Just out of good timing The Bank were handing out sombreros, this otherwise novelty item had a destiny in my half baked state of a Friday night.
A black and red marker pen, two sombreros and ten minutes later the bare sombreros were launched into the audience in order to play out my social game.
The rules were simple, place the sombrero on the person you like, they sign it with the attached pen and pass it on to the next person they like.
Jordan, Zane and myself – Katie and Saul making tracks, turned boys night out – remained at The Bank most of the evening in order to watch this game out, there were some reasonable expectations I had made before the game. Notably, that a man would pass it onto a woman and not another man – unless he was that way inclined… – for it was treated as a flirting guesture, which in some respect was one of the goals of it; to get people talking. Women on the other hand tended to pass the sombrero around their friends before passing it onto another unfamilar woman; no homophobic tendencies among sexes.
The clincher of the night I expected from alpha – other drunk, half baked – men was the tendency to steal or claim ownership of the sombrero, if that happened you could assume it had become a symbol of respect or power, which it had. The more signatures the higher the chance of a man to claim it? No! Women tended to keep it! And of those women they generally weren’t given it, they had to approach someone, generally a man to take it! They were bitches and I only call them that after several women I asked afterwards used that term. I’m beginning to learn how to dance too – Steph of the night taught me – so stop imagining a robot, yip, that’s progress.
Come 4am – well after the Valley lockdown curfew, which is ineffective in curbing crime and I detest! – the sombreros had done their rounds, layered with ink assumably including bar staff and the DJ of the night we made our respective ways home, to play poker and lose 1400 dollars to Zane; in our state I’m still not sure whether it was play money…
