As your friends holler along to 2000s’ hip hop in the mirror, their curled hair and matte lips shimmering in the reflection, you realize it’s time to soar off into the night.
Friday evening approached like a tidal wave and you have bravely taken it on like a championed surfer. The air has already been invaded by vape fumes and the enthusiasm of party girls galore.
You enter the weekend festivities. Eyes are wide, your outfit is cute and your shoelaces are tied tightly for the long adventure ahead.
You could be visiting the spacious basement of a fraternity house, your coworker’s disco-lighted apartment, or the sticky atmosphere of the local nightclub.
But the same, all-too-familiar pattern of dudes fist bumps nearby.
After two years of carefully listening to the complaints and lectures of women in sloppy bathrooms and throughout campus, I have titled myself a historian of male party encounters.
Here are the five guys that await you from that party house’s side door.
The One You Know-But Don’t Really Know
You see him all over campus, but have never once spoken to him or shared any sort of meaningful encounter.
As you see him bopping his head to a G-Eazy song, you wonder how exactly you know him.
Does he take the same route as you to the library? Is he a forgotten Tinder match that once sent you a meme?
You think maybe he forefronts the Starbucks’ on rainy afternoons or once was longboarding on a warm Sunday.
Either way, you avoid making eye contact and don’t even consider dancing with him.
Although he is a stranger, your connection with him is just somehow too close for comfort.
The Imperfectly Perfect Guy
He has the aesthetic of a marshmallow and the most enormous heart to ever bless mankind.
He’s the pure-eyed epitome of puppy behavior, desperate for love, attention and a warm home.
In a perfect world, such a gentle spirit would win the girl with a ray of confetti and a unicorn steed.
His fluffy physique and fairytale ambitions are sweet. It’s only morally correct to wish that this lonely, nice guy will someday find his happily ever after.
But this isn’t a perfect world and you have limited control of the law of attraction. Thus, as you shake your head and apologize for your lack of interest, your stomach fills with the icy waters of guilt.
It is now time to ask, “Why can’t the nice guys ever get the girl?”
The One Who Stole Your Clout Goggles
This is a eulogy to the dudes who are incapable of comprehending decent behavior.
They know all of the words “Wild Boy” and worship Jordan Belfort in full glory as the penny-stocking messiah.
They bounce from wall to wall, beating their chests like gorillas in an aroma of cheap booze and self-entitlement.
Your eye-rolling fails to aid you as repellent. So when they yank at your hips without permission, you are obligated to whip out an ammo of declines, excuses and the prominent “sorry, I have a boyfriend” strategy.
But they persist with the art of, “I only want one dance,” “but you’re so hot though” and various other statements that do not even acknowledge your personhood or intellect in the slightest.
They disguise nastiness as a concept of ambition, as though the world is literally their oyster and everything and everyone is there’s for the taking.
Although this is extreme, my experiences have proven it to be quite accurate.
Once I refused to dance with one of these gentleman, so they stole the $10 clout goggles right off my head as an alternate.
To be continued…