Hopeless?

I look forward to weekend events more than usual lately because I spend so much time alone during the days that I'm pathetically excited for any and every opportunity to be around people. This weekend myself and two of my friends who wished to remain anonymous decided to go to a single adult dance in LA. Note that I said "single adult," and not "young single adult." I've never been to one of these, but I was kind of curious to see if it could really be all that bad. The answer to that question is "no," it's even worse than I would have imagined.

We walked in and the guy at the table in the foyer collecting money looked old enough to be my grandpa. He told me I looked great, which felt weird, and immediately my friends started snickering. I had drank a bunch of water right before we left so the first stop was the ladies room. I don't know, maybe it was the girl with the taped up glasses in there (and I'm not exaggerating, they were literally taped) that made me start to feel like this was potentially a bad idea. We walked into the dance, and from the minute I set foot in the gymnasium, to the minute we left I could not stop gaping at people. There were people there old enough to be my parents. No, let me ammend that, at least half of the people there were old enough to be my parents, and there were at least a handful that could have been my grandparents.

My first order of business was to figure out where the food was that everyone else was eating. I found the food table, and headed over to get a plate. At some point along the way I got the weird feeling that people at this dance were afraid of me. Nobody came anywhere near me, people wouldn't even look at me. I can't say that I cared either. In fact, I decided that this could possibly be one of the most liberating scenarios of my entire life. Nobody knows me, nobody wants to get to know me, and I felt blissfully anonymous. My two friends were ready to bolt, but I told them that I felt like they needed to stick it out long enough for me to eat my food and get in at least one dance. So they agreed.

The matter of leaving or staying had barely been settled when one member of our party was assailed by a man that I actually have met on a previous occasion. He's...well, I'm sorry, but he's scary. He told me that I have a beautiful body and he'd like to use it as a model for a cement vase. He also stands way too close, and as I observed this evening as he was trying to stick his hands up the sleeve of my friends sweater, he can be aggressive in weird ways. I started shovelling the rest of my food into my mouth as fast as I could, because I figured the only way to save my friend from Art (that's his name) was to drag her out on the dance floor with me. I don't know the last time I ate that fast, and the whole time my friend kept giving me panicked S.O.S. looks.

We escaped Art, but once on the dance floor, the fun was just beginning. Not only were most of the people there old enough to be my parents, but a lot of the music they were playing was my parents music. How does one dance to that stuff anyway? Well let me tell you, nobody there seemed to know how to dance to it either, so after reminding myself that "no one here knows you, and you'll never see these people again" I launched right in. Even on the dance floor people treated me like a leper. My friends were the only people that dared come within arms length of me out there. Fine by me, and without people crowding right up to me, it increased my visibility of the rest of the room, so that I could take it all in. Words do not allow me to accurately describe this scene. I saw the most horrendous toupe imaginable. I mean seriously, if I showed you a picture of this thing you'd insist that it was photoshopped or intended as a joke. It was honestly that bad. We all got a good look at the, I'm guessing 80 something year old man with a beard down past his waist attempting some very suggestive pelvic thrusts. One member of our party described that scene as pornographic, and I'm not willing to disagree with that statement, but I will add horrifying to the description.

After a while they put on a slow dance and I was approached by a man that was probably only slightly younger than my dad who asked me to dance. I accepted of course, I mean if you're going to attend a dance like this, you have to just throw yourself into it, and hope to at least come out with a good story. My dancing partner was name John, who had a potbelly that kept banging into me. He announced to me part way through the dance that he's actually a devout Catholic, but he attends the Mormon dances sometimes when his church has to cancel Bingo night. He admitted that his priest would probably be very upset if he were to find out that John and his buddies were out fraternizing with the Mormons. However, he had confessed to one of the nuns, and it turned out that she's from Utah, and thought that it was a great idea for him to be attending the Mormon dances. He still said that if the priest ever finds out about this that there will undoubtedly be a special sermon prepared to address the matter. Then he gave me a brief rendition of what he believed his priest might say to him. It was hilarious, and I was laughing so hard by the end that all the other old people were staring at us.

Another dance or two after that and we decided to call it quits. We were walking out the door when we heard the DJ announce that the next song was probably written "before most of you were even born" and I was forced to add outloud to anyone within earshot that I'm not sure anything they played aside from a Shakira song was written within my lifetime.

Although it was fun, in a who cares kind of way, there was no way getting around the fact that at some point we were all forced to look around and realize that maybe our situation is more hopeless than I had previously suspected. Oh well, maybe if the Mormon dances get boring I can go crash Bingo night at the Catholic church.