Single white female seeks 5 minutes peace.
If there is anything I have learned about New York since arriving here 2 and a half months ago, it is that of all places in america, this city must be the most accurately portrayed on tv. Seinfeld, Sex and the City, you name it and if its about New York then there are people and places and situations exactly like the ones you are seeing every Tuesday at 8 on Fox. With the possible exception of anything about vampires. But I can’t rule it out.
Consider then for a moment, how often women in these shows are approached by random guys, how casually people are asked out on dates, and how the dating scene in general is intrisically connected to lets face it, motherfucking _everything_. Then consider how goddamn annoying this must be, if you are female and under the age of 50.
Perhaps I am being biased, perhaps I have just had ridiculous experiences, or perhaps its just manhattan. I am fully prepared to believe any and all of those things. But so far, my understanding of the process of dating in New York is as follows.
If you are male:
Go to a bar. Any bar.
Check for women sitting alone at the bar. If there aren’t any, go to a different bar and repeat this step.
Pick a female at the bar and order a drink beside her Ask if there is anyone sitting there, or if she is waiting for someone. If she says no, sit down, and commence politely asking questions.
Once you have established her name, the next step is to ask what she does for a living. If you are a penniless bum this establishes whether she is a good catch, if you are an investment banker this is to establish that she is not after your money. Or if you a particularly repellent and weird investment banker, that she is after your money and so might remain interested even when you turn out to be a sleazy asshole.
Anticipate the reciprocal question and answer in as impressive a fashion as possible. For example, if you fix the air-conditioning for the offices of the hedge fund across the street, you can say you work at Lehmann Brothers as an engineer. This is all entirely acceptable and routine exaggeration that no woman could blame you for.
Show off your knowledge of everything as much as possible. Feel free to wax lyrical about rennaissance art, experimental blues, tuscan cooking, how much you enjoy long term relationships and like to cuddle, how wonderful it would be to find your soulmate. Or if you are intellectually challenged, just allude to your sexual prowess. Women love it when men advertise in this blatant, embarassing and pretentious fashion.
If you are black, from Brooklyn, and have a dead-end job and no college education then you are probaby hitting on a white girl in manhattan (in fact its probably me, since 90% of the guys who hit on me match this description), so hint about how your penis is almost certainly superior to your target’s previous experiences. White girls are always impressed by that. Make sure to drop ‘you know what they say…’ into the conversation. It’s so subtle it is practically subconscious.
Offer to buy her a drink if you think there may be a return on your investment. Remember, you may need to try this with quite a few women before hitting the jackpot, buying all of them a drink might cut the evening short due to lack of funds.
Flatter her as much as you can manage, use any excuse to tell her how wonderful and intelligent she is, despite the fact that you know nothing about her whatsoever. Use the word “sexy” prolifically. Explain how she is everything in the list of incredibly vague and shallow things you look for in a woman.
When you have managed to converse in this fashion with a woman without being ignored or slapped for a full 45 minutes, you can try asking for her number, or a date. However the longer the conversation continues, the more chance you have of obtaining these, so hold off for as long as you can.
Regardless of the outcome, do not devote the entire evening to one chick unless you think you are going to score right now! Calmly and politely take your leave before the end of the evening, with or without her contact details. If you do not have them by now then clearly she has been too foolish to know what she is missing.
Repeat the procedure with the next girl you find, everyone knows two dates are better than one. You are hedging, all clever people do that. If you want to protect your initial investment, you might even take the precaution of conducting the second sortie in another bar, but this is usually considered overcautious.
If you are female:
Go to a bar. Any bar.
Sit at the bar, and order something. a drink, food, whatever.
Wait for approximately 180 seconds
May 14th, 2008 at 9:13 am
What is their approach for larger groups sitting together? Do they have a strategy for every eventuality?
I imagine constantly getting chatted up must get tedious after a while - especially if you only go in to the bar/cafe whatever to grab a bite to eat on the way home. Is there a magic phrase to get rid of them? Other than “Yes, this seat is taken, by who? … by my imaginary friend who has way less of a one track mind than yours?”
May 25th, 2008 at 3:30 pm
Oh God! The tedium. Is “fuck off moron” out of the question? “this seat is being reserved for someone much more subtle than you” or even the one you used on the lad who asked for a blow job, years ago somewhere in Limerick…..”would you care to tell me your success rate with this approach?” But then it is New York. Their success rate must be enough to encourage them to repeat the procedure. You need one off your famous t-shirts. Like the one that nearly got us thrown out of Harrods according to your father.
May 25th, 2008 at 9:25 pm
There is no way of conclusively proving that I almost got us thrown out of Harrods, and I am sceptical. Besides which even if I did the keyword is “almost”. So not “actually”. Besides, I would have been delighted to be thrown out of Harrods. Any shop that sells limited edition water does not deserve my custom.
Telling people to fuck off in america is not quite the casually insulting triviality that it is in ireland or england. They are mortally offended. It is actually easier to just act bored. I did in fact enquire of one guy what his success rate was, at which point he actually launched into an analysis of scoring potential based on “how good his game was”. It was most informative.
May 29th, 2008 at 11:16 am
I want to visit NY………. there is no such fun in Amsterdam
June 5th, 2008 at 3:58 pm
I wonder if I can get chicks in America the good old fashioned Irish way of not trying very hard at all.