I've never been one of those girls who can be the leader of the pack – the Queen bee if you like. I've always been the supportive one who will go to any party with her friends just to have a good time. No agenda. If I get lucky and find a hot guy, that’s great. If not, I still know I had a blast and wouldn't take it back for a moment. Any guy I've ever dated never came from a chance encounter at a party or a bar. My dating track record always seems to stem from a shared class, soccer, clubs, work or friendship. But I wonder, what would it be like to actually go ‘on the prowl’ at a party or a bar?
Out of university, I went to Seoul, South Korea and my dating track record was fabulous. Everyone I knew was a) a foreigner, b) an ESL teacher and c) looking for adventure. With three ticks already common to all, it was very easy to strike up a conversation, which led to a very easy dating life. If you don’t like one guy, you move on to the next because we’re all here for the same reasons.
Luckily, Dave was of course all those things, but was also one of my best friends before we started dating. Dating Dave now for nearly 2.5 years, I can confidently say I've been ‘out of the game’ for a while. Said with more certainty, if I were out of the game, I really wouldn't know what to do.
Moving to a big city and making friends, you hear all about their lives and what strikes me the most is what it’s like to be a late 20s early 30s single girl trying to make it in the dating game. My single girlfriends have affirmed over and over that it plainly sucks dating in Sydney. I'm sure any girl would say that about living in any city though. I've actually heard comparisons to what dating at Fordham University was like. My Fordham girlfriends labeled most of the guys as ‘squirrels’ – short, chubby and not very good looking. There of course were ‘non-squirrels’ and we had a list of 10 going on our fridge in our senior year apartment. The women of Fordham were exceptional. They were of Italian or Irish stock, well-dressed, career driven and feisty in the dating game. There was a 60/40 ratio of women to men and with all the women aggressive for any man, ‘squirrel’ or ‘non-squirrel’, the ‘squirrels’ who outnumbered the ‘non-squirrels’ knew they had their pick. They could go after girls they wouldn't normally go for or drop a girl because he could go for the next girl. The backwards food chain. This scenario is exactly what I've heard about Sydney, a place with a much larger pool of people than a co-ed campus of 6,000 plus.
Last night, the Sydney American Expat Group I belong to from MeetUp.com held a 4th of July celebration at City Hotel. A proud American living abroad, I wasn't going to miss this opportunity to celebrate Independence Day or meet more Americans, which has been hard to come by even after living here for over a year. I decided to invite my friend Lauren, a London girl who has been living in Sydney for over 2 years and fit the profile of the single female fed up with the dating game. Because I didn't know anyone at the event and she didn't either, I decided it would be easier to meet people together.
I showed up at the bar at 7:45pm with Dave who immediately bought 4 Miller beers so opening up would be easier. After a lap around the room of 200+, we decided to split and meet people. He knew my agenda with Lauren and was very understanding that I was playing ‘the wing girl’. However, I was there to meet girlfriends too. I ended up talking to 2 Sydney girls and a Chicagoan new to Sydney. They knew each other, so I felt like the new girl at school begging to sit down at their table in the cafeteria. Lauren showed up 10 minutes later and I left the girls to get some drinks. Taking Dave’s cue, we too double-fisted and took another lap around the room to scope out ‘the buffet’. We planted ourselves around the bar because getting your confidence up does take some liquid courage. After taking off my ‘girlfriend glasses’, we found a group of 4 guys who looked like they were in their late 20s all standing in a circle. For about 10 minutes, we strategized how we would break in. Lauren, a complete Clueless fanatic tried out her ‘valley girl’ accent on me. She said as a non-American at an American meetup, she was either using the Valley girl accent or upping the English accent to a higher and stronger decibel. We decided neither would be the approach. She then tried her Southern accent. Like a voice coach or at this instance an ‘alter-ego’ coach, I asked her where she was from and when she arrived in Sydney. Her response was West Virginia and a few months ago. A London girl trying to fake a West Virginia accent wasn't going to cut it. Desperate, I suggested she break into the group of guys and ask if anyone was from West Virginia, because she’s always wanted to meet someone from there. Lame idea Shady.
I looked at Lauren and said with determination, ‘We need to take a shot.’ This was my default setting. After all, I hadn't approached a group of unknown guys since I was in college and we were going to need more liquid courage. In my experience, shots always open up the flood gates of conversation. After two shots of Jagermeister, we found ourselves standing right next to the group of guys. One of them approached us and asked if we were American. Ecstatic, I said, ‘Yes! I’m from Texas.’ He said, ‘No, you aren't.’ I can’t hear your accent.’ Damn all those years living in New York and Seoul! We started talking to him a little more, but I was peeved at his dismissive nature. In typical fashion, he changed the subject and pointed to everyone’s shoes. Lauren and I found ourselves standing in the group of guys who were all wearing different shades of Converses and they all noticed the shoes and more importantly us!
The guy I stood next to was an Irish guy, who came with some of his American friends. He was good looking and had an adorable Irish accent. I have no particular interest in Ireland nor him, but I wanted to be there for Lauren. After exchanging the usual where are you from, when did you get here, how long will you be here information, I started babbling. To preface this story, I have to describe an encounter I had on the train going to work.
Coming from a client meeting at St. Leonards, my colleague and I debriefed on the train ride back to Artarmon. Hearing me speak loudly, a scruffy bogan (redneck) like character who was probably not right in the head Aussie guy asked loudly, ‘Are you from South Carolina?’ I told him no, I was from Texas. When most people hear this, a lot of things can be going on in their mind. Perhaps images of cowboys, desert or wagons pop up, but this guy shocked me. With real curiosity, he asked, ‘Is the Texas Chainsaw Massacre real?’ Wow. I said I’m not sure. He then told me in detail that he reads a lot of mystery and crime books and that he had never read anything about the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but thinks it might be real because the movie said it was based on a true story. Thankfully, our stop appeared when he finished his diatribe on his passion for crime and mystery. I told him perhaps it was a true story.
So this wing girl told the sweet Irish guy this story and then asked if things like this happened in Ireland. I am clearly ‘not in the game’. He didn't think it was a weird question and actually talked about some woman who had killed a bunch of people. My attention was interrupted when I saw Lauren had moved on to a different guy in the group, which turned me around to another guy as well. This guy was American from Chicago who had been in Australia since October on the working holiday visa. I threw in some knowledge about Chicago sports mixed in with my love of Texas sports. It was a good conversation starter. Talking about sports with a red-blooded American guy is an obvious tactic, but it indeed worked because he tried flirting with me and joking about how the last two Super Bowl’s didn't happen because his Bears didn't make it.
Feeling good about our banter, he started to disclose himself further by describing his life in Australia and whether or not he wanted to stay longer. He had difficulty in getting some temp jobs because there are so many foreigners in Sydney vying for them. Putting my professional hat on, I asked him what his resume was like. For the next 20 minutes I gave him advice on what to include and how to describe each experience. It may have not been the typical bar conversation, but he was very impressed with my advice. Then, Lauren tapped my shoulder to go to the bathroom. Before we went, both guys we talked to asked us our names and we left the door slightly open by saying we’ll see then when we get back. Interesting how we had talked for about an hour to this group of guys and it took them an hour to ask us our names.
For the rest of the night, we roamed around the party filling up on more cocktails and shots of Jager – to open up of course. We met a guy from Sydney who was 22 who kept following us around all night, a group of 21 year old Sydney guys who were pretty cool, but just too young and a strange and very outgoing Argentinean DJ who ended up forcing a kiss on Lauren while we were dancing. We even saw the guys we were talking to from a distance and waved hello across a growing room of over 400. We danced to old school hip hop and finally found Dave. I was so relieved because it was exhausting doing all this wing girl work and now I would rest assured of the one guy I knew I was going home with was here next to me. At midnight and with our last drink finished, we took off to McDonald's and had ourselves a Big Mac in true singles form.
The next morning Lauren texted me saying the guy she had met had given her a business card indicating he was a Marine Biologist. He told her he had made business cards because it was so hard to get a job in Australia coming from Ireland, so he needed to expand his network. However, on the card was a goofy cartoon dolphin and Lauren remembered this silly joke when she woke up. She found the card in her bag and texted him about the dubious business card. He texted her back asking her out for a coffee and a walk around the Botanical Gardens.
Hearing this was joy. I played the wing girl and I got my friend drunk, a kiss and even a date all from one night! The funny business guy may or may not work out for Lauren, but I was glad to play the wing girl for her. That night I experienced what it was like ‘to be on the prowl’ even though I still feel like a complete weirdo talking about Texas Chainsaw Massacre and how to improve your resume. The entire act was fun and exciting, but it is a good feeling to know that I’m really not ‘in the game’ anymore. But as I've done in the past, I will gladly be the wing girl to help a girlfriend out because we all deserve to end the game at some point.
No comments:
Post a Comment