I Don't Want to Talk Small Talk: Continuing Adventures of the Single Life

The blood had hardly returned to my hand after the pressure of his gripping handshake before I knew about his job, his last two relationships, his opinion on child daycare, and his sensitivity to lactose. All of my conversation starters in one fell swoop. Even the last ditch lactose question. But I shouldn't have been worried. He was a walking small-talk generator: he provided and answered all conversation starters. I have never been such a brilliant conversationalist.

He had a wave and a witty comment for every entering guest.

"Do you know that per- "

"I'm here to socialize: it's only a matter of time. Bathroom?" he called out to a lost looking patron without skipping a beat. "Back on the left."

"Have you been - "

"Nope, never been here but any person with a good sense of direction and familiarity with logical bar setup would be able to figure it out."

"How did you know that he -"

"Any guy carrying around an empty beer with a casual look of desperation on his face is clearly looking for the bathroom."

Before I had finished my beer, he had mentioned at least six times to the myriad of his new best friends that he didn't come to events like this for the talks, he was just interested in socializing.

"It must be an off night for you." I finally managed to get in a complete sentence.

My sarcasm fell like a lead balloon. "Yeah, I didn't get a lot of sleep last night so I'm flagging a bit," he sighed.

It was either the best deadpan I've seen or the grossest misuse of the word "flagging."

Then we were onto personalities. "You're an introvert," he declared rather than stated. "I see that you like to sit back and observe."

I took a stand for myself. "Well I would talk if I could get a word in edgewise."


In retrospect, I came out better when I let him small talk to himself.

After alienating the guy who was friends with everybody, or would be by the end of the night, I beat a hasty retreat to the bar. Even granting DC's seeming disregard of how money works in the real world, $7 was a heinous chunk of cash for a Budweiser, but it was a cheap price to pay for escape (although as a starving grad student who counts in Ramen, the loss of 70 packets was still a crushing blow).

I had more success with Mark. We proceeded along typical small talk lines:

"Where are you from?"

"Washington State."

"Where are you from?"

"West Philadelphia, born and raised (always a crowd pleaser)."

 I knew this script like the back of my hand, and with the confidence of a studied actress I started to adlib.

That was my mistake. Stage fright set in, I froze up. Then, in an actor's worst nightmare, I defaulted to script we had already spoken.

"Where are you from?" Abort! Abort! You just asked him that 5 minutes ago! He's from Washington, remember? Washington State - on the West Coast...ask him about the West Coast...

It was like catching a carton of eggs mid-fall from the refrigerator (which my sister did last Sunday, incidentally. I've been trying to work that analogy in ever since, so I can brag on her).

"Where you are from on the West Coast...(good save, talk slowly)...did you learn about the Civil War? (What?!)

And there go the eggs. And the conversation.


So maybe I'm not the smoothest operator when it comes to my own interests...but as a wingman, I put Goose to shame.

At this point, a clean cut guy in an Army sweatshirt walked past my friend and me. She turned to me and lifted her eyebrows, "I have a soft spot for army guys."

Redemption time!

"My friend likes your sweatshirt," I tossed out over my Budweiser.

He turned around and smiled, "Lo siento, no hablo Inglés."

Of course you don't. That's just about what I expected out of the night at this point. 

But I reckoned without the Latin love of American girls. A small matter of a language barrier was not going to stop the Chilean army (or it seemed by the time Carlos had called his compatriots over) from having a conversation with us (and pushing aside all the tables in the bar so we could salsa to the indie folk guitarist's songs).

If I thought small talk in English was a struggle, trying to make myself understood to our South American admirers in a conglomeration of classical Latin and my few Spanish phrases was like getting Apollo 13 back to earth.

I dug back into my college memories for more vestiges of Spanish...empañada, chorizo, nachos con queso, jalapeño (apparently all I did in California was eat)...

Mi casa, su casa? Definitely not appropriate bar chat.

Then I caught sight of my companion's bottle. "Ah, Corona! Quiero cerveza...y tequila! (see, I didn't just eat in college)

"Quieres cerveza y tequila?" Whistles from the army. Then a sly look from Matias, "Me quieres?"

Uhoh. I don't think that means what I think it means. Vincente took my phone and pulled up Google translate:




Umm...no. No, uh...gusta! Me gusta la cerveza y tequila. I don't want beer and tequila, I like beer and tequila. And I definitely don't want you, Matias. 

Of course, traditional small talk couldn't be completely avoided, but it was far from typical.

"Dónde vives?"

"Pennsylvania." They looked quizzical. "Philadelphia." 

"Ahhh! Philadelphia, si, si...Rocky! Rocky!"

Suddenly I was surrounded by Chileans singing Eye of the Tiger.

One of them pulled up a picture of Rocky on his phone. "You know he? He live from you?"

I could hardly order a meal in Spanish: I wasn't going to attempt to explain that Rocky was not an actual person. I just smiled and nodded, and I will have to answer for the fact that there are now soldiers telling their mothers in Chile that they met Rocky's neighbor.

Then Tomas made his move:





I explained that I was muy ocupado. And that I didn't go out with boys who didn't speak my language.

Felipe was the most well intentioned - he would not be deterred by my "muy ocupado" (very likely he couldn't understand it)...accounting for typos, it seemed like he was planning on coming back for me:





 ...Now if only I could find a way to implement Google translate in my conversations with American boys...