Is Your Date at a Speakeasy or Escape Room?

Who can tell these days?

Your date takes you into a dark alleyway and tells you to begin searching for anything that looks “suspicious.”

There is a bookcase in the otherwise empty alleyway. This is suspicious. You uncover an illustration of a small and jolly mountain man behind a faux book spine on the shelf. It is the only item on the shelf.

“Oh, it’s Yukon Cornelius, the character from that claymation Christmas movie! I love that movie — and Christmas! Don’t you?”

You look at your date like you’ve never seen him before — he likes Christmas? What is happening? It is November and you don’t know who Yukon Cornelius is. Or why you should care. Because it is November.

Someone emerges from behind the barrels to reveal a concealed door. As you step across the threshold, a man with a beard much like Yukon Cornelius’ says, “Congrats,” and hands you a whiskey. Your credit card is charged $75.

CONSENSUS: Speakeasy with escape room potential.

You enter a dimly lit room full of filing cabinets marked “Property of Eddie O’Hare.”

You laugh and point out what you believe to be a clever joke to your date. He waxes nostalgic about the “good ol’ days” of Prohibition when “men got to be drunk all of the time and women were property.”

Flabbergasted, you stare blankly as an attendant walks in and hands you a plastic bottle of whiskey and says, “Sounds like you need this more than I do.” Your credit card is charged $50.

CONSENSUS: Escape room, ironically, transformed into a speakeasy.

You are in a lavish pink room with white moulding adorning its walls. Men and women walk around the interior dressed as 18th century French aristocrats.

A beautiful woman with a snowy pouf and Marie Antoinette-mole watches with vicarious chagrin as your date digs through a white layered cake complete with pink sugar tuille. Your date knows no French and notices none of these flourishes.

“What are you looking at, you hussy?” Your date roars at Marie Antoinette. “I know there’s a key in there.”

You grab your date’s cake-clad collar and pull him towards the real escape room while exasperatedly explaining, “This is the themed waiting parlour for the escape rooms behind THESE doors.”

Your BOGO Groupon™ for ‘Escape Rooms Throughout the Centuries’ is redeemed.

CONSENSUS: Escape room, but oh god, you need a drink.

Your date is spread-eagle, feeling the side of an alleyway that is covered in vines and an assortment of greenery, certain there’s a door knob.

Finally, he finds it and the two of you enter a literal green room full of celebrity impersonators. A Marilyn Monroe look-alike asks your date if he’d like a drink.

“Only if you’re helping me drink it,” he replies coyly. Marilyn Monroe gives you an apologetic look — she hands you a whiskey nip from her pocketbook. Your credit card is charged $60.

Even though you want to leave, you can’t find the exit. This is your life now. Your date starts hitting on Rita Hayworth.

CONSENSUS: Speakeasy unironically transformed into an escape room.

Brooke Knisley teaches in Emerson College’s first-year writing program. She has balance issues. You can follow her on Twitter to read more.