I Wasn’t Rude. I Kept My Friends Safe in Target-rich Environments.
Not being nice might have saved their lives.
In college, there was hardly a night that I didn’t go out to hear live music.
But some of my friends were less enthusiastic, so we’d end up at some watering hole where the goal was to meet up with members of the opposite sex.
Their goal, not mine. I went because I didn’t want to stay home alone
I would have been content to socialize and drink with them without a hello from any of the men in the bar, but my friends had other ideas.
The environment was, as they say, “target-rich,” and my friends were pretty college-age girls, so it wasn’t difficult. Despite their eagerness, they were conservative and only exchanged phone numbers, in the hopes of a date.
We arrived together and we left together. Each of us took a turn at being the driver.
You’re not going anywhere.
We’d slide into a booth, not the bar, order a round, and begin to talk. That’s all I wanted, to talk and finish my sentence without a stranger edging in. But I knew that wouldn’t last long. Inevitably, some guy would approach and one of my friends would turn toward me like they had whiplash and plead, “Now…
