Erin: Welcome to Hotter Than Ever, where we uncover the unconscious rules we've been following. We break those rules and we find a new path to being freer, happier, sexier, and more self expressed. I'm your host, Erin Keating.
Today I want to talk about singles events, places to meet people that you go to IRL, dating events in the wild, oh, God. So, you know, I've been dating online, meeting people online since the Marine and I broke up. And it's fun and everything and I've met some nice people and I'm sort of figuring out a new level of person and dynamic that I want to be in. I definitely really enjoy dating interesting and compelling human beings, even if it's extremely casual and there's kind of no future facing conversation.
Because where I am in my head is I think it's best for me to just kind of date around, have a couple of folks that I like to see and not really try to do anything serious. Right now I want to focus on myself and my career and my life and I want to have a little romance and I want to have some sex, but I'm not looking to fall in love at the moment. It takes me over, it consumes me, and I think I need that energy for myself right now if I want to find a new consistent partner, lover, whatever that will happen. I trust that I will have what I want when the timing is right. Right now, what I want is to meet fun people and have a good time and so I have challenged myself to get offline and go to physical places where people who are looking to meet people meet in a kind of structured way. So my challenge here is to show up in my body. In real life, it's very easy to sit behind your phone screen and be personable and adorable and send photos and chat and get to know each other and be sexy and whatever you want to do on those apps.
It's a whole other thing to put your body in the world and show up in a room full of other people who are looking to meet people. I really have never been to a singles event. I have never been speed dating, I have never done anything like this for fear of being judged, for fear of not fitting in, not being wanted, being too old, too fat, too something to not what the doctor ordered or not whatever these random dudes at these events are there looking for and I'm really kind of done worrying about things. I really want to push myself through discomfort because I know on the other side of discomfort is adventure and on the other side of discomfort is wish fulfillment. And on the other side of discomfort is maybe my dreams coming true in a thousand different ways. Discomfort, I think is a beautiful thing and I'm really working to embrace it in my life because who cares, right? I'm 52 years old, I have everything I need to live a perfectly happy adult life.
I am out there chasing my dreams in a thousand different ways and I don't know if you'll find any dreams fulfilled in the examples of the two events that I went to, but I cannot wait to tell you about them. Okay, I went to a singles dating event put on by an LA matchmaker. So a friend of mine who lives in Venice, California, Venice is very sort of like hippie woo woo, but kind of high end hippie woo woo, they call it like a conscious community. Now if you hear a little bit of sarcasm dripping off my voice voice, it's because I just don't really fit in this world and I'm suspicious of anyone who's like walking around calling themselves conscious.
But I do have a dear friend who lives in Venice who is part of this scene and she is kind of my partner in crime for some of these adventures. And she invited me, she said, let's go to this thing, so I signed up. They you sign up online, they tell you whether or not you're going to be accepted. Of course they accept you, they accept everyone from as far as I could tell from being there and then they wait until the day of to send you the address. So there's like this intrigue of like where's it going to be and what's it going to be, so like have a babysitter.
I work my schedule to figure out how to go to this thing and my friend bails. LA is big and she kind of found herself on the wrong side of town and she needed to go home first. And I was like, it's fine. You know what, I'm actually better off in these situations by myself because if I'm with a girlfriend, I'm just going to want to gossip in the corner. And if I'm by myself, I'm actually going to put myself into the scene pretty completely or as completely as I'm capable of in any given moment. So it's at this kind of cool bar that I'd never heard of. Of course I don't go to bars in the middle of LA. I pull up, I park down the street and I see these two girls headed into the bar and they have like, like it's like a hoochie instagram look that the two of them have.
They're probably in their early to mid-30s. They've got fake body parts. They've got short, tight dresses and long hair extensions. And they look, you know, it's a little bit of a strippery look. And so I'm like, oh, is that what this is? Wait, they can't be going to this event, oh, God. Okay, so, yes, indeed they were they were going to this event teetering on these very high heels. Look, you do you. But this is not a world or a character type that I am comfortable with. Right. Or that only because I haven't been around it and I have a lot of fucking judgment. Can you hear it? It's dripping off my voice. So I go into the place, there's people awkwardly standing around. I go to the bar, I get a Diet Coke. I had taken an edible earlier so that I would just be more relaxed.
So the whole time in the event, I was drinking Diet Cokes. Alcohol is not my friend, especially not in these circumstances and I have to drive a car. So I'm there by myself and one of the people working the event approached me and I said, well, what is the story with this event? And she said, well, the person who runs it is a matchmaker and she was seeing that there was a lot of demand coming from the LA area, and they've just opened this office of their matchmaking business here in LA and they wanted to do an in real life dating event. And I thought, okay, all right, cool, that's a smart business strategy, I'm always curious about people's business strategies.
And, you know, as I was standing with her, there was a kind of a tall, awkward guy also standing with her. He was not giving me any time of day and that in general was my experience with the men at this thing, is that they were not giving me any time of day. But honestly, I didn't really care because they were not guys I would have been interested in. It's surprising to me to see guys in these contexts, it was surprising to me to see how insecure they seemed and how uncomfortable they seemed. And that makes sense, right? Like, if you're not good at meeting people in real life, you might come to an event like this where it is structured for you to meet someone. But I was actually really surprised at how awkward most of the men were.
To describe the men, they were kind of everywhere from like mid-30s to probably young-50s. Some were cute, most were not, like, most had something a little bit off about them. But in general, people were really nice and my strategy for the night was just to embrace. I don't give a perspective, and to not be there with any expectation that I would get something out of it romantically, because once I sized up the room and saw the guys who were there and saw the vibe and saw those hoochie girls, now the rest of the women who were there, largely normal in a Los Angeles kind of way, much younger than me. There might have been one woman who was kind of my age, but young.
And that was interesting, too, because that was clearly what was on the menu for these guys. Some of them seemed nervous, and some were there with girlfriends, and some of them were there by themselves and they were all dressed up. They definitely were dressing as they thought they should for a singles event, which was sort of sexy, tighter clothes, presentational, and they were cute, you know. So we get ushered into this room for the activity part of the night, and the activities were getting to know you Icebreaker games. But the host introduced herself, and she stood with a microphone next to the DJ in front of the room, looking like Instagram, basically, she looked like Instagram come to life. She was wearing a sexy satin dress.
She was very pretty, she was gorgeous. I just was noticing the artifice and I think for Gen X women, you know, this is not how we came up. This is something we wrestle with in terms of how we present ourselves in the world. You know, this is not punk rock, this is packaged and polished, and this is what young women, women in their 30s, look like to me, largely on Instagram. Now everyone has a personalized feed and whatever, but this is the prevailing look of the day. And she's really rocking it. She's really pulling it off. And she pulls up her microphone and she says, oh, God, and I'm gonna sound like such a--and I do not mean to-- but she basically congratulates everyone. I'm not going to do an impression because it's just too mean. She congratulates everyone for having the bravery to show up at this event and she acknowledges that it's hard for all of us to open our hearts and tells us that we're doing a really good thing by being willing to even just show up in this context, to go after the thing we are all looking for, which is love and romance and relationship connection.
I will have to say that this room is now crowded with people, and we're all kind of like, keeping our own personal space, but it's like we're squished in there, and all I want to do is make jokes like, I am just dying to find a buddy to pull aside to tell all the jokes to that that are welling up inside me about this circumstance. Because that is how I respond to the world. I make jokes, that's how I survive. And when things feel weird and uncomfortable, I just want to call it out in real time with someone else who's there who will acknowledge it. The room smelled like the inside of a dating app, it is what I imagine Tinder to smell like. I was dying to share this observation with people who were in the room, but I also realized that that would make me into a totally insincere or if not a, then certainly someone who is not playing along with the vulnerability part of this exercise.
For me, vulnerability is a little bit more earned than what was required at this event. Also, it was an event with a step and repeat. If you guys don't know what that is, a step and repeat is like a backdrop, like a red carpet backdrop. And there was a photographer and a videographer there at the event, and people were standing in front of this backdrop that had the name of the matchmaking service on it, and they were posing as though they were on a red carpet. Some people came with such an incredible posing game, I was amazed. Like, this one woman, she stood, she was up there, she was wearing a sexy dress, but she had a coat on on top of it. And then the photographer was like, go, and she just, she was like a stop motion animation of a sexy girl on a red carpet. She had all the moves. I was like, wow, this, she must be an influencer way, that's the kind of event this is.
So we're supposed to be vulnerable, but there's also a step and repeat and a photographer. And there's just a lot of Instagram in effect. What can I say? So we split into pairs. We go, like, wandering around the room. I go around the room, wandering around, looking for someone who will look me in the eye. It's really---there was a lot of, like, looking past me to younger people or to other people. And I was doing the same full on, like, I am nope, not going to pair up with this dude.
So I end up with a nice guy who is kind of hot in a like Barishnikov kind of way, not my type, but he was very good at eye contact. And I was like, what are you doing here? You definitely can meet people in real life. Oh, he's here to meet people in real life. So the host says, okay, this activity is the question that you need to answer is, what can your partner do to make you feel loved? I mean, that's a heavy duty question to start out with, that was not an icebreaker, that's like a plumb, the depths of your soul question. I was like, oh, God.
I was like, you go first, so he said something, he said affirmation, he wanted affirmation. He wanted to be, you know, seen and praised for the things he was doing well and for being who he was. I liked that, I thought that was sincere and nice. And I said, do what you say you're gonna do, like, don't be a flake. Be a good communicator, show up when you say you're going to show up. Text when you say you're going to text, like, don't, don't mess around.
Good communication is everything to me and it's a thing that is kind of the least possible to enforce on in dating because some people want to show up thoroughly and other people don't. And so my job, dating online has been to just try to get rid of the conversations where someone is not being accountable. It's just kind of like, eh, for this is not worth my time because my time is so incredibly valuable to me. So there was another question that I don't remember. We were supposed to split up and find other partners. I clearly was not into it. Then there was a hugging activity, and the host said, if you feel uncomfortable with this activity, you should leave the room right now. And every cell in my body was like, get out, so I did.
I definitely don't need practice hugging people. I get plenty of hugs in my life. I have children. I have lovers. Like, I'm good. I'm 5 foot 10. I do not need to hug a short guy or an awkward guy or a guy who really desperately needs a hug. I'm not going to be the person who's going to give you that, so I stepped out and in the other room, there was a tarot reader, sexy tarot reader with glitter all over her chest, and she looked beautiful. And there was a line of men waiting to get their tarot cards read. And so I sat down next to this guy and like, I do, I just started shooting the shit.
And, you know, it was so awkward and hilarious because I could tell when I started talking to guys at this event that they were like, I'm Are you hitting on me? I mean, honestly, I'm in such a don't give a era of my life that I kind of enjoyed how awkward they felt about me talking to them. But after a while, you know, we kind of broke the ice, me and this guy, and we were talking, and he was suspicious about getting his tarot cards read, but excited. And I was kind of interviewing the guys as they came off the hot seat from having their tarot cards read. And I started joking around with this one guy who was wearing, like, a tweed blazer and had kind of a beard. He looked like a preppy professor. He was adorable, but not in a way that I would want to date, but I asked him how it went, and he said, you know, the woman.
The tarot reader told him that on July 8, he was going to meet the love of his life, and not to worry, he would have sex before then, and he might meet people before then, but July 8, he better get ready for that date. So every time I saw him across the evening, I would say to him, July 8th and he's like, I got it in my calendar. Once I bailed from the hugging session, I ended up standing in the main room, and I struck up a conversation with the guy who was a photographer there who was taking pictures at the Step and Repeat where people were getting their Instagram on and he was a delight to talk to.
And then there was another camera guy there who was really fun to talk to, they were the only guys who asked my name who seemed like regular human beings, because they walked into this event with a job to do, and they were not there, pinning all their hopes and dreams on this matchmaker lady and her dubious qualifications, you know, of just being a sexy person who wants to put other people together for sexiness. I really enjoyed hanging out with the camera guys, talking production stuff, hearing about their careers and how things were going for them.
It was so unexpected that I found the most kind of human connection with these guys who were unaffiliated from this thing, but it was such a lesson to me. Number one, I probably could have gone home with one of them if I had wanted to, because it. They were nice and flirty, and they saw me. They saw me. What I felt in the rest of the event was all these guys were trying to avoid seeing me because I was not in my 30s. I was not meant to be there, Right? So I know a lot of women in their 50s talk about feeling invisible. You're only as invisible as you make yourself.
Yes, I was invisible to the guys who had come to this event with a load of expectations around what might happen for them there that night. But I was not invisible to the nice guys who were there working, who I was willing to just strike up a conversation with because I wanted someone to talk to, and I wanted to get their take from the outside on this craziness. So I just think that's so interesting. In my younger years, I would have just been there with anxiety and a feeling of not good enough and I came to this event with a sense of, like, this may not be my place, and let's just see what happens. And I'm willing to participate, and I'm gonna throw myself out there like it's an improv game. And also, I'm only going to do what I feel like doing, and I'm going to leave if I'm being asked to do things I don't want to do. I never would have looked for someone to make jokes with.
I never would have looked for a buddy. That's what I kept saying to the guys that I ended up shooting the shit with. I just needed a buddy, thanks so much. So that was a really interesting experience and one that I will not do again with that organization. It was not for me. I hope the people who were there had such a great time and that they, you know, either found love or found dates or got laid or whatever it was that they were looking for. I hope everyone who showed up there got some piece of their expectations fulfilled. I went to have an experience, and I had an experience, and so that was the expectation I had, and I had that fulfilled.
I'll tell you about the other event that I went to. I went to a BDSM Munch. Now, what are these words? BDSM is a part of kink. Really it's bondage, discipline, sadism, and masochism. It sounds so crazy when you say all those words together at once, so they came up with an acronym BDSM and a Munch is a casual social gathering for people involved in or interested in BDSM kink fetishes no kinky things happen. No BDSM activities happen, no fetish activities happen, it is literally like a meetup at a bar. So I found out about this Munch on an app for the poly community called Plura, which used to be called Bloom. What I'm coming to realize is that this thing that I'm doing, which is dating a bunch of people at the same time and being open about it, also kind of translates as being solo poly. Now, again, you know, I hate the language, and it makes everything feel so deeply unsexy, but that's kind of what's up.
And so I thought I would check out this app also. I like to check things out so that I can tell you about it and I found out about this event, which was a at a bar on a main strip in suburban Southern California and what was I curious about? Why did I want to go to this? Well, I've always been curious about sexual power dynamics and domination, submission and some various kinky things. And I figure, why not go and dip my toe in this water and see what the heck this is all about. And for me, there is always kind of a cast of Comic Con, Renaissance Faire, LARPing, Live Action Role play games, like real deep geek culture that overlaps with BDSM and I am not that person. I'm not a self identified nerd or geek.
I've always kind of been cool, at least in my own mind. And so I've thought this is a really nerdy community. But you know what? Like, all the more reason to not be intimidated to just show up and see what the heck this is all about. And ideally, I'd like to find one fun partner who I really connect with and we can explore anything and everything in this space. I've met a couple great guys, but no one who has the bandwidth to be consistent. So that's the real scoop. And so I reached out to the organizer in advance and I told her I'm a newbie, I've never been to something like this, I'd like to come. Will you look out for me? And she said, absolutely, I'll notice you.
I told her I was tall and blonde and true to her word, I walk into this bar and she comes over to me and tells me she's the organizer that I had been coordinating with and welcome, and that everybody's in this one back room that was kind of the size of a train car and that I should just make myself comfortable, get a drink and, you know, strike up a conversation. She introduced me to a group of people and kind of left me to talk to them. And you know what was fascinating was that, yes, it was a very nerdy scene. People were largely older. People were largely in their 40s, 50s, and 60s. A lot of them seem to know each other or have known each other for a long time.
And I found myself standing in a circle with this group of people. There was a trans woman who was 6 foot 3, blonde, very nice. There was a guy who was talking about his experience at the Renaissance Faire, he was saying how he had gone to the Renaissance Faire with a couple other people from the community and how they had gone on these rides and how fun it was, That was a very long story that he told about that. There was another guy who came over and I was like, oh, he's kind of hot in a, like, gray haired biker kind of way with, like, fit and tall. But literally all he talked about was motorcycles, like, down to the model number and the make number. And then was CR was like, quizzing the trans woman on her motorcycles, and they were having a motorcycle conversation.
I was like, okay, this is crazy, I don't drink very much, but I did go and get myself a hard cider. And I noticed that across the circle for me, there was this guy who was young, who was real friendly. And we just kept making eye contact and kind of rolling our eyes at like, oh, my God, we're stuck in this conversation about motorcycles. We have nothing to say about motorcycles. He and I ended up breaking off and talking, and he was asking, what are you doing here? And, you know, what is your experience in this space? And I was being really open and transparent and then I realized he was hitting on me.
I mean, this is---I don't expect to be hit on by guys who are 29. He was also really unassuming and kind of cute in a, like, young soccer player kind of way. He bought me another drink and we were chatting, and he works in production, and so we had a lot to talk about. And, I mean, we just had a lovely kind of sexy conversation. And as I was leaving, he and I got to talking outside and we decided to go get a drink together. And I thought back to the beginning of the night when I had walked into the room and I remembered that I noticed him noticing me.
Now, this is not normal for me. Like, when I was married, my husband would tell me that people were checking me out or hitting on me or something and I was like, so disconnected from the feeling that anybody would be checking me out because I wasn't thinking about flirting or sex or anything like that. When I was married, I was ahead, disconnected from my body, disconnected from pleasure, from flirtation, from sensation. But when I looked back at this, my first moments at the Munch, when I walked into this place for this weird event that I was just going to put myself into because I was curious, I realized that this guy had clocked me and that he had made it a point to talk to me. Now, how flattering is that? That is just so flattering. And anyway, we ended up making out in my car and I stayed a little bit longer because I had a babysitter. And I was like, I'm going to make the most of this night.
I am ridiculous. Ridiculous. I am a teenager. Anyway, it was really fun and really sexy and hot. And then, then I was like, I gotta go home, like, we're not going anywhere together, here's my contact information. I gave him contact information on Telegram, which is an app that doesn't show your phone number or full name. You can really have privacy on there and remain safe. I didn't know him from Adam and we texted a bunch. We made a date to hang out the next week. None of that happened. None of that happened because he's too busy and he's 29, he's 29. 29 year olds do not have their communication and interpersonal shit together. And it was a nice idea that we might date or we might have some kind of kink relationship or something.
Turns out it was just a nice story from a nice night and it made me feel attractive and it was fun and it made me feel like, okay, maybe there's some promise for me in this world and maybe there is and maybe there isn't--there probably is. I'm so curious about everything, right? I'm so willing to step into situations that I never would have stepped into before. I really would have been so worried about what you thought of me and what men thought of me and instead of pursuing my own pleasure, my own curiosities, my own kinks, my own whatever, I would have been so in my head and so like, oh, do I look fat? Oh, am I pretty? Oh, am I approvable? I mean, that stuff is just so--it's like in abatement or something. At this moment in my life, will it come back? I don't know.
Am I always going to be this wild child that I am right now, this fearless person when it comes to these interpersonal things? I don't know. I sure hope so. I sure hope so, because what I've come to understand is that freedom is the willingness to be uncomfortable. You know, the song lyric goes, 'freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose.' I certainly have some of that, too. Although I have a full life and children and a home and a career and all these things. It's not that I have nothing left to lose. It's just on the romantic front, I have nothing left to lose. And I have a willingness to be uncomfortable because I'm okay with myself because I know I'm gonna be fine.
Whatever the outcome of these absurd dating experiences is, I love putting myself out there to come back and share these stories with you. Thank you for being the impetus that gives me an excuse to check my fear at the door and go and walk into the world and have adventures and have the interesting life that I'm craving as a married person. Keeping up with the Joneses, doing everything right. I did not have a very interesting life. I had an interesting job. I had an interesting career, but I did not have an interesting life, and I did not have an adventurous life, and I did not take risks with myself. I did not put myself in situations where I was uncomfortable unless they were for business purposes. And I'm so thrilled to be willing to do all of this today. And you're part of the reason I do it.
What are you curious about that you want to explore? Doesn't have to be romantic or sexual. Although speed dating sounds crazy and fun, there's so many types of events like this, and I probably will keep going to them out of curiosity and also out of the idea that maybe I meet someone awesome. Un-fucking likely is how I feel, but it doesn't really matter, does it? Because you can hear in my voice, I feel alive. I feel alive. I feel present to possibility. I feel open and I feel free.
You know, this is an exercise in agency. If I pursue what I want, what happens if I define what I want and I go out and I pursue it? This is a metaphor for all of life. I don't know if you remember when Dr. Juliana Hauser was on the podcast and she talked about, if you can have agency in the rest of your life, you can have agency in the bedroom. If you can have agency in the bedroom, you can have agency in the rest of your life. You can have a say in how things go. I want to say in how things go. I want you to have a say in how things go. I want you to take action towards what you fantasize about. It's all out there, and they're people out there doing all kinds of stuff. I'm going to keep exploring it and I'm going to keep bringing it back to you.
Thanks for listening to Hotter than Ever. Please reach out to us with questions that I will personally answer on the air in our weekly advice episodes. Did you have some thoughts about dating and romance and IRL versus dating apps that came up for you as you were listening to this episode? If I have not been there, I am willing to go there and I am willing to give you my very bias and totally unqualified feedback. All you need to do is have a question and DM us on Instagram @hotterthaneverpod or call and leave a voicemail or text your question to the Hotter Than Ever Hottie Hotline at 323-844-2303. I would love to answer your question in a future episode.
Hotter Than Ever is produced by Erica Gerard and Podkit Production. Our Associate producer is Melody Carey. Music is by Chris Keating with vocals by Issa Fernandez. Thank you for listening to Hotter Than Ever. I am so excited to be celebrating one year of this podcast with you. Things are only going to get more interesting from here.
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