Last night, I made the conscious decision not to go out.

I sat home in bed, all alone, and… Last night, I made the conscious decision not to go out.

I sat home in bed, all alone, and watched Jay Leno while everybody I know, and most of the people I don’t, started off at Hemingway’s or Cumpie’s and made their way to the “O” about the time I was rolling over in bed looking for the cool side of the pillow.

This was the first night in a while that I firmly dug my heels in and refused to partake in a nightly beer crawl through Oakland, Shadyside or the South Side – take your pick of bars, the odds are I was there at least one night over the past two weeks.

So why did I decide to abstain from the dollar drink specials on this particular night? Because this decision was, perhaps, more convenient – and less of a long-term commitment – than joining a convent, which seems to have been my other option.

I don’t really want to join a convent – at least not for the conventional reasons, but after 14-plus days of going out and mingling with the type of person that I like to call, affectionately, the bar-guy, I’ve lost my taste for the bar scene and any desire to make an attempt to meet a member of the opposite sex. I’m not kidding.

Back up – yes, the bar-guy has turned me off to guys in general – at least this week.

My best friend and I thought, ignorantly enough, that the title of bar-guy was reserved for a particular breed of South Oakland-based Pitt undergrad, whose stomping grounds located him within the confines of the Forbes Avenue strip of bars.

This guy is loud, proud and looking for – well – anything that doesn’t avoid eye contact with him: the guy who is willing to raise his plastic cup of Coors Light and yell after a girl – without any reservation – “You are all that and a bag of chips – that’s right, you know I’m talking to you.”

This guy is what encouraged my best friend and I to venture beyond the Oakland scene, to Shadyside, to try our luck with an older crowd – the mysterious graduate students. Surely none of them would reveal themselves as the bar-guy type.

In Shadyside, I was expecting the well-adjusted law, business or medical school type: suave, future in hand, and capable of holding a conversation while maintaining eye contact. Instead I discovered that reality really does bite – hard.

The bar-guy, I realized, while my glass house shattered to the ground, could also be a graduate student. This bar-guy was more touchy-feely, but wore better shoes, which I noticed while he was looking over my shoulder, scanning the crowd to make sure I was still the most attractive thing he could have been talking to at that particular moment.

My bubble has burst, and I am left frustrated and alone, wondering if I will ever meet a genuine and attractive man, and whether it is really worth the effort.

I will never peruse the supermarkets looking for love in the produce section, and on the bus, I generally avoid eye contact.

I don’t want to say that the bar-guy has caused me to question what team I’m really playing on: I’m still batting strong, but can’t seem to get in line with a pitcher that will help me to hit a home run. The bar-guys’ pitches are wild and always seem to stop short.

Strong pitchers may contact Christian Schoening at [email protected].