You may have heard me mention a time or two before (okay, so more like nine) that where I live isn’t exactly dating Mecca-not for this little black duck anyway. I’ve made my piece with this fact of life, as much as a healthy, red-blooded, woman can. It gives me more time to focus on my work (building my shoe collection) and the things which are really important (building Mum’s shoe collection). Dad however, just can’t shake the idea; I’m single, I must be miserable.
My dad is an incredibly supportive father; he doesn’t make me pay rent and still reads just about everything I get published. As a child of the 50’s he might as well have been baptised in the feminist movement-nothing is out of reach for his baby girl. All my dad wants is for me (and I suppose my brother’s too) to be happy. His idea of what will make me happy is where the problem begins. You see, despite my years of study, a career that I love, and my slowly building nest egg, what I really need (according to dad) in order to be happy is a boyfriend-who of course will become a husband in short order. But not just any man will do. Oh NO! Dad has a checklist of criteria far longer and more detailed than any list of my own could ever be (note: my list consists of 1. cute butt, 2. buff, 3. cute butt). To put it plainly, my Dad wants me married, and then quickly pregnant, to the next messiah of capitalism… who has a cute butt.
The fact that I don’t go out much “with the young people” disturbs Dad, my not staying longer at parties “with the young people” disturbs Dad, and me working from home with little chance of mingling “with the young people” disturbs Dad. Though, more than anything, my lack of proactive man hunting disturbs Dad. My father thinks that finding a good man is EASY; you’ve just got to know where to look, and turn on the feminine magic.
So, when Dad got an invitation to some wealthy banker “friend’s” 30th birthday party in Singapore I was going. Despite the guy being “a bit weird and not very attractive”, Dad had gotten it into his head that the event would be wall to wall eligible, wealthy, men of appropriate age (for pimping off to his daughter). “If you want to get a boyfriend this is the place to be,” he’d proclaimed when I asked why I had to go. I’d fallen in love with the last guy Dad had ‘introduced’ me to, so I sucked down my juvenile impulse to yell “Take the filly to The Fair, huh Dad?” and went about deciding on a costume for a 1978 theme… Unfortunately Dad vetoed the costume I wanted him to wear; black leather jacket, chunky gold chain and t-shirt that read ‘Pimp Daddy’.
The night of The Fair (a.k.a. the party) arrived and in the best Annie Hall costume I could muster I stepped into 1978; which apparently is a land of nubile Asian bodies in micro-minis and blonde afro wigs, who drape themselves over slimy men in polyester suits with sweat stains in their armpits. (Note: outdoor party in Singapore, rarely a good idea.)
It was Annie Hall meets studio 64.
One of the Pink Ladies smiled at me (maybe there was someone here that I could talk to after all) and then groped her girlfriend’s butt (or rather not).
I downed a few glasses of champagne of surprisingly good quality and pretended to talk to my parents, while I scanned the room. There was a girl in green hot-pants (I could see her bottom-hehe) and pink roller-skates, a 6’3” German in a batik ‘Saturday Night Fever’ shirt, and someone wearing cat’s ears (I have no idea why), but Collin Ferguson’s clone was nowhere to be seen. “More champagne?” don’t mind if I do.
The night wore on and I drank. It was hot, so I drank. I couldn’t hear a word anyone was saying, so I drank. I was on my way to the bathroom when a sequined, tiger-print, stomach stopped me. “Hey, great hat. What are you dressed as?”
“Annie Hall,” I replied to the stomach… Crickets… “She’s the title character of a Woody Allen film,”… blank guppy-fish stare… “It won the Oscar for best picture in ‘78?”
“Oh that’s a great idea for a costume, what’s the movie called?” Brick wall, meet head.
On my way back I was stopped again, this time by a tennis player, the only guy at The Fair that didn’t come attached to a packet of cigarettes. “So why are you wearing a tie and a hat?” he asked. (I think he may have been flirting, but I can’t be sure.)
“Because I’m dressed as Annie Hall.”
Stunned mullet; the most contagious of all facial expressions.
Lucky for me, everyone at The Fair was a chain smoker, and right on cue (if I had anymore champagne I was going to throw) Mum pleaded weak lungs and we were finally leaving. “You can stay if you like…” Dad said, blocking my escape. “…with the young people.” (Note: there were no young people, just slightly less old people.)
“The only person I know here is him,” I said and pointed to a man in a white suit and Steven Segal-esque wig, who was handing out cigarettes to his surrounding harem.
I quickly side-stepped Dad and was quite literally bolting for clean air when an older Indian man said to me, “I love your costume, Annie Hall right?” I threw a brief “thank you” over my shoulder, which sounded far more aggressive than I had intended, and kept moving. I should have been more polite, but The Fair had proved to be anything but fun and games.
I’d hoped Dad had learnt his lesson from the whole awkward event; understood that good men are hard to find, that it’s okay for me to be single… or at least that you don’t take a Clydesdale to a market for Shetland Ponies. I was wrong. “You didn’t even try. You just sat with us all night.” I was about to launch into a tirade about him being completely naïve, if not blind and ridiculous, when mum (the only sane resident of the forty-fifth floor) said “You didn’t honestly think that anyone there was appropriate for her, did you?”
“Well, how do I know what a good looking guy looks like?” (!!!!!)
