Brutal...only if you make it so

Over the past couple of months, I've rediscovered that I'm surrounded by great friends who have been really supportive and am constantly occupied with enjoyable company. I had no idea what people mean when they talk about how being single can be disheartening, and even brutal at times.

Well when I, half asleep, replied yes to a colleague's text inviting me to hang out at some party the following evening, I had no idea that I would actually get a sampler of the kind of thing you only hear or read about.

I hadn't really read the text in detail. Did I want to hang out, it's a singles thing and it's at one of those swanky restaurants I'd read about quite a bit in magazines and was dying to try. So I said okay. I did ask what it was all about, but he gave me a pretty vague, and as it would turn out, rather inaccurate description of what the night would be like.

I fell asleep vaguely picturing the evening to be of a bunch of single people at the restaurant all gazing into a giant crystal ball & Turkish eye.

Image from Google Images.
The site this image was originally from: http://goo.gl/t8IU3

When the next evening came around, I found that I was almost spot on about how I pictured the restaurant to be. I'd just gotten the whole concept of the party wrong.
On our way there, I'd also discovered the reason my colleague was going - a girl he's interested in invited him. And one of her friends had canceled and they needed an extra girl. So that was my role for the evening - the solution my colleague was offering up in his role of knight in shining armor.
After the initial introductions, a little bit of small talk, it was obvious my colleague was making his move. So, I started looking for something to do while I make myself scarce. I've never really understood the concept of walking up to strangers, introducing myself, and then corner them into having a pointless conversation with me - which appeared to be the agenda for the evening.
Damn.
Everyone around looked like tigers on the prowl for prime prey, which I did not seem to be. So nobody was going to corner me into a conversation either, which would have only been marginally better.

So I occupied myself by walking around the lounge, soaking in the place that I'd so wanted to check out in the first place.

Soon, the organiser clinks a glass to get everyone's attention, and proceeds to announce the mechanics for the evening. Which elicits a huge, but whispered "WTF" from me, aimed at the colleague who'd invited me. He'd failed to mention that it was a bloody speed-dating thing of sorts. No wonder everyone there looked like they were on a mission, and a person such as myself was not being given the time of day (I hadn't even gone home to dress up for the evening - was still in my usual work wear). My colleague's pesudo-sheepish and not at all apologetic "Hehe..yeah I left that bit out," just pissed me off even more.

Going in with a strategy
"Penny, Penny, Penny...So... this is our pick-up line for tonight, ok? 'Do you like chocolate or vanilla ice cream?'" my dumbass colleague had said to me shortly after we'd arrived.
In my mind, I wondered if this moron was for real, and whether people were really that lame, ever.
But clearly, I was the odd one out here. Once we were all introduced to the mechanics of the event, we ladies were asked to take our seats. I'd quite reluctantly joined the pack, and picked the last seat in the corner, with the easiest escape route.
Well, I don't know if it was the out-of-the-way seat I'd picked, but round 1 did not get off to a good start for me. I was the last girl to have the seat across from her still empty. Two other girls were sat next to me on the couch, the two guys sitting across from them could just have easily sat across from me, since they were going to have to sit across from every single girl at some point of the evening anyway.
But nope...for this evening, I was the equivalent to being the kid who gets picked last to be on the team.

Jackasses 1:Penny 0

Needless to say, I wasn't going through the entire thing with finding a date on my mind. For each 90 second round, I found myself gazing back at these guys, trying hard not to reduce the nice ones to ash with my naturally mean stare, entertaining myself by attempting to read their body language (inspired by the "Lie to Me" marathon I'd incidentally had the night before), and sometimes feeling a stab of annoyance when I catch the guy sitting across from me obviously evaluating if I were worth his time and effort. When did finding love turn into shopping for it? When did people stop believing in things like fate, serendipity and actually falling in love?
It all seemed like a very strange paradox - a room full of people who carried themselves as if they were cavalier about love, hoping to find love at first sight, but felt that they had to organize and event as such to meet the person they'd fall in love at first sight with, rather than leaving it to a chance encounter.

Making up an excuse versus being genuine
Finally! We're at the last round, and it's a guy I'd noticed at the beginning of the evening - he seemed like a nice guy one could have a decent conversation with, without being evaluated like livestock at the county fair. And initially, he did seem nice. That is, until the bit about where he worked came up - it was one of those super huge companies that perpetually appear on the Top Graduate Employers lists, and is on the top of pretty much everyone's apply to list upon graduation. All I said was "Oh yeah, I think I've got a friend from uni working there, too!", and the next thing I know, he cuts the conversation short with a really curt, "Yeah everyone always has a friend of a friend who works there."

WTF was that?

I run into him again a little later coming out of the restrooms. He seems a little apologetic about being less than nice earlier, and strikes up a conversation with me. But the moment we get back to the bar, he tells me he's leaving, like immediately once he gets the friend he came with.
So off I go to my waiting beer and join in on another conversation. A couple of minutes later, I glance back at the bar, only to find Top Graduate Employer guy chatting up another girl, who wasn't the friend he came with.
Again, WTF was that?
I think a simple "excuse me" would have sufficed, instead of the whole "I need to go right now" thing.

Jackasses 2:Penny 0

Yo, bro!

Skipping ahead to the end of the evening, when I have to follow along, as the awkward lamp post while my colleague walks the girl he was into in the first place, and her friend, down to the entrance to wait for the valet to bring their cars round. Somehow along the way this random guy from the party that we'd been talking to while waiting for the girls also decided to leave together with us. 

I still don't understand the whole idea of...I don't know..whatever my colleague was trying to pull. He asks the girl he's into to drop us back to his car which was parked further down the road. Somehow Random Guy comes along, too - he's parked near us.

We reach his car first, and when he gets out of the car, I give a small wave and a "Bye", but for some reason, he leans back in and sticks his hand out. A handshake? Really? Oh okay...I tentatively reach out my hand, too. 

But no, it wasn't even a regular handshake. 

He grips my hand in the kind of way you would when you're about to arm wrestle...or possibly punctuate with a "Hey, bro!" followed by either a manly hug or a fist bump. 

WHAT?!?!?!?!

Jackasses 3 for 3:Penny still 0

In the words of one of my male besties who has never fist bumped me in the decade that we've been friends, "Why the heck do people even put themselves through things like this?"

BTW, no disrespect to anyone out there who has, in fact, found love this way, or hopes they will. My observations here are purely based on that one evening being recounted, and the particular people I encountered there. 

Grouchy on a Friday night

It's been about two months since I started my little rebound trip, and on some fronts, I can't believe it's already been two months! And the scary thought occurs to me that I really need to get moving on the romance front. (How people bound seamlessly from one relationship to the next seriously befuddles me.) On the other hand, I'm already beginning to tire of having to dress up, go out, be nice to people, and actually make an effort. I miss brunch and weekends of not having to leave the house to find good company.
My last weekend out felt like the epitome of everything I hated about being single and being forced to mingle by well-meaning friends and my occasional irrational fear of having a yawning chasm of a weekend with nothing planned.

Being okay with all the aimless crap hanging out with a big group entails
I guess one of the hazards of growing up on an island is that your social circle is a minefield of guys who go everywhere in shorts and flip flops.
S invited me along to hang our with a couple of friends who were coming to visit, and we were going to Marini's. Great! It was rare that we had where we were going planned out a day in advance, and since I've yet to go there, I was kind of hoping right now I'd be writing one of my food/drink posts about the place right now.
We get there, wait around for S and the friends visiting to arrive, only to find one of them in, you guessed it, shorts and flip flops. Really I swear I often wonder, what the hell is wrong with people? It took quite a bit of self control to not turn around and snap at him when he was defending his choice of attire to Kenny with a, "What? You guys look like you're dressed for prom or something." We weren't.
We'd walked almost all the way across the park at someone's suggestion of a nearby place, only to realise there was a dress code there too, so back across the park we walked to get back to the cars and head off somewhere else.

When random strangers try to chat you up
I'm supposed to be pleased with myself that people want to talk to me, right? Well, I often find myself undecided between feeling like Little Red Riding Hood being approached by the wolf, and some other kind of unsettled feeling about the whole paradigm of being chatted up and asked for my number that would take another post entirely to describe.

Being the single girl when another friend of a friend joins us somewhere along the evening
Somewhere along the way, there's almost always a friend someone runs into, or was called to join us or something like that. Tonight it was the latter, another friend of our visiting friends. I'd first been content to just quietly sip my drink and zone out watching tennis. Michael, as the newcomer introduces himself to the table, ignores me at first. Chunky, my biggest "go get back out there" cheerleader, looks at me meaningfully. That evening, he was trying to make me talk to new people. I wasn't in the mood. Somewhere later that night, when S was passing me my scarf that I'd carelessly left somewhere. Michael, who at that point had been dancing, for some strange reason intercepts and dances around with my scarf, wraps it around his neck and does some kind of "I'm fabulous" flip with it. That was incredibly disturbing in itself. Things only got worse when he asked me to dance, and then even further downhill as we all left the bar for supper.
As we walked, I unfortunately got stuck with him - to my chagrin, he'd finally figured out I was the single girl in the pack.
"Are you ok? Are you drunk?," he asks me two or three times. I was walking a perfectly straight line in my heels while he struggled along next to me. I didn't want to be mean, so the first couple of times, I quietly said I was fine, and asked if he was. On and on he went about how he'd already been drinking before he came to join us because he was entertaining some major client and he's creative director of his own company blah blah blah... And after the whole "why I'm awesome in 1 minute" speech which I'm sure he gave really often, he asked me again if I was drunk.
"Look buddy, I think I'm in better shape than you," I growl at him, and finally, he scampers off and launches into a repeat that same speech to Kenny.