I Suck at Girls by Justin Halpern Page A

Barcelona. Everything was going just as I’d hoped; even things I was normally self-conscious about seemed unimportant.
    “So, I kinda have weird chest hair,” I said, as I removed my shirt.
    “I like it. It looks like an eagle that’s grabbing another eagle,” Anetta said.
    “Fuck yeah. It totally looks like a crazy eagle fight,” Ryan chimed in.
    We knew we weren’t going to be able to afford drinks at the club, so that evening Ryan and I walked to a nearby liquor store, bought a couple dozen airplane-sized bottles of Skyy Vodka, Captain Morgan’s, and Jack Daniels, and stuffed them in our pants pockets so that it looked like we were wearing football pads. By the time our taxi arrived at Pacha, the four of us had downed several bottles each and my tongue was starting to feel numb. Before us was a big white building, with two large palm trees flanking the entrance and a wash of purple floodlights over the whole facade.
    As other people gathered in front of the club, though, we started feeling out of place. Ryan and I were both wearing khaki slacks and I was wearing New Balance sneakers, whereas almost everyone around us was dressed in all-white clothing so skin-tight it looked like they were heading to a speed-skating competition. Standing next to them, I looked like an old man on the way to his grandson’s third-grade play.
    “Man. Everyone looks like they’re from the future,” Ryan said.
    We pushed past the front door and into a cavernous open room where the techno music’s pulsing bass smacked me in the face and vibrated through my body. The walls were twenty feet high and draped in white fabric; all around us, purple and white spotlights chased each other fast enough to give you motion sickness. In the middle of the room was a concrete dance floor packed with hundreds of sweaty bodies writhing around like they were going through heroin withdrawal. Sitting above the dancers in the DJ booth was a middle-aged bald man wearing a cape who periodically grabbed a strobe light and flashed it over the crowd. Even though we were standing on the outskirts of the dance floor, arms and legs flailed wildly and knocked into us every few seconds.
    “Man, people dance really weird here,” I shouted as loud as I could, so that Ryan could hear me over the music.
    “Come outside for a sec,” Ryan yelled back at me, then held his hand up to Eloisa’s ear and said something to her.
    We walked away from the dance floor and up some stairs to a rooftop lounge where the music was quieter. A group of young people were smoking cigarettes in a huddle; in a booth nearby sat an obese man with a hairline that started at his eyebrows, with one incredibly attractive woman on his lap and two others on either side of him.
    “We can’t start making excuses not to party,” Ryan said, insistently.
    “What are you talking about? I’m here. I’m ready to party.”
    “No. You just said, ‘People dance really weird here,’” he replied.
    “They do. I’m just making an observation. Here’s another one: That fat guy has a lot of hot girls around him. Just an observation,” I said.
    “That fat guy is partying. You stand around talking about how weird people are, and you’ll end up doing that the whole night. I do it, too. But we can’t do that shit,” Ryan said, his eyes growing wilder as he talked.
    “What are you, my coach? I don’t need you to give me a speech, dude.”
    “Yes, you do! Because I spent all my money to come to this place, dude. Did you know I was saving up to buy a dune buggy? But I didn’t buy one. Instead I came here. To party.”
    “Why were you saving up to buy a dune buggy? Where would you even ride that?”
    “I was gonna ride it to school or something. I don’t know. It doesn’t matter because I can’t buy one now. But what I can do is fucking party, in the partiest party place in the world. Vietnam Joe is off somewhere in Spain and he speaks like two words of English and he’s making sweet