Pick-up Strategies of the Moment

So here are three pick-up strategies that were attempted on me last Saturday at (gulp) the Dark Room. I found them alternately surprising, appalling, and so far off the mark as to indicate the shooter was blindfolded.

The first happened soon after my arrival – which was pretty early in the night so the bar was hardly crowded. My friend Laura and I were at the bar, I leaning over on the counter, and I felt a backside brush(ing) against my own. I would hardly have noticed if it was a regular, fleeting brush against, but it was a lingering brush against, so after a few seconds I turned around to see what the fuss was about. And then he pounced! “Hi! I’m James, what’s your name?” I mumbled mine and turned back toward the bar to pay for my drink. Wallet in hand (three year old, faded ass, beat to hell, literally falling apart wallet), James took the opportunity to compliment me on it. “Nice wallet. What’s it say on there?” It being in an Oriental character, I had (and have) no idea. Sorry bro. Strike one.

Back to the corner by the DJ booth where my friend Alex was Djing. This poor guy has to play music for Dark Room assholes every other Saturday; at one point in the night he played “What About Your Friends” by TLC, during which a young “lady” came over to the DJ booth to request…another TLC song. Me and Laura thought we were safe over there. We’ve known the Dark Room to be full of sexual predators for a long while now, so keeping a low profile there is key to having a reasonably ok time. But alas, the corner was not safe for us, twice over.

The first one to venture into our space came over and asked us why we weren’t dancing, and proceeded to try to pull first Laura, then myself, onto the dance floor with him. Laura wrangled herself out of his grip pretty quickly, but he managed to clamp his paws on both of my wrists in a death grip. If not for Laura karate chopping and verbally eviscerating him, I might be in tiny, chopped up pieces in this guy’s freezer. Strike two, fellas.

The second to venture into our corner was far more clever than James and far less creepy than wrist-grabber. “Nobody puts Baby in a corner.” If ever there was a line to get me out of a corner and onto a dance floor and into a stranger’s bed, that’s probably it, but I’m a bit of an odd bird. Alas though, in my mind I already had one foot out the door, and no amount of Dirty Dancing quoting could tether me. Strike three.

I first wonder if these strategies ever work – and then I realize that they must have at some point in the past, otherwise the dudes wouldn’t still be using them, right? You find something that works, stick to it? Forever and ever? Then I begin to weep for all of ladyhood, that they would ever reward such poor efforts.