Hit And Miss

There is a distinct art to the pickup, which some people seem to have and others definitely don’t. Or maybe it really depends on the night and the person. Whichever theory you hold, I’d have to say that a rather dismal attempt at hitting on me was made the other night by an Irish backpacker.

I decided to get a head start on my weekend by going out and getting rather inebriated on a Tuesday night. It was excellent. I spent most of the evening at Scruffy Murphy’s, which is close enough to Chinatown and the city youth hostels that it has now become a sort of Mecca for the young, single, stupid and alcoholic. Towards the end of the evening though, I was at the bar by myself and well, I ended up leaving the bar by myself too.

Whilst at the bar, I was approached by this guy who started to dance to me. He wasn’t really dancing ‘for’ me or ‘with’ me but it was that single version of the bump and grind, which seems to replace conversation in certain situations and becomes a substitute for talking ‘to’ someone. I was in a good mood and so I made an appropriate response by doing a bit of dancing and smiling back. I then figured the ball was in his court and I wanted to see where he was going to go with it. I guess he dropped it.

Now I’m sure there are plenty of possibilities at this point but a really basic one would have been to make an introduction in order to start a conversation (either that or actually get me on the dance floor which didn’t happen either). From what I can remember, I think we established that I lived in Sydney and he was Irish. And that was it. At this point he didn’t seem interested in either dancing or talking so I left. I was slightly puzzled though.

Was he expecting me to completely slap him down and so hadn’t really thought about what to do if I didn’t? Did he actually decide, rather quickly, that he wasn’t quite as interested as he’d first thought? Was he totally plastered and not at all sure what he was doing? Or was he merely waiting for me? And if so, what did he really expect me to do? Grab his collar and get him lip-locked in under thirty seconds? Sorry Bucko, definitely not my style.

In the end I guess it was a case of no harm, no foul. As an unsuccessful attempt, the whole thing could also be passed of as just a little harmless flirting. It was an amusing diversion and then I went my way and he went his. I can only hope however, that his next attempt achieves more success.