True Life: I think I Dislike Happy Hours

I know, I know, this goes against everything you understand about my deep-set love and affection for alcohol and camaraderie. Hear me out, okay?

So RG asked me to go to happy hour at this bar he likes that is walking distance from both my job and my house tonight. I said sure, because I hadn't seen him in almost three weeks and wanted a chance to catch up, and besides, he's always *RAVING* about this bar. I got there first and he wasn't as late as he usually is, which was nice [Really, RG, I give you two freebies whenever we hang out--it's just that you always use your first one by being late :P]. I couldn't see their happy hour specials posted anywhere, so I decided to just sit, pretend to be interested in my phone, and wait until he got there.

Strike one: my amaretto sour was EIGHT DOLLARS. But I love amaretto, and so I let it slide and said I'd get a beer next to balance my happy hour budget. I then got a crappy Corona and it was an unheard of SEVEN dollars. I am never going back to this bar. But that's not what this post is about. Trying to have semi-serious conversations over thumping hip-hop doesn't jive well with me either, but again, this post is not about this bar specifically, and I suppose happy hour is not designed for semi-serious conversations with good friends. Fair. 

At the particular bar we were at tonight, I was, for one of very few times in my life, on the tiny side of a seriously skewed gender imbalance. At one point there were seriously five women and over twenty men in the room. RG kept commenting on this, asking if I saw anything I liked, saying I could have my pick. I kept brushing these comments off, until he tried to challenge me to get one of them to buy me a drink. I flat-out refused, and he seemed puzzled by how adamant I was. 

I...can't fuck with the superficiality of bar scenes, this one in particular or bars in general. Unless I want meaningless sex with someone I couldn't contact again if I wanted to, which is exceedingly rare but not impossible, then I have literally no interest in like, interacting with strangers on the premise of wanting them to give me things for no real reason but the possibility of getting my number and seeing me again, which they can only decide if they even want to do based on my looks and the brief conversation I suppose we'd have to have in order for him (or her, though that didn't seem likely in this bar) to decide to buy me a drink. That's actually one of the most undesirable forms of supposedly-pleasurable social interaction I can imagine--it brings to mind how I imagine putting an evening with me up for bidding at a charity auction would feel. Step up, step right up and place your bid! For the not-low-at-all price of an eight-dollar amaretto sour, you too can have a chance encounter with this woman, whom you know absolutely nothing about! #donotwant

Now, I'm not saying it's impossible to meet someone at a bar and develop some sort of legitimate interest. For instance, if that guy I met at the bar at The Howard had asked for my number, I would have given it to him. If he'd asked me out, I would have gone. Because we had an hour-long conversation that wound through all sorts of subjects and involved him showing me pictures of his family--we developed an understanding of who one another was. But that's the kind of thing that can happen when you meet at a bar at a concert you both came alone to--you already have two things in common: musical tastes and a dislike for the social constructs that say that going to concerts alone is a faux pas. At the bar we were at tonight, what was I supposed to do, scan the crowd to find a face I found aesthetically pleasing, walk over and start talking to him based on nothing, and hope he found me attractive or interesting enough in this briefest of encounters to...reward me with a drink? I'd rather not. There is literally nothing substantive involved in that kind of interaction, and I don't understand why it is supposed to appeal to me. 

A club is slightly better, because then I'm not supposed to talk and I can just dance by myself and maybe someone will start dancing with me and maybe I'll let them and maybe not and it's not a big deal. I feel simultaneously like this is less of a meat market and like I'm more comfortable because we stopped pretending it's not a meat market. There aren't awkward introductions or performance-feeling conversations when a guy whose face I probably haven't even seen comes up behind me and starts grinding his junk on my ass (culture is so weird). And grinding is infinitely more pleasurable/fun to me than dancing alone. But even so, when I go out, dancing with randos is not ever on my list of goals for the night. My list of goals for the night always consists of three things: have fun with my friends, don't lose anything important, and get home in one piece. 

So I'm in a weird place right now. I like going out with my friends. I still like drinking just as much as I did a few months ago, and I like partying with people I feel comfortable with. I don't like being thrust into social spaces where it is assumed that I will want to talk to/flirt with people I know nothing about and be "gifted" things from them for unclear reasons. For this reason, I was probably way more comfortable in the random neighborhood bar near my house where I was the only Black person in sight than I was at this upscale Black bar RG and I went to tonight. I like places that are chill and for drinking and talking, not for putting on appearances and flirting and playing peacock. If I don't know you and have literally no premise for an inkling of desire to get to know you (an attractive face does not premise make), I don't want you to do anything for/to me, kthnxbai.

...This post could appropriately be called True Life: I Miss Quad. 

Why do I talk to uninteresting/creepy guys that are talking to me?

Just read this on a blog about rape culture:

Women who are taught that refusing to flirt back results in an immediately hostile environment will continue to unwillingly and unhappily flirt with somebody who is invading their space and giving them creep alerts. (source)

And though I try to be good about recognizing stupid things I have been socialized to do and not doing them just because it's more convenient in the moment, I do this all. the. fucking. time.

Okay, well, at least a lot. I can think of a few examples off the top of my head.

Most recently: So I have a new guy's number in my phone. His name is Matthew. He is a grown man. Thankfully, he's pretend-to-be-classy-enough to have given me his number instead of asking for mine, so our interactions will not continue, but let me explain how I came to have Matthew's number.

It was a little before midnight last Monday night. I was standing on the platform at Trenton Transit Station, waiting for my train to take me to Princeton Junction, on my long trip back to campus from my interview in DC. There was a tall pretty cute guy standing to my left, and he caught my eye and I smiled a small smile at him. (This habit of smiling at strangers is something I picked up from my years of working in customer service, and I'm conflicted about whether it's a habit I need to try to break.) I sat down on the train and he sat one row behind me, to my left. As he's sitting, he asks me if this is the local train, and I know it's starting. But then he gets a phone call! He picks up and it's muthafucka this, nigga that, and I have decided that I have no interest in talking to this man. But then he tells whomever he's talking to that his phone is dying and he needs that last bit of juice to last him to NY, so he'll call him back later. Damn. I was almost free from talking to this man. We sit in silence for a minute or so, and then he starts again. I must commend him for his opening line: "Why you got all that hair tied up like that?" (We naturals are known for pride in our hair, I suppose.) I explained that I was coming home from an interview, and he asked me about the position and whether I wanted to move to DC and why and why not Philly or NY? He explained that he splits his time between Philly and NYC, has apartments in both places (the rent for the Manhattan apartment, which is only a few blocks from Penn Station, is $2k a month), and he owns a recording studio and sells cars. He didn't go to college, but his sister went to UPenn. He thought there were 5 Ivies (Cornell, Brown, and Dartmouth weren't on his list. Go figure.) He was talking about how great it is to be able to call himself a success without being in the drug game, and how much satisfaction that gives him, that he makes money cleanly and legally, and I respected that. He was kind of re-vamping my opinion of him until he mentioned that he has a son and he's really cute too. Yes, sir, it's great that you have a kid and evidently like/take care of him, but you are a grown-ass man who runs businesses and has a child and why are you interested in a 21-year-old college student? My answers had gone from being succinct and designed to express non-interest to semi-conversational, but at this point I was just like, wait, why am I talking to his man? Okay, he said I was pretty and he complimented me on my smile and my grey nails and the way I said "they match my suit...which is also grey." So what? (Side note: he also busted right out with "What are you mixed with?" And then seemed dubious of my "nothing recently..." This bothers me on multiple levels and will probably get its own post, so I'm going to move on.) We got to Hamilton and he asked when my stop was and I said next, and he said something that expressed dissatisfaction at this. Later he said, "So how are we gonna do this? You gonna take my number or what?" (Sir, you are not entitled to me. There is no guarantee that we're going to do anything.) I paused and may have "Hmmm"ed, which threw him off guard; he said, "What, you considering it or something?" "Am I not allowed to consider it?" "Well you, like, actually stopped and thought about it. You had me a little worried." I took his number, knowing I would never call it. 

Why did I do this? I have done this before! As long as the guy wasn't rude or legit calling me out on the street like this is an appropriate means of communication, I will generally entertain their advances, regardless of my own disinterest. I suppose I've always just interpreted it as, hey, I'm a nice person, and he doesn't seem to be an asshole, so I'll let him spit game as long as it doesn't seem like it's going to definitively lead anywhere I don't want it to go. Or as you know, I should work on my communication skills, or on talking to "regular" people (yes I know this term is all kinds of problematic; I just don't know a better way to phrase what I mean. Please volunteer one if you have one.) I don't give such guys my number when they ask--"I just don't give it out. It's just a rule I have."--and I won't volunteer to take theirs. But what's making me feel obligated to talk to them? Why do I feel the need to justify why I won't invite these men into my life by giving them my number? Operating under the rule that any men who do not seem like total and complete disrespectful creeps are allowed to occupy my time is...basically wrong on every level. When a guy calls out to me on the street, I will either ignore or flat out reject him (click here and here for interesting stories from my summer in New Brunswick), but on a train I feel like I'd be being rude by not allowing conversation to happen. But this is RIDICULOUS and I need to stop, like, immediately.  

"I have nothing to wear."

I can understand how this statement might be viewed as a convenient excuse or a cop-out in some situations. Like, if you have your entire wardrobe at your fingertips to choose from at your convenience and are actually overwhelmed by options and really mean, "I can't figure out what to wear." Or if there is no specific dress code for whatever you've been invited/asked to go to and you could legitimately spray some Febreze on something in the laundry hamper and call it a day. Or if you have the time and extra spending money to go shopping and buy something for the occasion. In any of these cases, you legitimately have no room to be making excuses.

But if you're, say, on vacation with a finite amount of clothing, and didn't pack, say, short dresses or miniskirts or high heels because it is December and your friends have never wanted to go clubbing before and you don't own a miniskirt anyway, then when your bestie invites you to her sorority sister's birthday party at this fancy club she doesn't think you can wear jeans to and all you brought home was jeans and the party is in three days, which includes NYE and appropriate getting-over-your-hangover time, I think it's a legitimate rationale behind which to at least think about declining the invitation. 

My friend seemed to disagree, and so I ask you, friends and people of the internet: Do you think not having anything to wear is ever an acceptable reason to not go somewhere/do something?