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I arrive at Chris’s around eight or nine, after a day of shooting and image manipulation. Sarah, Frenchie, Chris, and Lutz have already started on Foster’s oil cans and a Cabernet, chatting around background music and surf videos.

Frenchie’s getting calls from a friend of Sarah’s, so I buck for my hookup:

“Sarah, where’s all your single friends? We should call them up tonight.”

“The cute ones are taken.”

Chris chimes in, faux-serious, “You need work on that, baby.”

Her eyes flash “Wait – there is one, she just broke up with her boy.”

“Great!” I offer, “I’m a fantastic rebound.”

No one believes me, but Chris votes we print shirts up with the phrase.

Chris sneaks Girls Gone Wild on the tube underneath the Gang Starr that’s blanketing our conversation. Lutz pulls himself out of a reverie: “Fuck yeah, I just ordered this last night! We were drunk and up till like six, and the commercial came on like seventeen times, so I ordered it. Man, we were hammered last night. I can’t wait ‘til this comes in.”

We start a contest, trying to be the first to accurately call out “fake” or “real” or “into it” or “bored”.

Ahh, college. A memory strikes me.

“I know what you mean, I almost did the same thing. I came home drunk and that commercial for art school, you know, ‘if you can draw this duck, you may be an artist,’ came on, so I called in for the application. They hounded me for years.”

Lutz stops dead and just stares. “I got drunk and ordered a porn video, and you got drunk and applied to art school?”

“Uh, yeah.”

“Barclay, you say the strangest shit.”

Chris hoists a handle of Cuervo Gold.

“Alright, whose starting? Sarah?”

“Without a shot glass?”

“Yeah, straight from the bottle. Same difference.”

She declines.

I look at Chris. “You know, whever I go out with you guys, you’re full of the worst ideas.”

“But you keep coming back.”

I take a small swig. It burns that unique acrid rot of shitty tequila.

“Yeah. And people think I’m smart.”

We’re out at the pub, funk pumping from the stage speakers, and Frenchie’s telling me a story. The musicians cut to break, and I cut off Frenchie’s story.

“Frenchie, this girl to your right has looked at you like three times now, and her friend’s looked at me a couple times, so here’s what’s gonna happen. You’re going to walk up and talk to her friend, and I’m going to talk to her and her friends.”

“But –”

“Nope, just go.”

I lead, but he doesn’t follow, at least for a good fifteen minutes or so. The conversation with L— is interesting, but not phenomenal. Eventually, I bow out while Lutz and Frenchie take over. I pull back to make a round of the bar, say hi to some other friends that happen to be there, and watch Lutz and Frenchie work.

The band’s off break, the funk is in full swing, and Chris, Sarah, Lutz, and Frenchie are all dancing with L— and her friends. Sarah comes to help me out.

“You know, that girl you were talking to is out there on the dance floor.”

“Yup, I know.”

I’ll fill her in later.

We’re packed into a cab back to Chris and Frenchie’s when Sarah asks. “So why didn’t you dance with that girl?”

“See, that’s not really the way I work.”

“You don’t dance?”

“Actually, I do occasionally, but the real deal is that I talked with her for a half an hour or so, but I usually don’t go for the one-night kill. Yeah, if I’m really into the girl, sure, but for just casual meetings, I just hang out for a bit, have some fun, and hopefully run into them later. This way, if I made an impression, they get a little chance to miss me, and if not, they don’t resent me. Also, I know I won’t do something I’ll regret because I was drunk that one night, and I just have fun because I’m not trying to ‘spit game’ all night long. San Diego’s a surprisingly small town. I rarely go home with anyone I met tonight; I go home with someone I met last month.”

Chris adds an aphorism from school, “Planting seeds.”

“Damn straight, planting seeds.”