She comes over, and I play it cool.  Long story short, we exchange numbers.

I call her later in the week and we arrange to meet.  I pick her up in Brooklyn, where she rents a room.  In her room she has a cheesy calendar of muscular half-naked, waxed black men of dubious heterosexuality.  Kind of like a bunch of Shemar Moores on steroids.  That already makes a terrible first impression.

The plan is to go back to my place and watch some movies and eat some snacks.  As we get in the car, she’s asking me a bunch of questions.  It’s like 20 questions, she has a ton of them, but none are particularly insightful.

“How tall are you?”  “How much do you weigh?” “Are you mixed with anything?” “Are you part Chinese?” “Are you sure?” “Why don’t you have a girlfriend?” “Do you like big girls?” [Wait what?] “Are you really Haitian?”

This last question she keeps coming back to.  In the 80s and a good part of the 90s, many people had very little exposure to Haitians.  And the few Haitians they often did have exposure to were a very specific subset, the poor immigrants and refugees settled in the urban centers or the ones they saw on TV when they were showing clips of starving folk.  So I’d often meet people who claimed I didn’t look Haitian, even though there are tons of people in Haiti who look just like me.  They’d expect me to look like one of the refugees or impoverished people they saw on newsreels or like one of the taxi drivers they encountered in Brooklyn.  It’s similar to how people who’ve never met many Ethiopians expects them all to look like extras from the “We Are the World” music video, when in reality many of them are quite cosmopolitan, healthy and good-looking.  Nowadays with a lot more Haitians everywhere from all walks of life, this doesn’t happen to me anymore, but back then it would be an annoying recurring conversation.  But this girl takes it to a whole other level.

“So you’re half-white?”

“No, full Haitian.”

“Chinese grandparent?”

“No, full Haitian.”

“You sure?”

“What do you mean am I sure? I think I would know.”

“Is your dad Puerto Rican?”

“What part of full Haitian don’t you get?”

“No, I mean was he maybe Haitian nationality but racially Puerto Rican?”

“Listen….Mom? Haitian.  Dad?”

“Yes?”

“Haitian.”

“You seem really touchy about your race.  What’s up with that?”

“I’m not touchy about it.  You’re the one who keeps harping on it.  I’m touchy about answering the same question over and over again.”

“Okay, okay, fine.”

“So what movie did you bring to watch?”

” ‘Money Talks’ with Chris Tucker and Charlie Sheen.”

“Oh.  Really?”  That sounds like a really bad movie, I think to myself.  “Do you own anything else?”

“No, this is my favorite movie.  My favorite! It’s so funny.  Sooooooooo funny.  You’ll love it, I promise.  We have to see this one, pleeeeeeaaaasse?”

I think about it and realize that it might actually turn out to work in my favor if it’s a shitty movie.  If the movie is too good, we’ll both get engrossed in it, I’ll actually want to see it through to the end and I won’t focus on the primary mission at hand, which was sex (let’s keep it real here).  No, the more I think about it, a shitty movie is the best thing that could happen.  We’ll get distrated, stop paying attention, end up talking throughout it, making out, etc, etc.  This’ll be a great night.

We get to my apartment and enter my room.  I pop the tape into the VCR.  We sit on the bed to watch the movie.  We get about 5 minutes into the movie.

“HAHAHAAHAHAHAHAAAAAHAHAHAA!!!  Oh my God, did you see that?!”  She hasn’t stopped laughing since the credits started rolling.

“Uh, yeah.  I did.”

“Why aren’t you laughing?”

“It was funny, but come on, it wasn’t that funny.”

“Are you for real?”

“Are you? Come on, let’s just get back to the movie.  Stop worrying about me laughing.”

Now I won’t lie, “Money Talks” is not a terrible movie.  It isn’t particularly great either.  It’s adequate, a little bit above sitcom level comedy. Nothing groundbreaking or memorable, not the kind of movie I’d watch a second time, but the kind of movie I could slightly enjoy if I was watching it with someone else.  Anyone else.

She won’t stop cracking up for the whole movie.  I mean cracking up to the point where she’s convulsing with laughter.  She’s not only riveted to every utterance in the movie, she laughs uproariously at the dumbest parts.  Some of the lines she cracks up at the hardest I’m pretty sure aren’t even jokes.  I’m too annoyed with her antics to enjoy the movie, especially as she keeps asking me nonstop “Isn’t this the funniest?”

I realize there is no sex to be had during the watching of this movie.  It’s just not going to happen.  She’s not coming up for air between uproarious belly laughs and interrogations about why I’m not laughing harder, and on top of that I’m losing my motivation to even make any moves on her.  “Haven’t you seen this already?” I ask, hoping she’ll take a hint.

“Oh…heh…HAHAHA…I’ve seen it so many times….HA!…I lost count!”

“And it still cracks you up this much?”  [I'm normally not this snippy on dates, but this whole ordeal wore down my patience pretty quickly]

“Oh ‘Money Talks’ never gets old!”

Apparently not. I resign myself to the fact that I am not going to make any sex happen while this movie is on.  No way, no how.  But the minute it ends, though, it’s on.

So the ordeal is over.  It’s late, I’m going to have to wait until the movie’s over to make this happen.  As the movie wraps up and she wipes the tears of laughter from her eyes, we make small talk.

Then it happens.

“What’s that?” she asks.

“What’s what?”

“That.“  She points.

“You mean….my computer?”

“Yeah!  Can I see it?”

“Um….okay.  You want to look at my computer….now?  As in right now?”

“Yeah, yeah, let me see it.  What do you use it for?”

“You’ve never used one?”

“No.  Not really, my uncle had one and I used one when I was a kid…”

“Oh okay, let me show you.”  I turn on the computer and log onto the Internet.

She gets serious.  “Uh…what are you doing?”

“I’m getting on the Internet.”

“What’s that!?!”

“It’s…it’s like this big network where you can talk to anyone anywhere in the world in real-time, and your only limitation is how fast you can type.”

Her eyes widen.  “Really?” She in sincere awe at the concept.  Even in 1997 the Internet was still a pretty well-known concept so it boggles my mind someone could be totally ignorant of it, but I figure if it’s that impressive to her maybe it could help my cause.  I decide to really impress her by showing her a chatroom.

“Look at this: you can even go into something called a chatroom where a bunch of people talk to each other at once, similar to the old party lines they used to have back in the day.”  I sit her in my desk chair and stand over her shoulder behind her as I log into one.

As the words and messages in the chatroom fill the screen she starts to get visibly nervous.  “What are you doing!!!!!!??!?!” she shrieks.

“What?  What?!”

“Can they see me?!“  She launches herself from the desk chair into my bed and hides behind a comforter while looking at the computer from a distance, anxiously.

I totally lose it at this point. “Are you fucking kidding me?!  You’re joking right?”

“Are you sure they can’t see me?”

To make things worse, my roommate Grip, who hears the commotion, comes upstairs and into my room, just in time to see her cowering in bed behind a comforter, staring nervously at the computer screen.

“What happened?” he asks.

She answers “He turned on that thing and opened up a room.”

He turns to me with a look on his face of part disgust, part disbelief, part amusement and part “I am never going to let you hear the end of this one, motherfucker.”  Out of embarrassment, I make a last ditch effort to show that my date really isn’t as dumb as  she seems (even though she totally is) and I say “She’s just playing.  Isn’t that right? Always joking.”  I take her and and gently attempt to lead her back to to the computer.

She lets out a scream like “AIIIIIEEEEEE!!!!  No!” and starts pulling back, like a tug of war, with me trying to pull her to the computer and her trying to pull away, with Grip just surveying it all, not knowing whether to laugh at me now or mercifully wait until later.

And it was at this moment I make an astounding personal breakthrough, one that every man must learn at some point but many never do: sometimes, no matter how hot she is, sometimes the chance of getting sex just isn’t worth it.  Grip leaves my room, thinking of the thousand and one ways he’ll give me grief over this for the coming year.  Meanwhile, I turn off the computer and the two of us settle in on the bed.  She’s got that come hither look, like it’s finally time to make that move.  And I say those magic words.

“Time to go.”  She had a look of disbelief.

She leaves me about 50 messages after that date, each one increasingly angrier and erratic as time keeps passing and I don’t call back.  Sometimes I still wonder where she is.  She was truly one of a kind.

One night in 1997 I went out with the fellas to a hip-hop party being DJ-ed by old school legend DJ Red Alert at a spot called Downtime in Manhattan.  Nice spot, the music was great, the place was packed with just-dirty-enough chicks, my game was on fire, it had all the makings of a good night.

For anyone who doesn’t know much about New York, what you need to know is we’re renowned for our pizza, bagels, cheesecake and thirsty, thirsty thirsty ass dudes.  I mean Sahara thirst.  Just got out of jail, locked up in solitary most of the time with no lotion and a mouth too dry to even spit on your hand type of thirst.  As a result cockblocking is out of control here, especially in the dog-eat-dog world of hip-hop parties.  If you immerse yourself in enough of these spots, not only do you have to have your cockblock defenses up all the time, you have to refine your own cockblock game just to remain competitive.  Luckily I had just returned to NYC from living in Buffalo for a few years, one of the few places on the East Coast with thirstier guys than NYC, so I was well ahead of the local game in my defensive and offensive cockblocking skills.  It’s like doing combat in the Marines for a few years then coming back to your small town and joining the local police force.  Buffalo is like CB Special Forces for real.

I’m dancing with some girl and this guy keeps hovering around us.  He’s sticking to the periphery, hoping I don’t notice him.  If I was a rookie I probably wouldn’t have, but as a graduate of Buffalo nightclub game I’m endowed with 360-degree cockblock vision so dude was on my radar right away, but I didn’t pay it much mind at first.  The girl and I are dancing close, facing each other, and the pest keeps trying to stay out of my sight while catching her eye.  He’s winking, licking her lips, doing all this slick shit.  This annoys the hell out of me, especially after three songs or so.  She doesn’t smile back or do much to acknowledge him because she’s busy talking to me.  She’s basically ignoring him.

I finally ask, “Yo, who is that dude?  Do you know him?” 

She responds, “Oh, he’s a guy danced with for a song earlier who won’t leave me alone.  I’ve been blowing him off all night.”

Dag, that’s thirsty.  Worse, a bum like this isn’t just hurting himself, he’s contributing to blowing the girl’s ego out of control, which hurts everyone, most importantly me.  He then positions himself real close to us the side with his back to us like he’s not paying us any mind.  (Remember, he still thinks I’m not on to him)  I notice his hand behind his back facing outward, moving closer to hers.  Now I’m in a pickle: if I call him out over some girl I just met, I get into a dispute over a girl I don’t even care about and just boost her ego even more.  Women love when guys fight over them.  Even though the dispute would really be over his disrespect of me and would have nothing to do with her, that’s not how it would register in her brain.  But at the same time the longer I let him stand there doing slick shit, the worse I look.  The place is too crowded to just move elsewhere easily.  I refuse to leave the girl alone for him to swoop back in just out of principle at this point.  I didn’t care about hooking up with her at this point, I just wanted to make sure he didn’t (because I can be petty sometimes, sue me).  When you are willing to crash and burn in the process of ruining another guy’s chances, this is known as the Kamikaze Cockblock.

I let my hand brush against his.  He obviously thought it was hers and he took it (I have small hands for the record (not that that implies anything of course (no, really, it doesn’t))).  Then this bitch-ass actually starts writing letters in my hand.  This is the kind of desperation move thirsty guys do that just blows my mind, because not only is it horrendous but even if on the off chance it works, how can you respect yourself after?  Even if you win you’re a loser.  At life.  So I tell her, “This nigga’s seriously writing letters in my palm right now.  He thinks it’s you.  Watch this.”  And I start writing back, but looking straight ahead with a poker face.  She starts cracking up, which just makes him think she’s loving what he’d doing to “her.”  I see him start smiling too.  She and I are just cracking on the guy for about five minutes like our own personal in-joke.

When I think I’ve let the guy dig a big enough hole for himself, I squeeze his hand firmly.  He looks back, surprised.  I slowly wink at him with a totally creepy deadpan expression, still holding his hand.  The dude’s jaw drops and the girl bursts out laughing right there.  The guy just bolts. 

Fun fact: the average NY guy has become ten times as thirsty in the 10 years since this story took place. Especially in hip-hop clubs.  A desert nomad couldn’t top the stories of NYC thirst I’ve heard in recent years.  It really is no wonder a girl can be a strong 6 at best here and still walk around like she just finished booking the cover of Vogue and Maxim on the same day. 

Later on I’m at the bar, its near the end of the night and I’m pretty drunk.  On the dance floor is a couple dancing, and I notice the girl seems to be looking at me.  She’s really attractive, with a slightly exotic look I’d discover later was a Puerto-Rican/Irish mix.  I don’t pay it much mind, but each time I glance it that direction I can swear she’s looking at me.  Her expression is blank, not flirty.  She’s pretty far away, and the club is pretty crowded so she really could be looking at someone else or just staring in my general direction.  It’s so far away I can’t even be sure she can see me clearly.

I think, “What do I have to lose?  Let’s see what happens.”  I put on my best Blue Steel face, lean back against the bar, cock my head back, raise my hand to my hip and do that “come hither” thing with my fingers at her.  She just keeps staring in my direction blankly.  Did that even register?  Can she even see me from that far? I try it again, extra cocky this time.  Nothing.  She’s still dancing with the guy.

Oh well, it was worth a shot.  I turn to the bartender and order a beer.  Takes less than a minute.  I turn back around and inches from my face is the same girl.

Her, half-defiantly, “You called me over?”

Holy shit, that actually worked?!?!  I can’t believe it myself, but no way am I letting her know that.  Even though in the years following I will disavow cockblocking in general as a dating concept, at the moment I’m particularly proud of this one.  I play it off like this is my everday norm.

Me: “You know I did.”

Her: “Do I know you?”

Me: “You will.”

Little do I know I have just met the hands-down dumbest girl I will ever date.

Will be continued…

The jukeboxes in most hipster bars are conspicuously hip and filled with indie cred. The music selection is so well-designed that it is almost impossible to pick a song that is not hipster approved. All the major categories of hipster music bliss are well-represented and the jukebox is virtually philistine-proof:

• country, but only from the three country music artists that hipsters respect: Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard and Hank Williams (sometimes Patsy Cline)
• Old School East Coast hip-hop
• Backpack hip-hop dedicated to rapping about 1988 and molecules or some other dumb shit
• Punk and hardcore’s sacred cows
• Any Beastie Boys song not from Licensed to Ill
• Any band that is or sounds like Radiohead, Arctic Monkeys, Arcade Fire, The Go! Team or CSS
• A couple of bad, mainstream songs deliberately included for the occasional dose of irony
• Anything featured in an Ipod commercial

Even though much of the music is good, hipsters tend to be so self-congratulatory and smug about their jukebox choices that they almost make jack Black’s music snob character from High Fidelity seem tolerable. Almost. (Nothing by Jack Black is ever actually tolerable) Time after time I’d watch a bespectacled, messy-haired zero muscle tone hipster painstakingly peruse the selection for 20 minutes, sometimes alone, sometimes with a friend, maybe with a girl they hope to impress with their superior music snob acumen. Then you have to watch the self-satisfied smug smirk that comes across their faces as their selections come on and the nerdgasms come over their group.

Drinking with these music nazis used to make hipster bars unbearable until the introduction of one of the greatest inventions to hit the bar scene since the Megatouch machine…..the Digital Internet Jukebox.

Gift from the Heavens

This beauty was introduced almost three years ago and has been slowly gaining ground in even dive bars and hipster haunts. And oh the joy it provides, thanks to a game I invented called Hipster Hell.

For the uninformed, the internet jukebox allows you to no longer be limited by the music preselected by the drinking establishment. You have the choice of going online and downloading any of two million plus songs out there; just about anything you can think of is available. And even better, for an extra charge you can make your selections jump to the front of the queue, allowing you to bypass the first-come-first-serve method of traditional jukeboxes.

Here’s how Hipster Hell works. You go to the digital jukebox and proceed to pick songs designed to drive hipsters insane. Remember, anything liked by a lot of people can’t possibly be good in the mind of a hipster, so go for songs as popular as possible. For example here’s my top 20 Hipster Hell playlist:

1. “Crazy” by Britney Spears
2. “Native New Yorker” by Odyssey
3. “Knockin’ Boots” by Candyman
4. “Vibe” by R. Kelly and Public Announcement
5. “Uptown Girl” by Billy Joel
6. “Idioteque” by Radiohead (to give them a glimmer of hope, a light at the end of the tunnel if you will)
7. “We Built This City” by Starship (to cruelly yank them back into the 7th circle of Hell)
8. “Vogue” by Madonna
9. Any song by a Disney Channel alumnus, take your pick (for example Raven Symone, Lindsey Lohan, Jonas Brothers or Hillary Duff)
10. “Addams Groove” by MC Hammer
11. “Rush Rush” by Paula Abdul
12. “Hanging Tough” by New Kids on the Block
13. “MMMBop” by Hanson
14. “Pump Up the Jam” by Technotronic
15. “Now That We Found Love” by Heavy D. and the Boys
16. “Mambo No. 5″ by Lou Bega
17. “Physical” by Olivia Newton-John
18. “Barbie Girl” by Aqua
19. “I Will Always Love You” by Whitney Houston
20. “Zombie Nation” by Kernkraft 400

Bonus tracks:

1. “I Write the Songs” by Barry Manilow
2. Anything by The Strokes

Pay the extra money to get all these songs bumped to the front of the queue. The beauty of this selection is that for the first song or two, the hipsters will actually be into it and enjoy it, thinking that the songs are being played ironically. By the third or fourth song, they start figuring out that something’s wrong. By the fifth, they start becoming vocally upset. Critical mass tends to hit around “MMMBop.” It gets really ugly by the time the first note of Whitney Houston hits. People even start accusing each other in witch hunts like McCarthyites and I’ve seen some really vicious arguments erupt. Ask random people “Did you choose this?” just to deflect suspicion.

The key to this is to appear as openly upset as the other hipsters at the shit music that’s playing. Find someone 35+ to blame it on. Really play it up. A few hipsters will sacrifice their Pabst money and even do a collection for wrinkled dollars in an effort to regain control of the jukebox and move some Pitchfork Media approved jams to the front of the queue. Encourage this, and for added effect stand over the hipster hero’s shoulder and offer suggestions like “Psycho Killer” by Talking Heads and “Mongoloid” by Devo. This is necessary to deflect any suspicion and keep the ruse going.

After the hipster leaves, congratulate him on his choices and act like you’re about to add some more indie goodness. As soon as the coast is clear, it’s time for the final phase of hipster hell: BILLY JOEL POWER HOUR. Choose every single Billy Joel song you can think of and move them to the front of the queue. This is endgame, show no mercy in selecting your barrage. You’re taking no prisoners.

At this point, you don’t give a fuck, the jig is up. As the Joelly goodness hits the speakers, start punching your fists in the air, singing along, dancing with your friends, yelling at the top of your lungs, jumping up and down. Hipsters don’t fight, even when drunk, because they’re too passive-aggressive, so the worst you’ll get is some serious glares and really loud sighs. If they’re really badass it may escalate into a sarcastic comment or backhanded compliment. Nothing to really worry about.

The most fun you can have with hipsters without actually punching them.