"Click"

Two weeks ago, I'm at a club in the bottom with some friends. One of whom, who is single, and I decide to go talk to two girls who are dancing by themselves.

Now, you've got to understand something here. In this blog, when I say things like that we "decide to go talk to two girls who are dancing by themselves," I feel like the image that is created is one of confident urban professional men self-assuredly deciding that, gee, those girls look like urbane, fasionable, interesting girls who will be receptive to our finely honed pick-up techniques.

Nope.

What actually happened was that we noticed these girls that look interesting and one of us (doesn't matter which) suggested talking to them. To which the other responded: no way dude. You're crazy.

"No, I'm serious, lets do it."

"What? Are you insane? What will we say?"

"Oh god, don't think about it. Don't plan, we'll screw it up. Lets just go over there."

So now that I've shattered that illusion, let us fast forward several minutes. Somehow we've had a relatively good and interesting conversation with these girls. Well, I have. The girl I'm talking to is very cute and I'm deciding that she's very likeable also. My friend isn't doing so well - his girl is a bit too tipsy for civilized discourse.

So, eventually the girl I'm talking to says listen, I'll give you my phone number, you'll call me, and we'll go out sometime. Which, you know, is what cute, interesting girls say to me: never. My attention is now divided several ways: looking at the girl, operating my voice, remembering to breathe in and out and to tell my heart to beat, and so I initially say, I have a pen. Write your number down.

She says, what? Don't you have a cell phone? I'm sure she's thinking that I'm some kind of barbarian. Oh, right. I do have that. But there's the problem.

The next few steps are the crucial ones: I open my phone, I put it in "new number" mode, put in her number, let her make sure it's right, say "thanks," say "okay I have to go now," and close my phone.

"Click" goes my phone as I close it.

That phone-closing noise is the sound of crushed dreams and destroyed happiness. As you may notice if you reread that sequence of events, at no time did I actually save her number. It's gone.

She has moved to dance somewhere else more crowded by the time I realize this, and I make an executive decision not to go back up to her and bug her about it, because, seriously, that would be well across the awkward line, wouldn't it?