In retrospect, it was probably not the wisest move to take a blind date to a rave.
Like all shaky ideas, however, it seemed like a good idea at the time. I’d talked to a very nice lady on the telephone. We’d gotten along and made a date to meet last Saturday. A few days later, I suddenly remembered that I was supposed to attend Manchester’s big hemp symposium and subsequent dance event, so I called her to cancel.
“I’m really sorry,” I said, trying to find a way to present my case so it didn’t look like I was trying to back out of a date. “I’ve just remembered that I’m supposed to cover a story on Saturday night.” (This sounded good - a way of announcing how responsible I am. Call me JournalistMan!)
“Oh really?” she asked. “What are you covering?”
I wanted to make a point of showing her how much I’d rather go out with her, so I did my best to sound scornful of the event in question. “Do you believe it?” I asked, “I’m going to a RAVE!” I made a point of using my tone of voice to imply that it was truly ridiculous for a man as adult and sophisticated as myself to be actually attending a rave. “I’m going to have to beg off on Saturday night, unless you’d like to come with me.” (This was an entirely rhetorical offer of course - what adult woman in her right mind would go to a rave on a first date?)
It came as a complete and utter surprise when she thought it over and decided to actually do it.
And that’s how I found myself taking a blind date to an event called Make Out City 4.
The biggest surprise of the evening turned out to be that it was a pretty good date. We found out that we had a lot in common - mostly that we both enjoyed making fun of the people around us. A hemp fashion show is an ideal opportunity for people who were nerds as kids to feel superior to the hip kids around them. We spent the bulk of the evening assigning nicknames to our fellow attendees.
“Hey, look over there,” she whispered in my ear, gesturing vaguely to my left with her chin. “Over by the snackbar - the one talking to ‘BreckGyrl’ - the one in the blue.” She indicated a pair of young teenage girls trying very hard to look old enough to be at the event. An almost nude girl with cobwebby dreadlocks was talking nervously with a friend dressed in many, many layers of blue, filmy gauze. The gauze was so filmy in fact, that although it was not see-through, it gave the impression that it really ought to have been.
“Oh, you mean Chiffon?” I asked. My date nodded. We both regarded her critically for a moment, then agreed that Chiffon was more of a radical-wanna-be than an actual radical. An actual radical would not have spent quite so much time in a tanning booth.
“Did you ever see that movie, Young Sherlock Holmes?” I asked. My date thought for a moment, then confessed to having watched it at some point. I indicated a youth who was entering the room. He was very, very young. The only hint that he might actually have been older than 15 or so was the long, scraggly beard that reached halfway down his chest. We christened him “Young Rasputin”.
I felt a particular fondness for one of our fellow guests. An employee of the event, he circulated through the lobby in a black t-shirt marked “security”, talking vaguely into a cell-phone. His goatee had been braided into a ferociously tight plait that stuck straight out from his chin like an antenna. True to the hemp theme of the evening, he was so blitzed that his red-rimmed eyes looked ready to fall out of their sockets and roll around on the floor. We named him “BassetBoy”.
We felt curiously unguilty as we made our way to the ballroom where the fashion show was to be held and claimed our seats at a table in a corner of the room.
Attending a hemp fashion show is at once a humbling and ego-boosting experience. It is humbling to look around a crowd of several hundred people and realize that you are the least hip person in the room. At the same time, there is always someone nearby to feel superior to. (Obviously, our neighbors at the table felt the same way, as they pulled their chairs as far from ours as possible to let their friends know that while they might be sitting near us, they certainly weren’t sitting with us.)
The fashion show itself was a lot of fun. The models were pretty, the clothes themselves were skimpy and the event was stuffed with quirky little details that made it really enjoyable. It was so enjoyable in fact, that it was halfway over before I remembered to take notes. Here, in no particular order, are my notes and observations of the show:
Why do they keep referring to the clothes as being made from “Hemp Silk”? Hemp is hemp and silk is silk. What do they do - feed the silkworms hemp leaves? (This raises a mental image of a bunch of happy little caterpillars forgoing cocoons and dedicating themselves to macramé.)
What do they mean by “hand-dyed” fabric? With a professional operation like this, wouldn’t it make sense to use a stick or something?
In a desperate attempt to “play the room” the middle-aged emcee has decided to sprinkle his banter with hip-hop phrases. He just made a request for “more noyze in da house”, thus displacing us as the least hip people in the room.
If this event is dedicated to socially progressive clothing, why is one of the vendors selling cotton t-shirts emblazoned with the slogan, “I [heart symbol] Big Booties”?
Most of these models seem to be well-to-do young women who are hoping to use this event as a springboard to a modeling career. Many of these fashions aren’t really appropriate for the beach OR a social occasion; they look like something out of a jungle movie. We’ve nicknamed one of the models “Sheena, Queen of the Trust Funds”.
My date’s reaction to the swimwear? “My God! Eat something!”
All in all, we enjoyed the fashion show. Unfortunately, our carefully cultivated sense of superiority deserted us at the dance event that followed. (My friends who know such things assure me that this wasn’t REALLY a rave - real ravers wouldn’t have been caught dead at an event this organized.) We really were not hip enough to be there. So in short order, we weren’t.
