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I found Sherri and for the next little while things seemed like the average date. We danced, we chatted, we mingled with other people and things were going fine. I was getting a little too drunk to do my best smooth talking but I think she was impressed by the number of people I “knew” there. It turns out that the whole time we were talking to big bald guy she assumed I’d known him from way back, and all my new acquaintances seemed quite chummy right off the bat so it’s easy to see why she might have thought we were all old friends. This illusion seemed to be the best thing I had going for me, so I never bothered to correct her. For the first time I started to wonder if I might get a little action. I started to plan how things might go and was intent on working my date magic. A little later we ended up circling around some guy showing some dance moves and when he was done someone else would step in. Eventually the circle of onlookers stopped dancing and kept the beat by clapping and merely yelled comments to each other about who was the best. I was just wishing I stepped in before the dancing got good. I don’t really have any moves but I was thinking of trying a hand plant that I learned back in the skateboard days. But at this point a one-move-wonder was no longer going to impress. It didn’t matter anyway because I was soon interrupted by my old friend. The big, bald, booming voice hit me from behind “Little Beeeeaan! C’mon, we’re going for a smoke.” as he pulled me away. I was happy to get the privilege of being included in something but I pulled back indicating that I needed to talk to Sherri first. I was giving some sort of unclear explanation that I had an offer to go smoke, but we could still dance, or watch, or she could come with… but I don’t think any of it had sunk in because of the noise and because she was distracted by some girl who was talking in her other ear.. To speed things up the big bald head popped in between us and aimed a comment right at Sherri, “We’re going smoking”. She nodded and seemed to indicate that she would rather stay and watch the dance-off.