Friday. The clock strikes 10.
A fairy tale vision as my eyes feast upon the romantic décor of the back patio. A secret garden. A gorgeous secret garden.
I walk around the trees strewn with twinkle lights and hanging bird cages filled with soft spoken candles. Pink lights turn upwards to highlight the grey stone statues of Hindu deities. Banquettes with soft pillows to lounge about on and hidden nooks in which to steal a kiss. Doesn’t matter who you come with really, just by stepping inside you’re automatically put in the mood. Any old conversation seems new and exciting with a backdrop like this. Be intimate, laugh a lot. Smile at Carson Kressley from Fab 5, he’ll smile back.
To my right, a couple enveloped in their mushiness lock eyes with each other. The girl looks like a Cinderella knock-off and her date clearly wants to hold more than her glass slipper. He more likely wants to slip her one tonight if she’ll let him. But with a shy turn away, sly smile and sip of the drink, it’s clear she isn’t ready—or is playing hard to get.
My date, Mr. Prince, gallantly dressed in all black, gently touches the small of my back. “We can sit anywhere you want. Whatever you wish,” he says, as a true gentleman should.
I wish for many things. But first, I’ll take vodka chilled with cucumber and lemon. Make it two.
I’ve come a long way in the dating world, and Mr. Prince is proof of that. He opens door, asks good questions, and doesn’t say things that make my eyebrow rise. Actually, he says just the right things and genuinely means them.
I’ve definitely come a long way. Just a few years ago I came to this very restaurant with an ex, Mr. First, who was the king of shallow promises. He loved me, he loved me not, he loved me, he...just go away.
I’ve dated everything really, every kind of man. From a ballet dancer who sewed his own costumes and thought it cool to show me his homemade leather-beaded chaps, to a basketball player who thought it would be interesting to tell me, in detail, how lucky I was to date him. I remember him giving me the list of his perfections, lifting his shirt to show me his abs, pointing to his ostentatious Mercedes outside while he somehow forgot to notice that I was paying for our meal all by my wee little ol’ self.
I also once dated a man who told me, while I was standing naked before him, that I looked like a hooker with tiny tits and another man who always felt it necessary to feel, with his hands, the energy of his food before he decided to buy it. “No don’t eat that cantaloupe! He doesn’t feel good today.”
I could keep going. All night, actually. But despite it all, no matter what, I’ve always still believed that someday my prince would come.
As a little girl, I was obsessed with the Disney movie of the fairy tale, Beauty and the Beast. Most little girls imagine themselves as Beauty. I, however, being an awkward metal-mouthed tomboy wearing my brother’s oversized Stussy Shirts with Nike sweatbands around my head, associated more with the Beast.
I remember watching the movie and playing over and over again the scene when Beauty danced with the Beast at the ball. In one single moment, no words exchanged, they looked at each other and knew. Just like that. I was convinced that was how my love life would be. One look and the rest would be history.
As an adult, I have had many of those first glance looks. Those looks have often led me exactly nowhere, especially in situations where a man would lean in within the first 15 minutes of our date and whisper in my ear where exactly he wanted to stick it. Let’s just put it this way, it wasn’t sexy or pretty and definitely had no fairy tale ending.
Hopefully, my dating history won’t repeat itself in the likes of Mr. Prince. We’ll see. But if I keep drinking, I won’t be able to see clearly for much longer, so just one more sip and home before the clock strikes 2.
But Sur Lounge is a happily ever after indeed. Because like all fairy tales, I can always press replay and come back to the dream over and over and over again….
RATING:
SUR LOUNGE
616 N. Robertson Blvd.
West Hollywood, CA 90069
(310) 855-0880
www.surlounge.com
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