Goldswinger and the redheaded stranger

After four “pear-tinis” on an empty stomach, Vinnie from the Bronx looked pretty good.

He came up to my shoulder, displayed roughly 40 ounces of shiny 10-karat gold and spoke with an earthy accent. He told me I had beautiful eyes. Sigh.

As usual, my pal Carolyn and I had found ourselves at a semi-swanky, semi-industry party where they served too much to drink and not enough to eat. The “small bites” promised on the invitation were tiny morsels of salmon or chicken mousse on teeny crackers, perfectly sized for a Barbie doll, or Claire Danes.

Vodka spiked with pear juice was the only thing proffered to fill our tummies. And soon Vinnie from the Bronx and a new “young man” for the shacked-up Carolyn were fetching them from the bar for us.

Carolyn’s ginger-haired swain opened with a derisive remark about white men with Asian fetishes, then went on to ask her eagerly: “Are you Korean? I think Korean women are the most beautiful of all the Asians.”

Carolyn (who is Korean) and I thought that Vinnie and her new Opie-licious young man, whose name neither of us can now recall, were just so nice, and when they asked us for our business cards we handed them over without a thought.

Then we wandered out of the restaurant, empty martini glasses in hand, and sauntered off to Carolyn’s apartment, where she promptly plopped her new baby guinea pig, Mr. Chang (who is female), into her glass. Chang looked adorable peeking over the rim. Carolyn nicely ordered her live-in boyfriend, Henry, to go to In-N-Out and fetch us cheeseburgers, fries and Cokes, which he kindly did. I made my way home some time later.

The next morning when I woke up, my first thought was, “Oh no, Vinnie from the Bronx!” Carolyn’s, I was to learn later, was, “Oh no, redheaded Asian fetishist!”

I rolled over and called Carolyn.

“Vinnie seems like a very, very nice fellow,” she told me. “However. If you can get past the face, you will have to jump the hurdle of three astonishingly thick gold chains, which raise memories of Run-DMC, and if you can jump that hurdle, you’re only met with another -- a thick, gold hoop earring displayed with unabashed pleasure. Let’s say you can get past all that.

“Well, the last hurdle is his Bronx accent, which he tries to pass off as NYC, but I know Bronx. It’s not NYC. It’s not even the Valley.

“Sam, honestly, this is more troubling than when Billy Joel got together with Christie Brinkley. I am really, really having a terrible time with this.

“Need to know:

“No. 1: What terrible lies did you tell him?

“No. 2: And more importantly, what terrible lies did you tell him?”

At this point I changed the subject by reminding her of her ruddy-haired Prince Harry.

“I’m very upset because I can’t answer my phone because I generously gave my business card to a redheaded Asian fetishophile last night in thinking that I should share myself with the world,” Carolyn lamented. “I’ve already had two phone calls from a phone number I don’t know and no message left. I suspect it is this guy. I can’t face my terrible, terrible stupidity.

“Lastly,” she continued, “What kind of sick [word for bad men, sounds kinda like baskets] think it’s charming for girls to steal martini glasses? Shouldn’t they see that as a red flag and be turned off?”

I hung up the phone and checked my e-mail. Vinnie from the Bronx had already sent a nice message and asked me to dinner.

I felt horrible. Low, down and dirty. He seemed like a good guy. And I was a shallow pear-tini-head.

“Darling, don’t fret,” Carolyn told me later. “It never would’ve worked anyway. You look terrible in gold.”

They say that men are prone to cases of beer goggles. I can report that women fall victim to a similar affliction: vodka visors.

But, unlike men, we usually wake up in the morning with only martini glasses and guinea pigs.

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Samantha Bonar can be reached at weekend@latimes.com.