The first half of 1991 was a bizarre and surreal time for me. Among other strange things going on during that 6-month stretch, I had it occur over and over where I seemingly had a chance to date or hook up with a very attractive girl, but something always seemed to ruin it before it could happen. In that period, I had something like 8 opportunities with pretty girls whom I could tell had a very high likelihood of being interested in me, but all of it collectively translated into a success rate of zero point zero.
I'm going to tell a story from January of that year, which was one of those failures. I'll let you vote as to what ruined everything.
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Something I didn't realize at first was that admission to my college, UCSB, wasn't just granted starting from the fall quarter. There were also waiting list admissions, where new students would take the place of ones who flunked out in the middle of the year.
I lived in a high-rise dorm which was half male (all the rooms to the left of the elevators) and half female (the rooms to the right). I had been at the school since September 1990, as had everyone else on our floor, but one of the girls flunked out and was not going to return from the December winter break.
It was now January 1991, at the beginning of the second term of my first year.
One of the guys from the floor saw me walking down the hallway and asked, "Hey Todd, have you seen the new chick in our hall?"
I told him that I hadn't.
"Oh man... you gotta see her! At first I thought she was just visiting, but after I kept seeing her around, I realized she just moved in here this quarter."
"She's pretty?", I asked.
"Dude, the best in the entire dorm. I can't believe we got her. Very quiet though. I never see her talking to anyone. Took me weeks to realize she was even here. But I just saw her studying in the lounge right now", he replied.
Of course, I was very curious at that point, and walked with him to go see her in the lounge, which was a study/socialization area open to everyone on the floor.
He and I walked in, and the girl was indeed really hot. I agreed with the guy's assessment. But I wasn't really interested in trying to make any kind of move. The girl had been in the dorm for weeks, completely avoided interaction with everyone, and this seemed to even be the first time she ventured into the lounge. I figured she probably had a boyfriend back home, or just wasn't someone interested in socializing/dating.
Besides, while I didn't think I was a bad looking guy, and some girls over the past two years had liked me, I didn't think I could get a girl like that. I felt she was out of my league, especially given that there were a lot of good looking and personable guys on the floor, whom I figured she'd probably choose over me anyway.
I feigned some banal conversation with the dude who brought me into the lounge, pretending we weren't there to gawk at her. However, I felt weird about the whole thing, and was about to walk out, when suddenly the door opened and a few more guys from the hall entered.
They had also seen through the window that she was there, and presumably also came in for the same reason. After about 8 of us were there, finally one of the guys broke the ice and started talking to her. This was one of the good looking dudes I mentioned above.
She was giving semi-polite, short responses, but when he started to flirt with her, she shut it down fast. She made some snide remark back to him to the point where everyone laughed, and he got embarrassed and went quiet.
However, this somehow spurred on more conversation, and slowly other guys in the room made attempts to get to know her. Again, these resulted in failure. It was clear she had no interest in any of these dudes, and wasn't even willing to carry on the facade of finding any of them remotely interesting, even as friends or acquaintances.
I was quiet throughout all of this, but when yet another guy hit the rejection wall, I made some joke about the situation, and she audibly laughed. This was the first semblance of a smile any of us saw from her, but I wasn't too flattered because I figured it was because I made a joke at the expense of a dude bothering her.
However, this made me feel more comfortable to chime in during subsequent conversation topics, and it seemed everything I said was hitting right. All of my comments and remarks were getting verbose, interested, friendly-sounding responses from her, including laughter, while she took a mocking and derisive tone with every other dude in the room.
I didn't know what I had that all these other guys didn't, but I wasn't going to question it. I stayed the course and kept talking to her.
Eventually the conversation became just me and her talking back and forth, while the rest of the guys continued to sit there quietly and stare, not understanding what the fuck was going on. Why was she so cold, unfriendly, and insulting to all of them, but so nice to me?
A few of the guys walked out when they got tired of this, but a few stayed, clearly curious if this was going to translate into something for me.
The conversation grew warmer, and she started to give me unsolicited compliments, and at one point even remarking, "You're the only interesting person I've met so far in this whole school." This was with 3 of the dudes sitting there still in the room. Ouch.
Shortly after that, she excused herself to go to the bathroom, but told me to stick around and that she wanted to continue our conversation when she got back.
After she was out of the room, the guys broke their silence.
"Dude, she really likes you! I don't know what the fuck you did, but she's really into you!", said the guy who brought me in there.
"Are you gonna ask her out?", inquired another.
"You can't fuck this one up, man, this is a huge opportunity here", said the third guy.
I asked them not to make comments like this when she came back in the room, and to please remain quiet once she and I started to talk again. They agreed.
She strolled back in with a big smile on her face, moved to a much closer spot in the room to me, and asked, "Okay, so what were we just talking about again?"
This sounds like a dream situation for an 18-year-old male college freshman, but as I mentioned at the beginning, this entire thing did NOT translate into any kind of success. I never took her on a date, never hooked up with her in any way, and she ended up with a negative opinion of me.
What happened here to fuck it all up?
JEW YOU MAKE THE CALL!