The quiz master, a young Irish man, had a cavalier air that made him the envy of many men in the room. We were fighting off our predate jitter, hoping we wouldn't come across as a bunch of ill-informed idiots to the attractive women we were trying to impress.
"OK, folks listen up," said the quiz master. "The first round is going to be general knowledge, then followed by the Olympics, Madonna ..."
At that point, I knew my fate was sealed. I had deliberately avoided watching the games in Beijing in protest of the host country's human right abuses, and I knew next to nothing about the phenomenon known as Madonna. Why couldn't the quizzes be about history, drama, or literature, I thought.
On Wednesday night, about 40 men and women checked in for the singles' Quiz Date at Elephant and Castle, a pub a few blocks away from the San Francisco Ferry Building. I had never gone to these events, but I gathered they operated on the same principle as speed dating (which I'd done a number of times). You sign up, you show up, you rotate, and you hope someone catches your eyes or makes your butterflies flutter.
I had reinforcement, a pair of single friends who'd signed up for the same event. Unfortunately, they were both women, and the teams were split by gender, so they ended up on the same team, whereas I was directed to Table Four to wait for additional teammates to be assigned to me.
I was joined by Jensen, a shy 20-something who seemed to be having second thoughts, and Shiva, an enthusiastic 30-something named after an Indian god. As a trio, we would circulate through seven tables, each occupied by three or four women. In each round, we would work as a mix team of six or seven to answer ten trivia questions. By my own calculation, that gave me about 70 chances to prove my utter ignorance of the Olympics and Madonna to roughly 21 women.
After a few minutes, the first round began.
In which Austin Powers movie did Mike Myer's character meets the twins Fook Yu and Fook Mi for the first time?
Oh fook me, I thought to myself. I'd never been a fan of the series. I laid low, leaving the rest to work it out.
"It was the third one," said a perky blond girl.
"One that sounds like that James Bond movie," said her friend, another blond girl. In fact, they could both pass for twins.
"It's the one that kinda sounds like Goldfinger," said someone else.
"Must be Goldmember," I pitched in.
Which movie stars Tom Hank as the prison guard named Paul Edgecomb?
Suddenly, a scene featuring a burly African American inmate on death row and Tom Hank flashed before my mind. I knew this. It was one of those late-night movies I'd seen.
"The Green Mile," I volunteered.
Which Shakespearean play was banned in ... because it contains scenes between a girl who's in love with another girl dressed up as a boy?
Did he just say Shakespeare? I nearly danced with joy at this unexpected reference to my favorite bard. It didn't matter that the name of the city was garbled. I knew the answer.
"I think it's that one about a pound of flesh," suggested someone. "Doesn't that one have a girl named Portia dressed up as a male lawyer?"
"You're thinking of The Merchant of Venice," I said. "But the answer is Twelfth Night."
Shiva and the two blond girls looked at me with suspicion.
"If I'm wrong, you can hate me forever," I said. But I wasn't.
Suddenly a commotion at the bottom of the stairs. An unapologetic late arrival, a man in a black T-shirt with a somewhat abrasive voice, caused the organizers to shuffle some chairs. As he turned his back, I noticed the inscription on his shirt. In bold, block letters, it read, "Because I'm an asshole."
As we moved to the next table, I squeezed into the empty chair next to someone's vanilla-scented shoulder, playing peekaboo from a lipstick-red cocktail dress.
"Hi, I'm Celia," she said, flashing her dimples.
The girl sitting next to Celia leaned over, eying the silver band on my finger.
"Kenneth, are you married?" she asked.
"No, I have no business being here if I am," I answered. "I thought it's just decorative if I wear it on my right hand."
Suddenly, people on my team and the women at the table began debating what it meant to wear a ring on the right hand.
"What do you do Celia?" I asked.
"I work for a nonprofit that works with lots of troubled kids," she said.
"Are you a counselor?" I asked.
"No, I'm in administration," she said.
"What did you just win?" I asked her about the coupon she was holding.
"I won a large drink, I think," she said. "What should I get?"
On the reward card, I saw the drawings of two cocktails: one was green, splashed in lime and sprinkled in salt; the other was red, flavored with watermelon.
"Get the red one," I suggested. "It matches your dress."
"So you live here?" she asked.
I named my neighborhood, a block away from Golden Gate Park. It turned out she lived merely ten blocks from me.
"I went to Ebisu Sushi last night," I said. "Couldn't get in because the place was too crowded."
"There's that place called Ku, right by my place," she said. "It's just as good."
This round was the Olympics round, so I had no way to help Celia, or any of my teammates, for that matter.
What was the nickname of the venue where the swimming competitions took place?
Which actor's voice can be heard in the background of the commercial for the only card accepted at the Olympics?
Which bronze medalist threw down his award in protest?
To disguise my obliviousness of the games, I sought comfort in St. Pauli Girl, the only nonalcoholic beer available.
Which slogan was chosen out of over 200,000 submissions as the official Olympic slogan?
On the day the Olympic Torch was scheduled to roam the streets of San Francisco, I was standing next to the Tibetan protesters, shouting epithets I seldom used at the hypocritical Beijing Olympic slogan printed on oversize banners. I couldn't have anticipated then that my activism would somehow come in handy on a singles' quiz night.
"One world, one dream," I confidently pitched in.
"I think there's something else," Jensen said. "One world, one dream, one ... hope."
"No, no hope," I said. "It's just one world, one dream."
In the next round, I found myself mingling with my two friends. The focus of this round, as it turned out, was Saturday Night Live, also a topic beyond my sphere of knowledge.
"Did you watch that movie Anchorman?" asked one of my friends. "We need to figure out the name of Will Ferrel's character."
"I'm sorry," I said. "I didn't watch that movie."
"I think his last name is a color, something reddish," recalled Shiva.
"Isn't it Maroon?" said someone else.
We settled on the name Bob Maroon as the answer to the question, which was incorrect. The answer turned out to be Ron Burgundy.
At the next table, I sat next to Kelly, who was doodling on the answer sheet.
"What do you do, Kelly?" I asked.
"I'm an attorney," she said. "You?"
"Allegedly, I'm a freelance writer," I said.
She giggled at my attempt to insert a legal term into the exchange.
"What do you write?" she asked.
"Technology," I said. "If you ever have trouble sleeping, I can send you the link to my article about data management. It'll put you out, just like that."
"That bad, huh?" she asked.
'Um hm," I nodded.
She flashed a smile.
"I want to ask you about your job, but I don't know what's appropriate," I said.
"Why?" she asked. "What do you want to ask?"
"Isn't there something called attorney-client privilege that prevents you from talking about what you do?" I asked.
"Oh, that--well, yeah," she said, which abruptly brought our conversation to a halt.
During the rest of the night, I learned that:
- Beyonce helped popularize the term Bootylicious;
- Hungary's national sport is water polo (not fencing, as Shiva would have us all believe);
- In Evita, Madonna won an Oscar for the song "You Must Love Me" (not for "Don't Cry for Me, Argentina," as I--and everyone else--thought).
Now, when I take a stroll in the park or visit my favorite sushi place, I'll be hoping for the sight of Celia's little red dress.
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