[Drive thru. Golden Arches lit up and blasting out the stars.]
Hey man listen, it’s all a numbers game. You’ve got that eggshell ego, know what I’m mean?
It’s a problem with all good-looking guys. Yeah, homes, you a good looking guy. I don’t feel weird saying it. Some hetero guys, they swear they can’t tell what handsome is.
Most hot guys know they’re hot. They’re not used to asking girls out. They’re used to girls making it clear they’re down.
You know how gravity and air pressure holds structures together, and how in space that all collapses, your brains balloon out your skull? Your eggshell is maintained against all the lesser-looking guys who don’t get laid. But if a girl says no, you’re out in zero gravity, broken, floating away like Sandra Bullock.
But me, I’ve no face. No body; no face. I said to myself: Listen, you’re gonna ask out a girl every day for two weeks. Like working out every day, or when a writer tells himself he’s going to write every single motherfucking morning. Rain, shine, armageddon.
Got a lot of no’s, some maybe’s, a yes but no replies to my texts, and a yes leading up to a date tomorrow. You got to swallow your pride. Fuck pride. You’re young, you have to get laid.
You might find yourself saying (what’s that nagging thing telling you to be square and responsible? Super ego? Whatever) making you feel ashamed for getting no’s thrown at you like banana peels.
Some guys think they need to bide their time, wait until being well-dressed and employed is all you need to get laid. Like their ass gets better with age. That’s shame fucking with you. Pride and shame: good cop and bad cop on the hustler’s lifestyle.
You have to have sex with a lot of women. You’re good looking, it’s in your reach to fuck a lot. And a lot of hot girls too, for free. This day and age, you don’t even have to buy that many drinks, or movie tickets. Hang around the college. Guys are in a minority here now. Our team isn’t doing so well in school.
Good-looking, sharp-dressed, well-read motherfuckers like you? Go to a campus bar, you’re going to need hipster repellant to keep those chicks off your dick.
(You want the fries? I thought you ordered them. No? Dope, free Mickey D fries.)
Went out with this Senegalese girl once. She speaks French, lived in Tunisia for a while. Kisses on both cheeks. I’d joke afterwards, I’d say, even if you strike out with a French girl, you can always say you got a kiss! Twice!
Once you get used to the rejection, you don’t even mind the girl who says she’s not interested. Even the bitchy ones, the ones that roll their eyes and say it flatly, add a sorry and they really don’t mean it. Like they’re just saying it because we’re in Canada.
But you have to keep going. I was taking a smoke break at work and this guy comes up to me, asked me for a smoke. Fair enough, I’ve done that to enough strangers. I give it to him. He squints at me in the sunlight.
“Sir,” guy is at least twice my age, “now I have a second question for you, and, sir, just down the street at the Westin hotel a family of six, my family, incidentally, is ready to leave for the train station, us visiting for the weekend, and, sir, I can vouchsafe any requests you may have as to the truth of this information, because the fact is that van cab you see (see, by the Westin entrance?) cannot take the six of us plus luggage, so you see my wife and our kids, including one squealing infant, are in danger of missing our train and we need $32 for a second vehicle.”
He still squints at me. Hasn’t lit the cigarette yet.
“I don’t have any cash,” I say (was going to add “sorry,” it was fighting to get out of my chest).
“Any change?”
The way that guy spun his story, it was way too eloquent to be the truth. He’d told it to 20 guys already that day, and was going to tell 20 more. But as dirty as he seemed, as much of a junkie as I’m sure he is, when he asked me for change, not even pretending he had a wife, kids, and poor little crying baby at the Westin, I saw a kindred spirit. Dead-eyed hustler, going through the motions because what else you gonna do?
I threw out the cigarette and went inside, didn’t hold the door open for him. I’d hold it open for a woman, but a guy? Fend for yourself, man. I was already thinking of that new girl folding clothes at Zara, maybe I’d dart in there to slip her my number. Don’t want to be Captain Conversation with a girl who’s on the job, maybe on commission, too.
It’s not just a status thing, fucking lots of girls. You know why I say it? Look, I got out of that thing with Jenna a year ago. It was really tough. We were only together half a year, but that’s a hell of a long time for college, know what I mean.
Henry Miller said the best way to get over a woman is to turn her into literature. Well, good for him, whatever works. But I would’ve thought a guy who got laid as many times as Miller would know the best way to get over a woman is to fuck a lot of other women.
Then, when you’re thinking of sex, or jacking off without porn (I laud your imagination if you do. You should become a fucking writer or something), you’re not thinking of her body, that birthmark on her ass, some fucked up shit she moaned.
You’ve got this YouTube mix of different girls in your head, different moments, and that’s the achievement of fucking a lot of women. Consumer choice.
If you’re trying hard to find the courage to ask a girl out, you know without conversation, bolt of blue type deal, just think to yourself, we all die anyway. It’s all even in the end. Whether you make an ass of yourself or not, whether you get your dick sucked every day or not, we all die. Might as well distract yourself from that fact.
One time I was in a hippy coffee shop, saw the barista. Coke bottle body, some freckles on her nose and cheeks. Cat eyes. You like what you like, and I like freckles. I guess she smiled at me when she was cleaning up in the corner. Big mistake. Smiling at me when she didn’t have to. Then she bent over. I’m a big sucker for a booty and a smile.
So I ask, “You want to grab a drink?”
“Oh.”
“Here, I’ll give you my number, I’ll write it down for you.”
“OK.”
“As soon as I’m out of sight, you can throw it out.”
I look at the all the labels of the organic snacks they’re pushing. Everything vegetarian. Huge signs for fair trade coffee from small Peruvian co-op farms.
“I mean, you can recycle it.”
“Look, as nice as you seem, I’m not interested in a relationship right now.”
And neither am I, I thought, but how do you say that politely? How do you say I’m looking for casual sex, and I hope you are too? Maybe I had run into a conservative.
This is the misogynist’s trap. Or the nice guy problem. Guys who think being nice on the surface equals owed sex. Like a pussy tax for smiling a lot and laughing at dumb jokes. After a week of getting nein nein nein you ask yourself, why doesn’t she say yes, man? Won’t even consider the possibility of having sex with me? You feel like you’re tilting and windmills. The misogynist says, why can’t I just say I want sex? How’s that offensive? Why is my honesty wrong? Fuck feminism. Fuck Obama.
Man, that’s an easy trap to fall into. I always tell myself when this happens, I ain’t gonna be like Drake. No, for real, Drake moans about this stupid shit all the time. He’s more of a misogynist then R. Kelly crooning about pussy-as-Oreo metaphors.
There’s this one Drake song, off the latest, where he talks about Courtney “who worked at Hooters” and he was going to marry her but she turned him down and now she’s married to someone else. And I’m listening to this guy who gets all the pussy in the world bitch about some girl who turned him down to start a family and I’m thinking, hey man just be happy for Courtney, you sexist dick. She doesn’t have to validate you. You used to be on Degrassi. What happens to most people who used to be on Degrassi? We don’t know, and that’s all you need to know.
Oh, yeah, back to the hippy coffee shop. I had a brownie before we met up, man, so I’m trying my best to hold up. Really? Cheers, the functionality comes with practice, I guess.
Anyway, Coke bottle with freckles and cat eyes says she’s not looking for a relationship.
I decided to push my luck and be suggestive.
“Me neither.”
She gave me an appraising look, and took my scrap of paper.
“OK.”
“Shoot me a text!” I said on my way out. I knew she wouldn’t.
As I turned the corner, I looked through the coffee shop window. I saw her pocket the note in her apron. So she didn’t throw it out right away with the dregs. And she was smiling! That was a decent omen, I thought, not great, but still lifts you up a bit, like the taste of coffee without the caffeine rush. Makes me feel like I’m living a little, in my own small way.
Hot girls get propositioned all the time. Never forget that. Even if they don’t get asked out for like, whatever, a week, they’re getting fucked by strangers’ eyes. Old men squinting in a practiced way. Teenagers gaping, ready to jack off the moment they can. Men out with their wives, their daughters. Men twice your size, looking at you with one purpose.
So don’t fall into the misogynist trap and wish girls were like dudes you could fuck. Their world is different. Respect their world. They’re superior beings, man, I swear, and, no, fuck you devil’s advocate, that’s not just a reverse kind of sexism.
I love women, you know, but sex is something else.
Man, some days I think about sex so much I don’t even imagine naked girls or people doing it or the wildest videos I’ve seen online. I close my eyes and see the word sex, capital letters, printing itself over and over again against nothing. Just the thought, not attached to women, to pussy. It’s not addiction, though I’ve been tempted to pay for it. I think that would be sad, at least at my age.
Later on though, after my first divorce, I want to be a virile grey, you know what I mean, businessman spending a night in Bangkok where I buy the most expensive Thai escort up to my hotel room. Bamboo décor and shit. And of course this girl is well-paid, well-treated, chooses to do this line of work. Of course, of course.
Because I’m a nice guy, know what I mean, but not a nice guy.
