Tales From Girls’ Weekend: Dudes, Step Up Your Game

I spent this past weekend in Louisville with some of my girls for our second annual girls' weekend. Now, when six (or sometimes seven) women are out having a good time, chances are that, at some point, a guy (or group of guys) will come up and try to hit on one or all of them. I think that might be a scientifically proven fact.

We were able to experience some amazing examples of this phenomenon this weekend.

Now, for some back story, two of the girls on girls' weekend are married, one is engaged, and two of us have serious, long-term, live-in boyfriends. That's right, only one of us is actually single (and even she wasn't really looking to hook up with some local in Louisville), so we are obviously the wrong group of girls to approach. But, to their credit, there's no way for outsiders to know this without asking. In fact, one of the married girls had forgot her wedding rings on the kitchen counter, so you wouldn't have even known by looking at her hands that she was spoken for.

The first night that we were there, most of the girls wanted to call it an early night, but Katie (the single girl, who happened to also be having a birthday at midnight) and I decided that we wanted a night cap down at the bar in the hotel. So, we sauntered down there, after already having had a few cocktails with dinner, and plopped ourselves down at the bar to have a drink or two before heading for bed.

For the most part, nobody really talked to us except for our friendly waiter, Ricardo, and that was fine. We just sat and chit-chatted and caught up since we hadn't seen each other in a year. Just as we were about to retire to our rooms, a guy walked up and sat down next to us. He struck up a conversation by first announcing just how drunk he already was, and then offering to buy us a drink. We accepted, assuming he was harmless enough. For the next hour, however, we got to hear the drunken slurrings of a Southern man about his job working as the supervisor at a grain elevator ("You Northern gals probably don't even know what that is.") And then got to deal with him trying to convince the birthday girl that she should come back to his room with him for another drink ("That's ok, there are plenty of drinks right here."). Pro tip, guys: if you're trying to woo a woman, talking about your job for an hour probably isn't going to do the trick. Nor is drunkenly suggesting a one-night-stand in your hotel room after you spilled your drink all over yourself.

Night two offered more entertainment. This time in the form of an entire bachelor party out for the groom's final hoorah as a single man. We were gearing up for a fun night out ourselves, finally celebrating Katie's birthday properly, and exploring the Louisville nightlife, by starting at one of the restaurants in the hotel. As we poured over the menu trying to decide what to eat (and drink. I learned this weekend that there are about a thousand different awesome drinks you can make with bourbon), one of the bachelor party attendees pulled a chair up next to my friend Amy and just sat there. Now, at first she didn't even notice that he was there, because, well, he didn't actually say anything. He just sat there. Looking. When she finally saw him, she matter-of-factly said "Well, hello there!" which I think may have scared him. He made a valid attempt at what I can only grade as C minus game before a couple of his friends came over to "help" him. Mostly they just made complete asses out of themselves. But hey, Katie got a free shot out of the deal!

Now, as women, we don't want men to try too hard to get our attention. Or make it too obvious that they're out to pick us up. But, back in the day, I witnessed some impeccable game spit by dudes while out at the bar. Of course, there were always the ones with the cheesy one-liners and Affliction t-shirts that we'd make fun of once they walked away, but there were usually one or two guys a night that put in a decent effort and did a pretty good job at it.

Have guys just lost the ability to properly flirt with girls? Is the art dead? Or did we just experience the most socially awkward men the South has produced in recent history?