August 21, 2001
I was at a wedding over the weekend, for my stepbrother. Myrtle Beach, SC, for anyone who cares.
Anyway, I got to the reception and spotted a fairly cute girl wearing a red strapless dress. As almost every other attractive woman there was seeing someone, she caught my attention. I quickly formulated a plan and set it in motion.
The plan was a simple one. Step One: Drink enough Liquid Courage (ethanol, C2H5OH, booze) to start dancing with her. I need the alcohol simply because when I'm sober I'm way too aware of how dumb I look out there. Step Two: At the end of the reception, inquire about her plans for the remainder of the evening. Step Three: Aww, yeah.
Something that simple should be foolproof, right? Well, I made it through to 11:45 just fine. She seemed to enjoy dancing with me, and we were flirting a little bit. Since the reception ended at midnight, I thought I was golden. I went over to a chair to take a quick breather. (Hey, I'm out of shape and I'd been dancing for a few hours.)
My stepcousins, who are really nice people, see that I'm not dancing. Since they were drunker than I was, they didn't notice that'd I'd been out there more or less constantly since 9:00. They just thought I wasn't having a good time. So they haul me back out on the dance floor. This is the last non-slow dance, so it's really winding down, and she cuts out early. I miss it.
When I get off the dance floor, I saw she'd already left and quickly grabbed my suit jacket and speed-walked to the elevators. As I got there I saw the doors close with her inside.
"Fuck!"
I pressed the Down button about 300 times, hoping to convince the computer to send another elevator to the 16th floor. When it finally got there and took me to the lobby, she was gone. Not in the lobby, not in the parking lot, not on the beach. Gone. Without a trace.
And the hell of it is, I can't really get angry with my cousins, because they really thought they were helping me out. It just flat-out sucks.
