There Are No Men In Cleveland. Except For Chris Evans.

So friends, the blog is back. Another summer, another search (party). Since there are no impending weddings, or at least any that anyone dared invite me to with THIS kind of thing going on, this will be an open-ended expedition, and mainly just a chronicling of mis-adventures. Which always seem to find me. Or maybe vice versa. I mean, let’s be real – probably both.

It turns out, there are no men in Cleveland. Don’t let the census fool you. Presumably, there are 190,471.2 males residing in the greater metropolitan area, but all except 0.2 appear to be married, gay, both, a priest, or homeless. And while I have great respect for Cleveland’s transient population, they don’t make very good partners for my trying-to-get-it-together-and-be-fabulous lifestyle.

Friday night, the relatively unattached ladies and I attended the First Fridays mixer thing at the Cleveland Museum of Art. According to one girlfriend: “I’ve been. It’s man-stacked.” WIN. Game on. I unearthed the sexiest mint green stilettos I had, slid into my ruffliest, girliest short skirt, and even landed a sweet University Circle parking spot (making the survival in the heels much easier). The heavens were smiling upon me. This was going to be good.

I met my first friend, Tina, inside and we headed straight to the bar, obviously. Yes, there is a bar in the museum. As there should be. While waiting to order, the man sitting next to us offers us his seat and explains that he was just leaving. After multiple compliments, slurred words, several inappropriate hand touches and a stumble or two, he does vacate the area, and thank God, because he wasn’t a day under 80. “Didn’t you just say you preferred older guys?” Tina joked to me. Yes. Geriatric. Definitely.

Our third lovely lady, Lindsey, arrived, and we no sooner wandered into the event area when two very definingly Italian men saunter over to us and awkwardly (cornily) begin a conversation. They were apparently brothers, and I can’t remember either of their names, which should be a good indicator of where this was going. The chatty one had to be at least 45. Tight black button-down, gold chain around his neck, bad greasy (or gelled . . . tough to tell) hair, super smarmy, said he did real estate and lived in Pepper Pike. They asked what we did. Tina told him she’s a speech pathologist. “Oh, so you teach those people how to talk?” What is wrong with you. "These people" is a totally unacceptable way to refer to people with autism, and not only unacceptable, but digging you further into the ground. I asked the brother what line of work he was in. “I don’t tell people what I do for a living.” Okay . . . ? Are you in the mafia? Are you in the witness protection program? Are you a felon? “What do you do?” the older, greasy, smarmy one then says to me. I tell him I’m a behavior therapist. (Sounds legit, right.) “Oh, so the two of you could tag team,” Smarmy says with a creepy laugh. “That’d be like if I were a gynecologist and my brother here was a proctologist.” I literally spit my cabernet back into my cup. Is this real life. Thank GOD Lindsey had just spotted a fancy and fabulous mutual ladyfriend (who would never support us tolerating such bullshit from idiots), at which point I yelled, “Sorry, gotta go!” and bolted to visit with the delightful Cheryl.

Poor Tina was stuck with these two while Lindsey and I chatted with Cheryl and her friend Flora, and after a series of exchanges from Smarmy and Tina including, Smarmy: “So Tina, do you want kids?” Tina: “Yes, definitely” Smarmy: “Well, let’s go! Right now! [insert beckoning arm motion towards the balcony],” we set a rescue mission into operation and prepared to vacate the premises. Tina’s manfriend had arrived at this point, and the onset of a handsome, well-dressed, articulate, manners-possessing male on the party made it perfectly clear that we all needed to find more like him. Onto the next adventure. The night was still younger than the average age of all of that evening's suitors.

We all headed downtown to Society Lounge on East 4^th, one of the classiest libations establishments in the Cleve. Perhaps not as “man-stacked”as the Museum of Art, but we’re not going to meet the garden variety man of our dreams at a Denny’s, n’est-ce pas? We are kind of snobby and we don’t apologize for it. There's no time for entertaining classless morons when you're pushing 30. I park like ten miles away and walk through downtown, and while I’m en route, two valet guys sitting outside the Chocolate Bar whistle at me. I actually turned around to see who they were whistling at, because I do not believe I have ever been whistled at before. “Hey baby,” one says. (Not your best opening line, sir, considering YOU are the baby who is still in high school.) “Are you talking to me?” I actually asked out loud. “Yeah. Where you going?” “Not here,” I say. “But I’ll catch you on the way back.” (No I won’t, but what does one say to these sorts of things. I didn't have the heart to put him in his place.) “Can I have your number?” the seventeen-year-old one asks. “Uh, no,” I laugh. “But thanks for . . . trying.” I hope he didn’t think I was being insulting. Sometimes a girl needs a little validation boost, even if it’s from someone with a learner’s permit.

I head to East 4^th, which really is one of the best parts of Cleveland, and we run into another fantastic ladyfriend, Caitlin, and some of her grad school friends at Society, out celebrating her birthday. We order delightful and ridiculously easy to drink cocktails called French 75 (naturallement), and cozy into a corner booth with a prime view of the bar. Dark, swanky, with swallowing velvet seats, very F. Scott Fitzgerald. After a few of these, the room starts to spin, which is the tradeoff for the drinks being very expensive – one only needs a few. “Oh my God,” someone says. I can’t remember who because, as I may have just noted, the room was kind of spinning. “Chris Evans just walked in and is sitting at the table next to us.” I would like to please take this opportunity to note that that man is incredibly f-ing hot. Like, makes the girls in the booth next to him melt kind of hot. He was with two other people, and I didn’t want to bother him, although it WOULD have made for excellent blog material. I (un)fortunately was not in my soberest state, after having laid on the bathroom floor for like ten minutes while Lindsey photo-documented my amusing stint of trying to regain my balance in my heels (thank you Lindsey), so this did not seem the most opportune time to introduce myself to a movie star. Sometimes I’m smart like this, even while heavily intoxicated.

Chris Evans’ table of three has now increased in size, but I can’t really see him that well, because (a) it’s dark in there; (b) my rarely worn contacts are getting blurry, as they do after a few hours; and (c) those French 75’s mean business. I’ve never even seen a movie he’s been in anyway, and I’m not one who’s ever been particularly interested in asking celebrities for a photograph. Even in my prouder moments. So, we took our fabulous selves home, and with a smile, we expanded the narrowing man classifications to married, gay, both, a priest, homeless, or a deliciously beautiful, temporarily gazable movie star, just out of reach, one table over.