Here Come the Singles

Last night, I went along with SC Homey, Polar Opposite and another random friend to a "Singles Mixer" - those parties hosted by very generous, event-planning-loving people. The idea is to balance out the numbers so the one requirement is to bring another single of the opposite sex with you, thus the random friend. Pre-party, the four of us joined Hungry Monster and her boyfriend for some good ole greasy fried chicken dinner at Honey's Kettle Fried Chicken. As we walked in the door, he good-naturedly exclaimed "Hey, it's the singles!" And that pretty much summed up the feeling of the party for me.

I tried, really I did. But I remembered why I didn't like these types of parties and how the last time we went to this particular one a year or two ago, we had left early and gotten some coffee instead. From the get go, I had developed a dislike for the random friend within 5 minutes of meeting him. I am that much of a hater. Luckily, only Polar Opposite picked up on this. (Dammit, I thought I had gotten better at hiding my feelings towards people.)

When we got to the party itself, held in the host's lovely apartment home, I also remembered that yup, I'm still pretty socially awkward when it comes to a crowd of people I don't know, especially when it's a crowd with an agenda and everyone knows why there's a pink elephant in the room.

For the few hours we were there, I did manage to leave my friends' side and talk to a couple of people. There was the fellow animation industry guy who came up to about my nose and turned around to sit down on the sofa and talk to some other more scantily clad girl after we finished out conversation. And there was a very pleasant recording engineer guy, who studied classical guitar, participated in triathlons, but also deemed "possibly gay" by SC Homey.

Halfway through the night, my high school friend, Shrewlady and her boyfriend showed up to crash the party, along with some mutual friends from college. Pleasantly unexpected for both of us, I blew their cover but we all had a good time chatting. It suddenly became just a party where you're chatting with old friends instead of a "singles party" where you're painfully trying to make conversation with strangers and assess if they're crazy.

By midnight, I was ready to leave. (Well, actually the thought crossed my mind to walk home after I was there for fifteen minutes). Of course, the most successful participant of our little group, was the random friend. The one I found annoying and slightly obnoxious? He was surrounded by a group of girls chatting him up, and we had to sit and wait around for him.

At 1 AM , we finally made it out of there and all I wanted to do was crawl into bed, read, and get a good night's sleep. I turned down a late night meal and recap at our local hip diner with the group (much to SC Homey's surprise. She's usually the one who sleeps by 11pm and never stays out late.) and did just that, with no crazy dreams to plague me.