Ok I was a little bit unnerved. The prospects of the next few hours loomed as long and as forlorn as a winter weekend in Outer Mongolia. I turned to survey the door one more time, sipped my drink, looked at my watch and fingered my tie. Yes son, you are uncomfortable. So how did I get here?
I did not fall into this blind dating thing by accident. If it was a crash, it can only be because I took to the wheels drunk as bat. I found myself suddenly at age 24, bored and lonely. The post apocalyptic and anticlimactic end of a once sizzling romance had left me hard and dry. The complete collapse of this platform while welcome, left me with a desperate case of the rebounds, I needed to find love and fast. Drastic situations beget drastic measures, I started calling up all my old flames.
Alas, unfortunately for me, while I was building my love castle of sand, much of that flame had been extinguished. The ones that were still somewhat burning gave off such a faint glow even the owners were confused if it was actually a fire or a reflection from another space heater they had just recently started using. Dejected and feeling a little useless, I took to clubbing, bar hopping, local events gate crashing, you name it. I was the guy smiling at all any and every lady. “A lonely Wang does not chose dance partners”, is what I always say and if my guy was any lonelier, it would a solitary whale in the Northeast Pacific. I complimented all the ladies on their shoes, scarves, hand bags, hair, and fingernail polish ETC. whatever, it did not work. That slightly deranged look of despair coupled with a strong whiff of desperation does not make for good attraction cologne I tell you, but I needed to get laid, and fast. So I joined a church.
At service on the first Sunday, I vigorously danced and clapped. I waited for the pastor to ask new members to step forward and be identified. When it looked like they might forget, I danced, clapped and shout my amens’ with even more gusto. I signed up for the “singles” prayer meeting, the Thursday bible study and Friday night vigils. But the harder I worshipped, the more I felt that it was not right, I was there for the wrong reasons, it was bad enough that my soul was lost but I could not led another sheep astray as well, so I quit the church. I joined a rightwing activist group.
Yep, from now on, I was anti government, anti immigration, anti anti. We held a weekly rally meeting at the local bar, the chicks were not my usual type but who was complaining? I just needed them to pull down their knickers once in a while in between hating the government, the Jews, the blacks, the low income leaches and migrant foreign workers. The fact that I fell into three of the five categories never worried anyone least of all me. This was about politics not personal gratification! I need my female comrades’ to feel my frustration, as often as possible, if possible let my frustration spend the night. So every week I showed up at this bar and we met. They bitched about everything and everyone, shouted slogans and then hit the boozer, heavy. But no matter how drunk everyone got, they still would not let go! It was 24/7 with these folks. For the love of God! when do they switch off? Nope this was a bad plan, socially conscious partisans no matter how misguided, made for bad bedmates. That was when I called my aunt Lizzy.
Now, Aunt Liz fancied herself as somewhat of a matchmaker. The fact that she was colorblind and this was not in the “I don’t see race” kind of way either, has never stopped her from trying to connect two disjointed souls at right angles. Why, just last summer she hooked up my blind cousin with a one legged stripper, and it seemed to be going well. I had always been Aunt Liz’s fave. She always gave me extra helpings of her home made pumpkin pie, i wish she would stop making pies, i wish she would start buying from the store again. She listened as I explained the situation to her, she made sympathetic noises and told me not to worry, she had my back. That was incidentally when I really started to worry.
