The Wonder Years

Last week was crazy.

It started on Monday night dollar beers with my buddies, which of late has featured me, front and center, excitedly waving my arms around and telling my buddies about The Game, then after consuming x number of beers or other alcoholic beverages having the courage to “prove” to my buddies that all this shit really does work.

I had fun bouncing around the bar, introducing myself to the more attractive ladies and flirting for a bit with them and their friends, a drunken grin plastered across my face. It was easy here, all the guys were total AFC’s, and where I’m admittedly the same, being aware of such things automatically gives you an edge.

I spotted a beautiful girl sitting with a frumpy looking friend wearing Winnie Cooper glasses. One by one I saw guys come right up to the beautiful girl and start talking, ignoring her friend. A couple of them would actually introduce themselves to the friend then turn almost immediately to the beautiful one and start talking. I decided to make the beautiful girl into my target.

By the time I decided to approach her Winnie Cooper, the target had six AFC’s sitting around her in a semi-circle. It looked like a live taping of elimidate. I walked up to the obstacle and commented how her glasses reminded me of Winnie Cooper. She squealed with delight. While from afar she didn't appear very attractive, up close she was surprisingly pretty. I asked her about her nose ring and tattoos and said a few things to get her to laugh, and like clockwork the target came up to see what we were laughing about. I used an opinion opener on the two of them about ladies’ underwear that I read on a forum somewhere. It was bullshit, they knew it was bullshit, but it came from that silly flirting place so they loved it and we laughed for a bit. Then something strange happened—when I was going to go into another silly opener, I suddenly realized my affections had changed—I wasn’t interested in the target anymore, I suddenly became interested Winnie. Something about her, I didn’t know what it was, struck me in the heart and I felt like I saw straight through her. I kept talking to her and the fomer target wandered away when she realized I wasn’t as interested in talking to her.

Winnie had low self-esteem. Behind those nerdy glasses, I could see this cute 21 year-old had a shortage of positive feelings about herself. And so I gave her some. I became very honest (in a way where I would have been blown out by almost anyone else in the world), and started telling her how great she was, how I felt a really strong connection to her, and how I came over to talk to her friend and decided she was too interesting to leave. I meant every word and she was almost moved to tears. It was strange, but felt really good. I excused myself and went back to find my buddies and flirt with other girls, knowing this girl was in the bag.

As the night progressed, the guys multiplied like a tumor, until the point where every girl had several guys hovering around them. I decided I was done wanted to leave. I went up to Winnie where some AFC at the bar was writing her poetry. He was visibly annoyed that I interrupted him.

“give me your phone number, I’m going to see you again.” I said, right in front of the guy.

She grabbed a napkin and wrote her number on it. I took it, walked out, and just before dipping into the subway, texted her “Hey Winnie Cooper, this is Kevin Arnold.”

The next morning I got a text from her that read “You’re so awesome!!!”

I felt good about that night, but decided maybe she’s too young or not experienced enough—I decided I shouldn’t sleep with this girl.

But then at 12:30AM the next evening I received a text message: “hey, want to come over?” Not-so-innocent it seems.

I told her I needed my beauty sleep, which was hard, considering I’m a guy and prone to oneitis. But I couldn’t get this chick out of my head. I was so into her but couldn’t figure out why.

Thursday night was our day two. I took her to a friend’s art opening in Manhattan. We drank some wine, she was very nervous, but I tried my best to be the calm center of the universe so that she would follow my lead. It was tough, but I did a decent job. Later that night we were to meet up with some buddies of mine at a bar and drink for a bit. I kept saying I had to leave soon because I had work in the morning.

When it came time to leave the bar, she asked me up front “do you want to spend the night?”

I carefully weighed my options and decided to go home with her. I said goodnight to my buddies, who seemed happy for me.

She was drunk, I was drunk. Together we fell down together on the deflated air mattress she called a bed and made out in the dark. She had a great body and a pretty face, just a poor sense of fashion.

At a certain point in the making out she said “I’m on the rag.” So romantic. I replied while laughing “I wasn’t going to have sex with you anyway.” And continued to kiss her, slightly annoyed at myself for not having said it first.

We melted into each others arms and fell asleep without any difficulty. It was at this point when all the signs finally clicked and I knew why we were so drawn to one-another. Like my previous girlfriend and every other girl I’d had oneitis for, she was a raging alcoholic.

In the morning I got up, took a shower and kissed her goodbye. My head was spinning with conflicting emotions. I liked this girl a lot—but for the wrong reasons. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from being in relationships with alcoholics (even ones in recovery), they’ll hurt you. If there’s another thing I’ve learned, it’s that you can’t help them. I tried to push her out of my head and just focus on having fun in the moment. This girl is trouble, and besides I’m trying to get into sarging so that I can choose healthier girls for me.

I was a bit down the following couple of days, until Saturday when she had invited me to a party. I waited around with my buddy and we finally got directions to where it was at (I felt like a tool for waiting around but whatever). When I got to the party, it took a while but I found her in the back. Some douche was hitting on her pretty hard. She seemed cleaned-up, more girlie, very attractive (not just to my eyes). When I came up to her, there was a sense of awkwardness that I didn’t expect as she gave me a curt "how's it going?"

Because I’ve been in this situation before, I knew exactly what was going on. I tried my best to shut it out and have a good evening anyway, going around and introducing myself to people at the party, using a few openers here and there, but I wasn’t able to get it out of my head completely. When I decided to leave, I went up to her and took her hand and looked her in the eye and said goodnight. In that moment she squeezed my hand and her eyes pierced me again and I felt that electric connection that I had felt before, and understood that tonight she was going home with someone else.

The next day I phoned her and cut it off, feeling that it would be better to be the one to say something and end it than to passively leave it alone and let it eat at me. "It’s just practice", I told myself, realizing that there will be other girls who are better for me, also acknowledging my own susceptibility to troubled girls.

While I know I’ve still got a long way to go, I’m extremely grateful for what I’ve learned in my very limited study pickup. In the past I would have angrily pursued that girl for weeks, months or even years trying to gain affection from someone who wasn’t fully capable of doing so, or at best I would have stopped contacting her and kept a feeling of resentment inside for not having the balls to stand up for myself and say something.