Anyone who knows me knows that there is nothing I strive for more in life than the perfect “meet-cute” – as evidenced by its name, a really cute way to meet a guy that leaves you both with a story for the ages that will be told at your engagement party, rehearsal dinner, wedding, and to your children for years until they build up severe resentment issues based on the fact that their own love stories will never even come close to paralleling yours and next thing you know you’re in an old folks home because your deadbeat son-in-law won’t let you live in their house because he needs “me time” from the stress of the jobs he can’t hold down, but it won’t even matter because you’re just going to die at the same time as your husband after he retells you the story of your original meet-cute for the millionth time. (In case anyone reading this wants to buy my scripts, file that one under “White trash version of The Notebook.”) Meet-cute’s really only exist in the annals of Kate Hudson movies, and god I wish my life was a Kate Hudson movie, but that hasn’t stopped me from striving to live out my rom-com fantasies on daily basis. Which is precisely why this weekend was one of my bigger losses in a long time.
Friday night rolls around and as per usual, I find myself in bed watching reruns of Parks & Rec and assuring my mom that just because I’m home on a Friday does not mean that I’m a) depressed, b) doing drugs, or c) a lesbian (though options b & c would both be perfectly fine with her). That is until my good friend Alex (as always, names changed to protect the amazing) texted me at 11:30 PM that even though my attractive roommate would not be coming with me, I was still invited to come out to a bar in West Hollywood with him and his friends. Alex has the self-proclaimed body of a Greek god from hours spent at Crossfit gyms and is more than moderately attractive, so it stands to reason that his friends would be cut from a similar cloth. Plus I had just ended things with the guy I was seeing and possess the maturity of a sophomore boy in college, so I shaved my legs as fast as I could and hightailed it over to the Churchill to try to rub up against anyone else with a penis and a pulse.
Cut to an hour later, and despite my best drunken efforts at trying to get Alex’s roommate to make out with me, it was obvious things were going nowhere fast. Which just led me to down scotch and gingers at an even more alarming rate, all while becoming a little surlier with each sip. This is why I apparently felt the need to make fun of anyone around me who seemed to be having a better night than I was. (My therapist calls this “projecting”, I call it “I don’t pay you $60 a week to not be on my fucking side.”) So when I spotted a guy a few paces away from me taking cell phone photos of himself, the cunty side of me (fine, all my sides are my cunty side) just couldn’t resist walking up to him just to snarkily say “Cool self-portraits bro.” Alex came over to try to apologize and diffuse the situation, and upon seeing that the guy had a cute light-skinned Lenny Kravitz thing going on, immediately sold me into sexual slavery and left me there to talk to him myself. Asshole.
The second Alex walks away, Lenny looks at me and goes “I know you from somewhere.” According to bad dating advice from my friends, this is a classic pick-up line guys use even if they don’t know you from somewhere, but I was drunk on scotch and the myth that guys might one day want to bang me, so I decided to go with it. Which would have been fine, except Lenny was actually sort of irritating. He was super aloof, but wouldn’t let me walk away from the conversation either, which went a little something like this.
Lenny: No, I’m sure I know you from somewhere.
Me: I don’t think so, I’m really good with names and faces. (This is a lie, see here)
Lenny: Did you ever wear glasses?
Me: Um, never in public.
Lenny: Yes you did. I think I know you.
Me: Did you work in entertainment maybe? I used to wear glasses to work sometimes.
Lenny: Kind of. Have you ever been to the V Lounge?
It was in this moment that literally all the color drained from my face. Before I go any further, I should probably give a little preface to what’s coming next. About a year and a half ago, I got LASIK done – best thing I ever did, but I was forced to wear only glasses and no contacts for two weeks before the surgery. Those two weeks ended up being the two weeks that my friends and I decided to actually go out and party hard, which meant that despite my adorable Tina Fey glasses that I paid a small fortune for at Costco, I spent a weekend in Vegas pulling my glasses on and off anytime we went out and spent the next weekend in LA doing much of the same. Which brings us to the V Lounge. The V Lounge is a sad excuse for a dance club in Santa Monica, that consists mainly of minorities doing the Jersey Turnpike while they get triple teamed by guys that look like they could have starred in the movie “Notorious.” (Note: I’m not racist…I’ve tried dancing face down, ass up, and not only has no one approached me even once, I fell over from all the blood rushing to my head.) But the V Lounge is free, and it is literally the only place in LA that you can go dancing that isn’t in Hollywood, so there I was a year and a half ago, glasses and all.
In case you can’t see where this is going (LASIK pun!!), Lenny was right, he did know me from somewhere. And that somewhere was me and him making out on the dance floor of the V Lounge while my glasses were precariously tucked into the back pocket of my knock-off Seven Jeans. We had even left together in a cab with his friends to go get food – until I ran out while we were at a stoplight, fearing date rape (not because he was black, but because he was fratty) (maybe I am racist). For the last year and a half, he’d even been saved in my phone as “Cute V Lounge Black Guy (John Legend)” who I honestly never thought I’d see again. Flash back to the present and we shared a few laughs over the odds of us meeting again, and the fact that even though I pulled an Irish exit out of the cab, my friend who was with me still ended up shacking with his best friend (which really does sound like something anyone I’m friends with would do).
At this point, my meet-cute sirens were fully blaring. Hot guy with a full head of hair, and great teeth? Check. Had a whole black/Jew/hipster thing going on? Check. Destiny brought us back together? Check, check, and triple check. I even figured we could get past the fact that I didn’t remember his face at all, based on the fact that my eyesight pre-surgery was half a point away from being legally blind. Like I said, this was about to be a story for the ages.
Until this happened.
Lenny/John Legend: So you said you work in entertainment?
Me: Yup at ****** in comedy.
Lenny/John Legend: K. I’ll send you my script.
Aaaaand, all meet-cute hopes dashed. Apparently Lenny didn’t see the same visions of our bridal party dancing down the aisle to “Forever” by Chris Brown, and instead saw me as some sort of meal ticket for his crappy script. And considering the fact that he dropped it on me as if he was doing ME a favor (complete with a 2 AM email to my work account that just said “I owe you a script”), I’m pretty sure meet-cute or not, our love story wasn’t heading anywhere good.
Needless to say, my faith in romantic comedies has been a little bit shaken (especially after the fact that I watched “Something Borrowed” this weekend, and Kate Hudson couldn’t even save that trainwreck. Any movie that has the ugly wife from “Big Love” as its hero doesn’t really belong in my DVD player). If you need me, I’ll be doing the Jersey Turnpike at the V Lounge, trying to find a new John Legend lookalike to make out with.
