Bars are bad places to meet people. I’ll tell you why.
All bars are loud. It does not matter if it is a club or a sports bar or a speakeasy or a hip trendy hodge podge, all bars are loud. A situation only made worse by the invention of an event called trivia night. I love trivia night! It is every quiet, studious, note-taking, former student’s opportunity to loudly destroy their competition. By the way, all nerds, valedictorians, and geniuses are competitive by nature. What do you think drove them to those achievements? Trivia night is also an opportunity for every twenty-something who has lost their competitive outlet to come out and crush their opponents hopes and dreams. Just so we’re clear, I’m in that second category.
That need to be the best and break the spirits of others is exactly what drove me and my friend Justin to a local bar called The Viking one Tuesday night. It was trivia night and we both felt that itch to crush a few dreams. We each had our specific skill sets and thought we could handle whatever was thrown at us. It turns out our skill sets almost completely overlapped and we were useless in all but one or two categories.
When I get competitive my senses tune only to the task at hand. My eyes see only the ball. My mind turns over the cards until it lands on the combination that will get me the most points. Empathy and basic interpersonal skills become formless white clouds in the distance, too far away to distract from my goals. Something similar happens when I read particularly engaging books.
Halfway through the competition, which Justin and I were losing, a man from another team got bored. He wandered over to the pool table located just behind our table. He smacked the ball around with no regard for the actual rules of any billiards game I know. That too was not interesting enough for him. He found his way over to our table, leaning over me.
I have NO memory of what that man looked like or what sort of conversation he was trying to make with me. I was distracted. No, I was focused and uninterested. My body had gone into the same battle mode it used to at big track meets. Nothing else mattered. Only winning. I did not even bother to look up. Instead, I raised my hand level with his face, offering only my palm to him.
“I’m sorry,” I said, still laser focused on the MC reading questions, “I’m holding out for a hero.” I waved him away. I thought it was a fair rejection. If he had come back with some proof of his heroic deeds, I might have taken the time to chat with him. Might.
Two days later Justin presented me with a mug that read “I only date superheroes,” under the condition I bring it with me to trivia night from now on.
I am very good at getting rid of men in bars. It is a skill set I have carefully developed since turning 21. I used to lament that once I left college I would never meet eligible guys again because I did not want to online date, if I cannot meet people organically there must be something wrong with my life, and I had never once met a guy in a bar I wanted to spend more than five minutes even speaking with, let alone trusted enough to date.
The thing about men in bars is they are very good at disregarding any and all subtle signs or disinterest. It’s why I, like a great many women, had to learn the art of getting rid of them quickly. I have literally had my back to men and told them that their line was unimpressive and not to use it anymore and somehow still had to deal with them for the next hour. I learned I had to use force and got pretty good at it.
Isabel and I met a prime example of this kind of “bar boy” when we went out to her roommate’s bar with the intention of getting a quiet drink and catching up while I was visiting her in LA. You think I would have known by then, all bars are loud and there is no such thing as a quiet drink. We pushed our way up to the bar and chatted with Isabel’s roommate for a minute while she fixed us our drinks. And that is how we met Trevor. Trevor claimed his job was making things look good; I doubt he was very good at it.
“Hey there ladies.” God, why? “You seem to have an in with the bartender. Mind if I take advantage of it?” He leaned over me and Isabel just as Isabel’s roommate turned away to help the next customer.
“She’s my roommate,” Isabel answered, her voice flat. “We just stopped in to say hi.”
I do not really know how the conversation went from there because I found pushing the ice to the bottom of my drink with my stir stick much more interesting than anything this boisterous manchild who claimed his job was to “make things look good” had to say. What does that even mean? Advertising? Or does he just stand by other men and act obnoxious so by comparison the other guy looks good? That would probably work. Is that too harsh of a judgement? Oh well. His voice snagged my attention again a minute later.
He leaned in close to us. Encroaching upon my space. “It wasn’t just that. You know how it is, I saw you two from across the bar and just…”
“PFFT!” I made an unladylike sound of total disbelief. Really? That was his big move? I turned to face him. “OLD HAT! Try again!”
“What?”
“I saw you from across the bar? I’ve heard it before. Unimpressive.”
Trevor stammered for a moment and I went back to forcing the ice in my glass to the bottom of the drink, too tired from a day of vacation fun to even bother dealing with this guy in a more polite manner. He attempted to turn his attention to Isabel but had lost too much traction during my frigid outburst.
Another beat passed and he announced that he had to go check on “Curtis.”
That’s what he had been telling me and Isabel about! It seems he and a group of guys had just moved in together and they were out celebrating and getting to know each other. I knew what he was telling us about had to be somewhere in my brain.
Isabel and I had no trouble dismissing him. “Good idea. You should go check on Curtis.”
For the first time in almost a decade of going out and dealing with the unwanted attentions of men in bars I thought, how refreshing, a guy who knows when to retreat and let those girls enjoy their night.
Nope.
I hate being wrong.
I wish I knew what it is about men in bars. Where do they get all of that confidence? Maybe it comes from being told since birth that the world belongs to them. Oops, I got on my feminist soapbox there for a second; I’ll put that away. I just wish I understood. How do you take a woman having more interest in a fairly uninteresting drink than you and outright telling you that you really should go check on your friend instead of talking to her as encouragement? Do you think women are vending machines that you put compliments and attention into until sex pops out? That is not how this works.
We did not even finish our drinks before Trevor reappeared for another pass this time with reinforcements, neither of which were Curtis.
I could go on and on with this story and tell you all about him standing behind me talking while I faced the bar giving him one word answers, if any at all. Or tell you about physically brushing his hand off my shoulder and covering my drink to protect it from his spit while he talked. I could also tell you all about his new roommate quietly apologizing to both of us several times. I won’t; I think you get the idea. Somehow, through all of that not subtle body language he still had the impression that we wanted to talk to him and that the energy he was putting off did not make me want carve my own heart out with one of those plastic swords they put in cocktails, there was a whole jar right there. Somehow, he had the idea that if he and his new roommate just kept giving us attention one of us would break and we would have sex with him. Like I said, that is not how this works.
Honestly, I cannot think of a single interaction with a man in a bar that was not like that on some level. If that is where I am supposed to meet men then I guess I am going to have to just die alone surrounded by books and cats because I have enough empirical evidence to know that that I am not going to meet him, whoever he is, there.
Really, thank you but I am holding out for a hero.
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