1) How did you meet and what were the circumstances? Flirty, platonic, etc.
2) Does he initiate conversations at all, or do you find that you're the one who usually messages first? And are there any flirtatious exchanges or is it purely friendly or detached?
3) Do the conversations initiate in sort of an aimless way? Like would he typically open with a "how's it going?" or would it be something contextual like "did you see the video about blablabla"? If the conversations seem aimless or if they get to a finish line quickly, then that's usually a good sign. At least it shows that he wants the conversation to be more personal than based on material things, but he probably doesn't know how to get it there.
3) Even if it's purely friendly, it could still mean that there's an attraction but there isn't an opening for it to show itself. You could ask him to hang out or to lunch and see what it's like in person. Some people don't really wanna open up until there's an in-person chemistry to move things forward. You can give him some signals in person and see how he responds.
4) If you're still unsure then just let him know that you think he's cute and that you two should hang out. You'll have your answer then. Worst case scenario, you can move on to greener pastures or at least befriend this person.
1) We met in my universities LGBT society on a night out, so I suppose the initial meeting was more platonic. We've gone out a few times since but it's usually been with a group (I say usually as there were two times where we met up with a group and then just split ourselves); we do generally dance together but even still it's more like 'dance opposite one another' I suppose.
2 and 3) I suppose it's pretty much a mix of who initialises, I would probably start slightly more so, but it's rather balanced. Regarding how general they are, it's both contextual and rather aimless (and generally they get to a finish rather quickly). E.g. today:
"Hey how was prhomo the other night? Was it busy like or were many people up etc.? Was there a bouncy castle?" (some context as this may seem weird otherwise; prhomo is the name of a student night in a gay bar in Dublin; often times they bring in things like bouncy castles, UV Paint, Pillow Fights, etc. to match certain themes)
or his seasonal greetings with some topic attached to carry a conversation
"Hey Adam hope you've a great new year whatever you've planned. Think I'm going to watch Graham Norton and maybe the Wolf of Wall Street as wll"
"Hey Adam! Have a great Christmas and sure we can meet up back in Dublin before term starts maybe and have a nice night out in prhomo"
(I'm obviously not trying to read into these as they're obviously just common greetings)
Other times it's more pointed such as:
"Hey my printer would only print in pink when I wanted it to print in black and white, and then i changed the black ink and it did the exact same thing. When I changed the colour it then printed in black like I first wanted. Any thoughts?"
Overall, it's pretty much just friendly chat I would say, not much flirting on either side but I'm not sure if that's just shyness or simply a desire to keep it platonic.
4) Yeah that's probably a good idea. There's not much rush anyway so I suppose I can reassess things in a few weeks and just ask if I'm still unsure.
EDIT: Regarding hints involving gestures or body language, that's not really an option unfortunately; I can neither read nor convey things implied through non-verbal communication very easily (related to me being on the autistic spectrum).
EDIT:
Can we talk about hottest male
Protagonist in gaming?
I know my avy is Drake but honestly Wei Shen does it for me especially in that Bruce lee track suit.
Dem pork buns indeed.
New Dante is quite good looking. I don't seem to generally care for gaming protagonists looks-wise I've noticed though.
EDIT 2: Oooh poetry! I loved Sylvia Plath's works for the Leaving Certificate (admittedly partially because of how easy it was to answer on, but I liked how it was written). Some of the poems shamelessly stolen from an old post I made here:
http://neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?p=109467742
I caught a tremendous fish
and held him beside the boat
half out of water, with my hook
fast in a corner of his mouth.
He didnt fight.
He hadnt fought at all.
He hung a grunting weight,
battered and venerable
and homely. Here and there
his brown skin hung in strips
like ancient wallpaper,
and its pattern of darker brown
was like wallpaper:
shapes like full-blown roses
stained and lost through age.
He was speckled with barnacles,
fine rosettes of lime,
and infested
with tiny white sea-lice,
and underneath two or three
rags of green weed hung down.
While his gills were breathing in
the terrible oxygen
the frightening gills,
fresh and crisp with blood,
that can cut so badly
I thought of the coarse white flesh
packed in like feathers,
the big bones and the little bones,
the dramatic reds and blacks
of his shiny entrails,
and the pink swim-bladder
like a big peony.
I looked into his eyes
which were far larger than mine
but shallower, and yellowed,
the irises backed and packed
with tarnished tinfoil
seen through the lenses
of old scratched isinglass.
They shifted a little, but not
to return my stare.
It was more like the tipping
of an object toward the light.
I admired his sullen face,
the mechanism of his jaw,
and then I saw
that from his lower lip
if you could call it a lip
grim, wet, and weaponlike,
hung five old pieces of fish-line,
or four and a wire leader
with the swivel still attached,
with all their five big hooks
grown firmly in his mouth.
A green line, frayed at the end
where he broke it, two heavier lines,
and a fine black thread
still crimped from the strain and snap
when it broke and he got away.
Like medals with their ribbons
frayed and wavering,
a five-haired beard of wisdom
trailing from his aching jaw.
I stared and stared
and victory filled up
the little rented boat,
from the pool of bilge
where oil had spread a rainbow
around the rusted engine
to the bailer rusted orange,
the sun-cracked thwarts,
the oarlocks on their strings,
the gunnelsuntil everything
was rainbow, rainbow, rainbow!
And I let the fish go.
"The Fish" by Elizabeth Bishop.
I like the striking imagery and the simplicity of the tale.
"Day Trip to Donegal" by Derek Mahon (I can't find this poem online, I've searched a lot; this is the segment I like in it but the rest of it really compliments it).
"Kinsale
The kind of rain we knew is a thing of the past --
deep-delving, dark, deliberate you would say,
browsing on spire and bogland; but today
our sky-blue slates are steaming in the sun,
our yachts tinkling and dancing in the bay
like race-horses. We contemplate at last
shining windows, a future forbidden to no-one."
"Kinsale" by Derek Mahon.
.
(just a note here, the next few are from Sylvia Plath who I particularly like given how personal the poetry is, how open to interpretation it can be, and how relatable it is to modern society so these are ripe for sources of inspiration)
"Unlucky the hero born
In this province of the stuck record
Where the most watchful cooks go jobless
And the mayor's rotisserie turns
Round of its own accord.
There's no career in the venture
Of riding against the lizard,
Himself withered these latter-days
To leaf-size from lack of action :
History's beaten the hazard.
The last crone got burnt up
More than eight decades back
With the love-hot herb, the talking cat,
But the children are better for it,
The cow milks cream an inch thick."
"The Times are Tidy"
Mirror
"I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.
What ever you see I swallow immediately
Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike.
I am not cruel, only truthful---
The eye of a little god, four-cornered.
Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall.
It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long
I think it is a part of my heart. But it flickers.
Faces and darkness separate us over and over.
Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me,
Searching my reaches for what she really is.
Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon.
I see her back, and reflect it faithfully.
She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands.
I am important to her. She comes and goes.
Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.
In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman
Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish."
"Mirror" (full poem)
"Little poppies, little hell flames,
Do you do no harm?
You flicker. I cannot touch you.
I put my hands among the flames. Nothing burns
And it exhausts me to watch you
Flickering like that, wrinkly and clear red, like the skin of a mouth.
A mouth just bloodied.
Little bloody skirts!
There are fumes I cannot touch.
Where are your opiates, your nauseous capsules?
If I could bleed, or sleep!
If my mouth could marry a hurt like that!
Or your liquors seep to me, in this glass capsule,
Dulling and stilling.
But colorless. Colorless."
"Poppies in July" (full poem)
I ordered this, clean wood box
Square as a chair and almost too heavy to lift.
I would say it was the coffin of a midget
Or a square baby
Were there not such a din in it.
The box is locked, it is dangerous.
I have to live with it overnight
And I can't keep away from it.
There are no windows, so I can't see what is in there.
There is only a little grid, no exit.
I put my eye to the grid.
It is dark, dark,
With the swarmy feeling of African hands
Minute and shrunk for export,
Black on black, angrily clambering.
How can I let them out?
It is the noise that appals me most of all,
The unintelligible syllables.
It is like a Roman mob,
Small, taken one by one, but my god, together!
I lay my ear to furious Latin.
I am not a Caesar.
I have simply ordered a box of maniacs.
They can be sent back.
They can die, I need feed them nothing, I am the owner.
I wonder how hungry they are.
I wonder if they would forget me
If I just undid the locks and stood back and turned into a tree.
There is the laburnum, its blond colonnades,
And the petticoats of the cherry.
They might ignore me immediately
In my moon suit and funeral veil.
I am no source of honey
So why should they turn on me?
Tomorrow I will be sweet God, I will set them free.
The box is only temporary.
"The Arrival of the Bee Box"..
Your clear eye is the one absolutely beautiful thing.
I want to fill it with color and ducks,
The zoo of the new
Whose name you meditate--
April snowdrop, Indian pipe,
Little
Stalk without wrinkle,
Pool in which images
Should be grand and classical
Not this troublous
Wringing of hands, this dark
Ceiling without a star."
"Child" (full poem)
I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee;
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.
And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet's wings.
I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart's core.
- See more at:
http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15529#sthash.b3rEIdE8.dpuf
"The Lake Isle of Innisfree" by William Butler Yeats.
"What need you, being come to sense,
But fumble in a greasy till
And add the halfpence to the pence
And prayer to shivering prayer, until
You have dried the marrow from the bone;
For men were born to pray and save;
Romantic Ireland's dead and gone,
It's with O'Leary in the grave.
Yet they were of a different kind,
The names that stilled your childish play,
They have gone about the world like wind,
But little time had they to pray
For whom the hangman's rope was spun,
And what, God help us, could they save?
Romantic Ireland's dead and gone,
It's with O'Leary in the grave.
Was it for this the wild geese spread
The grey wing upon every tide;
For this that all that blood was shed,
For this Edward Fitzgerald died,
And Robert Emmet and Wolfe Tone,
All that delirium of the brave?
Romantic Ireland's dead and gone,
It's with O'Leary in the grave.
Yet could we turn the years again,
And call those exiles as they were
In all their loneliness and pain,
You'd cry `Some woman's yellow hair
Has maddened every mother's son':
They weighed so lightly what they gave.
But let them be, they're dead and gone,
They're with O'Leary in the grave."
"September 1913" by William Butler Yeats.
"from Settings: Model School, Inchicore" by Thomas Kinsella (I can't find this poem online)
September rain falls on the house.
In the failing light, the old grandmother
sits in the kitchen with the child
beside the Little Marvel Stove,
reading the jokes from the almanac,
laughing and talking to hide her tears.
She thinks that her equinoctial tears
and the rain that beats on the roof of the house
were both foretold by the almanac,
but only known to a grandmother.
The iron kettle sings on the stove.
She cuts some bread and says to the child,
It's time for tea now; but the child
is watching the teakettle's small hard tears
dance like mad on the hot black stove,
the way the rain must dance on the house.
Tidying up, the old grandmother
hangs up the clever almanac
on its string. Birdlike, the almanac
hovers half open above the child,
hovers above the old grandmother
and her teacup full of dark brown tears.
She shivers and says she thinks the house
feels chilly, and puts more wood in the stove.
It was to be, says the Marvel Stove.
I know what I know, says the almanac.
With crayons the child draws a rigid house
and a winding pathway. Then the child
puts in a man with buttons like tears
and shows it proudly to the grandmother.
But secretly, while the grandmother
busies herself about the stove,
the little moons fall down like tears
from between the pages of the almanac
into the flower bed the child
has carefully placed in the front of the house.
Time to plant tears, says the almanac.
The grandmother sings to the marvelous stove
and the child draws another inscrutable house.
Sestina by Elizabeth Bishop
