Yeah, I speed date. My mother doesn’t approve, but she doesn’t approve of non sequiturs either, and one time I taped two slinkys together and made a mega-slinky, so there you have it. She’s the usual anti-speed-dating type, worried that I won’t settle down with some nice Jewish girl. I tell it to her straight: Speed dating’s like Buddhism – it’s not about religion. For a real speed dater, it’s a way of life. Like a religion. Such as Judaism. So she doesn’t have anything to worry about.</drop_caps_paragraph>
Let me give you an example. Just last night, I put on my bowler hat and my Nike Shox and sidled into the People’s Democratic Republic of Lounge, the most fashionable Maoist nightclub outside the Guizhou province. Once inside, I filled in my speed dating card. Name: Slick Wilson. Occupation: Lust. Style counts. In fifteen minutes I had dated twelve women and gotten thirty-two phone numbers, nine home addresses, and the deed to Baltic Avenue. It was wild.
They call it getting lucky, but in speed dating, luck is another word for game, which is another word for charisma, which is another word for charm. Charm also has several synonyms. Sometimes, you’ll see some poor schlub out there, looking like a fish out of water, or, to be more precise, like a fish who is awkward around women and looks like a dude. He tries to play it cool, but at the end of the night I’m the one the ladies want to walk them home. I always tell them the same thing. “Listen honey, I’m a speed dater,” I say. “I don’t walk anybody home.” Then I’ll grab her by the wrist and sprint back to her place, and I sprint fast, because I used to be a polo player and I’ve studied how horses move. This establishes me as the dangerous, uninhibited type, especially if her shoulder dislocates.
I’m even good at breaking up, which is tricky, especially if you’re nervous wreck, which I’m not, ever. Two weeks ago I was at El Ron Hubbard, the best Scientologist tapas bar outside an underground complex in Washington D.C., and I was fifteen seconds into date number six. If there is one thing that I won’t put up with in a woman, it’s ennui, and when she said things like “I am not going to have sex with you” and “You are a creep,” I noticed a distinct ennui in her tone of voice. A novice might have frozen like a popsicle in headlights, but not Slick Wilson. Thinking fast, I screamed out “IDONTTHINKWESHOULDSEEEACHOTHERITSNOTYOUITSME” at the top of my lungs, and, stopping in front of the plate glass window to admire my reflection, jumped through it. Sure, it hurt. Love hurts. So does a ball-point pen, if you stab yourself with it, so stop crying and man up.
So would I ever get married? That’s like asking if Don Juan and Cassanova had a kid, and that kid was named Don Juan Cassanova, would he want to get married? Also, that kid is me. And the answer is yes he would, if it’s the right woman. But my standards are high as a kite, which I know is usually a reference to drugs but this time refers to my standards, so back off, word police. She’d have to have personality, brains, and a butt that won’t quit. Being a butt. If that happened I could see myself speed proposing to her, and one day I would settle down and raise a speed family. Of course, the next day I’d be back on the town, because trying to hold me down is like trying to hold a large balloon, which is difficult to hold down, down.
So the next time you’re in the Critique of Pure Bacon, the tastiest Kantian Kosher Deli outside Jerusalem, keep an eye out for me. Maybe you’ll spot me casually hiding behind a large plastic pickle. Maybe we’ll get together for two bites of a sandwich, and then pick up our sandwiches and move to the next table. And maybe, if you’re lucky, I’ll run you back to your place for seven seconds in heaven.
