Rollercoasters

My friend (already featured) and I decided to go to our all-time favorite bar this weekend and bring our old traditions back. In the past we used to arrive there around eleven, grab two spots at the bar and never leave them till the place closed around 6 AM. Those were the days. Later on, for some reason,we started to go more often on the dancefloor and dance around. Then we would get tired and bored way sooner.

When you sit at the bar, you allow more things to happen. People will come to talk to you more often. I guess that you look more available, less intimidating, than when standing in a group and dancing.

The downside of sitting at the bar, is that you drink twice as much and burn off half as when you dance.

Add this to the fact that I was already hammered (some friends had fed me some bad rosé earlier) and that since I became a vegetarian my body is more sensitive to alcohol and you'll understand what state I was in that night.

Sitting there, talking to my friend and checking out guys the barman came to me and gave me a coaster. I flipped it to see what was written on it. This was not the first coaster-message I received in my life, there are quite a few of them in my personal collection of “Things-people-gave-me-to-flirt”, but I never saw something like what was written on that coaster before.

A cute little sunflower with a hardon said hello to me from a coaster.

Maybe it was the rosé, but I burst out laughing real hard. Once I recovered, I asked the bartender who was the genious behind this Sunflower painting. He turned around ready to point at someone, but didn't. He looked at me, shrugged and said the guy had left.

“Maybe he saw me laugh and was hurt” I thought.

I decided to answer and clear things up. I grabbed a coaster and ask my befriended bartender for a pen.

I painted a bottle for of soy sauce. For no reason. It was the first thing that came to my mind, and I just gave in to my subconscious.

I finished colouring the bottle black, gave it to the barman and asked him to pass it on to my Van Gogh if he saw him again. After he took it, he left to serve some more drinks.

I looked at my friend, he smiled and we just kept on gossiping and laughing. I quickly forgot about this matter, until a different bartender gave me a new coaster. I eagerly flipped it, my friend looking over my shoulder, curious of what I had received this time.

“I'd like to make some chinese mushroom soup with you, hottie”

...

Well, that's one of the worst pick-up phrases I've ever heard. I guess I shouldn't have sent him a bottle of soy sauce... Anyways, I grabbed the pen and wrote my first thought down. I looked for the barman who gave it to me and asked him to give it back. He shook his head and apologized. He didn't remember who had given it to him.

Damn, getting to know who was sending me all this surreal stuff was not gonna be easy. I tried to find the one bartender I know, hoping he could tell me who my elusive admirer was. I didn't find him. One of his colleagues explained he had left for his two hour break.

I sat around for a while, wondering what to do next. After discussing it with my friend, we designed a new plan.

First we had to find eight coasters. It was not an easy task, but luckily it was only 1 AM and there were still a lot of them lying around unused. I stood up and walked along the bar, discreetly scavenging round pieces of cardboard.

Once we had eight of them, I wrote one word of my message (“That's the worst pick-up phrase I've ever heard”) in big letters on each of them.

Ultimately, with his help, we held the phrase up. We were hoping that the guy who wrote me the messages would understand it was for him. Of course more people saw our little act.

I had a little suspect that we were probably embarrassing ourselves, but the excess of alcohol gave us what we needed not to care.

Embarrassing or not, we triggered many reactions. One guy came to talk to us using our show as his own pick up phrase. Within five minutes we received three more coasters, but it was clear that none of them came from my Van Gogh.

I was a little bit disappointed. I must admit I was curious about who would write such unusual messages to someone. Nevertheless, I let it go. One of my new coasters included a free drink and a hot latin guy, and I couldn't waste it.

I stood up and walked to where this guy was invitingly smiling at me. I had just started enjoying my new, 3G coaster experience when I got a new message.

“So I do all the work, and he gets the trophy.”

Once I read it, I looked around me. I was hoping to see someone looking at me, checking if I was reading the message or trying to decipher my reaction. No one was. Every guy I could see was minding his own business.

I was getting annoyed. First I wanted to write an answer. “I'm no one's trophy, and please show yourself!” I wanted to send him. Then I realized that the guy I was talking to would not appreciate me flirting with someone else so obviously.

So I just decided to focus on him, and forget about the other guy. He probably wasn't any good anyway. Divide and conquer, I thought.

I've learnt that when you flirt with too many, you often end up with none.

Unhappily, fate made the latin guy's best friend feel sick ten minutes later and both of them had to leave. I scored a phone number, but that wasn't quite satisfying.

I looked at where my friend was sitting, but he was busy with someone else. Later, it turned out that the guy with the flower shirt talking to him was all but welcome and that my friend would've been glad if I interrupted them. I didn't pick that up though, so I preferred not to interfere.

“I'll answer to my post-impressionist now. At least it'll be something to do”.

I sat on an empty stool close to where I was standing and started engraving a new coaster.

“What exactly is so wrong about you that makes you turn to coasters to hit on someone?”

I called for the bartender who had brought me the last message and asked him to give this coaster as a response. I was planing on watching closely who my message was being delivered to. I wasn't expecting that the guy would preach to me, saying he was no postman and that the coasters were not meant for what I was using them.

That was really a gamebreaker. I sighed, disappointed, and resigned myself to just sit around and have a drink.

After ten minutes, the guy my friend was talking to left and I came to sit next to him. He told me his story, I told him mine and soon we had moved on.

The hours passed, and some more things happened. I'm not writing about them now, I had to choose one. Maybe one day I'll write a Map to a Night Out telling all the intertwined stories happening around us when we go out.

Anyways, at the end of the night, my befriended barman came to me to ask while cleaning up if anything had happened with the guy. I shook my head and summarized the story to him.

“What a pity, he was really hot” He said.

Maybe he was just teasing me, but I still was a little bit frustrated inside. Just a little bit.