Real Live College Guy Joe: Preventing the Awkward Number Request When You're Not Interested in Him
Ever wonder what guys think, how to deal with them, or whether instead of listening to you they just imagine you naked? Our Real Live College Guy Joe will answer all your questions about men and relationships with wit, clarity, grace, and physical attractiveness (can you tell he wrote this intro himself?) all while imagining you fully clothed! Well, usually – he is a college guy.
So many times at a bar or a party, a guy will start talking to me or my girlfriends. Most likely, we're not interested. But we're too nice (especially if he's a nice guy) to do anything but keep talking and smiling. This results in the terrible situation of him asking for our number when we have absolutely no interest. What are the best ways to give the "not interested" signal BEFORE you have to embarrass him and turn him down when he asks for the digits?
– Nice at NC State
It's great that you want to let guys down as easily as possible. You will save many guys many a long night of wondering whether they said the wrong thing, or wore the wrong cologne, or shouldn't have applied cologne every five minutes while talking to you. To save both his feelings and your olfactory senses, you have to make your intentions clear very quickly.
Guys go to bars for one reason: the free nuts. And once in a while to pick up girls. They do not go for the conversation and friendship, unless they are the male actors on Cheers and you are that one girl they keep around for the feminist viewpoint and the enlarged mammaries.
So, if a guy starts talking to you, it's because he wants to get with you. If he pays for your drink, it's because he wants to get with you. If he gets with you in the bathroom, it's because he wants to get with you.
If you're not impressed with his peacocking, or if he's doing the cologne thing, or if he actually brought some peacock feathers to display, you need to show him right away. There are polite ways to do so:
- Excuse yourself to the bathroom and move to another part of the bar.
- Excuse yourself to the bathroom and escape out the window.
- Excuse yourself to the bathroom and come out wrapped in toilet paper, moaning like a risen mummy, and scare him out of the bar (Note: This way either hurts or greatly enhances your chances with other guys in the bar, depending on how close to Halloween, Egypt, or a really nerdy college the bar is)
- Don't drink the drink he buys you.
- Pour the drink on him.
- Go to another bar.
- Pour the drink on him, then apologize for spilling and ask for another, but make it the most expensive drink in the bar, and make it five bottles worth.
- Pour all five bottles on him.
- Tell him you're just here with your friends and want hang out with them, but maybe you'll see him later, and move off to wherever your friends are or go onto the dance floor and make it clear you just want to dance with your friends, or actively hit on another guy.
- If he seriously hasn't left after getting five bottles poured on him, then he's really dedicated to you and deserves some credit—so do the mummy thing.
Granted, some of these suggestions are more ridiculous than others—who the hell would walk all the way to a different part of the bar? But at least you would make it clear that accessing your hoochie isn't in the cards for him tonight without saying as much. If you're up to it, you could even just tell him, flat out, "Look, my hoochie isn't in the cards for you tonight." If he sticks around past the apostrophe of "isn't," then maybe he really is just looking for interesting conversation. In that case, I recommend you grant him access to your hoochie immediately.
