Words with More Than Friends

Oh, good. The New Year is upon us. Since most of you will again be preoccupied, this time with desperately attempting to enjoy the single worst night of the year, here’s another slightly shorter post for y’all.

A couple years ago one of my friends got married. Due to other obligations, I had to arrive after the ceremony, which was fine by me, because I knew just one other guest at the shindig, and wasn’t very enthused about the idea of making small-talk with strangers for an extended period of time. By the time I rolled in, however, my one and only wing-girl was exiting the event to go pack for a trip to Florida with her boyfriend. “Later!” she called, after squealing about how excited she was. Then she breezed out of the banquet hall, leaving me at the dreaded Singles table with a bunch of dicey looking loners, all picking at their carrot cake cupcakes in silence.

Seeing not many other options, I began stockpiling vodka tonics at my place setting; weddings in general are no time for sobriety, let alone one where I forthwith got ditched for a dude by the sole person I knew. After a few drinks, however, I was chatting it up with my neighboring oddballs, and soon found out that two cousins, Howard and Courtney, were also in their own version of Hell. We made a pact to not step foot on the dance floor no matter who begged us and to drink as much as possible until the bartender closed up shop.

Of course we ended up on the dance floor anyway, although thankfully the only photo of me that exists from the entire affair features just my hand (displayed below). I became transfixed on the obscenely tiny feet of one of the bridesmaids, and after the DJ spun his last song, the two cousins and I hightailed it to the hotel bar, where another wedding party had already gathered and the bride, still clad in her poofy dress and lacy veil, was stuffing her face with Domino’s pizza and Cinna Stix.

Howard was nice enough, but so not my type. As the night wore on it became clear he was attempting to flirt with me, but apparently lacked a certain set of male organs that would enable him to do so properly. When the bar closed, I said good-bye to him and Courtney, lingering just a few seconds longer than necessary to see if he’d make any sort of move. When he didn’t, I skipped outside and hailed a cab. As I slammed the door closed, my phone buzzed: I’d been invited to play a game of Words with Friends with Howard.  Accompanying his game request was a message: I thought you were really pretty. I should have kissed you, huh? 

You know things are bad when the only way you can get hit on is via an iPhone app. Not knowing what else to do, I replied with a winky face and played a word. Howard never made another move, so to speak, and twelve days later our game went inactive. Sounds like the life-cycle of just about every relationship there is. Who knew Words with Friends was so frighteningly analogous to Real Life?