DateWatch: the cocktail hour of MADNESS!

Rash pacts get made at work Christmas parties. Sometimes well before the bar-tab runs out. Mine was to be part of a team, it’s mission to go out every night through January (it’s a slow month for us). Well, "Team January of Madness" never really made it off the starting blocks. Thus, I had to institute my own campaign to see how many nights I could be out this month. Given that I am a morning person and really not a Party Demon of Unflagging Fortitude, I am rapidly redefining the challenge to see what kind of a weeknights-I-go-out-on average figure I can produce. It’s about 3.5 at present, which isn’t bad considering how little I got out as a corporate lawyer in Sydney. It’s this weeknight effort that has got me into yet another rash pact, but more of that later.

Part of the batting average for this week has been a string of social drinks events. Wednesday I accompanied Beth of fridaysixpm to her first "Blogger meetup" (see some reports by nice people here, here and here). That went well, drinks were drunk, and without bizarre consequences or pacts. Not so last night, gentle reader.

Last night, with my book club group, I had a cocktail and scrabble night at Kelvin in Northcote: one terribly funky little bar that serves the smoothest of Toblerones. (But man, do creamy cocktails creep up on you – note to self, remember they are not milkshakes.) So anyway, I was there with three female friends (yes, all my friends really are women, and yes they all really are just friends): the two other existing members of the Book Club of Intestinal Fortitude, and our newest additional member. (The BCIF name has a history too tedious, and silly, to relate at present.)

So, we were playing obscene scrabble with double points for swear words and cocktail names. The word “obscene” was actually used (scoring much less than it deserved). The absolute top moment of the game, however, was when someone realised she had a four-letter noun available (hereafter, “the noun”), normally not repeatable in polite company (which unfortunately must include this genteel and well-mannered forum). Her problem was she had to wait for others to finish their turns before she could play it. Just as a member of the barstaff walked up, her turn came, and she cried excitedly: “I can still do [the noun]!”; to which the dry rejoiner from the new BCIF member was: “Are you sure? It’s been a while.” We like her.

Well, maybe you had to be there.

Though it does illustrate the point that, let’s be frank, none of us BCIF types were getting any, whether it be that particular noun, or others one might find desirable - if perhaps trickier to fit on a scrabble board. Adding insult to injury was the fact that the more we looked about us, on this quiet Thursday night at my local, the more we saw it was infested with people on dates.

Actually on dates. In a bar.

We were, of couse, shocked and outraged.

Okay, we were amused. And started a running commentary, which lead to the excitable scrabble player remarking “We are such bitches!” and the pointing at me to add “And I include you!”. (Always nice to be accepted by the sisterhood, doncha know.)

Kelvin isn’t a bad place for a weeknight date, really. Casual, not crowded, subdued lighting, good atmosphere, killer $10 cocktails. And people were making the most of the potential. There was couple no. 1, who had fallen for the classic awkward first date mistake of accidentally sitting side by side on a couch: eye contact tricky, awkward body-space issues injected instantly into proceedings, no-one can reposition to a chair without sending totally the WRONG signals. It took them the whole four hours we were there to get to the point of their shoulders more or less touching.

Far better were couple no. 2, who had armchairs at 90 degrees to each other and a square table between. Lots of opportunities to casually lean into each other’s space, for crossed legs to get close, etc. Much better dynamic.

Couple no. 3 were denim and blue singlet guys at the bar: good man-to-man technique, able to lean forward with one arm onto their knee simultaneously creating a very intimate personal space.

Couple no. 4 included a woman we dubbed “the grad student bored of her thesis”, it had to do with her hair and glasses. Cruel, but true. The direction her evening was going to be taking was revealed by the overheard comment: “*giggle* How big a party is it going to be?” Yup, his party. That’s what she’s interested in. Uh huh.

After the hideous voyeuristic fun we had, I thought there’d be an hysterically funny “DateWatch” website with a scoring system, technique analysis, roving reporters and witty body-language commentary. There’s not. Just plain dumb bunk like this and even more embarrassing, this. Not even a formula predicting the outcome of the night by relating drinks consumed (“D”), hours at bar (“T”), contraction of physical space between daters (“S1 – S2”) and intensity of body language (“BL”, rated out of 10). I suppose it might look something like – chance of a “snog or better” result-event is: BL x (S1-S2) / (10 – D) + T. Or whatever, it’s been a while since I did algebra. I do know some Sydney lads with an amusing site “droughtwatch” with an elaborate point-scoring system to rank their “dating” achievements (maximum score of 100 points may be scored with each new dating partner, a snog ranks as about 50 – you do the rest of the maths). I think it was really meant as an incentive system, but due to certain recent successes across the board, it appears that several droughts have broken and the site is down.

So, after all this came our stupid cocktail induced, post Tarot-card reading Pact of Doom (BTW, all our romantic futures are a disaster). We, the Book Club of Intestinal Fortitude, would regroup in Kelvin on a Thursday night two months hence, and bring a date of our own.

I think our working definition of a date is: you care what you’re wearing, you get nervous if they’re late, and there’s a prospect (in your mind) of a snog, no matter how naive a hope this may later seem. (Yes, I concede this means you can have a “one-sided” date where the other party has no idea what’s going on.) So, ruled out as cheating are: asking a friend, or we four pairing up into “designated dates” for the evening.

The challenge is on, and the only question is whether the BCIF (or maybe that should be League of Extreme Dating Sports) is up to it.

We are so doomed to humiliation …

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