It was time to get out again, and a half price offer on Speed Dating was tempting. Those who haven’t been initiated into this world may not know how many different themed nights are on offer. You can go to a food and wine lovers night (I don’t really qualify), curvy women (which I find a bit offensive), fit women (don’t want to create false expectations, or suddenly have to do hundreds of sit ups), toyboy dating (also a bit wrong…but more on that later). Something for everyone, or at least most.
After eliminating the above, the only night left was tall man dating. Perfect. A great chance to be totally shallow and frivolous, frock up, and wear big heels without worrying about short men complexes. After registering, the event date changed to the night before a 4am start, but I decided to not be a grandma, go anyway, and just take it easy on the endlessly free-flowing champers.
So about these tall men. While having 10 men to 12 women was promising, a quick scan of the room revealed that 7 of the 10 big friendly giants were my height or shorter, even without my patent heels. Not really what I would describe as “tall” (did they read the event name? or were they emergency last-minute free ring ins?) but the first champagne went straight to my head and forgiveness flowed through my veins.
I settled into my unromantic brightly lit perch right next to the ladies loo, with accompanying aromas, and the dates began. I met Mitch who had bought a house in Mitchelton “Get it, Mitch from Mitchelton? You’ll never forget me now! Mitch from Mitchelton! I didn’t want to buy a place in Gaythorne, get it!”, learnt about the “to die for” tourist attractions in Newcastle, discovered the meaning of the word teutonic (well I had to look it up later, I confess), and heard stories of a New Year’s Eve dinner at the top of the world trade centres while they were still standing. IT dudes revealed their musical other lives, including one who secretly played trombones (and owned 5 of them, including a plastic one?!), another played in big bands, which shocked his colleagues.
All and all, cool and fun.
In the break, the girls checked each other out, compared notes on how often they went to the gym, whether they had shaved their legs for the night, and how long they had taken to get ready to outshine the “competition”. Then I caught up on the buzz. A celebrity was here! A (literally) huge star from the Brisbane Bullets! Despite zero interest in sport, being alive in the early 90s in Brisbane when basketball fever was HUGE meant that I not only knew about the Bullets, but had even been to a game or two. Where was he? A brief scan over the heads of the mostly short men in the room quickly revealed two 6’7″ guys, one of whom looked like this. (I thought he deserved the “full size” setting.)
Ok, so he had more clothes on and it was now 2014, not 1994, but still. No way! Back in the day, the Bullets were allowed to import two star international players, so along with Leapin Leroy, Mr. Moore had come from Chicago and stayed on in Brisbane. And here he was, live in the flesh, and dateable.
By the time I had my celebrity date it was the giggly end of the night and I was a total fawning groupie for my allocated seven minutes. After Mr. M set his Oroton man bag down on the table, we talked about basketball, jazz, African drumming, snow, and whether I had kids (he asked). We weren’t meant to be, but I enjoyed my time in the sun, and the hilarious text messages with my friends after. For the record, I have to say Mr. M is still looking mighty fine, all these years later.