Disasterous Doubling Down

There are different types of interactions on can have, as a single guy in a bar, with women. It's uncommon that there's an easy opportunity to approach a woman that you've never met. It's uncommon to have that woman be interested enough in you to keep talking to you. It's uncommon to have a woman's interest build over time.

But what's even less common is to do that, simultaneously, with two women.

It's not even a simple arithmetical formula, where the two success rates are independent. If this were the case, let's say that there's a 20% chance of "succeeding" with each woman... that would put the chances at:

Success only with woman #1: 16%
Success only with woman #2: 16%
Success with both women: 4%
No success: 64%

If the odds worked this way, it would make most sense to just talk to every girl in the place...

Of course, it does not. Women, damn their mysterious ways, actually pay attention to their surroundings and for some reason don't really appreciate it when a dude is going from one woman to another right in front of them... whether they have any claim on the guy or not.

I don't have the exact equation as to how well the real success rates might be, but I'd guess it's something like this:

Success only with woman #1: 2%
Success only with woman #2: 2%
Success with both women: 2%
No success: 94%

The relatively high "double success" is based on geography (columns, lots of people, smoke machines) creating a near-independent experience.

Because I am a man of science (at least a bachelor of one), I rarely try to "double dip" this way. Because, however, I am also a man of alcohol it's not entirely unheard of for me to attempt to do so. This blog is a brief overview of one such attempt.

Study, if you will, the following chart. Enjoy the Easter-like colors and the Copperplate Gothic font. Savor the near-Tufte-like ability to capture a total plane wreck in Excel form.



A sign of a great chart is the ability to immediately tell what the chart is representing. Since that is clearly a great chart (it took me about seven minutes to make... it better be great!) you clearly could tell that I (a) interacted with two different women, and (b) went down in flames with both.

I've broken the evening down into three phases so I could flesh it out with detail.

This was a few weeks ago at Hula Hula, a Lower Queen Anne-area karaoke bar. I was there with Buddy One, and I had imbibed a little more alcohol than normal. When I saw my buddy The Waiter sitting with three women at a table, I rolled up and thought nothing of talking to the closest one.

She was blond and seemed friendly. She's plotted on the above chart as the black line. She started off at a "0" friendliness level towards me. Not because there's anything wrong with her (that I know of ) or with me (that she knew of) but because she was apathetic. Indifferent. Whatever.

We made small talk and a song was being sung that she evidently wanted to dance to. After about 2.4 seconds of, "No! I don't d--", I caved and we were dancing. This is Phase One. Note the sharp increase as she led me to the dance floor, and the slightly reduced slope as she saw that I wasn't very good at dancing.

After the song was over, we moved onto Phase Two of the graph and I moved onto the second girl.

Yep. Smart.

Anyway. Phase Two started off with us coming back to the table where the Waiter, Buddy One and the other two girls were all seated. As we sat down, I started talking to the second girl, who is the red line in the graph, above.

Note that at first it's a net gain. The first girl knows that I can talk to other girls, and the other girl is (for whatever reason) slightly interested in talking to me more. As I failed to reengage with the first chick, though, in spite of the fact that I was making little progress with the second girl, the first one was growing more upset/less friendly.

After touching base briefly with the first chick I made a decision: to focus more on the second woman. I had a pretty good line of discussion with her (about upstate New York) and as she became more and more friendly with me, whatever interest the first girl I'd interacted with was dashed upon the rocks.

Even at this point, the night could have ended just fine. I could have walked away with a number or something. At least a nice conversation with a girl I might see out and about town again.

Remember, though, I am a man of alcohol, and I had been sipping on a rather strong rum and diet. Remember that as we examine Phase Three.

Phase Three saw, in essence, things go extremely poorly with girl two while the first girl's interest remained nonexistent (or actively negative, based on body language and unwillingness to make eye contact... hehe).

So what happened? Girl two's friend was gonna sing. She took her leave of me, stepping onto the stage to watch her friend sing. I took a big swig of my drink and looked over at her and would have sworn up and down that she motioned for me to join her... that she made a "c'mere" motion with her hand. And I, obligingly, followed her.

Unfortunately, I think that the rum was playing tricks on me. Or she changed her mind very quickly. Something. Something happened.

By the time I got to her, she had already started to relocate. Ugh. I felt so stupid. Buddy One was laughing, I hope, so at least someone was getting some joy out of the bad interaction.

After the song, some time later, we made our way back to the table with the Waiter and the girls. Girl one had snagged some other random dude (although I could sense an impending dip in the interest level in that direction, too (but was that the rum, or the reality? We'll never know...)). Girl two was there and I tried to salvage things.

It was at that point that she mentioned a boyfriend. It was at that point that I knew I had bitten off more than I could chew and had consumed more rum than I could handle.