Exhibitionist meets voyeur

Right, so last night my friend Tami and I found this very cool little wine bar and restaurant in Issaquah.  It was great to catch up, and we were ready for some nice cheese and dessert. Thrown in with it, we got a fantastic waiter, Eric, animated just to the point of sanity, and some great, if not odd, entertainment.  He gave us lessons on everything from which shiraz goes with what, to what’s in each creme brulee.  And it paid off.  The combination was absolutely fab!  Having never tried chocolate creme brulee, I was pleasantly surprised that it was so good…and then there was the lavender…niiice.

So, I had to get up and go check out the bathroom in this place…what unique thing will they have done in there? Because all these posh-nosh places have something to make you go, “You’ve got to go check it out in there!” I thought maybe they’d have talking toilet rolls or you could watch the game in the bathroom, or they’d have an iTunes jukebox that you could choose your music while you do your business…you know?  But this one caught me completely off guard.  They had a unisex sink station in the middle (not the weird part…I’ve been in enough other countries to not find that strange).  But as I was washing my hands, I looked up at the mirror, and low and behold staring back at me was MY empty seat in the restaurant.  YES, there was a closed circuit TV camera in the restaurant that broadcasted each seat in turn to those washing their hands.

I actually did say to Tami, “You have GOT to go check out the bathroom!”  And I sent her in there with my camera…to bad it wasn’t still showing my seat…I was waving:-).  We asked our new friend Eric what the deal is and he pretty much said it all…they saw them in another restaurant and thought it was a creative way to let people check in on their date! What?! So, knowing that I could be on camera at any time for the man of my dreams who might be washing his hands just now, I became a little bit self-conscious (just kidding…but it could happen!)

Just think of the pick-up lines you could use along with this one: “Excuse me, I just looked in the mirror and I saw your face staring back at me…and I thought, ‘I’ve never looked so beautiful…’ ” or “Hey, just saw you in the bathroom and I can’t take my eyes of you…” Ok, silliness aside, what is going on here?!

If that wasn’t enough for a surrealistic evening, you know when you’re just sitting and chatting to a friend, and suddenly something catches your eye that seems a bit out of place? At one point in this otherwise calm and recollected evening, I looked behind me, and there was definitely a woman, who had previously been on one of those tall bar-chairs, lying on the floor, with her chair laying down beside her.  How exactly do you knock yourself AND your chair over?  There was a moment of shock where nobody could even think to help her!  But she picked herself up and assured us all that she was “fine.”  If not a little tipped.  Maybe she was trying to get on the toilet-cam.

So there you have it: voyeurism meets exhibitionism right here in our own home town…