The futility of the whole thing comes to light, about eight beers into the evening. Too content to just take a seat at the bar, too restless to stop moving, trying as hard as possible to determine what the glancing looks, the whispered conversations of the bartenders mean. Am I visibly drunk, is the disheveled, unkempt hair and four days worth of beard growth a sign of my lack of trustworthiness?
I am paranoid, there are too few people in the bar, too few people for me to hide amongst, to envelop me. Too few other hotnesses to admire save the bartenders, so close yet so far away, eyeing me occasionally, the crawling sensation in the mid-back alerting me to the increased attention, senses coming online, searching for the source of the gaze. Too often, it abates after I lock eyes for half a second with one of the vixens, embellishing her womanly traits, her body wrapped in soft cotton, poured-on denim, the other patrons of the bar either wrapped up in conversation or watching the Padres finally beating an opposing team, I rise.
Paranoid still in the night air, George the bouncer patting me on the shoulder as I exit, heading for the next drinking hole, right next door. Far darker, sweating bodies heaving against each other, the crowd lighter than suspected, the ratio off, paranoia again setting in, as I briefly watch the gyrating forms wriggling under cheap club lighting, before moving on the rear of the place, sneakers sticking to the floor as I round the corner, brushing past clumps of bodies, to a railing in the back. Popcorn, provided free by the management, hopefully there’s no arsenic in it.
Stop it. Don’t give in to old fears, or remember the old jokes, gradually shift to the positive, out of the paralysis of observation, the torture of non-action.
For some reason, the sight of the neighbor, met seven months earlier and never seen since except for just that evening, on the way to the bar, making his way towards me through the crowd sends me whirling in the other direction, back the way I came, sticky shoes propelling me back through the dancers, toward the exit. The sudden urge to flee, coupled with the desire not to be seen standing by myself, at the back of the bar, eating popcorn and neither talking to randoms nor hitting on the ladies, is what sends me north, a quarter mile, past the now-silent roar of the rollercoaster, past the empty stalls and sad dark windows of a carnival closed down for the night.
Once inside, the energy lifts. Different bar, more dancers, the ratio of women to men far more favorable, actually surprisingly enlivening. Energy surges through my veins, the chains of a nagging, mild paranoia become fully aware to me only as they slowly ebb, and disappear. Now the glances in my direction, the pleasant nagging in the mid-back can be addressed. I try to convince certain females to use the men’s stall, as I will be the only person in the room, the door not yet fully closed from the previous user, my hand arresting its progress, offering the services to these girls, now nervously turning to each other or straining their necks for any glimpse of salvation from the dancing bodies to their left.
Your loss, are stamped, typewriter style, across the sheet hanging in mid-awareness, against the noise of thought and speculation, scenarios and fantasies bleeding through, calculations of probability, cross-referencing modes of approach, tactics of the modern Californian courtship dance. So vast in its complexity, yet so simple in execution, the most valuable and fundamental lesson being that, if you are not successful with one woman, simply turn around and find hundreds other waiting to, at the very least, offer you ten seconds of their time.
Too much hand contact? Am I conveying the image of arousable male, without coming across as a complete scumbag? Don’t even try to talk around the speakers, don’t force it. After the third rejection, things get interesting. Positive eye contact from afar, nervous avoidance of eye contact as she slips by, two people out, on her way to the loo towed by her friend. I bide by time, order another Budweiser, putting them out of my mind, slipping through the crowd like a minnow through home waters, disappearing from view for a brief moment, from the collective memory of the place, finding myself again at the far side of the room, lazily eyeing the new hotnesses thronging at the door, desperate to find a way in.
Oblivious, I turn, to find her right next to me, back turned, dancing with her friend, who looks me straight in the eye. Fucked if that isn’t obvious, I think, wheeling to within a foot of her, waiting for a protective grab or sheltering from the friend. Closer now, she rubs her behind against me, my hands on her hips, words escape my mouth with the lack of control, an aftereffect of removing myself from the collective consciousness once again, this time due to my pairing with this young woman. She does not turn, and I silently sew my lips shut, seeing the corner of her friend’s eyes scrunch up slightly, in confusion, most likely because she didn’t hear what I said either, and cannot answer her friend’s question.
As I exit, pushing past the douchebag trying to convince the bouncer that he should be able to jump the line, purely on merit of coolness, I chalk up the downhill slide of the final attempted coupling to my apparent eagerness and friendliness, too much for these young girls. Perhaps I expressed too much desire or need with my smile, which emerged when her friend would check on me. Perhaps they found out that I was simply too drunk.
Either way, I walked out, giving up perhaps too early, and am now heading home.
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