frustration!

Because I have serious writer's block, and I get easily distracted these days while (not) writing my thesis proposal, I consult Facebook.com a lot. There's a guy on facebook (a friend of mine) who keeps poking me. Every time he does, I poke him back. So about once a day, we poke each other.

So my question is ... what is the meaning of all of this? Is this some strange online ritual that replaces flirting?

Let's back up a minute here and introduce the guy. Let's call him Poker. Poker befriended me on facebook a couple of months ago. We first met about this time last year, but I'd forgotten his name, and we never saw each other again until we went to a mutual friend's birthday party a couple of months ago. I remembered having seen his facebook profile before (when I get bored, I just surf around), but I'm always skittish about adding people as friends, so I never added him. After I got home from our mutual friend's birthday party, I had a facebook friend invite from him. It seems a bit TOO coincidental that he would meet me, go home, happen to login to facebook, happen to browse through some people, HAPPEN to come across my profile, and happen to notice, "oh, hey, that's the girl I met earlier tonight."

It definitely made me wonder if he had seen/read my profile already (like I had of his), but he was in the same predicament about whether or not to befriend me, and as soon as we actually met and talked for a while in person, he thought, "okay, time to add her as a friend because it wouldn't be creepy-stalkerish now that I've actually talked to her."

A week after we add each other as friends, he pokes me on facebook. For those unfamiliar with facebook, it has this feature where you can "poke" people. It's a pretty worthless function. Basically, you click a button, and the next time they log in, they see a message that says "Jane Doe has poked you", and they're given the option to poke you back.

I see that he poked me, and my immediate reaction was, "huh, interesting." I don't use the poke option very much (except a few times with the ex when we were still together), so I was new at this, so I poked him back.

He poked me back.

I wasn't sure what I was supposed to do at this point. Keep poking him? I didn't get it. So I left him a casual joking message saying "geez, don't be such a poker". He messages me: "I should have warned you before we became facebook friends - I love the poking". Hmm ... okay. Meanwhile, he's poked me again. Okay ... so I poke him back. Very very interesting.

Ah, also worth noting about Poker: the night of our mutual friend's birthday party, I got a sense that he may have been flirting with me. The day after the bday party (we had both added each other as facebook friends by this point), he messaged me on facebook saying that he was getting some people together to go out, and would I be interested? I honestly had plans that night, so I told him so, but I told him to keep me in the loop next time he goes out.

He leaves town to go home for a while, and returned to boston about three weeks ago. The poking was constant and consistent (about every other day I would get a poke from him, for which I would poke him back). After he got back to boston, he messaged me again on facebook, "Let's get some people together and go out." I told him that my friends and I had made some serious plans for Thurs, Fri, Sat, and Sun of the upcoming weekend, and that he was certainly more than welcome to join us for any/all of it, as well as friends he'd like to bring along.

So he baits on Thursday night, and he comes out with my friends and I to a club. Alone. He didn't bring any friends, so it's basically him and a bunch of my friends whom he doesn't know. I found that a bit suspicious (wondering if he was just wanting to spend time with me, and using the whole "let's get some people together to go out" as a discreet way to spend some time together). Hmm ... okay .... what's going on here?

Anyway, he's cute, he's tall, he's a good dancer ... and we have a good time out (though he had to leave early, and I ended up going home with my friend with benefits). I didn't really hear from him directly again, but the poking on facebook kept on going strong.

So what gives? If he's really interested, why doesn't he do something besides poking me on facebook? If he's not interested, why keep poking me on facebook?

Anyways, I'm writing this because I got really frustrated just now. I signed into facebook, and lo and behold, there was a poke from Mr. Poker. What the heck does he want? Innocent flirting? I'm a big proponent of innocent flirting, but 1) does facebook poking even count as flirting? and 2) flirting or no flirting aside, constantly poking back and forth for 2 months is no fun. (but damn it, I'm not gonna be the one to break the chain).

**ADD at 8pm**: speak of the devil ... Poker & his roommates are having a BBQ this weekend, and he sent me an invite. The email had ~10 people on it, so at first I felt kinda special (wow, I got invited to a BBQ as one of 10 people). Then I thought about it, and I realized there's no way they're only inviting 10 people. I'm sure his roommates are inviting folks too. Anyway, I think I'll go this Saturday and figure out just what gives with Poker.