I sat at the table in the cafe gazing out of the window, watching the world go by when I saw him.  The man of my dreams had just walked past the window, through the door and up to the counter.  I couldn’t take my eyes off him and was surprised that he didn’t feel the heat of my stare burning into his back.  He ordered a coffee and a sandwich, paid the cashier then walked out of the building and out of my life. Again.

You see this wasn’t the first time I’d seen him.  I’d first laid eyes on him when I was queuing at the cash point and he happened to be in front of me.  I was busy trying to talk on my mobile, fish my card out of my purse and juggle my bags of shopping, so when I dropped everything it wasn’t a surprise.  He turned round at the noise and offered to help me pick my things up and it was then that I saw his eyes, those big brown eyes that seemed to suck me in and hold me there for what seemed like hours.  He obviously thought nothing of this encounter and once he’d sorted me out he stepped up to the cash machine, took out his money and walked off down the street as if nothing had happened.  But something had happened and I knew that it would be a long time before I managed to get him out of my head.  I should have seen the warning signs, the signs that this was happening again, but I just pushed them to the back of my mind and so started my obsession with the cash machine stranger.  

You see I do this all the time.  It’s like an addiction I suppose.  I see a man who catches my eye and that’s it, I obsess about him for days, tell myself that I must be in love with him even though I’ve only really had a brief look at him and then spend hours hanging around the place where I first set eyes on him in the hope that he might turn up , realise that I’m the woman he’s been thinking about since he caught a glimpse of me in the bank and then tell me that he can’t live without me and let’s get married as soon as possible so as not to waste any more of our lives.  I usually never do see them again and after a while I replace the old obsession with a new one and so the cycle starts again.

And of course, heaven forbid that a man talks to me in a bar or in a shop, even if it is just to ask me where something is or to get me out of their way.  Now that constitutes a full blown chat up and then they stand no chance.  If words have been exchanged I know that we will definitely meet again, that my new obsession will find me and whisk me off my feet in an Officer and a Gentleman style and we’ll live happy ever after.  In my fantasy we are each others’ world, we don’t need anyone else, no friends or family, just the two of us and possibly a dog who we adore and treat as our child.  

But cash machine man is different.  Cash machine man has been my obsession for two years now and there’s no shaking him off.  I see him all the time, in bars and restaurants, in shops, walking down the street.  He seems to be everywhere and I find him taking up my every thought, day and night, until I feel like I’m going to explode.  

Yes cash machine man is different because I have actually spoken to him.  I don’t mean just a casual hello or a passing comment, but a proper conversation.  It was quite strange how it happened really.  I was looking for a new microwave seeing as how my life depends on TV dinners and if I didn’t get a new one I would probably starve.  I went into my local electrical shop to have a look around and there he was, almost enveloped in a shining haze, showing a young couple a particularly complicated looking stereo system.  I stopped short, gasping for breath, knowing that this was it, this was my moment.  I hovered around, shooing away other assistants who had the audacity to ask if I needed help, waiting, waiting, waiting until the couple had finally made their decision and I could get him all to myself.  Eventually they made up their minds and he was free at last.  I hovered near him, too scared to actually make an approach until finally I knew that I had to make a move and I took my courage in my hands and asked him to help me.  Oh the joy of finally being with him, the wonder of talking to him, the dizzy feeling that it gave me as he described all the amazing things that each microwave could do and how they would be such a bonus to my life.  I was mesmerised and must have come across as being incredibly stupid as I couldn’t say anything without my words falling over each other.  

I eventually chose a microwave and went to pay at the till knowing that it was now or never.  I had two choices; do something I had never done before and ask him out or walk from the shop knowing that I would probably have lost my chance forever.  What should I do?  Thoughts were racing in my head like a million lightning flashes and I was finding it difficult to gather myself together enough to even think.  After all I could be about to break my first golden rule of obsession.  Never ever ask out the object of your desire.  Once you’ve done that you’ve broken the spell and they become a real person, not just the vision that’s been sitting in your head since you first saw them.  And of course what happens if you get on together and things progress.  From then on you have to stop obsessing about strange men.  After all it really wouldn’t do to be thinking about someone else in that way when you should be concentrating all your attention on the one person.  

I felt sick, my painful shyness was really gripping me and my feet felt like lead.  I don’t know how long I’d been standing in the shop, how long I’d been trying to get my thoughts in order and get a hold of myself.  Something strange was happening to me, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on what it was and then suddenly, almost like a light bulb flicking on in my head, I knew what I had to do.  I had made my decision.

As I say, two years have passed since that awful moment in the shop and I’m now sitting alone in my flat thinking about cash machine man and the fact that I’ve seen him today.  It’s like having a special secret that only I know about and I smile as I think about him.  My thoughts are disturbed by the door opening and the sound of footsteps coming down the hall towards the living room.  I smile as he walks through the door and realise that if I hadn’t taken all my courage in my hands and squashed the crippling shyness that I had always felt in the past we wouldn’t be here now, in this flat, sharing this moment.  He comes over to where I’m sitting and kisses me on the forehead then flops beside me on the sofa and I tell him about having seen him today at the cafe and how I pretended to myself that it was just like the old times when I used to fantasise about my mystery cash machine man.  

It’s nice not to have to change the object of my obsession again.  It’s nice to know that this man is the one who will now fill my thoughts for eternity.  Because yes reader, I married him.