Crushes on a person who isn't your boyfriend are a bad thing. But when your own boyfriend leaves you a voicemail saying, "Just me--calling to see if you wanted to come over later to sit on it!" you have to wonder if it's any surprise your mind wanders towards more sophisticated men.

Normally, this sort of crude humor will earn a grin from me, and yeah: I'm enough of a goofball to actually be on the other end of the phone line, saying to myself, "Yah! I'll be right over!" This is the garish crassness our pairing considers "highbrow humor." It's what we've cultivated between us, seedy and weedy chuckles.

Until along comes a man who you've always been slightly in awe of, and he starts paying you way too much attention... more than he ever did when you worked for him.

In the office, I earned maybe a hello, maybe a bit of a chat from him. Past diary entries remind me of how nervous I used to be around him, because he's such a good looking man, the one in charge, the one everyone had to guess about because no one really knew him. The most talking we ever did was when I was working on a major project for him. That's all gone, now. We no longer work together. And we now communicate more than we ever did; I don't know why.

"When I saw your name on the list of people who were getting laid off this wave, I got sorta sad. ... I'm gonna miss you," he said with a pout. But he made sure that I promised to get Yahoo's messenger downloaded. "I'll be in touch with you," he said, promisingly.

I had so many questions about him and work stuff; I always wondered if he really was as good of friends with ___ as everyone believed, or what really happened with him regarding the ___ rumor. But he would rather tell me what outfits I wore to the office that looked best on me. ("Those black stretch pants were *killer* on you.") I used to wonder if he ever noticed me, or if my brazen and attention-starved officemate's antics had captured his eye. But now I know the answer.

"Yes I was interested in you. I found you to be bright and talented when I interviewed you. Very well educated and very sweet. There was an innocence about you professionally that was interesting and I knew that there had to be a more interesting dark side when you left the office. I think you are very attractive and have a SMOKING body!!!

And just how many times did I blast my officemate for her behavior around him? Just because this flirting is happening over the internet in emails or IMs makes it no different.

Oh, this is horrible...