At the request of my girlfriend, I spent last night at a fancy, black tie ball / gala party thing. The night went well for me, but unfortunately, it wasn’t quite so kind to everyone…

During the ‘sit and watch the people on the dance floor but don’t dare get involved’ phase, I found myself noticing this odd man, dancing on his own. I only say he was odd, because it’s odd to see a guy at a fancy gala dancing on his own, giving it his best to the same ABBA songs we hear at every over 40’s social event, at which I was inexplicably present. Anyway, Odd Man was jigging away when he noticed Pretty Lady. Pretty Lady was, as you can guess, quite pretty, and she too was dancing on her own.

So, here we go. Boy meets girl. Odd Man starts dancing towards Pretty Lady, in sort of a weird ‘boogie walking’ kind of way. Basically, one leg was just dancing a bit faster than the other leg, which was therefore gradually guiding him over to where Pretty Lady was minding her own business. Odd Man arrives at his destination, and firmly taps Pretty Lady on the shoulder. Pretty Lady, still dancing, turns around to see Odd Man standing right in front of her, giving her his best ‘Chandler from Friends meets Carlton from The Fresh Prince of Bel Air’ dance moves. He smiles and nods at her as if to say “Check me out, honey. You see what I’ve got going on here? Let’s dance. We’ll keep it vertical for now, but you know it’s going to be horizontal pretty soon.”

Here’s where it gets rough…

Pretty Lady, still dancing, looks straight at him confusedly. Odd Man stops dancing and starts to look nervous, presumably feeling the initial pangs of rejection. Pretty Lady, still dancing, begins to slowly rotate back until she’s facing directly away from him, and again, she’s still dancing the whole time. Odd Man, standing silently, looks around to see if anyone saw that.

They did. A lot of them. They’re looking at him and laughing.

Odd Man begins dancing again and slowly boogies back to where he was in the beginning. After about two minutes, he stops, stands dead still for a second, hangs his head, and wanders off to the bar to get a drink.

Poor Odd Man.