I was back in the hotel around 7pm, and there was no message waiting from Susan or Christy. Oh well. I had a shower and relaxed, waiting for a call, until 9. No call. I decided to head back to Bishop's, where we'd spent most of the previous night, hoping to meet them there.

Bishop's was only about half-full, and I got a table outside on the sidewalk. I sat perched on my stool for 2 hours, waiting for something to happen. Susan and Christy didn't show. I talked to the waitress a little bit, but she didn't seem interested in conversing.

I've always been told that the most important part of meeting someone at a bar is eye contact. I've tried this several times, but I have a feeling that my stares appear more predatory than flirtatious. I could see two very attractive women across the alley on the patio of the Sweet Water Cafe, and I tried doing the eye-contact thing. I believe we exchanged several rather intense stares, and I might even have received the odd flirtatious hair flip. As you can probably guess, meeting people at bars isn't really my thing. Still, I was feeling adventurous -- so after two hours of waiting and exchanging looks I decided to go over and say hi.

I went back into Bishop's for a final shot of tequila and to say goodbye to Jeff, the bartender. Things were pretty busy so I was there for a few minutes. By the time I meandered back outside, the two women were gone. Such is my life. I decided to head over to the Alley Cat, where we'd gone dancing the night before. The place was packed as usual, and there was an unusually large number of "special event" groups -- stagettes and birthday parties, mostly. I wandered around a bit before coming across the two girls I'd noticed across the alley.

I said, "Hi!", with a big grin on my face, and asked if they remembered me. Nope. An hour's worth of intense flirtatious glances had somehow never made it across the alley. I talked to them for a while but they weren't interested in making conversation. I eventually drifted off and danced up a storm. Like I said earlier, the men in Boston just can't dance. I'm not sure if I'm that much better, but at least I was trying. Occasionally I'd exchange smiles with the two women from across the alley, but their interests were elsewhere.

Around 1am I got tired of dancing so I wandered back across the street to Bishop's. I told the cashier that I'd been there earlier, so could she let me in without paying a cover charge? She didn't remember me. Not that I'd sat less than 10 feet from her for two hours or anything. Feeling very invisible, I wandered into the bar.

I asked Jeff, the bartender, if he'd seen Christy or Susan but he said no. So, feeling very bold indeed, I marched over to an interesting-looking pair of women and asked if I could join them. "Sure!" they said and I was in. Kim and Jen were there names, and Kim was in a really, really bad mood. She'd just lost her wallet. It's kind of hard to make smalltalk with someone who's in a really bad mood. Even when her wallet showed up about 10 minutes later, Kim remained in a bad mood. It wasn't until I told her that I worked for Microsoft that she became more animated. Kim works for a big software contractor, selling software solutions to banks and companies like that. My presence gave her a chance to bitch about how bad Windows NT5 was going to be. Since my financial future depends upon Windows NT5, I'll refrain from further comment.

I exchanged more pleasantries with Jen and her friend Bryan. Bryan is a chef who works at Ambrosia, a very fancy restaurant in Boston. We exchanged cooking tips for a while (I wasn't impressed with his knowledge of bean cooking techniques) but then the girls wanted to dance and I felt compelled to join them. Halfway through the song the bar decided to close and we were ushered out into the alley.

We walked out of the alley, heading for Chinatown. Abruptly, Kim hailed a cab, hopped in, and was gone. She was going to take the cab to her car and drive home. Unfortunately, she wasn't quite sober enough to be driving. But, she was gone. The three of us continued on to Chinatown without her. Chinatown is where the after-bar scene is located in Boston. It's not the safest place to be at night -- Jen tells me it was once called "The Combat Zone" but since recent crackdowns by the city it was now just "The Demilitarized Zone". People head to places like the Imperial Seafood Restaurant -- but not for a late-night snack. They're there for tea.

If you're a tea afficionado like me you might find the prospect of a city full of late-night tea drinkers very exciting. There are only two problems: the tea isn't hot, and it isn't tea. Bryan asked for some "cold tea" and the server gave us each a short stare -- lingering a while on me as if I might be a narc. Then he gave a short nod and disappeared into kitchen, returning in a few minutes with fresh teacups and a teapot full of cold beer. Bryan ordered some terrible chinese food, and the night rolled on. Around 3 or so we strolled out of there, heading back out of the Combat Zone towards the bars.

The Combat Zone is the place to find prostitutes in Boston, if you're into that sort of thing. I'm not sure what I found more disturbing -- the 16-year-old prostitute, or the four 17-year-old boys in the car she was approaching. The three of us briefly discussed what we'd just seen before hopping into a cab. Our conclusion: the worst part of that particular scene was that the five people involved didn't have any other options.

We arrived back at the Copley Square hotel, where I was staying. Jen gave me her phone number and we made plans to have lunch the next day. I paid for my share of the cab ride then walked into the hotel and bed.