The Pick-Up Game

Southwest Airlines Spirit by John Ross

It’s past midnight in New York City, and I’m running out of time to find a woman wearing red high-heeled shoes. I’ve already been in a half-dozen bars and clubs from lower Manhattan to the upper West Side. But so far there’s nary a ruby spike in sight.

I must find her, though, to complete my test of the tenets behind a new book about the bar scene. Called Night Games, the tome promises to be a “first-hand version of Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus, as seen through the filters of the nightclub and bar scene.”

At least that’s what the press materials say. Me, I have no idea what a nightclub filter is. Still, I do understand what author Rodney Battles has told me.

“About 80 or 90 percent of the people who go out to bars and clubs don’t enjoy the experience,” says Battles, a 50-something salesman from Texas. “But 10 to 20 percent do. And it’s the perspective of those 10 to 20 percent that I try to provide.”

Those privileged tenths know how to approach the opposite sex, according to Night Games.

Battles knows all of this, too, because he’s been clubbing since the late 1970s. The Night Games press materials say he has other relevant experience as well. Right there next to the bar filters there’s mention of Battles doing an Internet survey on bar and club experiences. He has 500 responses so far. We also learn that Battles has talked to his friends and some bartenders for the book. And those are pretty much his credentials.

Whether that makes Battles an authority or not on The Scene or male-female interaction is a matter of perspective. He’s certainly convinced of it, as the matter-of-fact style of Night Games attests. Here’s just a sampling of Battlesisms to consider:

“Sometimes large women will go to a club or bar with a smaller woman who will serve as bait. When men approach the smaller woman, the larger women will have an opportunity to attract some attention they might not otherwise receive.”

“Men have to work hard at flirting (in bars), but women are born with the ability to flirt as a means to signal their interest in and attraction to a man.”

“Most women can tell if a man has cheating eyes, lying eyes, dishonest eyes, married eyes, wandering eyes, or sincere eyes.”

And then there’s the Battlesism that’s taken me on a trek across half of Manhattan Island. I’ve been tracking a list of conclusions in Night Games along the way. But I’m stuck on one. That one is this: Battles writes there are some things in particular that women wear to “signal they are available.” For instance, “Red high-heeled shoes may indicate a woman is interested in sex.”

Now if only I can find a pair.

A bit earlier in the night I’m in the Coffee Shop, a hip diner-themed bar right off New York’s Union Square. Pretty people come here. I note the time as 10:30 p.m. This is important because Night Games tells us that most “attractive women” arrive in bars and clubs between 9 p.m. and 10 p.m. Most men, he writes, get there between 11 p.m. and 1 a.m. The conclusion, “If you want to meet attractive, classy women, you should arrive by about 10 p.m.”

I’ve made good time, then. And indeed, I estimate the ratio in the Coffee Shop as 0/40 women to men. Plus, lots of the women are very attractive as well. So far so good.

I keep putting Battles’ lessons to work. He recommends you not order a “common drink” because a unique cocktail will pique the interest of the opposite sex. I order a Canadian Club, rocks, because, well, a guy I know drinks that, and it’s all I can think of when the bartender points at me. Maybe not the best call, but it does spark a conversation with a patron nearby who I’ve been observing in his attempts to pick up an attractive brunette who definitely got there between 9 p.m. and 10 p.m.

The guy asks me, “Are you a Canadian, eh?” I answer, “No, you hoser.” Or maybe that’s not verbatim. In any case, we chat for a bit – turns out he’s originally from Canada. All the while he’s telling me his life story, though, he has his back to the girl he’d been talking with.

This seems like the Night Games script. Battles writes that men should try to “think like women think.” In his view, women are in control in the bar scene because they have the “natural assets and seductive skills to appeal to men’s egos.” So if a man makes a woman “more curious about you than they think you are about them,” he can reverse the roles. One recommended technique is to approach a woman and then quickly withdraw, making her wonder why you’re not still talking to her. But though that’s exactly what the Canadian has done, it doesn’t work. When he turns back around, the girl is engrossed in conversation with someone else.

The Canadian withdraws for the night.

Similar scenes – peppered with a few successes – repeat themselves all over the club capital of the world, from bars and clubs in Chelsea to the Flatiron District to Midtown. But I’m still not finding any red high heels. I keep looking inside The Whiskey, a sleek hotel bar in the theater district. Still no luck. But I do see two guys who look very much like post-convention salesmen trying to pick up a pair of striking 6-foot-tall blondes who are easily 10 years their junior. The details aren’t important, just suffice it to say they fail.

Battles has some advice relevant to the salesmen. Really relevant. He says meeting people in bars is a five-step process very similar to a four-step process employed by many salesfolk. The five steps: “prospecting, qualifying, approaching, attracting, and closing.”

The conventioneers at The Whiskey “prospected” well. The ladies were, ah, hot. But they failed to “qualify” properly. The ladies were also well out of their league. Thus everything fell apart in the “approaching” phase, and they never even got a shot at “attracting” or “closing.” Suddenly this Night Games stuff is really making sense to me.

But still no red shoes. Not one. It’s now closing in on 1 a.m., and I’ve taken my search to Noche. It’s a sprawling Latin-themed bar/restaurant in Times Square, owned by the same group that once ran the Rainbow Room and Windows on the World. It seems like the perfect place to test out as many of the Night Games hypotheses as possible before last call because it has two different bars, a dance floor, a singles scene, and a patronage of mixed ages.

Ay yes, the ages. Battles says people of different ages behave a bit differently in bars and clubs. Women in their 20s, for instance, “are most likely to respond to handsome men who are slightly conceited.” Women in their 40s “don’t have a problem approaching men in clubs and bars.”

I’ve asked Battles if age matters in bar behavior beyond the few slight behavioral differences he’s observed. I’ve also asked – for purposes of my experiments – if the conclusions drawn in Night Games are subject to change depending on where one is imbibing, how old one is, or, you know, whatever?

The answer is no. Battles contends his book’s rules are universal. “The issue of race doesn’t matter,” he says. “Status and class don’t matter. What you find is that there are different-looking people, but their attitudes don’t change. In Dallas we might drink Tennessee whiskey, while in New York they drink Louis XIV cognac. But the interaction between men and women is the same.”

I’m not drinking cognac at Noche. In fact, I’m not entirely sure what I’m drinking anymore. I’ve met up with a couple guys and they’re buying. I think I might be swilling Wild Turkey. In any case, I have suddenly found myself on the edge of my barstool. Not from the Turkey, but because I’ve just spotted two women nearby, one of whom is on those elusive red high heels. Actually the heels themselves are two-toned with alternating bands of red and gold. Close enough for me to comment about the shoes to one of my companions, who then launches himself in the direction of the women.

His opening line is not exactly a charmer – “That guy over there likes your shoes.” Still, it works, and the ladies slide over to join us.

I take note of what they’re drinking. Night Games offers a whole list of drink choices and what they say about women who choose them. A chardonnay drinker, for instance, “is likely a woman who is well traveled and financially secure. She is usually easy to approach.” The ladies with us at Noche are drinking chocolate martinis. These are not specifically mentioned in the book, so I’m not sure what to expect.

We talk for a while, almost entirely about them. It seems to be going well, but I’m focused on my end goal. I have to ask the girl in the red-gold heels if she’s interested in, well, you know. Just before I do, though, the party’s wheels come shooting off. The guy who made the initial approach decides to share something about himself and another guy who is with us. “We’re from Arkansas,” he says.

Turn out the lights, the party is over. About 90 seconds pass before both women get up and leave because one of them “has to take a call.” I write down on a cocktail napkin that I can hear no phone ringing. Then, as I scribble the words “we’re from Arkansas” alongside, I suddenly realize the problem I have with Battles’ book.

Even after 15 years as a regular in an Arlington, Texas, club – or maybe especially after that – I just don’t think Rodney Battles can be an expert on meeting people in bars. In fact, I think that maybe no one can be an expert on this subject because it is a subject with no real rules.

Every meeting in every bar on any given night in any particular city is different. Sometimes there’s no connection because there’s no physical attraction on one person’s part. Sometimes there’s no attraction because one person is Canadian, or from Arkansas. And sometimes things work out, too. But if things do work out, it probably has nothing to do with red high heels. And even though Battles says all women will be turned off if a man’s breath is “stanking from dranking,” some women won’t even notice. Some might even like it. People are just funny that way.

But I suppose Battles’ book is funny, too. For one thing, some of Night Games makes perfect sense and will sound familiar to anyone who has spent a bit of time purchasing adult beverages. And for the parts of the book that don’t sound familiar or don’t make sense, there’s still plenty of fun to be had. Just take the book with you on a bar crawl and challenge its assumptions. At the very least, that will give you the best opening line you’ve ever had.

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