"For I was thinking in a language like that, the stale impersonal language of the College Boy who thinks he's such a God-damned big man." -- Robert Penn Warren, All The King's Men

About a week ago, I was out with two of my friends. They're both pretty nice guys and they both have girlfriends. I was by far the most dangerous of the three and that's only because sometimes I'm a little clumsy.

One of the guys I was with thought he recognized a girl from his hometown. He didn't actually know her, he just thought he recognized her. So he tapped her on the shoulder and said, "Aren't you from Westchester?"

"No," the girl said. "I'm from Nebraska."

"Wow!" I said, because I had never met anyone from Nebraska. "You guys are Cowboys, right?"

Then I thought, "No, that's Oklahoma. Nebraska is Cornhuskers." But I couldn't decide if it would be proper for me to ask someone I didn't know very well if they were or were not a Cornhusker.

But it wouldn't have made much of a difference what I asked her because the girl had already walked away, and my friends were shaking their heads at me very sympathetically.

"Poor, poor Rich," they said. "She wasn't from Nebraska. She was lying to us."

"Why would she lie to us?" I asked, feeling disappointed because now I still hadn't met anyone from Nebraska. I had only met a liar from Westchester which is no big thing.

"She was probably tired of people hitting on her," they said.

I thought about that and it made me kind of angry. I felt insulted that this person would just immediately assume that we were interested in her. We were, after all, only talking about topography and geography. When did I become such a scoundrel? It wasn't like I asked her what her sign was or anything.

And anyway, if she didn't want to talk to us, she could have just said, "I don't really want to talk to you." Which isn't much less insulting, but at least it's honest. She didn't have to lie to us. She didn't have to impersonate a Cornhusker.

I also started to think that dating in the 90s was going to be a real drag if I had to learn a whole bunch of things like the location of Nebraska or the capital of Oklahoma, or maybe what the chief export of Wyoming is.

Anyway, a couple of nights later, I went out with my friend Mike and we met up with two girls Mike knew. One of the girls was wearing a hat, I think. And we were having a pretty nice time just sitting there boy-girl-boy-girl, and talking about silly things.

"Stay away from geography," I whispered to Mike.

After a while the bar started to fill up and that's when the fun really started. Because that's when almost every single guy in the bar, either alone or in small groups, began to come over to us and make conversation to the girls at our table. It was amazing. I had never seen anything like it.

These guys had all kinds of witty and original things to say to the girls such as, "So, wha's yer name, huh?" or "Hey! Hey, you. Wha's yer name?" One guy impressed us by showing how fast he could drink a beer, another guy wanted to fight with us and then some guys didn't do much of anything. Not one of them, though, said anything as brilliant as, "Aren't you from Westchester?" For which I am eternally grateful.

And I decided that all of these romantic overtures would probably impress any member of either sex if it weren't for just one little thing.

All of these romantic overtures were amazingly pathetic and stupid.

I was depressed by how many lonely and desperate guys were in the bar. And I thought that they were probably only lonely and desperate because all the girls turned out to be from Nebraska. But all the girls were only saying they were from Nebraska to protect themselves from the lonely and desperate guys. And so on.

Finally, one innovative guy tried to pick up the girl who was wearing a hat by sitting in the middle of our table and saying over and over again, "Lemme put yer hat on." I couldn't take it anymore.

"Where you goin'?" the hat guy asked me when I got up to leave.

"Nebraska," I said. "I'm going to Nebraska."