I recently allowed myself to step up to bat again, in the game I like to call meeting men at bars. As a former, let’s say addict, of this practice, I had recently become a bit turned off by the whole scene. I guess you could say the whole meeting men at bars had become a little dull. It was turning into the same conversation about where I was from, pretending to be interested in where they were from, which predictably turned into a few hours of bullshit conversation that you never really remembered the next day. So, in some ways I had been on strike, trying to find a better way to meet men. But influenced by the fact that I couldn’t a) keep pretending that I didn’t need a night of male attention and b) my favorite baseball team was in the World Series, I gave myself the go-ahead to at least see what was out there once more.
Just like the familiar practice of the seventh grade cafeteria scene, I showed up at the bar with a few girlfriends and sat down at a table. Like clockwork, a group of guys showed up and sat down next to us. Slowly we infiltrated each other’s camps and there is nothing like the conversation of baseball to make everyone friendly (or create some distinct lines!). As baseball talk turned into who was going to buy the next round of drinks, the coupling was already beginning.
What makes me laugh about the whole coupling situation is that it seems to be by chance who your designated hitter will be for the night. For example, after my girlfriends and I had unofficially marked our territory for the night, the guys who sat down next to us positioned themselves as a mirror image of us. My girlfriend happened to be sitting at the end of our table, which ran right into their table. As the night went on, I watched how the guy who sat next to her in the very beginning slowly made his way closer and closer to her so that eventually he was sitting at our table. The result: couple one had been formed.
I was sitting across from my friend at the table, and close to another guy in the group. We bonded over the annoyance of one very obnoxious girl (who seemed to feel the need to scream everything she said) and our mutual hate for the Yankees. As I talked to him, I found myself falling into that familiar routine of moving from talking causally, to flirting, to really considering if I was going to go home alone that night. Fueled by too much beer and a pack of cigarettes, the decision appeared obvious. He was cute; he wasn’t feeding me any lines, and he was exactly what I needed to feel a sense of validation.
As dawn approached and the game played through its last three outs, I was working on my own last three outs as well. The keys were exchanged with the girlfriend who would be going home to my apartment, regardless if I would be there, the sexual tension was mounting and I was just drunk enough to let some of the morals fly out the window. I think I had been feeling so rejected previously that I felt that this was a good moment to erase some of those stale feelings about myself and men in general. I thought to myself, here he was! A guy who liked me, spent the whole night talking to me, and now he might just take me home too.
And that’s when I realized these were the very feelings I had been avoiding by not going to these bars altogether. I was settling for the guy I met in a bar I barely knew, the same guy whom I had been avoiding for months and in that moment some how I had convinced myself that sleeping with him would prove that I had worth. However, as I thought about it more I realized that all it would really prove was that I needed a guy to make myself feel better.
Was this true? Did I need a nameless guy who bought me a couple of drinks to tell me I was someone special? If he was nameless to me, I am sure I was nameless to him. I knew right then and there I had struck out no matter what. I would be categorized as the hitter with great potential who swung at bad pitches and watched perfect pitches sail across the plate. It was no longer a game of strategies but a game of fooling yourself into thinking that you had all the control. Instead I was the rookie at the plate intimidated by the experienced pitcher.
And so, with the sun rising into the Parisian skies, I choose to take ball four, get into a cab and go home. Alone. This time, I wasn’t disappointed in my appearance at the plate. Although it hadn’t been my first time up to bat, I allowed myself to take my experiences and walk to first base and force the other team to change their pitcher. Next time, maybe I would be more familiar with the pitcher, work the count and get a hit. But this night was not that night.
Perhaps the people we find in life are based on fate and circumstance. However, I believe fate is what we make with the circumstances that we are given. There is no point in waiting around for that perfect pitch because you may never be satisfied, but you shouldn’t swing at every pitch because you will more often be disappointed that it didn’t go out of the park.
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