It started out innocently enough: a nice little dare between friends. My friend Misty, who's a karaoke queen, said she didn't want to do karaoke night because I never sing. I'll show her, I thought.

I know I'm no Barbra Streisand. I know I'm not even William Hung. But maybe, if I act fun and silly enough, people across the room will think I'm totally cool and unafraid. Because in today's society, it's less cool to show fear than it is to show imperfections. Or so I kept telling myself.

I chose my song: an appropriately silly and unassuming "Love Will Keep Us Together" by the Captain and Tenille. Oh, what memories of my childhood! Okay, I'm a closet disco freak, and have that on genuine cassette at my house. I know the song by heart; I didn't even have to look at the prompter screen. Scary, huh?

I danced, I sang, I acted like a complete moron. My friends all cheered. Everyone laughed. Yeah, everyone. "They're laughing with you," the two glasses of wine shouted. "Have another!"

Suffice it to say, no millionaires who looked vaguely like George Clooney rushed up to get my phone number. However, I was lucky enough to get love professed to me by a few guys with very large bar tabs, and one even recited a poem for me by the bathroom. But that was the extent of my male attention.

Strangely, I'm glad for that. I had more bang for my entertainment buck just acting silly with my friends than I could have had sitting in a roomful of George Clooneys. Well, maybe that's an exaggeration.

But let this be a lesson to me: I had decided that, for the sake of this column, I had to just throw out my inhibitions and sing a song in front of 100 strangers, and I did it. And you know what? Man or no man, it was really fun! I think everyone should try it at least once. Forget how cool you are and just do something embarrassing!

I'm going to start introducing friends to you who will be hanging out with me as I run around collecting ideas for meeting men. As they join in the fun, you'll hear about them. We talked about dancing this weekend....