Greetings, friends. This has been a long, strange week, and I will get into that in later posts. This evening's piece comes to you courtesy of my best friend Jessica. Without further ado, and because I am tired of fixing formatting issues with this blog tonight, here we go:

“Mythical Beasts and Where to Find Them”

I was standing close to entrance of the banquet room, observing in front of me the square made up of small tables and two chairs on opposite sides of the tables, facing each other. Two other young woman stood nearby, talking to one another. I overheard one of them, a brunette who was quite petite despite her four inch black heels, say, “Yeah I recognize most of these guys from the last event she held. “

“Not to butt in, but this is the first one of her speed dating events I have attended. I overheard her say a few of the guys are “fillers” because there were more women than guys and she was trying to get the numbers even.”

“I’m not surprised,” the brunette said. Her events seem to draw more girls than guys. I’m Nicole, this is Gina,” she said, gesturing to her friend. I shook their hands and the three of us made small talk for the next few minutes waiting for the event to start. As Gina walked to the bar to get a drink before we started, Nicole stayed and talked to me. She said, “You know, you seem like someone I could become friends with. We should hang out.” I said, “Ok!” I liked her directness. We agreed to talk again after the event was over and compare notes on the guys. The coordinator then called out to the group to get our attention to welcome us and gave us the directions for the event and we got started.

After the event half the participants were still milling about, finishing their drinks and polishing off the few bits of appetizers that were still left. Nicole and Gina found me, and we compared notes for a few minutes about our mini- dates and then Gina had to leave. Nicole and I were making plans to meet for coffee later in the week when one of the guys, whom I will call M. to preserve identity, walked unsteadily up to us. He said to us, “Did I tell you the story about my tattoo?” he slurred slightly, gesturing to his right arm where the body of a mythical-looking serpent was visible, winding up from his forearm toward his shoulder. We knew from our respective dates with him that the head of the serpent was on his shoulder but it had been hidden under his sleeve. Without waiting for us to respond, he then lifted his sleeve and said emphatically “THIS is the head of the serpent that bit me--my ex-wife. We were married for 10 years and then she bit me.” Nicole and I made some general comments about indigenous tattoo art, trying to change the subject and it seemed to work. M. asked us what we were going to be up to we left and Nicole and I looked at each other and both of us said we were going home so we could get ready for work the next day. He insisted he walk us to our cars and I suggested all three of us could walk to my car, the furthest one away, and drive the two of them back to the restaurant, as they had both parked close by it. M. insisted he would just walk me to my car so Nicole wouldn’t have to walk far in her shoes. I just said fine instead of arguing with him; he needed to walk off the four drinks he’d had in the past two hours. I told Nicole I would text her later. When we got to my car, M. was still a bit unsteady and he kept talking non-stop and not paying attention. I kept looking past him to tell him when it was safe to open the passenger door as my car was parked on a way one street and unfortunately he was street-side.

After he got in I started the engine and was about to pull away from the curb when he said “Don’t you have a few minutes before you have to go?” And I gritted my teeth and smiled tightly and said “Ok, a few minutes,” and he asked me what I thought about the event, whom I’d met, etc. I gave the shortest answers I could without trying to seem rude and dismissive. He asked me for my number and I said lightly, “Well how about you just email me? You have my email address from the event and per the rules, that’s how you can get a hold of me.”

That put a lull in the conversation immediately and I took advantage of the moment. I pulled away from the curb, into the lane and drove over to the restaurant. I pulled up to the curb near the front and M. got out, still a bit wobbly, but he managed to shut the door and make it onto the curb and I rolled down the window, shouted a quick “Bye nice to meet you!” and took off without waiting for a response.

When I texted Nicole later, she said she had roughly the same experience with him after I had dropped him off at the front of the restaurant. We then made plans to meet up for coffee that week and gossip more. That was almost three years ago and we still meet every week to catch up with each other. M. still comes up occasionally in our conversations.

When I tell people about my speed dating experience, they ask if I met any good guys and I smile slyly and say, “No, but I met a girl. We still see each other regularly. I think it’s serious.”

This is dedicated to the creator of this blog and the other ladies out there who have kissed a lot of frogs and still persist. Just remember, my sisters, ‘Chicks before dicks!’

Chicks before dicks, indeed. Here is my recap of what happened after Jessica and M. walked to her car:

I sat inside the venue browsing Facebook on my phone for what seemed like an impossibly long period of time. One by one, all of the other speed daters left. The staff started to look at me uncomfortably, but this place was not in the greatest part of town and I really didn't want to wait outside. Eventually, M. staggered back into the restaurant and we walked to my car. Once we got to my vehicle, he asked for a ride home, which I figured was fair. He only lived about 15 blocks away and we had discovered earlier that we had a few mutual friends, so what did I have to lose?

A lot, apparently. I mentioned during the brief drive that Jessica and I were going to get coffee, and he shrieked "DON'T BE FRIENDS WITH HER!!! SHE HATES GAY PEOPLE!!!"At this point, I almost slammed on my brakes. I couldn't even think of a response to this, plus right after that M. said "just pull over here." "Here" happened to be right at the intersection of 20th and K, which is possibly the worst place to pull over in Sacramento. It's a four-way blinking red light in the middle of a busy bar district with tons of drunk pedestrians. It takes FOREVER to get through, especially if you're pulled over in front of Head Hunters with a drunk dude hanging half-in and half-out of your car. After folks behind me started honking, I ended up yelling at M. to get out of my car. He fell out, I leaned over and slammed the passenger door, and made my way back home.

A few days later, all of the speed dating participants got e-mails from the coordinator with our matches. M. sent me a seemingly nice, long message, except he cut-and-pasted the exact same thing and sent it to Jessica. Neither of us responded to him. And for what it's worth, Jessica definitely does not hate gay people. I assume that M. just made it up so he could try to hook up with both of us.

I guess the point of all of this is that sometimes life works in strange ways. I met my best friend at speed dating, in spite of some random dude trying to keep us from being friends. Hey at least I met someone I'm going to spend the rest of my life with. Maybe I should have been more specific.

Jessica is working on a new recurring column for this blog called "Top 10 Things I Hate About...", where she discusses things that she wishes people would stop doing. It's going to be incredible.

I also think I'm going to start using a bullet journal to pre-plan blog posts. Right now I have about three weeks worth of material, and I need to find a way to organize it so I can figure out what to post when. If anyone has any ideas or experience with this, please let me know. If you're good at using Squarespace, hit me up as well. I'm having issues.

Alright gang, it has been a long, frustrating night, and I need some sleep. Catch you all in the morning.