Speed Dating at State Line
Nothing like wearing a giant neon sign: I'M EA-SY
By ANDY ENRIGHT

Tahoe is the best place for finding quick company. Tonight I'm in Nero's at Caesar's, where exactly 28 people are gathered in a bar that has amazingly fake flames billowing from a Greek urn. There are 14 tables set for two and each has one of those red, penis-shaped flowers standing in a narrow tube.

Twenty-four of us are wearing business suits. Six have skirts carelessly creased from failure to smooth before sitting. Three men have placed BMW car keys on their tables. A menu arrives. Upon it are the names and blurred photos of every person in the room. It looks like a menu from a bad sushi restaurant, where small pictures of chopped fish and their names are covered in some yellowish discharge. In my picture I look like a registered sex offender.

I find myself sitting with Karen Wiedlinski: 29; telemarketing administrator. The menu states there are "Four Favorite Words That Sum Up Karen: STRONG, WARM, BLONDE, NO NONSENSE." That's five words, I say, trying to break the ice by (successfully) appearing a jerk. "You could take the 'no' out," I suggest.

"But that would make it strong, blonde, warm, nonsense," Karen says, visibly wondering if her three minutes with me are up yet. "That doesn't make sense," she says.

"Go out with me," I squeal. But she's gone.

I decide to lie since everyone else is (especially the men, about their manhood and their income), persuading people that my four favourite words—"TALK LIKE A PIRATE"—were written by Karen, who I am in fact married to, and that we're looking for swingers to join our insane sex party in Gardnerville.


Karen brusquely approaches and tells me that she doesn't know who I am, but to please stop ruining her night. I feel we're bonding. I try some misplaced humor, telling a small group at the bar that, God, it's like having yourself flayed alive in a Japanese prisoner of war camp coming to a thing like this, ho-ho. "No it's not," says Sheree, a female Taebo instructor with a bod like Buster Douglas. "My grandfather was a prisoner of war and I take exception to that comment." Shit.

I slope off to find a coin bucket with which I can asphyxiate myself. Things are going well and I feel I've pulled at least 12 of the 14 women present, plus some of the men. (Karen and the Taebo woman are proving difficult.) I decide to make an announcement to my harem of available women by standing on a table.

"Look, if anyone's desperate for a bunk up, I'll be 'round back where the bins are." A man with perfect teeth claps slowly and I'm escorted from the premises. It's snowing outside and I have no jacket. Shit.


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UK-based Contributor Andy Enright hails from swingin' L-town.