|
How I Met My Wife:
A Halloween Story
It was nine o’clock on Halloween night, 1975. The trick-or-treaters had left, and I was sitting alone in my apartment, watching TV and wondering if I would ever meet the right person. I figured I had two choices that evening: I could keep watching TV, in which case I wouldn’t meet anyone unless you count Mary Tyler Moore; or I could go to Big Daddy’s.
Big Daddy’s Lounge in Marina del Rey was the quintessential singles bar. It had five dance floors, strobe lights, and a tag team of bouncers with biceps the size of my thighs. I hated the place, but I’d gone there a few times out of sheer desperation. In the process I’d developed a theory. It seemed to me that just about everyone drops by a singles bar at least once, if only to see what all the fuss is about. The trick is to separate the visitors from the barflies. Is the woman talking, laughing, having a great time? Forget her. What you want is a person who looks out of place and uncomfortable. And so, on that Halloween evening, I turned off the TV and headed for Marina del Rey.
When I walked into the bar I was greeted by a giant lizard. Beyond him, Darth Vader was chatting with Cleopatra, Queen of the Nile. It seemed that Big Daddy’s was having a costume party, as if the place wasn’t strange enough on ordinary nights. There were ghosts, ghouls, aliens, and, standing next to me at a urinal in the men’s room, a nun wearing a wimple and a mustache.
Hurrying out of the men’s room, I bought a beer and positioned myself next to a large dance floor. As I looked around, it occurred to me that my task had been simplified: this evening it wasn’t so much a matter of looking for the right person as finding the right species.
|
