Great Dating Disasters (4)

Reminiscing last week about the Bus Bar (second version) and the good ol' days of the "Devil's Triangle" (in the old Gongti Beilu car park) brought to mind another of my Great Dating Disasters. Well, I suppose it wasn't so much a 'date' as an accidental amorous encounter. In Yugong Yishan (the old, good one) for a gig one mid-week night four years or so ago, I happened to bump into a rather gorgeous lady lawyer I'd just recently met. We were both rather drunk, and she was getting very flirtatious. Great Odin's Raven! That kind of thing just doesn't happen to me very often: someone I fancy turns out to fancy me; we meet by chance, without having any of the anxiety of trying to set up a formal 'date'; and she makes all the running. I was thinking I'd died and gone to heaven. So unused was I to such a happy combination of circumstances that I made a near-fatal blunder almost immediately: as soon as the gig finished, I said, "Hey, let's go to the Bus Bar." Was it inexperience? Or recklessness? Or a perverse sense of fun? Or some obscure self-destructive impulse? Whyever would I have supposed that a mature, glamorous, professional woman would enjoy a pit of sleazerie like the Bus Bar? I think I had tried to explain to her what it was like beforehand, had given her the opportunity to opt out - and she said she was willing to give it a try. I loved her for her daring, her openness to new experience, her lack of prissiness. Maybe my powers of description had let me down on this occasion. Or her powers of imagination had. Or maybe she thought I was just joking. The reality of the Bus Bar - on a particularly bustling early-Thursday-morning - was obviously far, far below her very worst expectations. She responded to the spectacle with a look of pure horror which haunts me to this day. What had I missed out? Windowless, claustrophobic, undecorated hellhole? Walls clammy with condensed sweat? Thick clouds of cigarette smoke scented with ganja? Packed to the rafters with African drug dealers? No, no, I'm pretty sure I'd mentioned all of that. All part of the place's distinctive 'charm'. But they were playing some good music on the speakers, and the place was buzzing. She gamely agreed to stay for one drink. I left her unattended for a couple of minutes or so, while I did a quick tour of the bar greeting friends. When I came back, she was deep in conversation with a huge Nigerian who was apparently very keen to develop some kind of import/export business with her (I rather think this was just a euphemism for sex, but she seemed to be taking him at his word). I managed to extricate us from that situation without causing too much awkwardness. And we left soon afterwards. Yes, in fact, this night can probably be accounted one of my (rare, rare) great dating successes. But I did come perilously close to blowing my chances by succumbing to the siren call of the dive bar. There are fairly few women who can even tolerate, much less appreciate the dive bar experience; and this lady was not one of them. It was pure good luck for me that her gratitude for being 'rescued' outweighed her resentment at being taken there in the first place. There's a Gary Larson cartoon I particularly love (but have never been able to find on the Net): Two big sharks in the shallows just off a desert island are watching a swimmer scramble up the beach to safety. One suddenly remarks to the other, "Hey, our dorsal fins are showing! I wonder how many times that's given us away?" It's a telling metaphor, I feel. With me, the great overlooked failing in my sex life is a tendency to let the possibility of a good bar experience distract me from closing the deal. Repeat after me: When a woman starts indicating a willingness to go to bed with you, do not suggest a last drink on the way home. Especially not in a dive bar.