I Suck at Girls by Justin Halpern Page B

love to women and shit.”
    Ryan removed three minibottles of vodka from his pockets and unscrewed their caps. “Let’s do this,” he said, then tilted his head back and poured all three down his throat one after the other. I took out three bottles of Captain Morgan’s and did the same, fighting the urge to throw them back up.
    “Also, everyone here seems like they’re into rich guys. So, if anyone asks you, I’m telling people my dad invented the calculator watch, and my name is Brian Waters,” he said as he tossed the empty bottles into a trash can. “Who are you?” he asked.
    “Hmm. I don’t know.”
    “I like the name Robert C. Manufas. I mean, it’s your call, but I’m just saying I like that one.”
    “How about this: I’m Robert C. Manufas and I own an Internet company that helps people find tax loopholes?”
    “Hell, yeah,” he said giving me a high five.
    We each downed one more tiny bottle of liquor and strode confidently back into the club. Ryan grabbed Eloisa, who was standing where we’d left her, and walked out onto the dance floor. I spotted Anetta out on the floor, making out with a tall guy in a white jumpsuit with the zipper opened down to his belly button, revealing his shaved chest. I stood on the periphery of the dance floor for a few moments. I have never been what you would call “a good dancer.” I have one move: reaching my arms out wide, leaning back, and lurching my chest forward to the rhythm of the music, like a guy being shot repeatedly in the back. But that night, I pushed that move to its absolute limits.
    The only way I could even keep track of time passing was that every so often a giant cloud of freezing vapor would blast from the corner of the room, making it impossible to see your hand in front of your face for a few seconds. Ryan drank all of his tiny bottles of liquor, and most of mine, and spent what felt like several hours carrying Eloisa on his shoulders and challenging other couples to chicken fights until security insisted he stop. I danced till seven in the morning with anyone who made the mistake of making eye contact with me.
    Toward the end of the night, I was dancing with a tall, rangy blond woman who looked like she was in her late twenties. After an extended grinding session, she pulled me outside onto the upstairs balcony, where I noticed that the sky was becoming light.
    “You’re fucking intense,” she said, then pounded an entire bottle of water, most of which ran down her chin and chest and onto her white tank top.
    “Just dancing,” I replied.
    “What’s your name?” she asked.
    “Robert C. Manufas,” I said, sticking to my script, then realizing no one ever says his full name and middle initial when answering that question.
    “Do you have any E on you?” she asked.
    “Ecstasy? No.”
    “Shit. Let’s do shots of 151.”
    And that was the last thing I remembered.
    The next day, at five P.M ., I woke up in a bunk bed in our hostel. Ryan was sleeping facedown on the floor in just his underwear, the rest of his clothes balled up beneath his head like a pillow. Eloisa and Anetta were spooning each other in bed across the room. Ryan rolled over and looked at me.
    “I think I blacked out,” I said with a hoarse voice.
    “Do you remember going out into the middle of the dance floor and challenging people to dance battles?” he asked, rubbing his eyes slowly.
    “No. How did I do?”
    “Mostly people just yelled at you. Then you stole a knife from the bartender and cut your sleeves off. Then the bartender asked for it back and you started making body builder poses and then ran away. So that was pretty awesome.”
    I smiled in victory and then realized I felt worse than I’d ever felt in my life. I sat up—a little too quickly, I guess, because I immediately projectile-vomited into an empty bag of chips. I went to wipe my mouth on my missing shirtsleeves, and ended up rubbing my puke onto my bare biceps.
    “What do we do now?” I asked