“I was the same when I went to college,” Grandpa said. “It will take some time for you to settle in. Nothing will change until you make friends.”
“How am I supposed to do that?” I asked. “These kids seem pretty unapproachable.”
“They seem unapproachable until you approach them,” Grandpa said. “Just try to be friendly. Talk to people in class. I’m sure there are a ton of social events organized by the college. Go. Introduce yourself. Look, you have to study a lot, right? Study in the library instead of alone in your dorm room. They must have a student center with a coffee shop, right? Go study there.
“Tell me something – how is the female situation? Are there a lot of cute women?”
“Tons,” I said. “Tons and tons and tons. There are so many hot girls here that it intimidates the crap out of me. I can’t believe any of them will ever be interested in me.”
“Yeah, it’s going to feel that way right up until the moment one of them swoops down and snatches you up. By now I hope you understand that women will never ask you out on a date. What they’ll do instead is let you know they’ll say yes if you ask them.
“When a girl starts batting her eyes and giggling and tossing her hair back over one shoulder, be prepared. Always have some ideas of things you can ask her to do. Getting coffee. Going to see a movie. Colleges hire up-and-coming comedians to entertain students. That’s a great first date. There’s nothing nicer than having a conversation after you’ve spent an hour laughing your asses off.”
“I’ll figure something out,” I said. “But I wish I could figure out a way I didn’t have to just wait for a girl to express interest in me.”
“Yeah, I understand, Ben,” he said. “You can approach any girl who appeals to you and ask her out, but she’ll probably say no. I read about some survey that said for every 8 times a woman is invited on a date, she declines 7 times. Those are pretty lousy odds, son.
“Here’s an idea for you. Invite a group of girls to go out somewhere with a group of your guy friends. You could approach a group of girls who hang out together in one of your classes and say you and your roommates are going to a baseball game, and invite them to join you.
“That way, the pressure is off. It’s not a real date. But it will give several ladies a chance to get to know you a little, and maybe one of them will decide she’d like to know you better.
“Keep in mind that when you are out in a group, it’s like a competition with the other guys. If you can appear to be more mature, you’ll be the one girls want to see again.”
I didn’t think that would work, but it was easy, and I had nothing to lose. I checked the calendar of campus events, and there was a free comedy show the next week. It featured four comedians I’d never heard of, but it seemed perfect. I asked my roommates about it, starting with a guy named Mike.
“Let me get this straight,” Mike said. “You want to go up to random groups of girls and ask them out. You’re going to say you’ve got three roommates, and you’d like the girls to join us at the show. Am I getting this right?”
“Yes. That’s it exactly,” I said.
“Ben, you are nuts if you think that will work,” Mike said. “I can’t get ONE girl to go on a date! If you think you can get a whole group to go out, you need to get your medications adjusted.”
“My Grandpa Frank says it’s easier to ask out a group of girls than a single girl,” I said. “He’s always right, Mike. Always. The only reason I managed to lose my virginity was that I followed his advice.”
“Really? Wow. OK, fine. Count me in. I can’t believe you think you’re going to convince a random group of girls to go out with four guys they’ve never met. But give it a try. I’m willing to do anything that might help me get laid before I graduate.”
I gave it a try, and it worked just like Grandpa Frank said it would. There’s a group of five girls who sit together in my American history class, so I went up to them before class, sat down, and introduced myself.
“I can tell that you ladies are friends,” I said. “I hope this doesn’t sound too weird coming from a guy you don’t know, but my roommates and I want to go to the comedy show Friday. I love comedians, but they are a lot more fun if you go with a group of people, especially if some of those people are of the female persuasion. It would be OK if my roommates and I went by ourselves, but if that happens it will be a sausage fest, which gets old fast. I’m sure they’d behave much better if there are ladies present.”
The girls looked at me like I had three eyes and antennas coming out of my head. “Like… how will they behave better?” one girl asked. “I don’t get it.”
“Well, for example, I’d really like it if all of the guys take showers before the performance,” I said. “If you show up, I can guarantee everyone will take a shower AND put on clean clothes! They might even use mouthwash.”
I guess I must have delivered that last line properly, because the girls started to laugh. “They sound charming,” one girl said.
“Oh, you have no idea,” I said. “They are all house broken. I promise I will kick their asses if they don’t behave like civilized people in front of you. No belching. No farting. Minimal usage of the F-word.”
That triggered another round of laughter. Things were going well. Thanks, Grandpa Frank. I figured I needed to let the ladies think about the idea, so I shifted gears.
“Give it some thought and you can let me know later,” I said. “If you want to go, I will pick up the tickets. The event is free, but you have to get tickets in advance. I guess they don’t want 2,000 students to show up at a venue that seats 800 people.”
With that, I changed the subject, asking how the girls know each other. It turned out that they are all members of the same sorority. They’d managed to change their schedules around so they went to a lot of the same classes together. That explained why I also saw the same group sitting together in my Freshman Composition class.
I thought it was unlikely that all five of the girls would want to go, so I hedged my bets by inviting two girls who always sat together in my software coding class. They both want degrees in video game design.
It worked out pretty well. Three of the sorority girls decided to go, and both of the gamer girls. My roommates were very impressed that I’d convinced five girls to go out with the four of us.
“Damn, Ben! How’d you manage that?” Mike asked.
“Hypnosis,” I said. “I put them all in a trance and convinced them that there’s nothing they’d rather do than go out with four sweaty freshmen boys. Listen, I promised these ladies that we’d all take showers and put on clean clothes before the show. If we want to see any of these girls again, we need to act civilized for a couple of hours. Can you guys impersonate adults for that long?”
“If we must,” Mike said.
I picked up the tickets, and it gave me an idea. The seats were numbered, so I gave the odd numbered tickets to my roommates, then handed the even numbered tickets to the girls. This meant the seating arrangement was boy-girl-boy-girl, which everybody recognized was my way of encouraging mixed conversations.
“Fiendishly clever,” said the girl next to me. Her name was Julie. “Do you think making us sit like this will get you and your roommates laid?” She smiled as she said it, so I knew she was joking.
“I get no credit for the seating arrangement,” I said. “This is the way my Mom organizes dinner parties. I’m pretty sure she isn’t trying to encourage people to hook up. Considering the type of folks she invites to dinner, it would be pretty twisted if that’s what she has in mind. I sat next to my Aunt Velma last time.
“The idea of hooking up with Aunt Velma conjures up images I don’t want to think about too much.”
The show was great. Grandpa Frank was right. We laughed so hard our bellies ached. When it was over I made an attempt to keep the group together for some actual conversation.
“Is anybody else interested in going to the coffee shop?” I asked. “It’s too early to go to bed. I’m in the mood for cappuccino. Would anyone like to join me?”
The two gamer girls went back to their dorm, but the three sorority girls and my roommates all walked the short distance to the cafe in the student center. We got our drinks, sat at a big round table, and started to talk.
“How’d you guys like that joke about the dude with the hangover?” I asked. Grandpa Frank said that a good way to keep the conversation going was to talk about individual jokes. He was right! Everybody laughed, and we talked about one joke after another. I put myself in charge of making sure there were no long awkward silences. The evening was shaping up nicely.
My roommates didn’t realize that we were participating in a kind of competition for the attention of the girls. As I expected, they were on their best behavior, but every so often they did something that made it clear they were goofy adolescents. Sometimes they laughed like hyenas. Sometimes they had bad posture. Every so often somebody said something a little bit crude. I felt grateful that nobody picked their nose.
Since I was the person who organized the evening, I felt I had a special responsibility to act like an adult. I sat up straight, used good diction, avoided profanity, and tried to steer the conversation in ways that made sure all the girls could participate. I realized that the girls were deciding what they thought of all of us, and that I had a perfect opportunity to make myself look good in comparison with my roommates.
“Folks, it’s getting late, and I get the feeling that you ladies have had just about enough of our company for one evening. Guys, I think it’s time for us to walk them to their sorority.”
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