Sober Balls

I've been out last Friday night and the Friday night before that. On both occasions, I'd be out with my residency friends and they'd be drinking heavily while talking to tons of women, grabbing them on the dance floor and grinding on them, and occasionally getting a number. I don't really operate that way, so I didn't do any sudden grinding (for lack of a better term), I didn't talk to every woman who crossed my path (though I did talk to a few), and I didn't get a single number. Honestly, out of most of the women who I saw in a specific club, bar or other venue, I wasn't sure I'd get along happily with them since, being drunk first of all, they were in a completely different state of mind than I was and secondly, although some of these women were indeed quite attractive, going to a bar and dancing with men to get free drinks out of them doesn't seem like a hobby I would want a future wife to have. That's what I'm after, by the way, a relationship that one day (years into the future) leads to marriage. I'm not really after flings or something casual, because I guess I'm tired of it at this point and I would rather move on from that. My friend did this thing after we exited the club where, still considerably drunk, he walked out onto the street (and I would roll the car with the other three guys in it, watching the spectacle unfold) and tried to talk to every free woman or group of women on the sidewalk. When drunk, he had zero approach anxiety, and to be honest I thought this to be a fool's errand because I thought most of those women would just be trying to get home. Turns out at least one of them (a first year internal medicine resident at some other program in the area) gave him her number, and may or may not pick up when he calls (assuming he hasn't already called).

On the drive home, I started to doubt myself after seeing the success my friends were having with women in the club, however superficial it may actually have been. I wasn't interested in what they were achieving but I nonetheless had to repeatedly tell myself that it wasn't my area of expertise, it wasn't where I was best at picking up, nor was it full of women who were 100% amenable to conversation.

I thought about it a bit more the next day, and that evening (yesterday evening) I went to a greek food festival. The day itself leading up to the greek festival was quite shitty in general, because everybody cancelled for this afternoon in the park I was planning, and then I went to the hospital to put things in my locker and discovered I couldn't park my bike as close to the entrance as I wanted to park it, meaning I'd have to plan on going there earlier. Then I was already late for this greek festival, so I drove out and hit a closed road. Taking a ten minute detour, I hit ANOTHER closed road. Either my GPS was incapable of maneuvering around these things or I hadn't figured out how to program it to avoid them, so I just ended up coming back home and then heading out to the greek festival, showing up an hour and a half late.

Upon arriving there, I noticed my friends were in line and hadn't eaten yet, which made me think I wasn't inconviently late, but still very much so. If they had already got their food, that probably would have been quite bad.

While we were in line, my friend was eyeing some rather attractive women of the right age (I found it impossible to tell which women were too young and which were too old) and decided we should try and talk to them. However, he was unusually nervous about where to sit so that we could end up talking to them. At first, some seats near them were not taken and some were, so we ended up actually doing this massive loop around the entire eating tent before we actually went and sat down next to them. I was confused as to how the guy who would walk up to women on the street and start forcibly introducing himself to all of them was all of a sudden disinterested and hesitant to talk to four beautiful women who were sitting at a table all by themselves. We sat down, and he didn't say a word to them, just started eating. I figured hey, this guy's the man, he's gonna sit down and in ten minutes he'll have everybody eating out of his hand. Nothing happened, neither him or my other friend, both guys who were bragging about how well they were doing at the club, neither one of them said anything to these women.

I realized, at that point, that this was where I have historically done best. This is the classic "Day Game" scenario, where you meet a woman who is most likely sober and it's the middle of the day and there's no loud music playing. This is where I was previously most successful, so I figured hey, now's my chance to show these guys what I can do. Every interaction normally starts with an opener of some kind, something funny or interesting to break the ice. If nothing comes to mind, it can be just "Hey, I'm _____ and these are my friends" but I've found those to be less successful. I have the most success with the situational opener, that's where there's something about the situation that's particularly amusing or interesting and you point it out. I went "excuse me" and I asked all four girls which of my two friends actually looked greek, and before they could answer I asked them which of them were greek. Then after some negging and further jokes, I introduced all of us and they reciprocated.

Where this could have fallen apart (and classically does) is where everyone reveals what they do for a living or where they go to school, and at that point I normally try to make either funny or interesting comments about it, usually I say more thought-provoking things to which a woman would react. When drunk in a club, a woman doesn't normally react amazingly to stimulating conversation about her work. Surprisingly, I carried through with this point-of-no-return per se, and subsequently got it to the point where the women around me started asking about us when there was a lull in the conversation, like we were the ones being picked up. At least for the first ten or fifteen minutes, I was more or less the only one holding these women's attention. Four gorgeous women and I was fearlessly negging them and joking around with them. One of them left to continue the work she had to do for the event, and then I continued talking to three of them. Then my friends joined in and the 6 of us ended up talking for 2 and a half hours. I was really funny that night, a bit dramatic at times but funny nonetheless.

When the time came for them to leave, the problem with the group dynamic was that I couldn't really tell which of them if any were into me. Probably none of them, but in any case I told the other two that, since my friend was getting this one girl's number, the two of them would coordinate social activity with the rest of us. Then one of the two to whom I told this said "Hey, you should come to my birthday party next week" and so I was pretty much forced to get her number. I told her we'd be on call on Saturday and Sunday that weekend, not realizing it was day call but still it was admittedly sub-optimal as a scenario where we'd actually have time to go out and stay out. She then suggested I or we come to the next thing she was involved in the next weekend, which was a party at some place in downtown Pittsburgh where she's doing a promo for Bud Light. I should probably mention, though, that these girls were all in university and they're all pursuing professional careers.

I got her number and, after they left, my friend had to sit down and eat because he hadn't managed to eat while talking to them (another thing I miraculously managed to do). At this point, I told my friends that this is part of the reason I don't drink anymore. One of them asked what I meant, and I said that, if I were drinking, I'd never be able to do what I just did that day with those women. Every initial interaction I've had with a woman on any meaningful level has been while sober, and I tend to do best when I'm thinking clearly. My friends were impressed with my ability to carry on a conversation and fearlessly open four women the way I did, so the other friend of ours who was with us that day said I had "Sober Balls". I don't know if the name will stick, but at least now they won't keep trying to get me to drink every time we go out, because now I've finally managed to demonstrate one good reason to stay sober.