Bonersville U.S.A.

She: “Your glasses are Bonersville U.S.A!”
Me: “What?”
She: “I said your glasses are Bonersville U.S.A!”
Me: “Oh. Um, thanks.”

Then, after an excruciating moment of awkwardly standing around in silence, she just sort of floated away. That’s how it went down last weekend. She thought I was cute. I was weird and awkward. I’m still kicking myself. Immediately after that moment, my inner player chimed in, “Hey Raf, here’s an idea: when a hot girl gives you a complement, try NOT to sound like a complete nerd that has his game dial turned to negative five.” (Okay, I say I have an inner player, but he’s buried so deep in my subconscious even Scientology couldn’t unleash it if I gave Tom Cruise a trillion dollars and all the babies’ blood he could drink for breakfast.) So yeah, I admit it. I have zero game, and I don’t care who fucking knows.

We all have moments where we kick ourselves for coming up with an amazing comeback way after the fact. My friend Liane calls it “quiplash.” Maybe at some point you were at a bar and some overbearing chief gave you static and the next day you woke in a eureka moment with something biting and witty that was way better than your original, “Oh yeah, well…screw you!”

All the way home, my quiplash hit me hard and I sifted through over 60 different retorts, each one worse than the last. “Yes, I have a map to Bonersville, it’s right over here!” *points to crotch* No, too crude.

“Bonersville U.S.A. Population: you.” Nah, too cheesy.

“Well, the train to Bonersville is about to leave so you better get on it.” Oh God.

But can you really blame me for not coming up with something witty? I mean, “Bonersville U.S.A.” Sure, it’s hilarious and weird (exactly the kind of qualities I look for in a compliment/girl), but what does that even mean? My logical nerd brain was too busy trying to comprehend it all. How can an inanimate object be a city? Or maybe she meant there’s a town called Bonersville where everyone walks around with the same thick glasses…… and ginormous erections? But does that make the entire population of Bonersville male? Oh God, does she think I’m gay? Or does it mean my glasses gave her a boner? Can girls get boners, technically? If not, does that mean she has a penis? I think I would have noticed. Or maybe she meant boner in the old sense of the term, as in “a mistake.” Which means she doesn’t like my glasses…or does she?!

My luck with chatting up girls is so bad that guy friends jokingly sign me up for e-mail newsletters with titles like: “44 of My Best FREE Secrets for Success With Women” and “Are Women Attracted to ‘Nice’ Guys?” (FYI according to the e-mail, apparently not.)

Most of these e-mails are pretty much common sense like, “Don’t try too hard to impress someone” and, “If she says, ‘Let’s just be friends,’ she probably means it” (duh). Surprisingly, the major hurdle most of these newsletters attack is the problem of approaching women. That’s not my problem (I’d like to thank sweet, approachable, non-threatening Asian males David Suzuki and Pat Morita for paving the way for the rest of us young slanty-eyed whippersnappers).

Girls seem to be able to talk to me quite easily, but often I freeze. My friends say I think too much. That maybe I should just give girls compliments instead of trying to wrap my head around the semantic impossibility of eyewear also being a largely populated American municipality. Others say my problem is that I actually care what girls are saying.

“Dude, you just have to switch into predator mode,” is something I hear often. “You need to be more aggressive. Forget what they’re saying, just nod your head, say you like their shirt or something and go and make out with them.”

Fuck that, I say. I don’t have to succumb to brutish alpha male mentality to find someone. Then again, they’re the ones going home to their girlfriends and I’m the one left walking home alone thinking of witty retorts to “Bonersville U.S.A.”

So while it’s getting close to Valentine’s Day, aka the worst day of the year, and while it’s also true that I do need to work on my game (i.e. don’t get paralysed by fear when a cute girl talks to me), I still have faith that nice guys don’t have to finish last.

Oh, and if the female I met at the Coda Club on Saturday is reading this, I finally decided on my comeback: “I’m the mayor of Bonersville U.S.A.”

E-MAIL YOUR BEST BONERSVILLE RETORT FOR A CHANCE TO WIN 2 TIX
TO MY VALENTINE’S DAY LOFT PARTY ON FEB. 14 (FOR SERIOUS!)

Riff-Raff@sympatico.ca