If too-beautiful-to-be true Taye Diggs, or someone who looked exactly like him had smiled at you as you were walking down Parliament Street, all virtuous and virgin-like, on a sunny Saturday afternoon, what would you have done? Would you have smiled confidently, nonchalantly walked up to him, stunned him with your massive wit, fascinated him with the breadth and depth of your knowledge and interests, but only enough that he was left wanting more, before exchanging phone numbers and emails and MSN Messenger nicknames (the Third Millennium so complex)? Alternately, would you have done what I did, giggle like a complete goof and scurry away, using as an excuse that you were on your way to a garage sale at the home of constant lurker and occasional commenter, Marqanoid, and you therefore had no time for such dalliances? I choose the second option.

I arrived at Marqanoid's to find that the garage sale was over and my "excuse" had been for nought. He was so sunstroked that he was all but passed out in his backyard, so incapacitated that he thought the squished bugs he'd rolled on were freckles. Such were the heights of his intellect this sunny Saturdaafternoonon. I didn't even get to snag the matching Wonder Twins salt and pepper shakers!

I am surely losing my touch. The street pick-up has never really been my thing, but I'm certainly not opposed to walking a few blocks out of my way with an interesting fella just to see if a later date is possible. I've met some of my favourite ex-boyfriends that way. So no shakers and no Taye for Surly, who now feels both adolescent and incredibly old, and a bit of a loser, at the same time.

In honour of this non-event, I am not announcing my engagement to Taye Diggs, a straight actor whom I will never meet. That would be silly. Plus I already have four fiancés. Instead, I promise to smile brightly back at his gay, Cabbagetown-dwelling doppelganger if we ever cross paths again. I hope he's enjoying his burritos, wherever he may be right now.