The state of affairs:

I went out tonight. "Why" should be a very good question. I stand, I stare, I look away, I wish, I wonder, I worry, I waste time, I walk around, and I walk out. Boring and very sad. It's all so superficial and judgemental and unfortunately I don't meet the requirements. And this nagging question keeps running through my mind: How would I talk to anyone in here? I mean, TALK. How does one get to know anyone in this environment, unless it is based on superficiality. Yes, I see some hot guys and I want them, but that's just superficial. What I really want is to meet someone with a mind too.

So then I do. I actually do. And he came up to me. I had given up and left the bars, but then decided to stop by one last one near my home. I was in there for a little while and he came over and started talking to me. He's actually intelligent. Then the lights came on and we parted. He has my card. We'll see.

P.S. While at that last bar I ran into him: the guy who stood me up last summer and never contacted me again. I had actually completely forgotten about him, and then I saw him and knew he looked familiar. It took me a few minutes to get it all to come back, but then it did. We said hello and chatted a bit. He remembered my name unbelievably and seemed very nice. I didn't even know how to be mean to him; I just small-talked. He touched me and rubbed my back and acted like we were good friends. I, for some reason unknown, did the same. At the end of the evening, outside the bar, I ran into him again. We chatted again. I asked "So why didn't we ever hook up? You kinda disappeared." He responded that he didn't know and there must have been some kind of "time-conflict" or something like that. Whatever. It's hard to be mad at anyone, especially when he's looking at me directly and being nice. And it had been a long time. But still I can't help but feel the hurt from last summer again tonight. Wasted emotions.