Van Gogh Might Have Been Looking For A Valenstein
I feel like I've been hit over the head with a big bag of "What the F*ck".No, seriously.
I work in advertising, and have for my entire professional career. I know enough to know that even when advertising the worst product, you must always play up the product's greatest strength - even if there's only a kernel of truth to it.
Despite its advertising a "cool" event for young, hip professionals, the Valenstein's Party was neither cool, nor hip, nor young, nor professional.
What a crock of shit.
Maybe it's my fault for going into the experience all bright-eyed and optimistic. After all, while brunching with my family, I did see a couple of guys at Bagel Palace that morning that looked decent. "Hey," I thought to myself, "I'd probably sleep with this guy. He's not bad, if you overlook his ears and maybe a few other parts of his face. He seems like he might like long walks on the beach and pets. He'll probably be at the Valenstein's party. There could be some hope here."
Instead of hope, I got five vodka tonics, not enough shots, a quasi-blown eardrum from the volume of "Gold Digger" remix being spun on the dance floor, and the bizarre desire to cut off an appendage to help shift the focus of my misery elsewhere.
You know, Van Gogh wasn't as f*cked up as we all thought he was. Maybe he was just misunderstood. I can definitely see how the whole cutting off his ear thing might have stemmed from being dragged to a neo-Impressionist Valentine's Day party and being surrounded by a bunch of talentless, abstract artist f*cktards.
I'm not quite sure how to describe the quality of men. The only thing I can think of is to say that if placed under the right circumstances, the entire vaginal population of China could be assured cleanliness by the number of utter and total douchebags in attendance. I questioned whether a few of their mothers had let them off the leash for the night, hoping some other would-be owner would take in a stray.
I was approached by a cute friend of my Wife's. I was thinking there was hope as we were making asses out of ourselves on the dance floor, until some supermodel that he had apparently dated walked up to us and started dancing with us, leading his eyes to wander and my thirst for another drink to quickly become apparent.
It was just after I had purchased the drink that I met a creepy guy from Russia whose intro line was, "I'm from Russia, but I've lived here now for a long time. Don't worry, I'm a citizen!" (What, do I have "Channeling Andie McDowell from 'Green Card' - will marry you for citizenship" plastered on my forehead?)
Shortly thereafter, I spotted a really cute guy, and told Wife's friend who was with us. Trying ever so hard to be the good friend, she stopped him as he was walking by and started to say, "Have you met my friend...." when he looked her straight in the eye and walked away. (Well, at least it wasn't me. That blatant dis might have reduced me to tears, and I'm pretty sure I saw a tear in her eye. She's a cute girl, and that guy was way harsh.)
The final straw came when an old childhood chum of the Wife's came over to talk, and while he seemed nice and normal at the outset, he made a special effort to turn around so that I could see a ram made out of suede that was embossed on the back of his blazer. A ram. I didn't misspell anything here. A ram. I just kept imagining myself bringing this guy home to Mom and Dad, and trying to sell them on him by pointing out the venison on his Armani Exchange pants. "Look Mom! Mark is a successful, good-looking single banker who has a hankering for wearing clothing that has redneck animals on it! What a catch!"
Even with all this, I'm not going to be all Debbie Downer on you. Let's look at the three good things that came out of the night:
Good Thing #1: Perhaps the biggest irony to the evening was that I walked away with a number - from a girl. No, the party wasn't bad enough to "turn me into" a lesbian, rather, earlier on in the night, I spotted a girl who looked awfully familiar to me. As luck would have it, she turned out to be exactly who I thought she was - an old summer camp friend from Pittsburgh (now living here), and the younger sister of an ex-camp-boyfriend I haven't seen since 1996. (By the way, her perfect brother who was willing to date me long-distance and tried to get me to go to Penn State with him was perfectly dumped by me after a month for another guy I ended up dating for two years. My perfect Penn State guy is now engaged. To another girl we went to camp with. Of course! Of course he is.)
Good Thing #2: Having suspected that this would be a meat market, I decided to play up my strengths and wear a more conservative outfit. (And yes, I feel my strengths are in personality. Although my boobs are quite nice also.) My casual outfit of button-down, cashmere sweater, and jeans earned me quite a bit of attention, if only because at least five other guys had the same idea. I'm not sure if having so many male twins makes me a man. I'm even less sure I want to ponder that idea. At any rate, I did manage to secure photographic evidence of this phenomenon. As soon as I get to my home computer to post, I will update the post with proof.
Good Thing #3: I could have seen Cute Boy again this weekend. One of our friends was back in town and I'm sure he expected me to show. But in having attended this nightmare of an event, I managed to (at least in my own head) "play hard to get" with the guy and pull a whopper by not showing up. I am sure he barely noticed this.
In retrospect, it was a good experience in that at least I tried something new. And my formerly confidential (but now shared) resolution of trying new things and opening my eyes was at least exemplified just once by going to this thing.
I think I'm just glad that the feeling of consistent social discomfort is over.
posted by KA @ 9:01 AM
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