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Old Village is like most cities in this country; if you want to go dance to some good music, you have to hit up a gay club. After the show last night, four of my castmates (two guys, who we'll call The Mayor and AC, and two ladies; all of us are black) and I went to get our groove on.

The crowd was more gay than straight, but there seemed to be a large number of straight ladies there. We walked towards the back of the bar, passing the restroom, along with a young lady who gazed hungrily at us as if we were dessert. AC and I sidle up to the bar. I'm standing there for maybe fifteen seconds when a young lady kind of brushes past me and stands leaning on the bar directly next to me. She pulls out her cell, glances at it, then checks me out. "Hi."

"Hey, how's it going?" I'm trying to be good, you know, since I'm so far away from my girlfriend right now, etc., so I try to ignore the fact that she's giving me every signal in the book. I look away. She goes back to the cell phone.

AC, who is one of the friendliest and most gorgeous men I have ever met, then greets her. She kind of steps over to the side and has a brief conversation with him, all the while leaning over my back. At some point, AC introduces me. We do a variant on the usual song-and-dance:

GIRL: So, what are you doing here?

ME: We're actors. We're doing a play in town.

GIRL: Oh my gosh! You're an actor? That's SO cool! I love plays! Can I come see it?

ME: Sure. We may be able to help you out with tickets if you want.

GIRL: I would love to come see it. I have to say that I think you guys are really cute...

She gives me her number. I've been in the club for five minutes. AC said he got two phone numbers from two different people in sixty seconds. As I was leaving the club, a girl was making eyes at me while she was hanging on to her boyfriend.

Now, I'm not going to pretend that I'm getting this attention because I'm insanely gorgeous. I mean, I clean up pretty well, but I'm not that special (unlike AC). We're getting this attention because there are not a lot of black people in Old Village, and in liberal-leaning towns like this, black men get a LOT of attention from women - mostly white women. I guess it's because we're different, or "exotic", or something. I'm not quite sure why this is, but it's been a constant in my travels.

All of which makes it extremely hard to be good. I've gone out three times since I've been in town and have been given four phone numbers.

But I'm trying, Maxine. I'm trying.