At first it seemed as though he was going to strike out that night.   He had wandered through the seedy back streets of Glen Hartwell for hours, going from disco to disco, looking for action.   All to no avail.

By a quarter to midnight he was considering calling it a night, when he found himself standing outside the doorway of the Purple Sin Discotheque.   It was a new place that had opened up less than a year back.  Until now he’d never made the time to check it out.   This seemed like as good a chance as any, so he stumbled inside, then groped his way across to the bar to sit while allowing his eyes to adjust to the lighting.

The large, square room which made up the disco, was lit by three low-wattage, multifaceted strobe lights, which radiated their meagre red light into first one spot then another, as they slowly revolved.

Out on the murderously highly polished dance floor, a dozen or so couples were shaking about without rhythm or style.

“No Patrick Swayzes here tonight,” the man said to himself.

Over at the bandstand a D.J. shouted garbled inanities into the mike.   No one was paying him the slightest attention, so he gave up and reluctantly put a CD on.

“West Coast cooler,” the man ordered.   Then he span around on his stool to check out the local talent.

The disco was positively crawling with good looking birds, but for one reason or another he failed to connect with any of them.   Either they already had dates, were just getting ready to leave (Alone! as one bird pointedly told him, when he offered to leave with her), were too drunk to bother with, or were simply not interested in him.   A couple of real dogs showed some interest, but he wasn’t that desperate…Yet!

“I just don’t understand it,” he said to himself.   Only a few years ago they had been swarming all over him; now they gave him the bum’s rush with “Piss off, creep!”

“It’s not as though I show my age,” he consoled himself.   “I might be forty-six, but I don’t look a day over thirty-two.”

“Man look at that creep, he must be a hundred and two,” said a teenage girl, as though reading his thoughts.   “Wonder what he’s doing here?”