The Experiment: Bar Chronicles, Part I

Last Saturday night, my friend - let's call her "Elle" - and I decided to conduct a social experiment. We were planning to meet a few friends in Adams Morgan, so we agreed on two official settings: the first venue we would attend alone, just the two of us. The second venue we'd join our friends. Both venues being typical, though slightly more upscale (by A.M.'s standards) pick-up bars. And the mission was to examine how many times - if at all - in what manner, and by what types of characters, we'd get hit on at the first venue versus the second venue. We kept the alcohol intake to a minimum to stay alert (and halfway-charming), and we attempted to make ourselves as approachable as possible. We arrived at the first destination, a new, swanky bar for mid-to-late 20 y.o.'s, called Bourbon, and immediately scanned the crowd for the male-to-female ratio. It looked equally balanced, and promising for the experiment. With our fruity, diluted drinks, we found a high cocktail table at the center of the room and positioned ourselves for the attack. So we waited. And waited. We even took turns going to the bathroom to leave the other alone at the table. Elle, at that point, decided that our generation of males have either been castrated or completely drained of any courage to approach girls anymore. Honestly, I was a little annoyed that, for once, when I had a mission, for the sake of science and social experiment, not one bastard actually came up to us!


Then two vultures swooped right in. A tall, blonde Euro-looking dude, and a short, swarthy brown-haired dude. Swarthy dropped the first line on me: "you know, your friend over there is trouble. She stepped on my toes and didn't even say sorry." I looked at Elle and said, "well, she IS a little tipsy, isn't she." (Of course I want to give the impression we've been downing a few - this is an experiment after all). Swarthy was on a roll, dropping pseudo-witty comments left and right, smug that he was playing the game right. I humored him, and let him go on like a crack fiend on a fix. I watched Elle and Euro-dude having a normal, pleasant conversation. Meanwhile, Swarthy was hopping from topic-to-topic, as if he was a conversation pro. He couldn't keep a thought straight. He asked, "how tall are you? 5'1", 5'2"?" I contained my anger, coolly smiled and eyed him up and down, "No. I'm 5'6". You're 5'8" right?" "Wow, that's right. So where were you born?" "Uhh, Tulsa. How about you." "Near Tulsa! Guess." "Texas?" "Yeah!" "Oh, what part? Elle is from Plano!" The blood drained from his face. "Uhh I wasn't born in Texas. From Chicago, actually. So how do you two know each other?" "We worked together. The assembly line at Ford in Detroit, actually. It was a mundane job, but we met next to each other in line assembling parts of the steering wheels." Swarthy analyzed my expression to see if I was bullshitting and, since he couldn't tell from my deadpan smile, kept flapping his mouth. Then my cell phone rang and once I picked it up, he jumped from our table to the next table to chat up a cute brunette. Hmm, smooth guy. . .doesn't waste time does he. . .? Then he jumped back and goes, "so how about I get your number?" and whips out a scrap of paper from his right pocket, and a pen from his left. "Wow, you're prepared, huh?" I began to write some random digits down - this was an experiment after all - and then handed him the paper. "Hey are you kinda artsy? Can you draw?" "Umm...stick figures, at best. Why?" "Can you draw a sketch of yourself...like your hair and stuff...I don't think I will remember tomorrow." I glanced at his anxious face, trying to tell if he was serious or not, and after realizing he was very serious, I said, "well, Swarthy, I guess it wasn't meant to be." And I tore the paper in 4 pieces, crumpled it up, and dropped it into his glass. His jaw dropped and he reached into his pocket for several more scraps of paper. "Come onnnnn. Are you serious?" He laid down the paper and pen in front of me, and I pushed it away. He looked at Elle, who had missed the entire conversation, then nudged his friend to leave. While Euro-dude was busy putting Elle's digits into his phone, I leaned toward Swarthy and said "Good luck with getting numbers tonight. Try to keep track of what the girls look like so you don't get them confused, honey."

Clearly, he was aiming to make a scrapbook of numbers and sketches he was going to collect the entire night and his motives were so transparent that I just couldn't give him the satisfaction. Even if it was an experiment. Stay tuned for Part II.