SoMa Literary Review - Speed Dating

Speed Dating

By Kemble Scott

"This is the biggest thing with the Jews these days," Kevin said as they headed down Folsom Street.

"I thought Lieberman for VP was the biggest thing with the Jews." Wayne added a sigh as his usual punctuation indicating something was boring, stupid or both.

"If you’re going to be such a prick, maybe you should have stayed at home."

It wasn’t like Kevin to be so blunt with his best friend, but he had been looking forward to this night for weeks. Wayne’s signature negative energy wasn’t going to ruin the night.

"Hey, I’ve been looking for a man in this city for the past three years. Every time I meet someone, he’s looking over his shoulder to see if anything better is coming down the street. Can you blame me if I’m a little jaded?"

Kevin knew all too well what Wayne meant. He’d lost count of the number of tricks he’d had since moving to SoMa. But he could count on just one hand the number he’d repeated with, and only two that turned into dates.

Kevin and Wayne were both in the thirties, and reasonably good looking East Coast transplants. This just wasn’t the neighborhood to find a long-term relationship. A fifteen minute blowjob in the back room of a bar was the most typical coupling. Actually, more like five minutes.

"Look, man, I’m sorry," Kevin said. "I just want this night to be fun. For once, I’m going into a situation where I can meet guys and won’t just be thinking only about getting laid."

"Yeah, well I see a night where we’d be lucky to find someone fuckable. This has loser written all over it.

Kevin had read about speed dating a few months back in the New York Times online. Synagogues had run the sessions for decades, and only now was the concept making its way into other communities. Men and women gathered for an evening and spent seven minutes in round robin conversations with each member of the opposite sex. At the end of the night, they could vote by secret ballot on who they wanted to get to know better. If people chose each other, the facilitator would let them know and then a full date, and maybe even a relationship, was put into motion.

"Why seven minutes? Why not twenty?"

"The idea is to meet as many guys as possible in one night. If we’re there for a couple hours, that’s at least a dozen introductions. You should be able to figure out pretty quick if someone is interesting."

"Yeah. I’m not holding my breath."

Sigh.

Kevin and Wayne had never been to The Arc before. By day it was home to vocational training for disabled men and women. They’d grown their own cottage industry assembling gift baskets for the Nob Hill and Pacific Heights crowds. At night, the huge lobby was rented out by community groups. The ceiling was constructed with thick planks of wood in a curve made to resemble Noah’s fateful vessel. How appropriate, Kevin thought. Two by two. A couple of each species.

As far as anyone knew, this was the first time speed dating had been used for gay men. In a city where guys met easily in supermarket cereal sections, or while filling their cars at gas stations, no one knew what to expect. Tricking was so easy in San Francisco, the idea of finding a soul mate seemed relegated to Sunday brunch discussions that went nowhere.

Maybe not. The Arc was packed. Organizers had set up only twenty chairs and scrambled to bring in enough from storage for the crowd of nearly sixty who arrived. A young man collecting the ten dollar entrance fee at the door was giddy as each bill passed through his hands and into the till. But the facilitator went into a slight meltdown mode, drafting men near him to pull more seating into the room. He shouted commands to anyone who would listen and after 20 minutes of noisy chaos, the scene was assembled. Thirty chairs around the parameter of the room, with another 30 in the center, each facing one of the outer seats.

"Can I have everyone’s attention? Please, men. Listen!" Facilitator Jeff sported the looks of a rugged, aging gym teacher. But when he yelled, he had all the mannerisms of a frazzled mother fruitlessly calling the kids in for dinner. "Hello? All right, boys, it’s time to start!"

Facilitator Jeff told everyone to take a seat. No, it didn’t matter whether to sit in the outer parameter, or the inner chairs. "Girls, it does not mean top or bottom. They are just chairs!" Each man had to make sure he was sitting across from another occupied seat. After a couple of minutes, no one was standing except Facilitator Jeff, who looked concerned and disappointed. His worst fear had happened. There was an odd number of people, which meant someone would be left out.

The only empty chair was across from Wayne.

"Okay, we need to do a little rearranging. You there..." He pointed at Kevin. "Move over to that seat."

Kevin looked over to see he was being motioned to sit across from Wayne, and taken away from the spikey-haired twentysomething he had specifically decided to face. Worse yet, he was being asked to move into a chair that was on the same circle as Spikey, which meant no chance to meet that evening.

"But, I already…" Kevin started to protest.

"Look, you are holding up the entire room. Please move. Now!"

Kevin took his seat across from Wayne while the facilitator now positioned himself to sit across from the young handsome Spikey.

"I told you I’d meet all losers," Wayne said.

Sigh.

With all the flamboyance of a cabaret singer, Facilitator Jeff explained the rules. Each man had signed in when they arrived and got a numbered name tag. With the number, each man had left his name and e-mail address or phone number. After tonight, if two men ended up picking each other, he would hand over the contact information that would allow them to follow up. If someone picked you, and you didn’t pick him, then that was the end of it. No one would get contacted who did not want to be.

Everyone was instructed to stick to first names only in their conversations, and not ask for phone numbers during the sessions. That way no one would feel pressured into handing over personal information they never intended. Instead, all the time would be spent in conversation to see if there was any potential chemistry.

Each man got a pencil and paper. On the paper were suggested topics and questions, in case someone got stuck. There was also space to note the names and tag numbers of the men wanted for follow-up. Those papers would go into the secret ballot at the end of the night to check for matches.

"Okay, let’s see. You are Kevin, number 49. Let me just write down my thoughts here. Uh, well, how about big fat loser with bad ideas," Wayne said as he scribbled something on his paper, although Kevin couldn’t see what it was.

"Will you shut up?" Kevin hushed.

"I told you this was dumb. We come here to meet new guys, and instead I’m at the prom with my sister!"

"Shut up!" Kevin hushed again.

Facilitator Jeff said that when he said "go" the conversation would start, and last just seven minutes. Then when he said "time" the people in the inner set of chairs would all move one seat to their right. The people in the outer parameter would stay seated, and that way a brand new couple would meet in each round.

"Excuse me!" Wayne raised his hand, playing up gay for all it was worth. "What if we see someone on our own row who we’d like to meet. Your system won’t work for that, will it?"

Facilitator Jeff clenched his clipboard, his near meltdown now approaching critical mass. "No it won’t, honey. But we’ll have a little open time at the end of the night where you can mix and mingle with whoever is on your…rim."

Wayne smiled broadly. Kevin knew that grin. It meant that if the event wasn’t going to be everything Wayne wanted, then he’d make it fun on his own terms. He’d cause so much trouble the only person who’d wind up having any enjoyment would be Wayne himself. An inside joke that would cost everyone else a good time.

Time to put Wayne in his place, Kevin thought.

"Okay, boys. Get ready. Get set. Go!" Jeff screamed, louder than if he had fired off a starting pistol. He clicked his blue and chrome stopwatch and jumped into the chair across from the clearly disappointed Spikey.

The sudden drama and volume of the announcement caught the group off guard. No one knew quite how to start. The din that had filled the room during the chair arranging fiasco now turned to dead silence. Kevin saw his opening.

"What do you mean you are into felching?" Kevin yelled at Wayne. "That is so fucking gross! You are a pig!" The timing was perfect. The whole room seemed to turn en masse to stare at Wayne and start laughing. The moment broke the ice, and soon thirty little conversations started around the room.

Wayne leaned over to Kevin. "Who’s the asshole now?"

"Are you going to behave, or do I need to do it again?"

"Okay, okay. Let’s just get this over with. We’ll just sit here for seven minutes in silence. Then I can move my tush over one seat and you get to talk with The Wolfman here next to me!"

Wayne said it loud enough so the bearded man to his left glanced over briefly, embarrassed but no doubt grateful he would not have to face such a loud bitch. The jab worked, though, and Kevin couldn’t get The Wolfman vision out of his mind. A hairy chest was one thing, but he imagined he’d be able to comb that guy’s back with a ‘fro pick.

Seven minutes turned out to be the perfect amount of time. Short enough to leave a man wanting more if he was interested, relieving him of any hesitation at exchanging follow up information. And not too long if the other person turned out to be a disaster.

And to Kevin, most were exactly that. One man claimed to be a doctor, while after a few minutes of talking it became clear he was much more likely to be an AIDS patient than a physician. Another filled the entire conversation, never allowing Kevin to speak a single word beyond "hello." The third man down from The Wolfman had written "Plow Me" instead of his name on his tag. That’s one to skip, Kevin thought. But there was no passing allowed in the game, so Kevin steered the discussion to a debate about the latest movies. Thank god for Charlie’s Angels.

Wayne stuck to the script, asking only the questions on the pre-printed sheet and avoiding eye contact with each new man.

Sigh.

"Time!" Facilitator Jeff screamed out as another segment came to a close, and the inner circle made yet another click.

"You know, I think I am straining my face muscles," said the man as he moved and sat down in front of Kevin. "I’ve been smiling so much I feel like I might be stuck with this grin for a week. Hey, my name is Dennis." He held out his hand to shake.

Kevin hesitated for moment, clearly startled. Where did this guy come from? He had been too distracted to see him coming down the pike, because otherwise it would have made some of the other conversations more bearable. Dennis had all the trappings of a normal, regular guy. Regular in the way he was clean cut, an average build, and not a speck of affectation in his persona. Kevin figured he was Filipino. The few wrinkles around the eyes probably meant he was also in his mid-30s, although Kevin always had trouble figuring out the exact age of Asians. Especially handsome ones.

"I know what you mean. Some of these guys are such freaks. It almost hurts to be polite." The man with the Plow Me name tag darted Kevin an angry glare.

The seven minutes raced by as if only a moment had passed. Dennis and Kevin connected like old high school buddies reunited, laughing out loud at each other's anecdotes about their weirdest experiences in The City so far. Dennis told about the time he tried to pick up a guy at The Hole who was a dead ringer for Mark McGuire, only to find out it was really a woman. And Kevin relayed the tale of the day he took the 14 Mission bus and discovered a prostitute at work in the back seats.

"Time!"

"Shit. That’s it? There’s no way that was seven minutes," Dennis said as he stood, being pushed to move down to the next seat by a balding middle-aged man with a red hankie in his right pocket. "Hold on a sec, buddy," Dennis said as he held back the man. Then he leaned over next to Kevin and whispered into his ear.

"I pick you."

"Same," Kevin said and smiled.

Several seats down Wayne simmered.

"Okay, you are Brad. Number 32," Wayne bitterly scribbled in his notes, once again being sure not to make any eye contact. "Let’s start with question number one. What was the last book you read?"

"Hey, fuck that shit, man. I don’t want to do the questions with you. I want something else."

Wayne looked and for the first time widened his scope past the name and tag. The man looked like an aging biker. Or at least a guy who was attempting to look like a biker. Probably really just a frustrated accountant, Wayne figured. Pathetic. The man was in his mid-fifties, decked out in full leather two sizes too small. He smelled curiously like he had just stepped in something.

"What I want to do is take you back there into the bathroom. Then we can do some of that felching you were talking about!"

Sigh.