fast. I called Dylan, obviously, who gave me some suggestions and I went with one (apparently in my mind Dylan is some New York love guru). However my girl was going to be turning up to the wrong place at 10:45 later that evening. I needed Dan.
Dan finally came home and I leapt on him, stole his phone and texted my girl the change of address and told her the doorman at the new place had a note for her. Now I couldn’t make a reservation at the new bar so I’d have to get their early to guarantee myself a nice little booth.
I arrived at the bar at 9, she was coming at 10:45. I spoke to the doorman about my plan and he, being French, loved it. Giddy with the smell of romance he sent me downstairs to put my name down for a table but I would then have to come up and wait in line to get into the bar. I then gave the doorman a note that looked like this.
Dear Girl,
I’m going to reveal who I am.
Many theories have been thrown about but it’s time for me to
Put my money where my mouth is.
Let’s make it easy for you and find out the answer to the question
Everyone wants to know.
Spell out the first letter from each line to reveal the name the reservation is under.
(it spells out Dimples for the idiots among you)
He was under instructions to give this to her as she walked up to the door.
I went downstairs and waited for my booth whilst slowly sipping on an insanely strong cocktail, at this point I was shitting myself with nerves. Thankfully the nice hostess seated me a little earlier than expected, she was a sucker for a love story I guess! So I sat in the booth for an hour and waited and waited and waited.
Finally at 10:45 after a week of crazy games and elaborate plans my girl walked in.......
You can plan most things in life, but you can’t plan what other people are going to do. Unfortunately the love story stops here and reality kicks in. She sat down with a smile on her face, I explained that this was her Valentines Day present and I had wanted to give her a great story that she could always tell people and hopefully make her forgive me for all the crappy things I had done to her. She thanked me and told me how sweet it was, the sweetest thing anyone has ever done for her actually. However here’s the thing, it seemed she had wanted her secret admirer to be someone else. Who I don’t know, but as she sat there trying to hide the disappointment it became kind of obvious. I don’t blame her for it, I mean who wouldn’t let their imagination run wild? We had a nice chat but really I didn’t want to keep her and make her have a bad time.
After one drink I decided to throw in the towel, I thanked her for playing along, made sure she got safely in a cab and then I left.
I don’t regret the last week, you have to do these things. For one thing I don’t think people at work have me down as lazy anymore! As anyone who knows me will tell you I am a big analyzer, well this time I didn’t analyze I acted and you know what, on Thursday night after it had all gone down I slept like a baby (thanks Nicole) because truly there was nothing else I could have done.
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