TKOG Who sends you a drink

Guys! After several weeks of sloth, gluttony and absolute bliss, I wake up from my holiday coma, ready to start blogging again. Lock up your google reader, ’cause I am officially back. (Though no comment on when I expect to catch up on the 507 unread items in my Google Reader.)

NTKOG #84: The kind of brazen barhopper who likes your style and sends you a drink to prove it.

I am: broke. Really broke. I can barely afford to keep myself preserved in ethanol, let alone ply strangers with it!

I am not: big on interacting with other in bars anyway, lest they gain the misimpression that I want to talk to them.

The Scene: Buffalo Wild Wings in Vegas, where Sister and I spend an inordinate amount of our time — not only because buffalo wings are the best proof of a merciful god in this crazy, mixed-up universe, but because we are die-hard fans of NTN trivia game broadcast through the bar at all times.

Over all the years we’ve been coming, Sister’s and my team (LeJinq — named after our unpleasant cat) has been routinely demolished by a competitor with the handle CurlyQ. Despite the fact that we’ve only ever caught fleeting glances of Curly over the years, his mystique has grown. Every time we play against him, rumors swirl: Curly weighs 400 pounds, consisting almost entirely of wing sauce; Curly plays with two trivia buzzers to ensure maximum point-racking. My friend chemist actually saw Curly once, and swore on his life that Curly was a male-to-female transsexual. Our nemesis is quite the source of contention in my family, is all I’m saying.

On the night in question, Sister and I noticed with shock and horror that Curly was actually IN THE BAR and, by all accounts, the only other player. After he defeated us in a round, I flagged the waitress down. “Hey, can you do a little recon for me? I’m trying to find the other person playing trivia. Curly Q. We have — kind of a rivalry.”

Sister was mortified, but the waitress was intrigued. A few minutes later, she rushed back to the table, breathless: “There’s only one other guy playing. At the end of the bar. He’s been here for several hours now.” What does he look like? “Kind of old. Overweight.” BINGO. That’s our target!

“Send him another of whatever he’s having, along with this.”

Surely CurlyQ would, after all these years, acknowledge our presence and come thank us, or at least raise his glass. Enough of the rumors and propaganda, we  would finally SMOKE THE BASTARD OUT.

Five minutes later, the waitress came back.

Waitress: It wasn’t that guy at all, actually. It was a woman. She’s in here all the time. Like, all the time.
TKOG: !!!!! A woman?! Point her out to me! Quick!
Waitress:  She’s right — oh, that’s weird. She’s gone now!

God damn you, Curly Q! You cannot evade me forever! Also, just so you know, you have given some credence to the transsexual speculation (not that there’s anything wrong with that).

The Verdict: So there are two things, I think, about sending people drinks: 1) it never turns into anything (as I realized a few weeks later, when a boy sent Kiss-Ducker a drink in a bar and, after much giggling, she decided just not to even acknowledge it); 2) it gives the most ordinary evening such a tinge of adventure that I don’t even care. This was hilarious and I’ll be doing it again — providing it’s somewhere where the drinks are cheap.

Tagged as: bar trivia, barhopping, drinks, i know i know you thought i'd send a drink to a guy but in my defense is there really any way of knowing what sex curlyq considers him/herself?, sending a drink, this is not a pick-up