Some surreal stops on a complicated journey

The road to the One is curvier than Mulholland Drive, and has countless scenic overlooks. As a crisp fall rolled into a cool winter, a single gal-about-town’s road turned and turned:

It’s lunchtime on a picturesque October day in Santa Monica. I am at Wolfgang Puck’s restaurant, enjoying pad Thai noodles and my first date with a man who was born in the same Spanish town as my grandfather. This is a good sign, I tell myself. We have a very nice conversation about politics, the arts, and relationships. We are on the same page on several important things. Then comes the bomb: “Would you be interested in a threesome?” My eyebrows arch in a rare moment of speechlessness. Then, this man who has never even kissed me, extends an olive branch: “How about a foursome?”

I am with a couple of friends at the Well’s Halloween party in Hollywood when a tall bald man dressed like a sailor takes the seat next to me. Inside of five minutes, he asks my name, my zodiac sign, and if I want another drink. Then he stands up, pinches me on the cheek and announces, “You’re very cute and all, but you’re not going to have sex with me so I’m moving on.”

We are in an art studio in Venice, surrounded by my friend’s fiery paintings, when one of his friends moves his finger in the air in front of my strapless dress like a maestro over his orchestra. When I look puzzled, he says, “I am counting your freckles. I need to know if you have more than I do.” I don’t stick around for the final count.

I am at Star Shoes in Hollywood, and there he is: a vibrant, dreadlocked man wearing a skirt. OK, the skirt is hanging over his gray slacks and technically it’s a denim sarong, but you get the picture. The man in the skirt is sexy. Man in the skirt calls the next day and says, “If you’re not single, become single.” Man in the skirt speaks my language.

We are sitting inside a metal box, and this time the dreadlocked papi is not wearing a skirt but his black slacks have slits. “Sultans of Swing” is coming through the speakers at Deep, the racy Hollywood nightclub. OK, we’re not exactly in a box. This used to be a restaurant freezer and now it’s a VIP chamber. I am sitting on a leather couch thoroughly enjoying the hot-blooded man in my life. My friend, Kim, is on the other side of the sofa, vodka in hand, suave Southern man at her side. If it weren’t for the two deaf girls signing in the corner, this former freezer with its grainy black-and-white monitor would be all ours.

Then she comes in, the lean blond with leopard-print pants who pounces on the coffee table in front of us and crawls up to Kim’s date’s knees. She turns to my date, and asks him if anyone is using the strip pole. A nod from him and to the pole she goes. As the four of us watch the amateur seduction dance, a man appears claiming to be the wannabe-stripper’s husband. The husband of 20 years goes on about his wife’s tight body and that she is a yoga instructor.

Yoga seems to be their intimate trigger word. She abandons her hip gyrations and moves into a headstand, crawling her legs up and down the back wall. In a second, she’s in a back flip, her dirty blue eyes glazed and eerie. This proves to be too much for her doting husband, who joins her in a clumsy and drunk back flip on the floor.

The four of us stare at the nerdy freak show, amused and bemused.

“Isn’t she great?” the husband asks as they prowl out of the freezer.

“That felt like a David Lynch movie,” my date says, laughing.

More like a David Lynch kind of season, I think to myself, because, as my road twisted, turned and narrowed toward the year’s ending, it was the man in the skirt who got the girl.

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Maria Elena Fernandez can be contacted at [email protected].