Valentine’s Day: a situational guessing game

How well do you know the author of this blog?

Three situations; three girls; one night. Can you guess which one involved Allison?

1. She’s up at the bar, waiting for the drinks she just ordered. The guy standing next to her—who, coincidentally, looks a little like a Puerto Rican version of Burt from “Sesame Street”—turns to her and says, “Hello, may I introduce myself?” Raising an eyebrow, she says, “Sure.” He holds out a hand. “I’m J__.” “Hi J__,” she says, shaking his hand. “I’m A______.” He proceeds to ask her more about herself, adopting what she considers to be quite a cocky manner when he discovers she is not an alumni of a school “on par” with Georgetown, his alma mater. “So what are you doing here?” he finally asks. “Hanging out with these fat cats,” she answers, taking two drinks that have finally arrived and handing them to her two friends, who are standing behind her in the crowd. “What are you drinking?” he wants to know as she turns back to wait for her drink. It finally arrives, and, tired of talking to this muppet-faced Georgetown highbrow, she replies, “Captain and Diet. I call it a Skinny Bitch.” And with that, she smoothly makes her exit.

2. This guy’s been following her all night like a case of bad breath. She’ll make up some excuse to leave—to go to the bathroom, to refill her drink, to get something from her coat—and as soon as she turns around, there he is again. He has a face like a little puppy, too, which is why she can’t summon the will to tell him to get lost. He just looks so eager to please. She thinks that maybe if she weren’t interested in someone else, she might find him good-looking enough to give him a chance. He is mildly attractive, in a clean-cut sort of way. But she is interested in someone else, so all this attention is just exhausting. Finally, though, it’s the end of the night, and she’s made it clear she’s about to leave—her final escape. He’s hovering over her as she sits and waits for her friends to say their goodbyes, trying to make the room stop spinning and wallowing in grief over her broken camera, which fell on the floor just as she was going to get a picture with the party host. He leans down asks if he can have her phone number. Wincing slightly, and with no lack of pity, she says, “I think you should go.” He straightens and, with a regretful smile and an awkward high-five, he leaves.

3. She didn’t mean to get wrapped up in conversation with him. It’s just that the first guy she got stuck talking to was dumb as bricks, and this man had a really bizarre accent—which he explained he had acquired by travelling since childhood and speaking 13 languages—so she figured she may as well get into conversation with someone halfway worthwhile before that other silly Indian guy came back and tried to twirl her again. Problem is, she should have seen the warning signs way in advance: most notably when he started telling her how refreshing it was to meet someone like her at a bar, how she carried herself well, and how she seemed very intelligent and “girl-next-door.” She should have known that this was all code for, “you look like you’re still in college (she had been asked this very question by 3 guys already that night) and you’re listening to what an unattractive forty-year-old man like me has to say.” Of course, the fact that she is this oblivious and girl-next-door type brings us to the horrific next stage in our encounter, in which he asked for her phone number. She immediately thought to give him a wrong number, but luckily she anticipated his calling her so “she’d have his number” (which he immediately did), and it would have looked awfully suspicious if her phone hadn’t rung. . . . So the only alternative was to vow never to answer when he called. Which is why, when she filled in his contact information in her phone, she labeled his number with “VDay” instead of his name. Good thing, too, because he called her twice later that night—after she had left, sometime around 3 a.m. “Rule of thumb for bars,” one of her friends told her later, “is never talk to a guy you don’t intend to give your number to for more than five minutes. And never give your number to a guy you wouldn’t fuck.” She’ll have to plan a better exit strategy for next time.