I’ll never forget the day I met her.
I’d been hanging with a buddy I used to party with, who lived in a building near me. A dude I met at the gym. This Filipino nicknamed “Nasdaq.”
Nasdaq and I would go out clubbing, hit bars. He’d always be talking about, plotting ways to pick up girls. But when we’d go places, he could never muster up the courage to talk to them.
(Unlike me, who, after a few drinks, gave no fucks. Or like Nasdaq’s friend, “Crazy Juan.”)
((Crazy Juan was an absolute madman. He was a tall, swarthy, well-dressed Latino. A guy with a pockmarked face and the pockmarks somehow made him look more handsome. Dude had a bombastic personality; he’d hit any club or bar like a fucking tornado. This guy truly gave no shits. He’d step in a bar and yell over to me, “Hey, let’s go get shot down by every girl in this place!” and he would. At times, he’d be too spastic for his own good. Importunate in his approach. Scaring chicks away. But, underneath, he was a decent guy, a kind soul. He was crazy, sure, but a lovable crazy. We only hung a few times before he left, departing for L.A. when he landed a job there.))
Nasdaq and I continued to hang, though, go out and hit the town. He’d usually just sit at the bar, or stand in the back of the club, lean on the wall and drink. I’d dance, hit on girls, and I’d never have much luck. A couple times I did, but most times I’d be shot down by snooty chicks, tall models, and even chubby girls.
Buffalo Bangkok: Juvenile Delinquent Most of the girls I’d try to pick up would give me the identical, South Beach Shoot Down gesture, the hand signal, the palm held up to my face, like a traffic cop stopping oncoming vehicles.
(The joker in me wanted to slap their hand a playful high five. But I’ve never been one to touch without cause. And they usually rolled their eyes and clomped off quickly anyway…)
I’d didn’t care much, though. Mostly I had better luck meeting girls in public or online. Going to bars, clubs for me was about being out, listening to the music, dancing, drinking, digging the lightshows, the atmosphere.
(Though the atmosphere wasn’t always chill. One time I was taking an epic piss in a bathroom stall because the urinals were occupied. Oh, man, it was urgent, after drinking countless beers. As I was draining my lizard, I heard an ear-splitting knocking on the stall door and someone screaming at me to “quit it!” “No way, Jose,” I yelled out. No way I was quitting a piss that glorious and relieving.) ((I came out to see a burly bouncer, his neck veins popped out. Dude had cauliflower ears and looked like a posterchild for steroids. He had a stiff, serious face and started berating me about “snorting that shit in there!” which I wasn’t doing, and I told him I was taking a piss. He replied, saying that no one pisses that long. He’d obviously never seen me piss after seven or eight beers. He then commanded me to shut up and go dance. Which I obeyed and did.)) Besides getting shot down at clubs and accosted by burly bouncers, Nasdaq and I had been prowling the beach, mostly perving, stealthily, and occasionally attempting to pick up girls, but not usually having much luck in the sands either.
He’d happened upon a stretch of the beach, not far from us up A1A, where there was a language school, packed with smoking hot European chicks.
This was an English language school, an international chain, which had set up a campus in South Beach.
(Which was a strange place for an English language school, considering how few people in Miami spoke English, at least in daily life, or at home. In certain areas, virtually no English was spoken! Parts of Miami, you’d go into a store or
Buffalo Bangkok: Juvenile Delinquent restaurant, and people were only speaking Spanish, many spoke no English at all.
Like literally, they didn’t speak the language…) Nasdaq, on a solo perving expedition, had spotted this coterie of fine-looking European lovelies. He asked me to join him, so we could hit on them, try to score dates.
The morning he’d called me up, it was a Sunday, and I was sort of tired, after hanging with the Venezuelans the night prior.
I wasn’t totally sure I’d go, but he talked me into it. I think he wanted help initiating conversations. He was too pathologically shy to approach girls, and it was usually me being the one to make first contact.
It’s incredible to think of the vicissitudes of life, and how wholly different my path, my life would have been had I not joined him that morning. That one morning, that day, changed absolutely everything.