Bars are bad for my sef-esteem

Friday (last night) I went out to have a couple drinks and dance. Primarily to dance but the couple drinks are usually necessary to get me on the dance floor. I’ve wanted to go for a while and there was finally a night when this band I like (my brother was their bassist), and used to go hear often (decent chance of running into people I know), and my Little Sister could go. I’ve gone out a few times on my own and it wasn’t good.

Let me give you a brief history focusing on my love life for the last 10 years.
March 1998 – boyfriend/fiancé of 5 years breaks of our engagement. Spend one year in denial that this could really have happened.
Jan 1999 – Move to Andalusia, AL for job.
Sometime in 1999-2000 - Go on 2 dates with a dork who worked with my brother; 1st was blind, dork had asked Bro to fix us up.
Jan. 2001 – Move back to Tuscaloosa for grad school.
June 2005 – Go out to here my brother’s band and meet their “fan club”.
Oct 2005 – Make out with one of the “fan club” guys (real nice, smart, and cute). I’d had my eye on him for some time.
Late Oct/Early Nov – Learn that I have NO gaydar.
Spring 2006 – Get hit on by an old guy (50ish, no offense to the older set but I’m only 31). Actually contemplate calling him even though there was no chemistry on my part and he probably thought I was easier than I am.

Over the course of the dozen or so evenings I have spent shaking my groove thing at a couple of different bars only two random guys have come up and danced with me - one kind of gave me the creeps and I spent the entire song backing away from him and hoping a friend would come save me; the other I accidentally gave the brush off to by moving forward just as he started dancing behind/with me. I was just moving closer to the stage. Three random guys have talked to me/hit on me - one the owner of the bar (this was a different night than the other two), one a really drunk guy who was nice enough but seemed to think he was bothering me and wandered away when guy #3 walked up, and guy #3 who gave me his number.

Friday, LS and I got to the bar and two of the “fan club” people were there. So I walked over and said hi. We ended up sitting with them, since there wasn’t a pool table open and the band didn’t start for over an hour. Several groups of their friends showed up. The first group were three guys. Only one caught my eye, I’ll call him Sailor (he’s in the Navy).

Sailor hit on LS pretty hard until it became obvious that there was a limit to her flirting since she has a boyfriend. He and one of the others started working on a pair of girls, with whom they were possibly friends/acquaintances already, I don't know. I tried to be flirty. I went over and asked him, and the other two, if one would like to dance when the band started a slow song. Sailor said yes. I think I lost him when he asked how old I was. He said he would have guessed mid/late twenties.

I know I really blew it when later I told him, ‘here you are working hard on those two, just like you did LS, but I’m the easy mark’ and then when asked why I was the easy mark I told how long it has been since I got laid. It is a time period guaranteed to scare off the horniest of guys. (Normally I would, at best, just say it had “been awhile” if it came up at all.) He was nice enough the rest of the night and would have walked me to my car but I didn’t think he’d make it that far (he was having a hard time standing up straight at this point).

So here I was dressed in my best club-wear and up for anything a guy could want to do on the dance floor or saying goodnight at the car. (Because damn it, it has been a long time since I was kissed by anyone, much less someone who likes girls!) The dance floor was packed by midnight and yet there was usually a little empty circle around me.

So why don’t I get hit on? Am I too tall? Not skinny enough? Not pretty enough? Not drunk enough? Too old? Do I have “I crazy, but not in a good way” stamped on my forehead? What?