Pick-up line #4: It all starts with “the stare” - Vienna Würstelstand

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Pick-up line #4: It all starts with “the stare”

It happened again. Standing at the bar of one of my vorglüh (pre-drinks) places, nursing the fifth or sixth vodka of the night, talking to the pretty barkeeper, who may or may not be the reason I come here, my eyes wander around the room absent-mindedly, until suddenly they trip over “the stare”.

A random guy is looking at me from across the room. He’s probably wondering why a girl like me is hitting back shots of vodka all alone. My first instinct is to tell him that HE is not the reason. But the vodka means I’ve left my typical standoffish attitude drugged and lying curled up on the couch in her underwear at home tonight.

But still the muffled alarm bells ring. Past experience has made me a little over-sensitive towards accidental millisecond eye-locks. They’re typically misinterpreted as shyness, but coy interest. One glance still counts as random or unintentional. So it’s still safe and I avoid letting my eyes wander there again. Meeting those eyes a second time would mean trouble. The Game of Stares. Letting off stare signals. Sexual body language should be included in the high school syllabus or an instruction manual could be handed out at club entrances.

There’s two way “the stare” can go down …

If the eye’s owner attracts me, I will make sure he doesn’t misinterpret anything. You’ll know if I want to take you home and would let you use my toilet in the morning. But if said eyes belong to a person that doesn’t fit my taste or reminds me of my hairy-backed uncle Bernhard, guys can read the brief glance as if a no mans land with barbed wire fence, snipers and land mines has been erected between me and him.

© Tomi Tapio K / flickr

 

The filter between brain and body isn’t working properly after vodka number seven. My eyes somehow accidentally land in his direction again. Twice. Fuck.

Another vodka, please – I say to the pretty barman, with an extended stare.

I attempt to activate my defense system, to communicate my lack of interest by not smiling, looking away, turning around, hissing at him like a cat, burping and farting, leaving the room, flirting like hell with the barman. But it’s not working!

The juice of life that I love has caused a mutiny. The vodka has sunk the ship. My brain fails to function.

The stare is piercing. As if I’m caught in the crosshairs of a snipers’ laser target. It’s as if it wants to convince me of something, or is attempting to distract me from the lack of interest he evokes in me.

I keep chatting, but it’s no use. It’s too late. I let out a little ‘eep!’ as said person is suddenly standing right next to me. For a short moment I wonder if he is wearing a Halloween costume (as it is Halloween) with his long blond braid, dressed in all black.

I give up on my inner fight and swallow. I swallow hard on my lecture about how meeting his eyes accidentally does not mean that usual myth and prejudice that women play hard to get and want to be charmed by men. I compose myself and try to be nice and listen to what he has to say, wondering about the magic of vodka and how seven shots of it could have suddenly produced something resembling patience and tolerance within me.

It does all go down from here. Off a cliff. A very high cliff. A cliff that if you dropped a stone off the edge, you’d never hear it hit the ground.

It begins with him mistaking me for a business student. I can handle people thinking I’m 22, but an economics student!? Come on!! But it’s when he tells me about his hobby (or is it his job?) – medieval sword fighting –, and invites me to get to know it a little better via his Facebook page, that it gets awkward …

But I keep my cool, managing to brush him off nicely. He takes the hint this time. King Arthur disappears into the night.

I’m a little proud. I’d given him ten minutes and more than three sentences to convince me why I should rather chat with him, than with the barkeeper. I already knew how slim his chances were. But I chatted, nevertheless.

You can call me harsh or shallow. But I know enough about myself to be aware that if there’s no initial connection in the first moment, there won’t be one in the second. And you wouldn’t want me to persuade myself to like you, would you?

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