Writer’s block

Lose the attitude

Single and not exactly loving it? Try checking your attitude at the door

By Mike Florczak

“That is just awful an awful line,” she said. “Are you kidding me?”

The girl had a disgusted look on her face as she looked at me. It was enough to make me turn around and go right back to my table of friends.

So what just happened? What happened was I walked up to a table of two girls at Casey Moran’s in Wrigleyville and tried talking to them. What did I say to these girls to have one girl look at me in utter disgust and respond so rudely? I walked up and said to the one’s friend, “Hey, my friend over there wants to meet you.” That was all I said.

Two days later, I happened to be looking on Match.com and ran across the profile of that exact girl who made me feel like a jackass for trying to introduce myself to her and her friend. Here is a girl with a Match.com profile, hoping to have a guy send her a message and ask her out. In her profile, she described herself as friendly and outgoing. How then could this same girl react so rudely to a guy who simply walked up to her and tried to talk to her and her friend?

That incident a few years ago got me thinking, are single people in Chicago actually meeting other single people, and if not, why not? I fear I may have just sounded like Carrie Bradshaw from “Sex in the City.” I believe there are many more single people out there than we realize. It is real easy to look around and see a couple walking together and assume that everyone other than you is dating or has a boyfriend or girlfriend. Whenever I see a cute girl walking alone down the sidewalk, or shopping alone at the grocery store or clothing store, I find myself wondering: Is she single? Let’s see, it is Sunday at 11:15 a.m. If she had a boyfriend, he would certainly be with her, right? Girls who have boyfriends go shopping together at 11:15 a.m., don’t they? A girl shopping at the grocery store by herself must be single... or is she planning to cook her boyfriend a special dinner? I have these mini dialogues in my head every time I see a cute girl by herself somewhere.

On internet dating sites, many women claim they are “tired of the bar scene.” I think what women are truly tired of is actually not meeting any guys when they go out to a bar. I think the vast majority of people go out with their friends and rarely meet new people. This seems like such an impossibility. On a Friday or Saturday night in Chicago, thousands of people are out at pubs, bars and clubs. The following has happened to me countless weekend nights in Chicago: I meet up with my friends at a bar, stand around catching up with the week’s events. We all look around to see groups of girls scattered here or there. We make comments about girls or point different girls out to one another. But nothing happens. I see other groups of guys standing around doing the same thing my friends and I are doing. But nothing happens. No one from my group of friends goes to talk to any girls. No guys from other groups go to talk to any girls. It seems like a grade school dance with the boys on one side of the gymnasium and the girls on the other side. With all these guys around, why is no one talking to the girls? The girls seem to get bored and decide to move to another spot in the bar. Eventually though, the different groups of girls get too bored or tired and decide it is time to go to a different bar or go home. Is this the “bar scene” that girls have grown tired of? I confess that I grew tired of that scene long ago. Isn’t the night always better when conversing with someone of the opposite sex?

Four years ago, in a club in Rio de Janeiro, I saw a guy walk up to a girl standing next to the bar and literally, within minutes, began kissing her, quite passionately I might add. After a few minutes, I went to the bathroom and came back. That same guy was still standing at the bar next to the girl, but now had his back to her as he was talking to a different girl standing on the other side of him. Not more than a minute passed before he started kissing this new girl. I was astonished. How could a guy and girl make out with one another, then not three minutes later, that same guy is now kissing a second girl, within a crotch kick of the first girl? A Brazilian girl my friends and I had befriended explained it simply. She said that when you meet someone new, you might as well find out if they are a good kisser right away. Otherwise, why waste your time with them? Wow. How different it is in Chicago!

Back on point, I still don’t think I’ve answered why that girl from Casey Moran’s was so rude to me. I am sure she is well-liked by her friends and co-workers and loved by her family. She is probably not rude to any of them. So why was she so rude to me after I made a friendly gesture? It was about 10:30 p.m. on a Saturday night, and we were sitting near the loud dance floor. Before I walked up to the table, the two girls did not seem to be in any deep conversation, and in fact, both were looking around the bar and the people at the tables around them. I think I partially blame her rudeness toward me on the possibility that big city life leads you to become cold or not as friendly toward other people. There are thousands of people around, and you can’t possibly smile or say hello to all of them as you pass. Another possible explanation for that girl’s remark is that her friend was more attractive than she was. She may have felt that her friend gets more attention than she does when out somewhere, and she may be insecure about this. Lashing out and being rude will not solve this problem. Smiling and being friendly would have resulted in my friends meeting both her and her friend. Who knows what could have happened or if phone numbers could have been exchanged? Unfortunately, in the end, I can’t possibly know the real reason that girl reacted the way she did.

As I struggle to wind this down, I feel I must say to you ladies that it may not be your fault that you aren’t meeting anyone, it might be the plethora of other women over the years who have basically scared men away from approaching you in a bar by being rude or ignoring them when they say hello. Times have changed, equal opportunity is in. If you see a guy you may be interested in, go up to him and introduce yourself. Men will ALWAYS be flattered and impressed by a bold woman going out of her way to meet us.

I want to follow this up with some advice for those of you with single friends. Most people are terrible at describing themselves and even worse at attempting to describe what they are looking for in someone else. That said, what are the odds that you can be the perfect matchmaker by putting a lot of thought into it? The best thing you can do is put two single people you know in contact with one another and let it go from there. The worst thing that can happen is that they spend three hours together and don’t have any chemistry. But ultimately, if you are single and don’t want to be, you must be proactive about it. That means joining a club, socializing more at work, breaking your daily or weekly routine or doing something as simple as smiling more. In the end, if you aren’t meeting anyone, the only person to blame is yourself.

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