Dating Events: Something for the Undateables to do on a Friday Night
I awoke some time Saturday afternoon, the previous night’s insanity still a little too close to the forefront of my thoughts. One of my old college buddies had left me a voicemail detailing the latest singles event gimmick, a Lock and Key Party, that was being held that night and wanted to see if I was interested in attending. The potential for two great stories in one weekend; sure, why not?
The premise of this event is that all of the women receive padlocks and all of the men, keys. People then mingle with each other, using the “can I put my key in your lock/how about sticking your key in my lock” analogy (only this time, literally) as an icebreaker. If a guy’s key unlocks a girl’s lock, then the two of them turn in their respective hardware and receive a raffle ticket and a new lock/key in exchange. At the end, a series of prizes are raffled off.
The event was held at a ritzy martini bar in a very nice part of town. In an effort to avoid going into debt for the sake of catching a buzz, I opted to do a little pre-partying before heading out the door.
Because most people pre-registered and I had to sign up at the door, we got to the bar well in advance. I was able to claim one of the remaining spots, paid my $30 and slapped a “Hello, my name is…” tag on my chest. I’m sure I don’t even need to write that the next stop was the bar. On the way in, the hosts of the event claimed that there would be drink specials all night long, as long as the person ordering had their nametag clearly visible. When we got up to the bar, “drink specials” translated to $6 cosmos. Great, I’ll take a cosmo, oh, and one for my buddy here, and while you’re at it, perhaps a couple of to-go boxes for our testicles since we won’t be needing them for the rest of the night. Thanks. Rather than go the eunuch route, I opted to pull out my credit card and order a round of real drinks that definitely weren’t on special.
As my friend and I drank our way through a couple rounds, I took note of the people walking into the place; I also noted that it was shaping up to be a long night. By the time the place was filled up and the event began, I came to realize exactly what all these singles events are really about. They basically just collect all of the people that you normally wouldn’t be interested in meeting or talking to at a bar and combine them all in one convenient place. And, people pay money for the chance to spend the evening with them.
The night wore on and the potential locks that I wanted to stick my key in dwindled rapidly. Then I came upon Schlage and her friends. Schlage was on the shorter side, had a nice body, really cute face and short, dark, sexy hair (as opposed to short, dykey hair). While my key didn’t fit her lock, we did seem to hit it off nicely and talked for a short while. Her friends then wanted to get a round of drinks, so I took that as an opportunity to take a break and look for my buddy. I found him talking to an attractive older woman, but there didn’t seem to be too much going on between them, so I pulled him away. He was as disappointed with the "locks" as I was, but we decided to stick around in the event that we might be able to at least come away with a raffle prize.
It was then that some other girl attached herself to my side. She was blond, had a relatively cute face and the body of a softball player, complete with a set of very large breasts that spilled oover the top of her blouse. She was also 21 or 22 and very, um, peppy. I talked to her for a couple minutes as she rambled on about how she was supposed to come with someone to the event, but they bailed out on her and she decided to come anyway and now that she’d met me she was glad she had and that she didn’t come looking for a relationship but if something came out of this than she wouldn’t be opposed to it, etc, etc. When she finally stopped talking long enough to take a breath, I mumbled something about going to the bathroom and got the hell out of there.
Fate stepped in and I happened to run into my friend, and then Schlage a few steps later, amidst my hasty retreat. “This thing blows, let’s all get out of here and go hit up a real bar,” I proposed. My friend and she agreed completely and, after conferring with her friends, we were on our way. We drove a couple miles away to a much better bar with a much better crowd. Things were going really well with Schlage and I was kind of hoping that I’d get to see her again after the night. We were talking at one point in the middle of the bar and she suddenly leaned in and started kissing me. After the previous night, it was nice to get kissed by someone without psychotic motives. Schlage and I hung out for another half hour or so and then her friends decided to take off. I asked if I could see her again, but she refused to give me her number. Instead she offered to take mine. Oh well, I guess I won’t be seeing her again.
After her group left, I headed to the bathroom. On my way, I passed a small group of attractive, foreign-looking girls and said, “Excuse me,” to get by them. One of them snapped back something to the effect of “there’s no excuse for that.” I honestly didn’t really hear what she said, but when I came back out of the restroom, she was waiting for me. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to say that, it just kind of came out.”
“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “By the way, my name’s [Dating Fool].”
“Hi, I’m [some Russian name that for the life of me I can’t remember now]. These are my girlfriend’s, [more Russian names].”
My new Russian harem accompanied me back to the bar where I introduced them to my friend. He seemed pretty surprised at the turn of events, but also pretty pleased. We ended up talking to them for another 20 minutes or so, but by then we were both ready to get out of there and get to bed.
I feel like I gave the whole singles event thing a fair shake, but I’m done with that circuit for a while. Tomorrow night I’m supposed to meet up with TheSister’sFriend for drinks. Thursday, I’m off to Sin City for a few days. Hopefully I will have some good tales to tell when I return.
