Why Analog is Sexy: Reason #1
You can say, “Want to come over to my place and listen to records?”
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Time to Move On
One particularly lonely night in San Francisco, I walked over to the Lexington Club. Yes, the Lexington—I said I was lonely. I sat and enjoyed a few impossibly cheap Chimay Blue’s and after some casual conversation with an international clique, including a cute Scott working a paper boy cap and an equally cute Brazilian who couldn’t believe I guessed where she was from, even though she had the same name as half of the other Brazilian women I know, Juliana. Later, a nice, Latina femme and LA transplant chatted me up until her girlfriend, whom she’d referred to as her boyfriend, took her away. (I was still quite clueless regarding the transgender trend sweeping our community; I remain mostly clueless).
Another young woman filled in the bar stool to my left, previously occupied by the couple’s Jack Russell Terrier, and started talking to me. She looked a little nervous about her venture into the Lesbian vortex that is the Lexington, and spent a lot of time bemoaning how her education and career in software programming meant she’d spent her entire adult life in the company of geeky men, with little to no opportunity to meet women, much less ones she could date. She was shy, a little stoic, very innocent-looking and yes, maybe a little nerdy but not in a bad way, really. I, of course, didn’t recognize any of this chatter as an actual invitation (perhaps proof of its ineffectiveness); I only thought she was asking for my help. So I started by taking a brief intake of her interests to see if she could get involved in some group activities.
“What do you do when you’re not working?”
“I design video games.”
“Do you play any sports?”
“No.”
“Do you want to learn any sports?”
“I don’t think that would be such a good idea. I’m asthmatic and always seem to end up hurting myself whenever I try.”
“Well, you’ve got to start meeting and hanging out with some kind of group, so your friendships and opportunities begin to grow from there.”
“Okay.”
I also went over the basics of being bold, acting confident, and striking up conversations with strangers. I honestly don’t mind doling out this kind of advice. It took me forever to figure out the whole social 101 thing. Okay, I admit, some days I’m still learning, but I’ve often wished someone had taken me aside early on and taught me these lessons. (Whether I would have absorbed them is another question, of course.)
So, back to this young woman: she was the only, and obviously very sheltered child of Russian immigrant parents. She must have been about twenty-four. I really don’t believe she could have been any older. She looked more like fifteen, but I’d already established she was a college graduate with at least a few years of work experience, and she hadn’t mentioned skipping three or four grades in school. Now, when I meet someone more than ten years my junior, two things occur to me: One, I know we won’t be playing together, ‘cause we just don’t have recess at the same time, and two, I feel like a bit of a vieja. So, all of this only added to my generous willingness to share what little wisdom I’d garnered up to this point and try to help this poor girl meet some women.
I must have mentioned being older than her. She took the opportunity to compliment me by telling me I didn’t really look much older.
“Although, I can tell that you are,” she said, “because you’re wearing a watch.”
“A watch? What’s wearing a watch got to do with age?”
“Well, young people today don’t wear watches because we just use our cell phones to tell the time.”
“Well, my cell phone is a big, chunky Blackberry and I carry it inside my purse. Why do I want to dig it out, remove it from its case and unlock it just to tell the time, when I can do this-” I mimed a simple lifting of my hand off the bar, with a slight quarter-turn of my wrist.
“We just don’t do it. You’ve always got your cell phone in your hand anyway. It’s faster just to look at it.”
Well, maybe that’s your problem.
I’m pretty sure that’s when I stood up and said, “All right. That’s a friendly group of women over there. Come meet Juliana.”
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Marta! What an amazing player, considered the best in the game worldwide. If you missed the match, check out the highlights – made extra fun announced in Portuguese.
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Watch Repair
The nice older gentleman only charged me five dollars for a battery replacement! He asked me to have a seat, but he was done fixing my watch before my butt actually touched the seat. Oh, and he set it to the right date, too.
Ah, my favorite timepiece and I are reunited at last. It really wasn’t the ten dollars I expected to pay that kept me from getting a new battery. It’s just that watch repair shops are not as prevalent these days as say, Starbucks, or… cellular providers. Sad.
Moral of the story: kabob cravings lead to good things.
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