Theorizing

It seems that in Los Angeles, it is nearly impossible to meet someone in a bar and have it lead to anything substantial. In fact, in all of the years that I’ve lived here (Officially five on Saturday, if you can believe it), I’ve only heard of it happening two or three times. If anyone has been following closely enough, you may have noticed that I’ve given my number out quite a few times in recent months, and that none of it has ever come to anything. This has led me to observe bar interaction more and more closely, with the intention of figuring out just what the heck is going on here.

In other cities – notably New York – people can meet in a bar, strike up conversation, and end up with a love connection. In fact, my great friend Blondie met her fiancée in a bar in NYC. But this just doesn’t seem to happen in LA. Or it happens so rarely that it’s almost reached Urban Legend status for us Angelenos.

My theory is this: there seem to be two types of people that go out to bars looking to hook up. 1. There are the people that are hoping so desperately to meet someone that they will latch onto anyone that comes near them, get their phone number and call incessantly for a week afterward, until the pursued party finally gives them the boot. 2. Then there are the people that are just out to hook up; they hope to take someone home, have their fun and kick them out as soon as the sun rises. If you don’t want to go home with one of these men, you may as well never have existed in the first place. And almost everyone else is just out to have some fun with their friends and they aren’t looking to meet anyone at all.

My friend Red seems to have been exclusively meeting men from Category One lately. She is nice, strikes up conversation, gives her number and then is forced to endure a slew of calls over the following days. Eventually she becomes totally turned off (who wouldn’t?), and has to tell the man in question that she’s just not interested in something so intense. I, on the other hand, seem to only meet men from Category Two. Seeing as how I am not the type to go home and jump into bed with any cute guy that I meet at a bar, I’m destined to never hear from these gents again.

In this city that tends to leave its many residents feeling very isolated much of the time, we have somehow decided to make it even harder on each other by clinging to our own social circles and leaving narrow margins in which to interact with anyone else. It’s not something that I think can be changed by one little blogger in a huge dating pool, and I’m not one with enough energy to buck such social norms. So I’m resigned to continue kissing frogs that I meet online, in hopes that someday one of them will turn out to be a prince. Or at least someone I can tolerate for the next 30 years or so.

Lyrics of the Day

“You lay around so bored and you hit the bar at two, and you waste your time on girls, they know they're getting used.” The Good Life Drinking With the Girls