There was a fight over me this past weekend. True, one of the parties was a guy that might have been related to Christopher Walken, and the other was a sorority girl that had been drinking for the length of a workday (in the U.S., not France), but nonetheless – they both wanted a piece of the Tedd. I was left alone by my two friends who had both gone out for a smoke. I look up and all of a sudden I'm surrounded by these two peeps. At first I thought they had to be together because they were talking about me, to each other, as if I wasn't there.
Girl: “Isn't he cute.”
Guy: “Adorable.”
Girl: “I love blondes.”
Guy: “Honey, he's gay.”
I had to interject, “I'm very gay.”
Girl: “I know. I knew it.”
Guy: “I've always wanted to bone a blonde.” [One must love the subtlety of homosexual flirting.]
The whole thing wrapped up in twenty seconds when I told the guy I had a boyfriend. The girl, however, was still into me, so we went out on the dance floor. At 7 p.m. We looked real cool.
I don't get hit on a lot at bars. One person suggested that it was because I was, “too intimidating.” Further research suggests that it more likely due to the concentric rings of chin flab that started to accumulate around my jugular after I turned 25.
Most likely, however, is that it is the god of flirtation's merciful dealing with myself and anyone I happen to come into contact with. At first, I wouldn't engage, but would rather laugh obnoxiously and run away. This happened most pronouncedly when a man told me my hair was pretty. Flight is also the response to the times (read: one) that I was hit on by a guy who looked like he walked out of a magazine...that has...good looking men in it. At this point I had moved slightly beyond the possum laugh and play dead stage.
“Hey, you come out here often?”
“What? Often? What? Yeah, my friend...he's from LA...so we're here...like seeing things...and...he's from LA...so...”
The effect is probably incomplete without seeing the drool and nervous head tic that were happening as the conversation was occurring. Oddly enough the conversation didn't last long.
I have finally found my stride, though. It is ineffectual in rituals of courtship, however, it is also resolutely awkward and me.
Doesn't matter who you are at the bar, if you approach me and I don't know you, you will most likely be the butt of a terrible joke or a string of insults.
At one party I was introduced to a handsome man.
“This is John. He's an engineer.”
“Oh, wow,” I said. “That's pretty awesome you drive trains.”
Handsome man expression of judgment into a: “I don't drive trains. Do they even call those people engineers anymore?”
“I don't know...,” I said. “My friends from LA...and like...”
The joke wasn't funny, but three-beers Tedd thinks its a hoot. In general, no one else does.
This was also the case when I met a German. I'm kind of a nerd when it comes to my job stuff – not that I'm super in love with my job, but my line of work deals with such random stuff that when I have the chance to talk about my vast knowledge of international education, you better bet I do.
At a pretty sloppy party this German came up to me. Even if my friend didn't know him, you would know this guy is German. 6'1”, Aryan, muscled like the gestapo. So he comes up to me and starts talking to my friends. At the moment when it was least awkward, I inserted:
“Oh man, you're German. You must have taken the abitur.”
The abitur is the German national examination given after Grade 13. For German students, it's really important. For any other human being... It doesn't matter.
“Yeah,” he said.
Which I thought would conclude the conversation, however, soon all were joining in talking about Germany and education in general. I had lost interest the minute my esoteric knowledge was used in conversation, so I just sort of sat back and listened for a bit. Eventually, the conversation got around to the previous party we had been at to watch the Pride parade. I clutched my figurative pearls and said, “Gay Jew...” referring to the man at the previous party who was most likely neither gay nor Jewish, but looked awesome with a shirt off.
The German looks at me and says, “You know, I don't know. I don't really find Jewish men attractive.”
“Well,” I said before I could stop myself, “is anyone really surprised coming from a German?”
If you take any lesson away from this blog post, let it be that Nazi jokes still aren't funny to Germans. Don't joke about it. It's not even that he got upset, but that the whole crowd was looking at each other like, “Too soon?”
These all culminated to the most recent encounter with a guy at a bar. Before the story it's important to know of another man: The Tilapia. So named for a play on his last name, and his general personality, which resembled a fish flopping awkwardly on a shore.
The Tilapia is one of those people that is almost certainly living with an eccentric ex-sitcom writer. At the beginning of the day they go over his role and how throughout the day he can be as obnoxious and charicaturish as possible. The Tilapia did such things as bring books by ancient philosophers to the bar. He would sit by himself until another group of people came in, at which time he would approach them with the book held – cover out – and he would start saying things in that Harvard-Ivy accent that can be seen here:
He and the ex-citcom writer would come up with such phrases as, “That's the Times for you!” Referring, of course, to the newspaper. If you know me, I don't talk about current events or newspapers. The world is depressing. Let's talk about Taylor Swift. But The Tilapia had graduated from Harvard and wanted all to know he was better than you. He was also a man who had the whiteprivilegatude to be able to travel to eight countries in four weeks. And tell us all about it. “And that's Eurasians for you!”
Well, I was at a bar recently with my friends. In my old age I like to go out on Thursdays. I like to go out on Thursdays at 6, drink my fill, and leave before anyone else gets there.
This particular night, my friends and I were the only ones in a bar drinking cheap beer before more fun people showed up. This super-fit guy walked in and sat at the bar. He was still sweaty from working out and had on a sleeveless shirt. Before I knew that he was good friends with the bartender, I was pretty sure he was just a giant douchebag. Aside from the sleeveless shirt, the most damning evidence of which was the giant 3rd edition of Chemistry that he put on the bar. Like HUGE, textbook Chemistry object. The kind my friends kept in its plastic in college.
As soon as the book was set on the bar, I had massive flashbacks to the Tilapia.
“Oh, why yes I'm reading Aristophanes! That's the ancient Greeks for you!”
I was about three beers deep at this point (as stated before, Tedd's critical mass) so this seemed like the perfect opportunity to make a joke that no one would even remotely understand, the purpose of making only to be able to tell my other friends about later.
The guy orders a drink and I turn to him.
“Conversation piece?” I ask pointing to the 17-lb book on the bar.
It is also important to point out that I wasn't saying this in a flirty way. I was saying in in the 65-year-old-Parisian-prostitute-who-smokes-3-packs-a-day way. It was not inviting.
“Oh,” he says, “no, I'm a TA. I was reading up for my class tomorrow.”
This was a valid excuse, and once I found out he was best friends with the bartender, I was going to give him a pass. Douchebag status was lifted. Why you would bring a Chemistry book to the gym is beyond me. I can barely run on the treadmill without falling off, much less focus on...whatever the heck you study in Chemistry. We talked for a bit after this, but after the funny joke to myself, I was done with it.
It's a good thing that I'm off the market. My favorite bar currently is one on the north side of Chicago that has DILF night. Two of my friends like to go, so we hang out and just drink a couple beers. The great thing about DILF night is that no one is even remotely interested in talking to me. A skinny kid who looks 20 and can't grow facial hair isn't really in high demand.
Which is fine with me. If someone did strike up a conversation it would inevitably turn into a slew of insults, the culmination of which would be me talking about how I know this guy in LA.
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