Maybe It's a Little Late to Be Asking . . .

. . . but I need some guy advice. You would think that at 24, I would have a pretty good handle on this dating thing, but the truth is, I suck at it.

I'm sitting here waiting to leave for a party, and I'm hoping a certain boy will be there. We'll call him Cute Army Boy. He's cute. He was in the Army, but he was wounded in Iraq. When he told me about it (in a group conversation) he said it just like that - "I was wounded." Of course, me with my big mouth chimed in, "Oh, yeah, he's all mellow about it. 'I was wounded.' He probably got shot or something." He responded with this:

"Actually, I got blown up."

And I was, miraculously, stunned into silence, in which I thought, Holy crap! Blown freaking up? The silence lasted about three seconds, after which I said, "Blown up? Seriously? Like by a bomb?"

I'm so eloquent.

After we had established that it was, in fact, a bomb, I mentioned that at least he still had all his limbs, and he said he'd had some mild brain damage. I said, "Well, you look okay" (again with the eloquence) and he said, "If you'd seen me a year ago, you wouldn't have said that." And that was it. No bitterness, no plays for sympathy, just matter-of-fact-ness. Like it was no big deal.

And then I fell in love with him a little bit.

Apparently he was raised as an Army Brat, and joined himself when he got old enough. He joined as a Medic, but was sent to Iraq as a Machinist. At night, they went out to look for IEDs and one night he found one. I think the way he tells the story says so much about him. I mean, he didn't even get a medical discharge. He got a medical retire. That means that he gets all the same benefits he would have if he had been career Army and then retired. If that were me, I would either milk it for all it was worth or be really bitter. But he's not.

**As a funny aside, when I told this story to a friend earlier, I accidentally said IUD instead of IED. Then I was like, "Wait, I'm pretty sure an IUD doesn't blow up."**

Anyway, now that we've established that Cute Army Boy is freaking amazing, let's get back to me. I'm sitting here, all ready to go to this party and literally forcing myself not to leave for another 15 minutes so that I won't be exactly on time. I'm all done up and cute. I smell good. My problem is that I have no idea how to do this boy-girl thing.

I know that if you want a guy to ask you out, you have to show some interest. My problem is that I've never been able to find the happy medium of "showing interest". I either act like I'm not interested at all, or I end up looking like a desperate, pathetic fool. There's got to be something in between that, right?!?

So help me out here, Internet friends. How do you show a guy you're interested without coming off desperate and pathetic?

Cause honestly? I'm feeling a little desperate and pathetic.