S’wank’ Central

The invite goes something like this.

Dear Dee… Please come to my 30th birthday party at [insert v swanky cocktail bar] wearing ‘your best sexy outfit’.

A whole phrase geared to touch off all one’s least favourite insecurities about what to wear and whether you want to go when you’re comfortably upholstered AND conscious that you’ll be the straightest person there… especially as dinner was not part of the programme. Which means cocktails and no food… that’s just plain crazy, right? Or it means the whole plan is to get plastered…

Sigh. But you can’t say no… Especially as it’s the first time I’ve seen her since we moved house…

So, as insurance against getting too messy I drove. I also took a couple of local mates who were going too, this so that I didn’t have to walk into a swanky bar on my own…

But before we actually get to the event I have to get out of the house. Which I did in the usual way by closing the door behind me.

Right before I realised the car and house keys were still [ahem] inside the house.

SH************T!

Thank goodness that I’m on the ground floor. And thank goodness the bedroom window wasn’t locked. The bedroom with louvre windows which needed disassembling before climbing through (in best sexy outfit).

I broke 2 of the window panes… but did get through, face first onto my bed, much to the bemusement of Chino who seriously questioned my sanity as I came barrelling in… And I got the keys and also grabbed the spare set which are now secreted in a v safe v secret place on the other side of the front door, just in case the unthinkable should ever happen again. Happily the sexy outfit was none the worse for the experience…

So having solved that little problem I drove my mates and me to Swank Central [not its real name], one of Sydney’s popular cocktail spots.

And seriously, while it was definitely not my scene, in its defence it was a bit of a cultural insight.

It was great to watch the skilled barmen and women pour and mix some unbelievable cocktails. They LOOKED awesome (the barmen too), and surely tasted great, but at $15 a drink they’re not something I wanted to knock back one after the other (wasn’t stopping the others)… nor was that sort of frenzy something I had the pocketbook for either.

The opportunities to people watch were unlimited. I feel for the young girls dressing to impress, eyefuls of cleavage and some serious leg showing who were getting slowly more inebriated finding even the most unusual guys getting more and more attractive to them as the volume of cocktails increased.

Then there are the men and boys eyeing them off, wondering which of them they’ll get to go home with… The ratio of girls to guys was carefully managed by the door at 2:1so the guys had their pick…

Someone asked me if I’d go to that sort of place to meet guys.

The answer was [ahem] “Hell no…”

All that being said I did actually have a good time, the company I went with was good and it was nice to meet people from other facets of the birthday girl’s world… The evening passed fast enough and though we got home late, and had to go via the golden arches so that we actually didn’t starve overnight, I survived.

Insecurities intact.