I need a better cover story on how I met my boyfriend.
We all know that bars and clubs are bad places to meet people, right? I mean, how many times do you hear someone say, “and I met my husband at [insert flavor of the month top 40/hip hop club here] when he started grinding with me to a Ludacris track.” You don’t. Well, I heard that story, once, but I believe that couple have since divorced after a couple years of marriage.
Yet we all somehow hope to meet a romantic interest at a dance club. Maybe it’s a holdout from a day when dance clubs really were singles mixers, with quiet music and intricate, intimate dances that brought people together. I could see meeting a future spouse while doing the dances from a past era, when you had to focus on each other’s movements for the dance steps, and you could talk above the music when you took a break. But now, it’s impossible to tell anything about anyone in a dance club, and I think all anyone gets is the quick psuedo-sex of close dancing, and maybe a date or two if there’s enough mutual attraction.
I had higher odds than that. I know that. I was at Bar Sinister when I met my boyfriend, which automatically gave us a whole slew of things in common. The music, to start with, because anyone who really enjoys that club is going to have a similar taste to mine, or at least a large overlap with my likings. But the environment and the dress code also mean that most people will have the same slightly darker likings in their entertainment, in their clothing, in their humor. There’s a really solid chance that a guy I meet at Bar Sinister will find Jhonen Vasquez comics hilarious, whereas a “normal” would probably think I was morbid and sadistic. And immature, if said Vasquez media is Invader Zim.
But I can’t explain all that to people who are not goth, or not familiar with the subculture, or to people who I’m connected to by work. Instead, I gloss it over, and when asked, say, “oh, I met my boyfriend at a dance club.” This gets some incredulous looks, especially when I finish the story with, “and then he called me five days later, and we talked, and it turned out we had lots in common, and we’ve been dating ever since.” When I’m able to tell it that way, it sounds like an urban legend. “I have this friend, who has this friend, who actually met her boyfriend on the dance floor of a club and had it turn into a serious relationship.”
The problem now is that sometimes, women ask me, “oh, what club?” Because they want to know where there’s still enough straight, single, smart guys that a girl like me, with my very non-L.A. zaftig figure, can snag a guy. They want to know in case lightning strikes twice, and because hearing me tell my story gives them hope.
And then I have to explain that it was a goth club. Which explains things, somewhat, because it’s easier to meet people in a subculture than it is in a dance club filled with slashers.
Yesterday was especially hilarious. I was wearing a brown and cream print, strapless, full skirted dress, with bronze flat shoes and a khaki jacket over it. I was wearing a triple strand of oversized, fake pearls, no nail polish, and minimal makeup. And I went down to the skin clinic like that so I could look respectable for the new client. But I still told the aethetician where I met the boyfriend when it came up in conversation.
So today, the client herself tells me that the aethetician told her afterwards, “That girl isn’t what you think she is. She looks like a nice corporate type, but she’s actually a total goth. And a tech head.”
I really need to get a better cover story on how I met the boyfriend so this doesn’t happen. Everyone loves hearing the urban legend about love at first sight in a dance club, but I need to come up with a better club to set it in so I don’t have to explain what I do on evenings and weekends. I can come into work looking all “office goth”, but that’s easily confused for being from New York (which I’m not, but people assume I am, what with all the black)
And there you go. After much musing on the state of relationships formed at dance clubs, and on whether that’s possible – who wants to help me formulate a cover story?
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