2. Meet Mr. Right at Happy Hour

                 I am not, nor have I ever been, a drinker.  I simply don’t like the taste.  Having no experience with alcohol prior to tasting my first beverage at the age of 16, I had an immediate, reaction stating, if I remember correctly, “You paid money for that?  It tastes like a horse peed on a peach.”  And this was of course a Peach Melba Rum Wine Cooler; such was the drink of my peers in Tylerpatch.  Beer, when I eventually tried it, was much, much worse.  Luckily, I did not feel any peer pressure to drink.  My friends said, "You want a beer?  No?  Good, more for us."  So you see I wasn’t overly confident I would find my Mr. Right at a bar at Happy Hour.

                One thing I have discovered is Happy Hour isn't necessarily only for drinkers.  A good HH has really great appetizers at really great prices to entice the drinkers to drink.  I have spent many a night happily munching away while my alcoholic friends imbibed to their hearts content.  Let’s face it, I will eat with just about anyone when the food is good.  I have trudged through bad dates solely because the restaurant was a favorite.  Full disclosure, I would share pulled pork nachos with Charles Manson, y’all.  Just saying.  However, once the food is gone I am ready to be, too. 

                The main reason is I’m not a big fan of bar people to begin with; I barely like some of these people sober, much less drunk.  And If I am jostled by one more bro wearing flip-flops and jeans, high-fiving another bro I AM AFRAID I WILL SAY SOMETHING REMARKABLY UNCHRISTIAN!  I’m kidding of course, but what is it with Southern California people and their insistence on foot nudity?  I have attended a number of Happy Hours with my friends until I realized almost all of my friends are straight.  How am I to find Mr. Right in a straight bar?  Don’t get me wrong, there are definitely gay guys in these bars; I have seen them.   However, they are usually (1) comforting a girlfriend who has just been dumped by one of the naked foot high-fivers or (2) not comfortable enough to be hit on in such a setting.  How do I know they’re gay?  We can spot each other, of course.  Yes, gaydar is real and mine is finely tuned, people.  It couldn’t be more finely tuned if Benedict Cumberbatch had invented it to defeat the Germans in WWII.  True story.

                This presents a quandary.  I have spent more hours than I care to admit in gay bars and I have discovered several realities with which I am unhappy. 

1. Rare is the gay bar with decent lighting.  I will not eat food I cannot see, strobe-lit or otherwise. 
2. 99.9999999% of gay bars have strippers who dance on the bar itself.  I have a very strict rule about eating food that is either prepared or presented in the vicinity of someone who is currently, or has in the very recent past been, squatting while nude.
3. 83.4672935% of patrons at Happy Hour in a gay bar are obnoxious straight girls having a bachelorette party, typically bogarting the karaoke machine.  There are few things more annoying than a tipsy bridesmaid wanting to recruit you because they’ve watched too many movies and suddenly realize their life isn’t as filled with enough bitchy bon mots (delivered sotto voce with a look of disdain and a flick of the wrist), so they need a new ‘best gay’ to provide these services. 
   

I don’t drink but I don’t care if Mr. Right drinks.  Plenty of non-sketchy people drink.  Full disclosure: I make an assumption that all sketchy people drink.  However, I would rather not share the adorable story of how Mr. Right and I met if it begins with the line, “I was searching for my hot wings in the dark and at the exact moment the stripper stepped off the bar and the strobe light malfunctioned because some drunk bridesmaid tripped on a feather boa, I saw him, looking adorable, standing next to the pool table just outside the bathroom, bathed in purple light, talking to a drag queen.”  I will not have that.  I simply will not.

As you can see, the experiment with Happy Hour came up short, which is ironic because I think short guys are cute.

             So, it is on to Suggestion #3:  Meet Mr. Right through online dating.