Audio By Carbonatix
It’s about 10 p.m. at the smoky jazz bar O’Hara’s (722 E. Las Olas Blvd., Fort Lauderdale), and the place is full of the usual 30- and 40-something singles. Dave Shelley and Bluestone plays funk on-stage. A female bass player with blond dreads bobs her head funkily.
I am just watching, minding my own, when a man in a tropical-print shirt appears in the corner of my eye and sets his beer down next to my drink.
The 41-year-old, who has close-cropped blond hair and dark blue eyes, says, “Can you watch this for me while I go to the bathroom?” Then he adds: “You look trustworthy.”
I smile, “Oh yes.”
I’ve got him.
When he returns, he pulls up right behind me, in the aisle, and asks, “Am I in your way? I’m sorry.”
“No, you’re not in my way.”
I turn back to the band.
“Are you a groupie?” he asks.
“That’s an insulting question,” I reply.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” he says with a foreign accent.
I give him some slack. “Do you know what a groupie is?”
“I don’t know,” he says gruffly.
“A groupie is someone who follows a band around so that she can have sex with them.”
“Oh my God. I’m sorry,” he says and puts his hand over his mouth.
“Yeah, I would think so.”
Soon, two chairs at the bar open up.
“Would you like to sit down?” he asks.
We park it, and I hold my drink right in his face, so as to flash my bling. You see, this little Night Courtster has purchased a $23.67, cubic zirconia ring — an exact replica of a two-karat engagement ring valued at about $20,000. The idea? To see how the male gender reacts to a female who’s preparing to get hitched.
After Mr. S. spots its gleaming synthetic glow, unfazed, he asks, “How long have you been engaged?”
“Three months,” I reply.
He follows up with, “Where’s your fiance right now?”
“I’m not entirely sure,” I say. “I’m not his warden.”
“Yeah, but if you’re engaged, you should know where he is.”
“I’m not that way,” I reply.
“When are you going to get married?”
“For me,” I say with a sigh, “it will be a June wedding.”
He inspects the ring, then looks into my eyes. “Are you in love with him?”
“…Yes.”
“You hesitated,” he replies.
“No, I didn’t.”
“You did.”
“Whatever.” I pull a deep, conflicted drag on my cigarette.
“A girl like you would never wear a ring like that.”
“Oh? And how would you know a thing like that?”
“I can see it. You’re very sensitive. You look to me like the kind of woman who would die for love, not the kind who would wear that ring. That ring is not you. Whoever gave you that ring is a loser.”
“What makes you so sure?”
“How old is your fiancé?”
“He’s 24,” I reply.
“My God! A man that age doesn’t know who he is. He will go around sleeping with every woman, and then what will you have? Nothing. He will suck the life out of you.”
I get all Camus on him and come back with: “There is a necessary distance between all people, so it really doesn’t matter who you marry as long as you have space.”
He takes the line. And the sinker. “OK, but you have never been in love.” He points at the ring and says, “The dream that you are having will never come true, not with this guy.”
“I’m not dreaming,” I assert half-heartedly. “I have to run.”
“You don’t need that ring. Let me tell you something. If you and I were to get engaged, what I would do is take you to a faraway location, and when I asked you to marry me, we would fax out a letter to our families telling them how it happened.”
“Hmm. That’s a nice thought,” I comment. “I have to go.”
He hands over his business card and asks, “Tell me what you will think about me when you drive away.”
“OK,” I say, and deliver it stream-of-consciousness style. “That guy was interesting. He was clever. Cunning, maybe. Perhaps a little too cunning. What’s his interest in me anyway? Oh yeah, I’m 25, and he’s 41. That probably has something to do with it.”
“No,” he insists. “We are equals.”
“Gotta run.”
I walk to the street and hail myself a cab. I turn around and Mr. S. is sitting at the outside table watching me go. I wave as I escape the fling. He waves back.
And swoosh, I’m out. I’ve discovered a truth: Interlopers love to scoop ambivalent chicks who are in the yes man’s land between taken and independent. The bling didn’t put off Mr. S. in the slightest. Indeed, this guy felt a responsibility to help me. Or maybe not. Maybe it was more carnal.
There is something to this. Why this desire to pounce on and save women from themselves? So a few days later, I slip on my two carats of pseudo-ice and head for the red-lit, über-cool Club Sonar (2006 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood) at, oh, about 1:30 in the a.m.
It wasn’t long before a six-foot-two, 27-year-old man named Sean made his way around the bar and planted himself two feet to my right. He had dark hair and dark eyes, a smile plastered across his face, and absolutely none of the gravity of demeanor that had made Mr. S. such a marriage-sundering force to be reckoned with.
Never one to pity a fool, I turned to look at him, and within about three seconds, I was getting a rather aggressive back rub and being asked my name.
“I’m Courtney,” I extend my hand.
“I like that name,” he says.
“I’m happy to hear that.”
“I like your smile.”
“Thanks.” I purse my lips.
“Why don’t you smile?” he asks.
“What’s it to you?” I let a slow grin unfold.
He laughs and squirms like he’s never met a sarcastic babe. Then he throws his arms around me, and I wriggle away. “Come back,” he calls.
“OK, but chill with the hands, please,” I say, feeling like the Emily Post of barroom behavior.
Then he says, “You want to kiss me, I can tell.”
Time passes. “Kiss me,” he says. “I can tell that you want to.”
Cue the bling right in his fat face.
The inevitable question arises. “Are you in love with him?”
Sigh. Hesitate. “Of course I am.”
“You don’t seem so sure.”
“Well, what is love anyways?”
“Come and sit on the couch with me,” he says.
“I don’t think that’s such a good idea. You’re going to try to lay me out and get on me.”
“I won’t. I promise.”
The second I sit down, he hurls himself back toward the middle and throws his arm around me. I smack his hand, but the dead thing does not move.
“So,” he begins, “are you really happy with this man?”
I push him. “Get on your side of the couch.”
He obliges and shoots back like a spring. “I like you,” he says.
“I think we’ve covered that,” I reply.
The bouncer walks over at 3 a.m. and announces the club is closing.
“I know you want to kiss me,” Sean insists.
“Go kiss 10,000 girls and then come back and find me and I will kiss you.”
“Ten thousand is a lot,” he barters.
“OK, 100 girls.”
“I’m going to kiss you.”
“Do it and I’ll punch you in the fucking face.”
He laughs.
Hee hee. I’m out. My fiancé is feeling no heat from this guy.
But what does it mean? If your boy’s dropping mad bones to tag you with the bling, and through some stroke of madness (fine! let’s call it love) you agree to wear your bondage on your hand, it seems strange that there’s not some tacit agreement among men to honor that.
It seems the notion of exhibiting commitment is archaic, yet we keep doing it. The glimmering hand, no matter how piercing the scream when a woman receives the ring, brings on nothing so much as contempt from men.
Or maybe, to the male side of the divide, it’s just the challenge.
