What’s a Perfect 10?

I thought I would go ahead and tell you about that night at the Cowboys Club.  First, I need to set the stage a bit…

I am 21 years old, and going to college in Big City, TX.  I just recently joined the basketball team at my small school.  I’m in a new world in many ways.  Big City is a large city, and I have mostly lived in small towns.  I have never played basketball on a team, nor been a part of any sort of club or clique.  This is all new to me.  I am enjoying it, though.  You wouldn’t know I’m new to it.  I hide that fact pretty well.

I’m also hiding my depression.  I go about life like nothing is wrong.  Not much has changed over the years, I guess.  Since I have no family yet and no responsibility to speak of, I do spend a lot of time sleeping and avoiding real people.  My full-on depression hasn’t hit hard yet in my life, but I’m in the early stages.  I’m just avoiding people, interactions, and social situations.

That changed a little when Dude walked in my life.  That’s just not who he was, and he wasn’t going to let it be who I was either.  Not if he could help it.

Dude likes basketball.  Actually, Dude loves basketball.  He is extremely talented at basketball.  Michael Jordan is his hero, and he reminds me of M.J. when he plays.  The way he runs, the way he moves on the court.  Dude never made it big like Jordan, or even to the pros, only because he chose the wrong schools.  Like our small college in Big City.  He never got found.  But he was good enough.   He was fun to watch on the court.

I wasn’t a starter on the team, in fact, I was down near the end of the bench.  In my mind, at least I wasn’t the last guy on the bench.  That spot was reserved for our shortest player – but even he had more heart than I did.  Man, that kid was a go-getter.  Actually, I wasn’t at that end either.  I was somewhere in the middle.  That’s the story of my life, somewhere in the middle.

Dude liked basketball so much that when we didn’t have 2-a-day practices he wasn’t getting enough (and to improve his raw skills, I’m sure).  So he would go to a local gym to play ball.  He chose a 24-hour Fitness.  I’m not sure why he ended up at that one, but it was new, nice, and very large.  It also drew some of the Dallas Cowboys to work out there, or at least play basketball from time to time.  This is where Dude met Michael Irvin.  He also met another guy who was DJ at the Cowboys Club.  Both of whom invited Dude to the Club.  He was told to tell the bouncer that either one of them sent him.  In fact, the DJ told him to just say he was a cousin.

So Dude invites me and a couple other guys to go.  Actually, I’m sure my invite was because I was one of the few kids who had a car at our school.  But I was glad to tag along.  I liked to drink, and go to bars.  I also liked the thought of meeting Michael Irvin.

We arrive at our destination.  We get out and go to the door.  There are bouncers, poles with felt rope, and the whole typical setup.  Dude walks up claiming to be the cousin, they don’t believe him.  He drops Irvin’s name; they don’t buy it.  The bouncer says, “I’m going to go ask, and if I come back with bad news I’m gonna beat yo’ ass!”  Dude turns to me, and is surprised to see that I have taken a very large step back away from him.  I’m dancing slightly to the music that I hear from inside and avoiding eye contact with this crazy guy trying to get in. Dude says, “REALLY?!?”

The bouncer opens the door to come back outside, and Dude and the DJ make eye contact.  The DJ insists we be allowed to enter.  We are finally let inside.  It’s nothing real special inside.  In fact, it’s quite crowded.  Not really my scene.  I always preferred a dive bar thing as opposed to a loud club.  As I looked around I noticed a lot of very beautiful women.  We even saw some coming in while we were waiting outside.  A few of them snickered at us as they overheard the conversation we had while trying to get in.

We make our way to a booth near the bar.  We ordered a few drinks.  We didn’t have money, but luckily we were allowed to use the tab of Dude’s new “cousin.”  Because we are just poor college kids, we couldn’t have paid for much of anything on our own.  I think we may have scrounged just enough for a bad tip in the end.

We’re sitting at the booth; I believe there are 4 of us total. It’s one of those round booths.  Ours is the middle one, out of 3.  The booths face the bar.  This allows some room for people to mingle between the booths and the bar.  I purposefully choose to sit on the end because I want to see the ladies walking by, and hopefully they’ll see me too.  I remember talking to Dude about his confidence, and how ladies respond to him.  I remember him telling me, “I just tell myself that I’m the best looking person in the room.  That’s where the confidence comes from.  The ladies pick up on a guy’s confidence, and they love it.”

Okay, so I tell myself the same thing.  I’m the best looking guy in the room.  I’m as confident as I can be.  I’m looking at all the girls walking by.  Not desperate.  Not drooling.  Just looking, and most of the time it’s out of the corner of my eye.  They don’t notice.  I’m not acting desperate.  I’m too confident for that right now.

Then I see the girl who snickered outside.  She’s a 10.  Gorgeous. A knockout.  She’s approaching our table.  I want to make eye contact.  I do.  She sees me.  She walks over toward our booth.  She talks to me.  She says, “Excuse me.”  Not to begin a conversation with me, but because she intends to have a conversation across me.  As she leans up to the table and talks across me, she begins to address Dude.  She says, “I just wanted to tell you, I’ve been watching you, and I love the way you drink your beer.”

WHAT?!?  Are you freaking kidding me?  It’s not even that she didn’t notice me.  It’s not even that she spoke across me to get to him.  As she left, I stated my concern, “Who freaking says that?!?”  I mean seriously, who says that to someone?  AND, who in the entire world gets told that.  What guy in the history of the world has been told that, other than this guy?  It was the craziest thing I had ever seen.  The whole situation was insane.

Needless to say, I dropped any hope I had that my confidence could be perceived.  I go back to my last post; it has everything to do with a person’s energy.  You either have it or you don’t.  You’re either a 10 or you’re not.  You can’t fashion confidence.  You can be self-assured, but confidence is not something that can make you a better person.  Not the kind I’m talking about anyway.  It’s in the grey area between arrogance and self-confidence.  If you gain confidence it might improve your demeanor, but it doesn’t change your energy – your force – your aura.  For some people, it’s just who they are.  They ooze confidence.

After that, the rest of the night was fine and normal.  Some girls sat with us at one point.  Nothing special really happened. Dude reminded me that there was a moment when I leaned over to him and said, “What would they do if they realized that we don’t have any money?”  It’s a whole lot funnier when he tells it though.

After a while we left the club.  Dude decided to run into a 7-Eleven that was nearby.  I watched as he and another man came out of the store, and watched him wave goodbye to the other man.  He got in the car and said, “Do you know who I just ran into?”  We all said, “Who?”  He said, “I was buying gum that I thought was marked 25 cents.  The guy rang me up and said it was $1.39.  I was like, that’s a lot for some gum!  The guy behind me said, ‘It sure is.’  I turned around and it was Emmitt Smith.  I said, man, you’re Emmitt Smith.  He laughed, paid for my gum and we walked out.”  No one believed Dude’s story.  No one saw him walk out with Emmitt, except for me.  I can’t say I recognized Emmitt right off the bat, but I believed Dude.  Why not, crazy stuff happens to him all the time.

What a crazy night.