A co-worker from my temp workplace — straight day job — asked me out one day. So I said, I am not going to buy you a meal, shithead. Besides I have to be here until seven. He said, OK.

By the time we split that night, I was tired although had felt completely comfortable during the whole time we were together. He was only 22 years old, and asked me out believing I was even younger than him. Wow, no wonder I didn’t get respect from my colleagues as someone of my age. In the meantime, this date/co-worker was a handsome and tall film major student. He almost always looked like he did his best to ruin his looks; he seemed to want to make himself look just awful, though he was not quite successful in it.

Still I had no plan to get involved with any man whatsoever, so I had to put an end to the night saying, I will get on the subway from the other station.

He did not want to split with me yet and began subtly nagging, but I insisted that I had to take a train from union square. He said that I could get on the same train in the end even from 14th st. station, where we were.

It is OK, I am just used to the union square station, I said. While I was staring at him in the dimly lit face, I felt some condensed fear. It flashed in my mind, and went.

I said, I will see you tomorrow?

I saw him descend the stairs into the 14th st. station.

Since then he never showed up at work. My heart sank.

But it did not even occur to me until this week that he did not come back to work because he had felt rejected so badly by me that night. I finally recognized that his uncanny disappearance from work had something to do with me when I managed to get his number from a friend in common and called and left a message, to receive a voice mail back by some stranger woman saying, this is not the person whom you are trying to get in contact with, so don’t call this number any more.

I did not mean to hurt him just because we went home separately that night, to say the least because I went to the other station. I did not have to, or want to, make the occasion so finalizing one, if not prepared to start anything romantic with him yet. There were always another day/night, wasn’t it?

I got shocked and what is more, puzzled because I never thought there was any reason that he had to end up avoiding me or showing any aversion to me. But I learned that he was super-sensitive for rejection and I might have hurt him badly just because I did not get on the same train.

He is young, even younger than Mr. Tao Lin. What is more, this young (ex-) friend/co-worker of mine was also from Florida. I feel like any piece of advice that a young man as himself could offer for this bizarre aftermath of a frozen yogurt date. I wished I could stay in touch with him after the temp period was over and maintain something nice and hopefully innocent with this man.

Now I will start another day job in another work place from next monday. I still carry his number that I ’should not’ use to reach him, if I followed what a sequence of events indicated, and odds are he still knows my number, unless he has discarded it by now.