Nightclubbing & Flirting

I haven't been out dancing in a nightclub in, ummmmm, 20 odd years. A group of friends decided to try the new nightclub in Raleigh, Solas. We decided to have dinner there. Now I love food and consider myself a bit of a food snob. So when I ordered "foie gras" I knew what I was doing. And phooey to those of you who think that it should be banned. Move on and order something else.

Apparently the kitchen didn't know what they were doing. Or, maybe they did. When my trendy large dish arrived I could barely see the trendy sized foie gras. Now I get nouveau cuisine. But this was over the top. Almost as overtop as Solas charging $13 for a glass of ordinary red wine. Now don't give me, these are New York prices. $13 for a glass of wine is not NY price. This is Raleigh trying to be NY by thinking that way. NY charges that price if the bottle is expensive; not cheap. I digress. I need to get back and rant about my foie gras.

Imagine 2 pieces of toast, a little smaller than the old shaped iPods. On one end of each cold piece of toast were two incy, wincy little pieces of foie gras. My friends took one look and started to laugh. If I was that foie gras I would have turned from brown to red. I tried to spread the foie gras but it kind of bounced a little, bringing more laughter to the table. Hmmmmm. In my experience, foie gras is supposed to spread like soft butter. In this experience, it jerked like overcooked tofu. I took a bite and too my surprise all that was left was the other half of a dry piece of toast. My friends now had tears rolling down their faces because my expression was, well, it must have been funny. In two bites, I had eaten all the unspreadable foie gras and what was left were the end pieces of toast. It was then that I noticed some white stuff underneath the toast. I took a tentative bite and could not believe it. It tasted like potatoes but I wasn’t sure. I took another bite. OK, I figured it was mashed potatoes, but it was lumpy!! UGG. I think it reasonable to say that I will be eating elsewhere in the future. The dancing made up for it though.

In addition to checking out Solas for the dancing, my therapist had given me some homework. Now don’t get all wigged out that I casually mention that I have a therapist. I have this philosophy that if you don’t share information about yourself then others will have this notion of you that is not true. So I am free with lots of information about myself. However, there are some subjects that I will never blog about – personal relationships for example. Not because of me, but out of respect of the other person. So my therapist’s homework for me was to flirt. Now don’t get me wrong I can flirt when I feel safe. It is when I stop feeling safe that I can’t flirt and I get defensive. This happens at work, it even happens when I go out. I get cold and panicked. I don’t know how to act so I put up lots of barriers and boundaries. I get all logical and non-flirty.

So I decided to flirt on this particular night. To see whether of not I could do it. Keep the warm, natural me going. I was doing it fine with my dance partner who was gay. We were flirting really well because I felt safe with him. So I looked around the room wondering who I could practice on. After a while a couple of guys caught my attention. I kept dancing and keeping an eye on them. Yip they looked like good candidates for my homework. I nervously walked up to them and asked them if there was a bet going on. They said yes. What it was about I have no clue. I forget things when I get nervous. I felt that I was doing well flirting with the two guys. I was patting myself on the back, until the guy who I not paying as much attention to, mentioned that his friend was married. Huh!!? Crap, I had forgotten to ask that question. Hell, I hadn’t even flirted that long to get to that question. I mean, at what point does one ask that question? This single stuff is complicated.

I turned to the supposedly married man and asked him if he was married. He said that he had an open marriage. I gulped hard. I felt the flirting motor shutdown fast. Homework was over. “What do you mean by ‘open’”? I asked casually, getting ready to bolt. He explained that he couldn’t come back to my place but I could go back to his. This was too much for me. Then he said that he was kidding. I said it was not funny, which I knew was not flirting. He said I did not know his sense humor. Well duh, I had just met him and this topic was a bit too much too soon. Then I remembered that I felt way better on the dance floor with my gay friend. He knew how to flirt without being stupid. So I said “Bye bye.”

And my flirting motor started up again as my body gyrated with my new friend.