By Deanne Revel
Running into an ex-fling is always problematic: seeing him or her with another date, running into him or her at the grocery store in sweatpants or something really awkward: running into your ex-fling while you’re wearing the same outfit you flinged in with him or her.
I have lost faith in the lucky dress. I outfit repeated and the repercussion was brutal.
I went home for a short visit this summer, which is always stressful—the good stress of trying to see all the people I never see in an endless series of quick coffees and power lunches. Speed dating people I already know.
After a just-one-drink meeting with a friend, a man called with a last minute proposition: a mini road trip to Huntsville, Ala. that night to see Squidbotz perform. And, because I like Squidbotz so much I wore my lucky dress to ensure a meet-and-greet Facebook photo later in the evening.
Life is just better in my lucky dress and dates are definitely better. I always meet great, attractive men in this dress and it’s not super sexy or hot. It’s a sky-blue and red vintage, paisley sundress—a dress that says, “I look cute and comfortable.”
My date and I arrived late and missed Squidbotz, but I didn’t consider it bad luck and I certainly didn’t question my luck until out of the corner of my eye I saw him: the best date I had ever been on in my lucky dress.
I met the man at a party last summer and we hit it off. I fell hard and fast for him, an artist with charm and wit. We met up a week later and I wore my dress. The entire evening was flawless, except when he told me he was moving the next day for a job as an art teacher. He said he’d keep in touch.
Of course, he never called. I was crushed and vowed I would never wear the dress again.
But that had been more than a year prior. Time had passed and so too had a lot of dates. I only remembered the lucky parts in retrospect. I forgot the dress wasn’t lucky anymore.
So, there he was a foot away from me: the man who one-night standed a woman. And, there I was: the woman he one-night standed wearing the same dress he one-night standed her in.
I ran to the bathroom in a very un-cool way.
I remember when American Apparel first introduced the Le Sac dress and I made so much fun of it. But, at that moment, I really wished I was wearing one and could go from a halter to a strapless. I looked in the mirror and suddenly remembered I was wearing my hair in the same Lauren Conrad braid. I looked like the ghost of hookups past.
People were shouting outside and I knew I couldn’t spend the rest of the night in a bar bathroom.
As people started pounding on the door, I remembered what Nick tells Kat in “The Wedding Date”: “If you look people in the eye, they won’t notice what you’re wearing.”
I was confident and determined. I walked out of the bathroom and scouted a path back to my date by the stage. All paths seemed clear of the art teacher.
I was walking fast and laughing at myself for making such a big deal about the situation when the back of a striped Ralph Lauren polo suddenly blocked my vision. The art teacher had moved closer to the stage, too. I tried to move around him while staying behind him—in the espionage fashion—but I’m not that stealthy. He turned around and gave me a I-thought-I-would-never-see-you-again-but-here-you-are-what-do-I-do? look and my movie-quote inflated confidence instantly deflated.
But, I never stopped looking him in the eyes. It worked. I played it cool, even when I had to acknowledge his leggy date. And, later, after the last band performed, he found me again without his date and expressed an interest in keeping in touch, etc. As we were winding the conversation down and saying goodbyes, a man walked past us and said, “Hey darlin’. Nice dress!”
Like the apex of a triangle in a Dutch master’s painting, my date was looking at my dress from the right, the man was looking at my dress from the left and I was in the middle with my eyes locked on the art teacher.
And, maybe he didn’t hear the comment over the crowd, but I’d like to think it was because I kept him interested in me—not my dress. Regardless, he never looked down.
