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Nerve.com
In a baggy white lab coat, lanky and bespectacled, Abumrad could easily pass for a lab tech a few years from his PhD (they're all wearing them, by the way — bartenders, caterers, and other random host-like folks — all wearing white lab coats and wandering the perimeter with supportive, chaperone-at-the-dance smiles). I'm prepared to find Abumrad pretentious and patronizing, but in his opening speech — during which he welcomes us all to the event, commends us on our courage and tells us we are all attractive — I feel myself warm to him. I wonder if I'm picking up that reverence from the crowd. I begin to assume that he, too, has a girlfriend waiting for him at home.
"I gotta go smoke," Jon says.
Before I follow, Abumrad puts on a recording of a Radio Lab episode. The theme? Chemistry. In it, Abumrad is interviewing a scientist about the chemicals that trigger feelings of desire in the brain — Oxytocin and Dopamine are two, Norepinephrine is the other. I hear members of the crowd, already claiming allegiance, laugh and cheer. Amidst their giddiness, I slip out.
Outside, Jon is sucking down his cigarette, jaws clenched with a drastic look of disappointment.
"She left," he says.
"Who left?"
"Hot Girl. With her boyfriend. I just saw them get on bicycles and ride away."
"Jon," I say, "they came to a singles event together and then left early."
"Yeah, but she was hot."
Next to us, a tall, busty woman is holding the stub of a cigarette and scowling.
"Wait a second," she says, turning, "you guys are way too young to be here."
We stand back, startled.
"How old are you?" she asks. "Twenty-five?"
"Can't we be any age as long as we're under forty?" Jon asks.
She lets out a sour laugh and asks us why we can't just go to a bar to pick up girls.
Do public-radio fans really share a value system and a magical sense of hormonal congruity? Maybe they just share a semi-snotty taste in media. |
"That's easy for guys like you," she says.
For a second, I believe her, though I've never met anyone at a bar. And then I'm embarrassed. Why is she here?
"You could meet men at bars," Jon says to her.
"No I can't. Plus, I'm tired of it. And I want an intelligent boyfriend."
"And you hoped to find one amongst the radio fans?" I ask.
"Better chance here than at singles night at the JCC." She stomps her cigarette into the concrete. "But, oh well."
I feel sorry for her, but mostly I feel anxious for the future of my own singleness. Then I wonder if this corralling of our interests is really a productive way to meet people. Do public-radio fans really share a value system and a magical sense of hormonal congruity? Maybe they just share a semi-snotty taste in media, in which case I'm the odd man out.
"Really, though," she goes on, "why are you guys here? Are you journalists or something?"
I try to motion to Jon that I want to head back inside, but he takes another cigarette out of his pack and lights it.
"No, we just really love public radio," I hear him say as I hurry back in.
Around the bar, everyone seems reanimated. I notice they're holding large index cards and speaking in quick, excited bursts.
"What are those cards all about?" I ask the nearest duo of girls.
"Oh, you're an Oxytocin," she says. "Can you sign here?"
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