Dave: on the pull alone

So many films have captured the romantic ideal of the straightforward pull. Picture the dimly lit bar in some American city, usually East or West coast. Devoid of custom or rammed to the ceiling. A man trudges in, seats himself at the bar and orders a Scotch. Inevitably, there will be at least one woman (usually the same age or possibly younger) also at said bar. And also drinking alone. A brief back and forth of monosyllabic decadence, several more inexpensive drinks and bobs your uncle. Another notch on the bedpost. Or most likely a scratch on the crack-riddled, nicotine-stained wall behind your manky pillow.

Unfortunately, opportunities like this just do not exist. Indeed, did they ever? Was it an entirely fictional premise? In the days when film was based around escapist entertainment as opposed to the modern obsession with documentaries, attempted realism and all the other genres designed to cull the population through mass suicide.

Where is there to go for the opportunity of engaging with a woman you’re yet to meet without either being surrounded by your pissed up mates or having to earn the approval of hers? It’s incredibly rare to see a woman drinking alone in a pub these days. And even in this modern day Pompeii, immediate suspicions surround the lone male drinker. It seems your only way to secure access over the ramparts and into her acknowledgment of your existence is through the company you’re keeping. Even then to cross the moat, you’d need to bring your mates into the conversation. Getting her to relax with raucous tales of the night Gerry got arrested for simulating sex with a traffic cone on the bonnet of a parked police car, blissfully unaware of its inhabitants. I was going to keep going with the impenetrable fortress analogy with a further Portcullis reference. But I think the moat was touching on dangerous ground so I shall not over egg the pudding.

There are clubs, I suppose. An illegitimate free for all for the worst type of primeval butt-rutters. However, owing to the volume of music, it’s less a convenient system of flirting and more a place to get away with touching someone up. Call me over-sensitive but personally I’d rather not end an evening, having misread the signals of one particularly seductive dancer, being made to feel a would-be molester. With that kind of guilt swimming around your head you wouldn’t even be able to go home alone and touch yourself up. Well, not unless you’re a very bad man.

Then some bright spark fooled the public into giving Speed-dating a go. Thank fuck that ludicrous phenomenon died a three minute death. It takes that long to exchange flirtatious glances and breathless pauses between generic compliments. Having a stranger rattling off his or her career, personal or sexual history at pace is precisely why women avoid drinking alone in pubs in the first place. Where’s the appeal in having to sell yourself like a reduced infomercial?

“I dunno, Bob, I’d sure like a little extra for my money.”

“Well, hold on there, Chad. I’m also gonna throw in good hygiene, a winning smile AND a BA(hons) in caring for small furry animals!”

The notion of potential suitors passing between school desks via conveyor belt in order to present a favourable account of themselves before the princess doesn’t even have a novelty factor. Especially when you’re bound to encounter her ugly evil stepsister at the next table.
And of course the infamous Singles nights held discreetly in the function room above your local pub. Advertised as thirty and up, to encompass a broad scope in clientele. But in actual fact only attracting men over sixty hoping for so nubile younger totty, and to there dismay discovering the women had the same idea. The only woman in her thirties whom actually turns up, invariably brings a male friend for moral support. They then spend the first half an hour chatting exclusively to each other before bogging off downstairs to main body of the pub and people nearer their own age group.

So what’s a guy to do? Enlist his friends, rally acquaintances, pay the odd stranger to stand next to him laughing at his hilarious tales of derring-do? Does he have to wait around for the next work-do or birthday party to try and get his end away? Or is it the soul-destroying solo night at a cheesy club, whereby you feel too depressed to channel any appeal into your visage and just end up getting smashed on extortionately priced vodka. But it makes no difference at this point because you’ve been gradually deafened by the excessive thumping generated by some Dutch ‘musician’ with an adjective for a surname.