Singles, Booze, and Books

Me and a friend went to a singles mixer organized through work last night. Before I get into the gritty details of our adventure, let me explain something about CS, TX. It's good when you're an 18- to 22-year-old college student, or married with spawn, but after that it becomes a sad and lonely place for those without beaus.

I've called this town home for the past eight years. It seems like a black hole for a young, professional, single woman. You have to escape while you're still young, or you'll get sucked in and will find yourself sitting around a table of potential Sugar Daddies wondering if this too will be your demise in 10 years.

Back to the adventure:

Me and E are 26 and 23. We're no longer college students, but we are actively seeking potential suitors, although that's difficult when we're a bit shy and too settled in our comfy boxes. But we took a step out. We took a "splash" and went to a happy hour to meet other singles. I'm not sure what I was expecting out of the group, but let me tell you what we didn't get: young, available, professional men. I could say something like "enter the geezers" but that would be horrible cruel and not at all true for some of the guys there. However, they were definitely older than E and me. Like totally older (said in a valley-girl way). Haha.

Now, we all know that wine gets better with age, but.... do men? E had a connection over Johnny Cash biographies with a man who was at least 40 years older than her. There was a spark there! I said there was potential for her to find a lover other than Idol's Jason Castro.

Her response: "Nasty!"

She's sure that he had hearing aids. I'm sure I would have seen them as I was sitting right beside the man, but I saw nothing. Maybe they were the tiny little microchip ones? Maybe she was looking for fault because she was scared of the dynamic, lusty connection she felt. We'll never know.

I didn't feel any connections, but did have an interesting conversation with a nice-looking gentleman sitting across from me. I mentioned that I was going to spend my summer moving to New Hammie for the MFA program, which sparked a conversation on literary writing. I told him that I was hoping to work on my literary fiction style, to which he asked me to explain the difference between literary fiction and popular (genre) fiction.

My initial and internal response in regard to literary fiction was: "It's booooorrrrriiiinnnnggg!" (sang dramatically and drawn out).

I instantly corrected myself and tried to sound somewhat intelligent as I explained how literary style differed from what you find on the bookshelves at Wal-Mart. How literary novels are usually a more detailed, descriptive, and deeper form of writing. I'm glad to see that my definition was close to Wikipedia's Definition. The conversation made me think about how little I seem to know about a style of writing that I'll focus on for 3 years. It can be overwhelming at times--I hope my simple mind, which yearns for fast-pace entertainment most times, can slow down and develop a love for what I like to call Mom's Type of Book.

We ended our singles adventure with some chips and queso, a few dollar margaritas, and an uncertainty if the Johnny Cash lover was wearing flesh-colored hearing aids or just had really big, bumpy ears.

It was an interesting night.