Remembered I'd meant to add a few more stories to this thread.
--I was working at a pretty big name financial services company in downtown Manhattan (admittedly because my friend's husband was in a management position and was able to point me to an opening that fit my skill set and experience for what otherwise would have been an internal hiring). The section I was in hired a bunch of interns as they did each fall/spring from NYU's Stern Business School, which if you don't know is one of the more high falutin schools of that type. A lot of these were what you would expect - aggressive Type A overachievers (both male and female) ready to conquer the corporate world, the sort of sharks you might have admired before the 2008 crisis hit, haha.
One of these guys was a real pretty boy type, and while a nice guy, seemed to try "too hard" because of it. In the first group meeting we had that included the interns, I kind of felt that thing where it feels like someone is staring at you, and I turned my head to my right abruptly - sure enough, he was looking right at my face like he'd been studying it (note that the current speaker was actually to his other side). He kind of looked away quickly, but looked back after a second I guess to see if I had really noticed, and luckily I had kept my gaze on him - I kind of gave a half smile, and he did too before just looking down at his notepad sheepishly. Well, that definitely caught my attention, as if his looks hadn't already, but I also wasn't about to perv on one of our interns (though at the time I was just a few years older than they were), so played it safe - kind of timing trips to the elevator when I noticed he was about to go, going often to help or give tasks to one of the needier interns who happened to sit right by him, and such. For his part, suddenly he started using the copier near my desk which was probably a bit further than the one near where the interns sat, although not enough to seem amiss unless you were alert to that, and which allowed for a lot of casual hellos and prolonged eye contact.
It was a fun game, but other than chats by the men's room or elevator, and one conversation when we both conspicuously took our time leaving the meeting room so that we were the last ones gathering our things, we didn't really interact much. I found out he'd actually be leaving a bit earlier than most of the interns that spring because he'd already been hired for a position at a very well-known Fortune 100 company. I stopped by his cube his last day to congratulate him on graduation and the new job, ask him a few things about it, and stuff like that - it was the first time I directly approached him, rather than just happenstance chatting, and he visibly straightened up and acted kind of nervous at first. So I wished him luck, gave him a lingering handshake with a friendly squeeze (I can actually recall how electric it felt), and actually winked in a "go get 'em" kinda way before leaving to go back to my desk. I must have made an impression, because for someone who was about to leave for greener pastures, he sure had a lot of copies to make throughout the afternoon, haha. I really didn't have the nerve to pull him over on one of the trips by my desk, though I thought about it - in fact I didn't really meet his gaze much beyond an intentionally distracted smile a couple of times. I figured that if he made the rounds to say bye I might ask him to grab a beer sometime, but unfortunately I had hesitated too long because I think he ended up leaving when I was busy elsewhere. Not really sure why I didn't give it a shot, other than being paranoid that I was misinterpreting our dynamic - the professionalism angle didn't even hold anymore because he was on the way out anyway - but looking back it seems really obvious now he was hoping I would initiate some sort of social opening. Sigh. His name stuck in my head, and when I checked for him on Facebook some time ago, he'd apparently married (and she is a knockout - well done). I guess that makes it easier - if he turned out to have actually been full-on gay then I really screwed it up, haha.
--I was on a trip to Turkey in the wanderlust of my early 20s, and went down to see the ruins of Ephesos (Efes). There's a beach nearby called Selcuk Beach, and I went there the next day to enjoy the view of the sea and nearby hills and relax a bit before catching my bus up to Izmir. I met two brothers around my age who had been camping on the beach on holiday - the older brother (Umit) was one of the uncommon but not unusual Turks with red hair (look up Galatia to see the Celtic connection - the founder of modern Turkey was also a ginger!) and really arresting blue eyes. So they were both eager to try out their English with me, and we had a very pleasant conversation that included trying to teach other some terminology in our respective languages, but the younger brother got kind of bored after a while and went for a swim, which was fine with me because it left me alone with the older one, haha. I don't remember the context, but he went out of his way to say I was "very handsome." His English was pretty good, so I figured he knew what he was saying, but his demeanor was more friendly than flirtatious (although I kept imagining I saw signs of the latter, and hey maybe I was right), and even though Turkey is actually very European in some cultural attitudes, especially the younger generation (unfortunately it's grown more conservative since then, partly because the current ruling party is religiously-oriented), and everybody knows the jokes about Turkish prisons and Turkish baths, I still thought actually hitting on a Turkish guy wouldn't be too bright. Still, sitting there on the sand chatting while shirtless in shorts seemed pretty sexy anyway.
Anyway after some time we all gave our goodbyes. I went to pick up my backpack at the hostel, and then to the bus station. On boarding the bus, it was a nice surprise to see who else but the brothers on there. I knew they were from Izmir, where I was headed, but hadn't made the connection that they were also wrapping up their visit at the same time. It actually was a help, because later on Umit was able to tell the driver to leave me near the airport rather than all the way downtown at the bus terminal, which saved me some time and trouble. So he made sure to sit next to me, and we were able to chat some more, including (now that I had my things with me) exchanging our addresses. Yes, these were the days when penpals were still a thing, if you can imagine. After a while we were each ready to doze off, and while I'd been enjoying the proximity of his body and kind of letting our fingers touch with our hands in our lap, he suddenly put his head on my shoulder and closed his eyes. That was pretty sweet - I also got to kind of nudge and squeeze his thigh to let him know when I was about to get off the bus, and said goodbye for the second time. Hey, it's the little things. We did end up exchanging a few postcards afterwards.
Jeez, another long post. So that's it.