The Meet Cute

Where, in God’s name, do people meet people?

Coffee shops. Entertainment has suggested that you go to a coffee shop alone, whip out a book, and get approached by your soul mate. That’s how Summer met her husband and broke Tom’s heart in (500) Days of Summer. Hell, Landon Pigg wrote a song called “Falling in Love at a Coffee Shop.” They make it seem so plausible. But then you go to the coffee shop, and the people sitting alone have their headphones in or are typing away furiously as their computers, and suddenly plausibility is going down the tubes with coffee dregs.

Bookstores. He picks up Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs and you say that you love Chuck Klosterman and the chapter on Billy Joel is musical truth. He takes you to the nearby coffee shop where you never meet anyone and you talk for another two hours about life, love and the pursuit of living and loving. Maybe he gets Billy Joel tickets for your second official date, I don’t know, it’s a scenario. But then you go to the bookstore, and the only people who are shopping alone are obvious loners. They haven’t combed their hair in a while and there are questions on whether they’re capable of speech.

Cooking classes. I don’t have the money for that.

Steak houses. Rich men? Check. Young men? No check. When I get desperate enough to want an old dude or hot enough to be a trophy wife, we’ll revisit the steak house.

Bars. Now there’s a question mark. There is no doubt that people meet people in bars. The question mark comes when you factor in finding something semi-permanent with someone.

I have found reasonable success in bars of late - at least more success than I had in the past. But the guys that I met only seemed interested in that stereotypical “one thing.” Is it possible to meet someone in a bar that might want to see you when you’re both sober? It seems like such a crap shoot when you meet someone in the throes of alcohol.

But in actuality, isn’t it all a crap shoot? The guy in the coffee shop could be coming off of a stint in prison. Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs could be an integral part of the bookstore man’s morning routine. The old dudes at the steak house could still be married with wives and children in Greenwich.

So really, what’s so bad about meeting someone at a bar? If it’s all a crap shoot, then maybe my alcohol-induced reservations don’t exactly hold up. Reasonable risk taking. That’s what I’m looking to do now. And if that doesn’t work I’ll roll the dice with the old guys.