A Lesson in Common Courtesy (written with a nasty hangover and in a café whose coffee is reviving my faith in human existence)

So here’s the situation. It’s the Saturday night before Halloween and my new friends and I are at our second bar of the night. I’m on my third drink, which, as you may have gathered from some of my previous entries, is too much for me. But I digress. This is not a lesson in how I shouldn’t have drunk that extra gin and tonic, nor is it about throwing up in an embarrassingly public place (never again!). This is about people not being up front about their relationship status (OH HELL NO!)

So I’m feeling pretty damn hot, being Freud in a slip, and doin’ my thing when my oh my I spot my type of guy. Most of you know who that it is; over 6 ft, a little awkward, AND, to top off this lovely sight, he is a wearing a hoodie! In that moment I feel like I haven’t seen a guy wear a hoodie since college (aka last June), and I am loving it. In the midst of every other person who is dressed to the nines, toppling drunkenly over themselves, and just having a raucously good time, this cute, casually dressed, and seemingly unattached guy standing by himself is having none of the drunken chaos; he’s totally absorbed in watching the football game.

I probably stare at him for a good 20 minutes moaning to my friend about how much I want to talk to him but don’t know what to say— (the art of picking someone up at a bar is something that I can easily play along with as a wing-woman, but am very uncomfortable actually initiating) when, lo and behold, he sidles up to my friend and I and positions himself right next to me. My friend makes the quick exit, and I turn to him and say, “So why aren’t you dressed up?”

This evolves into a very nice conversation about how he went to Stanford, is a med school student in the same city I work in (!), and how he only lives a couple block away. I’m getting all the unmistakable signals that he’s into me:

1. He came over to me first
2. Direct eye contact
3. Physical touching on the shoulder and arm every so often
4. It’s been 15 minutes and he’s still into it

I’m feeling extremely positive about this whole thing and am starting to think I’m going to get some tonight, when all of a sudden he drops a doubly douche-baggy bomb. Not only does he have a girlfriend, but he LIVES with her. I’m shocked, and can’t help but ask, “Well, where is she?” He responds that she’s asleep and not feeling well. All I want to do is shout, “Then why the fuck are you at a bar at 1am on a night where EVERYONE is trying to get laid, and why did you choose to start talking to a hottie (me) in a slip with a “penis envy” sticker on her left boob and a “libido” sticker on her right ass cheek!?”

But of course I don’t say any of that, and instead coolly inquire about what she does for a living (she works for the “Ted” talks program, which I guess is pretty cool). Then it gets awkward and he excuses himself to go home to her.

This incident puts a damper on my night, which soon transitions to me sitting drunkenly on a bar stool in our third and last bar, slurring my way through feelings of confusion and hate towards men to my friend, who has seemingly lost the red wig to her Merlotte’s waitress costume. What else is new, though?

So the moral of this story is pretty self evident: BE UP FRONT about your relationship status within the first 5 minutes (at most) of a conversation, ESPECIALLY if you are talking to a cutie at a bar in a hot slip. Frankly, if I’m trying to get some (as I damn well should be on a drunken Saturday night), I don’t want to have to ask if you have a girlfriend— that’s YOUR responsibility, asshole.

                                                                                                              

I have to say, this brings to mind my recurring wish that we lived in an alternate Sims computer game-like universe, so that there would be a way to immediately discern whatever information we wanted to know about a person we are macking on and really should know.  I’m thinking, bright halogen signs over peoples’ heads that say “seeing someone,” “in a relationship,” “casually fucking someone,” “scared of commitment” “I have a problem getting it up,” or anything else that you really should know about a person before your interest gets piqued.

But of course, we don’t live in a world where people put their faults up front, and that’s just the beauty of dating and getting to know someone, isn’t it?