"The Skirt" is an ongoing series in which Four Pins' resident lady friend, Rachel Seville, becomes the most important woman in your life.
Girls: we are here, there and everywhere. We are pretty and funny and smart and dress cool. We come in a variety of sizes, including short and tall. Sometimes, we talk to you guys or even spend time with you.
One day soon you may want to make one of us your own. Everyone always tells you what to say to a girl when you meet her or where to take a girl on a first date, but that advice is moot when you’re looking for love in all the wrong places, which I bet you are. (Come on, a bar? That’s where we go to forget our sorrows, not find new ones to buy shirts for.) Meeting a girlfriend is a totally different animal than meeting a girl, which you can do in most American cities at no cost to you. Meeting a girlfriend takes courage and discipline and a longing sense that you would play less video games and stop being so selfish and dress a little better and, I don’t know, eat more fruit, if you just had a girlfriend.
That’s why today I’m providing you with seven sick places to meet girlfriends. Why seven? Because I am writing this, and I make the rules.
In an elevator
A lot of girls take elevators in buildings, so this is probably a decent place to meet a girlfriend. For 45 unforgettable seconds, you’re enclosed in 27 intimate square feet, soaring vertically through the city in a gravity-defying box. Romance! Do not make a rookie mistake like saying hello. Time is of the essence. Instead, say something like, “I just bought all the golf balls from that place across the street. Do you want one?” Which is a real thing that a real guy recently said to me on the elevator and it was totally okay because he was wearing dubs.
Reading a book
Books are for smart people, many of which are women, and some of which are probably looking to become girlfriends. Take a carefully chosen book and a jeroboam of champagne and plant yourself in a park like a prince. Hip books from the syllabi of dubious college seminars like “What Was Hip-Hop?” and “Post-Post-Modernism” are especially good here, because then she can just be like, “I read that in ‘Thoreau and Digital Culture’ and it changed my life,” and then you are in. You are so in!
Probably not at menswear market week, so I don’t knowwhy you guysare freaking outso hard, likeseriously, it’sjustaroomwitha lot ofHawaiian shirts.
At an art museum.
Meeting in front of a painting is cool, especially if it’s the kind of painting with a bunch of different colored squares, or even better, a white canvas, because no one gets that shit and you can just make fun of it. Note: do not conflate art museums with gallery openings, where meeting a girlfriend will mean saying 2-3 substantial, objective comments about art in competition with meretricious investment bankers who own a couple Rashaad Newsome paintings and think Steve Martin should just quit comedy and only write books because why is the world so freaking unfair.
Through your mom
If you’re like most people, you have a mom. Moms can be infamously toxic romantic meddlers, but if you have one of those cool moms who will talk about taking acid after a glass or two of oak-y chardonnay, you can definitely drop the knowledge that you’re looking for a special lady and let her work her magic. My boyfriend’s mom set us up, for example, and now we live together and eat breakfast sandwiches every night for dinner like royalty.
The London Olympics, those weird couple of weeks right after the 2009 NBA Final Four, and a couple of hours before Dido had a kid and didn't tell anyone.
Sometimes finding a girlfriend can be ephemeral. Sometimes you may feel you’ve missed your chance. But I promise that you will find one someday. What you do once you find her is up to you, but now you know where to go to steal some hearts.
Rachel Seville is a writer living in Brooklyn who believes in miracles. Read her blog, Pizza Rulez, here and follow her on Twitter here.
