Maybe this is why I'm single, Part II

One place I frequent that is supposed to be great for meeting relationship-eligible people is the bookstore.

***
Playboy ranked the Tattered Cover in Denver one of the top 10 spots in the United States for meeting desirable people.

As a customer, I was hit on once that I recall. The guy tried to start a conversation about my coat. My coat, not the book I was reading, about which he asked nothing whatsoever, nor did he make any reference to the stack of other books I had collected. I may have been a bit harsh, but I felt that anyone too stupid to even mention books when we were IN A BOOKSTORE didn't deserve my time.

As an employee, well, there was a bit of an eligible-guy pool of coworkers, some of them even paralleling my "taking a break between 'real jobs' to do something that is fun but pays peanuts" life phase. But mostly, as in the real world, guys who initially appeared eligible turned out not to be (to me), for one reason or another: too twitchy, secretly taken, cute until he opened his mouth to reveal that he was an obnoxious cretin with a superiority complex, slept with my best friend. (Given who my best friend was, that latter category ate up a large and perpetually increasing slice of the available males. It also meant we knew immediately who the man-whores were and which guys had morals/ethics/wanted more than a quick tumble. Also, she was ferociously loyal to me, so if I liked someone, she'd dig around and get all the info she could but wouldn't mess with him.)

So we amused ourselves most Friday and Saturday nights by scoping the people who were obviously at the Tattered Cover only because of its meet/meat-market reputation. The girls all had long, straight hair and tended to wear clingy turtlenecks. The guys had carefully gelled hair and dressed in what a coworker at my previous job called "Lodo style," sort of muted-palette preppy. They all wore leather coats and too much scent, and they tended to congregate in the self-help section, specifically near the relationship books. The girls usually traveled in pairs, the guys solo. They'd show up around 9 p.m. en route to the club or bar. They had conversations that sounded scripted. They seemed pretty much interchangeable with one another.

***
In the bookstore, I'm an addict. I can barely pry my gaze away from all the titles long enough to make eye contact with the cashier. It's the one time I walk out of a shop to my car without being as aware as I probably should of who's around, whether anyone has followed me or taken an undue interest, etc., because I'm too busy immersing myself in the sight and scent of new books. Oh, and I talk to myself, not a lot, but if I find a bargain title I've been waiting for, or something really amazing has just come out in paperback, I'll exclaim softly or mutter. And I laugh at people who are morons (like the teenage guy who loudly told his friend, "This is a lame store. They don't even have a nonfiction section.").

So I doubt that anyone who notices me would perceive me as either particularly sane or very appealing to know. I am not carefully coiffed and scented. I don't hang out in the self-help section. I don't giggle. I am wild-eyed and excessive, carting around large stacks of books or a laden shopping basket, sitting on the floor and reading a few pages of each selection, carefully adding up amounts in my head, dashing off in another direction as I remember that I wanted to check the travel section or the biography section or the nature section as long as I was here...

***
So there it is. I am wild-eyed and excessive, slightly insane, a raving bibliophile.

Why does that (in my head, if nowhere else) translate so often into unlovable, unworthy of being loved, incapable of attracting love?