What a week! Yesterday I ended an eight day project involving a series of focus groups, in home interviews, and shop-a-longs in Cincinnati and Charlotte. My brain is spent, so much so that I cannot even begin the report writing process until I get to chill out a bit. Cue the Jimmy Buffett music and find me a blender.
My hotel in Charlotte was situated walking distance from a “Gentleman’s Club.” Where this term came from, I am not sure because I don’t think you could accuse any married man who frequents such a club a gentleman. Anyway, someone I was traveling with this week had his heart set on going. He asked me to tag along but I declined saying, “That kind of thing just isn’t my bag baby.”
My “bag” is sitting at the hotel bar with my laptop and writing stories about the people sitting around me. For those of you who think this is antisocial behavior, I will remind you that I talk to strangers all day long for a living. The last thing I want to do at night is engage in idle conversation with my fellow business travelers.
Well the truth is oftentimes stranger than any fiction I could write in a hotel bar. I was sitting at the bar, minding my own business with a Jameson on the rocks and my trusty MacBook Pro when I noticed a younger woman to my left working her thumbs out on her blackberry like she was trying to hack into the WOPR computer.
A minute later, another woman walked into the bar with a very drunk “friend” in tow. The two women smiled at each other as if they knew each other. The conversation with the man and woman went like this:
Woman: “What do you want to drink, baby?”
Man: “I think eight drinks is enough, I’ll just have a beer.”
Woman: “Bartender, can we have two beers?”
Man: “Can we take these back to the room?”
Bartender: “Yes”
Man: “Come on, I have you for two more hours.”
Woman: “Let’s go, baby.”
With that the man, lets call him John for the sake of argument, and woman left the bar.
Turning my attention back to the woman next to me, it seemed as if she met a friend at the bar. The guy was relatively good looking and the two hit it off. Next thing I know I hear the woman tell the bartender that she and her friend will be back in a half hour and will pay for their drinks then.
Surely enough, the two were back in a half hour looking a little disheveled.
The conversation that ensued between them upon their return is one that I will never forget:
Woman: “Hey, you are a really nice guy.”
Man: “Thank you.”
Woman: “I don’t find too many nice guys. Most are jerks.”
Man: “Well I am here to change the world’s opinion of men.”
Me (to myself as Seth Meyers from SNL): Really? You just paid for sex but you are trying to change the world’s opinion of men. Really? I wonder what your wife thinks of how you are going about this noble effort.
Woman: “Hold on one sec, I think my cell phone is ringing.”
Woman’s cell phone Ringtone: “Would-you-like-to-play-a-game?”
All in all it was a great two-week project filled with a lot of insight and comical observations. Can’t wait to see what the next project has in store.
