The art of juggling

"I'm over at my brother's tonight", the message read. "We're staying here tonight."

The problem with the Date Juggle is the realisation where you, yourself, realise you are part of someone else's juggle.

As one who is completely uncoordinated with walking and talking in anything resembling stiletto form, when questions are posed and I'm asked what I'm doing, it's hard to make up a flighty answer in response. Yet as a woman, I have twelve intuition-satellites orbiting the earth, honing in on liars and beep-beep-beeping a signal back to me when any dimwitted male gives me an answer like he's, say, hanging out at his brothers. Because here I am, part of the juggle, a ball figuratively frozen in mid-air waiting for him to to get done with his date and juggling game, waiting for his hand to come back round to me, and figure if he wants to keep playing with this Ball of Eileen or toss me aside.

Meanwhile, my own game is going on. I'm sitting across from the Ball of Steve, the ex-best friend of my ex-fiancee, where he is telling me I'm much nicer without Chris around. Wishing I'm with the other guy. And when I cross my leg and it kind of hangs outside of the table and Steve reaches down and rubs my ankle over the top of my pants, I feel a little taste of Cajun come up the back of my throat which is not good, because we're not eating Cajun, but it's what I ate for lunch seven hours earlier, and between Cajun and this Italian I'm now eating are not the kind of fusion-food I enjoy. Besides, I want this juggle to end, find myself unable to stop, and then feel even more ill when Steve sends an email later saying how he can't wait for our second date.

Oh, but it could be that Caj-talian juggling in my tummy.