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matchmaker party
Friday, August 20 1999
During the weekly "product resource meeting," the school marmish VP of IT was going around the room asking those of us in the product resource what projects we were working on. When it was my turn to share, I said that I was putting out fires left over from the site redesign, building and improving administrative tools, and working on the new homepage builder. The official corporate policy is still to slap things together as rapidly, vapidly as possible without any regard for ease of modification and update (two factors which, though they don't contribute much to the initial difference apparent in a site redesign, are essential to the long-term health of the site after the redesign). So it was natural for the VP of IT to tell me (in that condescending voice natural to managers who use to work for Qualcomm) that administrative tools were at the bottom of my priorities and that the new big thing, the web page builder, was at the top. She can tell me that sort of stuff until the cows come home, but ultimately I do pretty much what I want to, no matter her priorities. I work so effectively, with so little wasted motion, that no one really has any cause for complaint.
At a little past 5:00 pm, I slipped off to the nearby Gordon Biersch brewpub (check out this scathing review!) to meet up with a fellow online journal keeper known only as Rash. He's an old school C programmer who hails from Silicon Valley. His journal has some of the [green] look and [wEiRd-gEnIuS] feel of Coredumps from My Brain, without the gratuitous wackiness and anti-social political indifference. Rash is in town to visit an old would-be girlfriend and thought he'd meet up with me while he was about it. Gordon Biersch seemed like a logical rendezvous point, since it's one of the few places that I've written of going to that's neither home nor work.
I'd arranged to have Kim rendezvous with me Gordon Biersch too, even though she's usually infuriated by my drunkenly inappropriate behaviour whenever she meets me there. As I was coming back from pissing on the Swisher anti-splash, anti-drug urinal colanders in the bathroom (to Joe Walsh's "Life's Been Good To Me So Far" on the muzak machine), I saw her striding into the mainspace and didn't immediately recognize her in this context. I was thinking, "Hmm... that girl is kinda cute." Then I realized who she was and thought, "Oh, it's just Kim."
Gordon Biersch was its usual self on this Friday evening. There were plenty of youngish white collar women wearing plenty of makeup. There were plenty of dapper men standing around with glasses of strong beer in their hands, scanning the faces for a possible take-home girl.
Before long Rash showed up. I'd talked to him on the phone last night and thought he had a rather "grandfatherly" voice, so I'd been expecting a somewhat older-looking man. Indeed, Rash is no spring chicken (he can remember loading punch cards during his Freshman year in college back in 1972). But the years have been kind to him. Being the quirky intellectual type, he probably hasn't assaulted himself with nearly as much chemistry as your typical would-be retro-beatnik.
[REDACTED]
Kim and I didn't hang out long with Rash at Gordon Biersch; it hadn't been our intention to be there very long to begin with. As we waded through the throng out to the car, Kim remarked, "You sure do have interesting readers."
While we waited for the valet to get the Volvo, I noted a unique symbol on the back of a fancy car being left for the valet by an expensive middle-aged woman. The symbol consisted of two symbolic fish. The larger was the Christian fish, with Christ's name in Greek letters, and it was devouring the smaller fish head first. The smaller fish was the DARWIN fish, of course, though it didn't have any feet. It was such an extremely ironic symbol that I burst into uncontrollable laughter. After all, here was survival of the fittest being demonstrated precisely while it was supposedly being mocked.
The plan for the night was for Kim to attempt to set up her cute single co-worker, Renee, with my co-worker, Scott. Of all my co-workers, Scott seemed the most appropriate for Renee. She's a classy chick with refined tastes and worldly interests. Scott definitely is the most refined and erudite of my colleagues, though he also has a bit of a checkered past, as evidenced by his Harley motorcycle, tattoos, piercings, and many crazy tales. Scott had pulled me aside earlier to ask man-to-man if Renee really was cute, and I'd assured him that she was, that we weren't just trying to palm off some hapless girl upon him.
Kim figured we'd start out at our place at eight with wine and cheese, then do dinner at a fancy sea food place down in the Gas Lamp district, and then, well, who knew?
Scott showed up promptly at eight, followed shortly by Renee wearing a skimpy red dress. The two seemed to hit it off well from the start, rather as expected. Following Kim's advice, Renee completely changed her outfit about a half hour after arriving, just to refresh her entrance and maintain her mystery. It's little things like this that keep us guys simultaneously baffled and fascinated by all womankind.
Eric the Web Developer arrived, as did Lisa from next door. Evidently I was supposed to have invited my co-worker Al, but of course I'd forgotten, so Kim gave him a last-minute phone call. He showed up wearing a fancy pimp jacket and everything. Al also brought along his neighbor Jeremy (who happens to be one of Lisa's friends from Wisconsin) and another guy, a quiet hapless character who identified himself simply as a "Republican Activist." In my circles I don't meet a great many self-described Republicans, so this guy ended up being something of an object of exotic fascination.
Rash, the online journal keeper from Silicon Valley, swung by for a brief appearance and a glass of wine, but he didn't stay long. He talked mostly with Kim while he was here.
We split up into two parties and caught cabs to the Gas Lamp District of downtown San Diego.
As the members of my subcontingent were walking from our cab to our destination, a place called Blue Point, we randomly stumbled upon the company Grand Pooh Bah and his red-eyed over-worked graphic designer girlfriend. He was nothing but friendly, giving us all hugs. We were quite a spectacle, arguably three of the Grand Pooh Bah's most productive employees with additional hottie chicks. Somewhat inappropriately, Eric brought up a random promise the Grand Pooh Bah had recently made to send the entire product team on a trip to Hawaii as a reward for our recent hard work. The Grand Pooh Bah, who is notorious for his unkept promises, didn't miss a beat. He immediately crowned Eric co-ordinator of the Hawaii trip project and basically absolved himself of all responsibility. (Just for the record, I cannot imagine wanting to vacation in Hawaii with a big group of my co-workers, the people I see more than my girlfriend, but that's beside the point.)
We had a big reserved table at the Blue Point. And though the Blue Point was a fancy restaurant full of fancy ways, it didn't have the elegance or grace of an average restaurant in, say, New Orleans. For example, the waitress felt the need to card everyone at our table before serving us alcohol, though when I asked her how old she thought I was, she replied "25."
I don't remember much about the food or the conversation. For some reason I was on the very edge of passing out, more from exhaustion it seemed than from actual drunkenness. Towards the end of dinner, just being there was an unbearable torture. I just wanted to go home. Unlike most of my colleagues, I had no strength to go to a nearby dance club to celebrate the last night of Azhar's internship. (Azhar is the cute Arab girl who happens to know how to program computers.)
The bill was an absolute scandal, of course, and it brought out a frugal side of Kim that I've never seen before. Of late she's gradually developed a much more sensible view of money, something she credits to my miserly influence.
[REDACTED]
As we were leaving, Kim went around the table drinking all the wine that remained in the glasses. It did me proud to see her fighting so hard to keep that expensive wine from getting poured down some godforsaken drain. But the kicker was as we were actually heading out the door. She decided to take a half-full glass of Chardonay with her for the cab ride back to Ocean Beach. Unfortunately, though, one of the managers grabbed her and didn't let her get away with her prize. Kim saw this as further proof that San Diego is a hopelessly uptight, pleasureless town. In any "real city," she figures, no one should care if you walk out with a glass of wine after dropping $300 on dinner.
Back at our courtyard community, our neighbors were all hanging out on the grass in a circle drinking beers, listening to ho-hum Dave Matthews and not seeming to be enjoying themselves all that much. By now my contingent consisted only of Kim, Scott, Renee and me, and we were in a considerably friskier mood than our neighbors. We went into our place and turned up the music and started dancing. It wasn't just the artist formerly known as Prince back when he was actually known as Prince, but it was Madonna as well. By fits and starts I managed to develop a second wind, especially when Kim tried to intitiate a strip-tease. Suddenly I was fully energized, and vowed to go streaking through all the calm beer-drinking, Dave Matthews-listening neighbors in the courtyard. Scott didn't think I was serious until I actually took off my pants. I ran outside towards the back end of the courtyard, waited for a moment making animal noises and then ran back to my apartment. At the time I had the impression that my calm drunken neighbors were more disgusted than shocked by my behaviour, though this probably wasn't the case.
Our party ended up dissolving into a makeout party, the sort for which middle schoolers are famous. Kim and I were on one couch acting all coochy-coo, actually trying to spy on the action on the other couch. Scott and Renee, you see, were kissy-kissing big time!
We retreated to our bedroom and let them crash in our living room. Kim saw this as her first real matchmaking success in a year of attempts.
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