How to Ask Me Out

People, it happened again! What’s going on?

Last week as you’ll recall, I met a deliciously attractive young man who I flirted with but who didn’t ask for my number – and who I didn’t give it to unsolicited. Well, this week it happened again, which now makes it a trend. What is up!? (See how scientific I am? Two occurrences and it’s a trend).

I went to a sexy restaurant in the Village with Veronica (In The Village With Veronica … that would be a great name for a band). It was quite the scene: dance music, trendy clothes, overpriced sushi, and about 150 people there with the express purpose of looking at each other out and being looked at. Just my kind of place.

He was NOT rockin' this kind of ponytail, but c'mon... who wouldn't do Josh Holloway?

I noticed one guy straight away. He looked like a model – not one of those pretty boy types, but more rugged, with chiseled features and striking eyes. Veronica didn’t find him attractive at all, but to me there was something about him. He seemed grounded and in control, and I liked the way he glided across the floor in his blazer and pulled back ponytail. Wait, ponytail? He must not be American, I thought. Veronica and I went back and forth about where we thought he was from.

We were also confused about who, exactly, he was. He didn’t dress like a waiter but didn’t act like a patron. He crossed the restaurant frequently and talked with people, but didn’t seem to be a host – no one followed him to tables. A good portion of our time spent at the bar before we got our table was spent guessing what his job was, exactly, and from which country he hailed.

I'm honestly not even really sure what this is for... backstage performances of what, exactly? I don't know. I only know it's AWESOME.

He was white, so was he Swedish, with those jawbones? Or from Copenhagen? Maybe he was Czech, I surmised, they tend to have brooding eyes. Or perhaps he was one of those European-looking types from Argentina – they like ponytails and mullets down there. We giggled and guessed some more.

Finally we were seated, and as we were waiting for our exorbitantly priced sashimi, he passed by again. I caught his eye and gestured for him to come over. I wanted to know who he was.

“Hello,” he said, and I didn’t detect an accent at all. “Oh!” I said, surprised, and paused. When he looked at me I said, “Well, it’s just that my friend and I here were trying to guess where you’re from…” He raised his eyebrows in a, ‘and what was the conclusion?’ gesture, and I looked at Veronica helplessly.

I'm sure everyone in the IDF looks juuust like this... esp homeboy all the way on the left; careful, or you too could lose your pants in the West Bank.

Then I noticed he was wearing a star of David. I concluded he must have been Israeli and said as much, but also shared that I doubted my own conclusion, given that he had an impeccable American accent. Israelis tend to have thick accents and strong opinions. As it turned out he was from … Chicago. But he had lived in Israel for 3 years and I was about to visit the Holy Land, so we chatted about that for a few minutes.

Then he had to go back to work – since apparently he did work there. He didn’t explain exactly what he did, but he seemed to be a sort of problem-solver, manager fix-it type person. Essentially his function appeared to be to make the patrons happy. It was working.

Veronica and I tittered about this exchange for quite a while, she congratulating me on getting his attention and extending the conversation, and me blushing a bit, wondering how I’d come across, and whether he was interested. Then, a few minutes later, he brought us over two itty bitty dainty girly drinks, “on the house.” Veronica beamed. “Congratulations,” she said, “I think you have your answer!”

I was thrilled. Surely it was a sign! He didn’t have to do that. Or wait. Did he? Was this like Club Med, where he was unofficially-but-sort-of-officially tasked to flirt with the guests? Was that his real job? Or was I just being paranoid?

I floated this idea to Veronica and she thought I was being silly. “Of course he’s interested,” she said, “he thought of you – well, of us, but probably mostly of you – and sent drinks over! That’s classic!”

So it was, I agreed, and decided to trust that it was genuine. And he and I caught each others’ eye a few more times that night – especially once when Veronica went to the ladies room and I sat alone. When he passed me I smiled invitingly and he smiled back, but he didn’t come over and chat.

By the end of dinner I was in relatively the same position as I was with Adorable Starbucks Guy: do I leave my number? Do I wait for him to ask me for mine – and just let it go if he doesn’t?

We lingered as we left, putting our coats on and glancing about. I didn’t see him around and if he’d been concerned about us leaving, I figured he probably would have told the waiter to give us a note. So it was that another one passed me by, and this time I wondered: is it me? Or is it them?

It seems to me that older men tend to approach me more often and more effortlessly, while guys around my age are withdrawn. In fact, it often feels like the ones I want to approach me, don’t, and the ones I don’t want to approach me, do. I have a feeling that most of the older guys just don’t care whether they get rejected, while the younger ones are still intimidated by it.

 

And that’s fine – I get that. I understand the fear of rejection. We all have it. But what about the guys who I’m dropping hints to (like this guy), who still aren’t picking up the ball? When I’m begging for it and they’re still not doing anything, what’s really going on?

In the U.S., this happens relatively often, and I’m often stuck wondering whether I wasn’t obvious enough (unlikely), whether I should have left my number (should I?), or whether I was right to let it go.

Let’s contrast this with the Middle East, where I went recently for work. I was standing around at a tourist site in Jordan with a male coworker when a guy approached us. “Hi,” he said, “where are you from?” (Keep in mind this entire conversation happened in front of a male colleague of mine). We went back and forth with the obligatory yet unbearably repetitive exchange about who we were and what we were doing in Jordan, but then he asked this: “Have you tried Jordanian wine?” Surprised, I replied, “No, I haven’t … is it good?” He smiled. “It is good,” he said. “Very good wine here in Jordan. You have glass of wine tonight, with me?”

Perfect! What a perfect pickup line! Just cheesy enough to be funny, but welcoming enough to say yes to easily – and (here is the key part) direct and clear. ‘I want to take you out. I want you to know I want to take you out.’ He had no qualms about asking, and he knew he only had about 60 seconds to do it, given that we were on our way into a tour. He slam dunked it!

As it happened, I didn’t say yes, mostly because I was in a (very) foreign country and didn’t want to go anywhere alone. But he was my age and relatively goodlooking, so had I felt safer and more comfortable with my surroundings, I probably would have! Know why? Cause this guy had Jordanian game.

I would be a complete idiot not to realize he does this to multiple girls, possibly on a daily basis. This clearly wasn’t his first experience asking out a tourist. And it won’t be his last – I don’t think getting turned down by me scarred him for life. In fact, I have a theory that men like him, similar to those I’ve met in Latin America, look at asking women out as more of a game … you win some, you lose some. If you don’t get this one, try that one. Eventually one will say yes. If you look at it like a numbers game, that a certain percentage of the time, someone will say yes, then it’s a lot easier to take it less personally.

I don’t know what was up with the American guy at the restaurant, or the cute guy at Starbucks. I don’t know whether they had girlfriends, or whether they really weren’t interested, or whether they were just chicken. But I am determined to change this trend. I want the young, hot men of my generation to ask women out. All the time. This is of course, in part, selfish, because I myself want to be asked out. But it’s also because I know that young men would get what they wanted more of the time, which is young, hot women saying YES.

 

So, to all the young, hot men: ask us women out! More specifically, ask me out. Sometimes I’ll say no, but sometimes I’ll say YES. And sometimes – for example, if you catch me on just the right sexually frustrated day – it’ll sound a little more like this: