At a Loss for Words

My boyfriend likes to go on these adventures through the Quarter. He sets out, gets a beer or two, and wanders around, taking pictures and talking to people. Sometimes he'll be gone for hours, and I have no idea how he amuses himself, but he's the king of small talk, so he tends to find other wandering souls to chat with. Lately I've been going with him, although mostly we talk to each other, and we're not gone nearly as long. It's a nice way to remember the neighborhood as we're about to leave.

So, the other night, about a week ago, we took a couple of friends with us, E & P. We got our beers, we wandered around, taking in the people that populate the Quarter on a random Sunday night. We actually did have a destination in mind, for once, and on the way back we stopped a little bar on Royal so that P could use the facilities. We're standing at the bar waiting, nary a bartender to be found, but these two rather tipsy almost middle-aged guy took a liking to my friend E, as they so often do, because she's cute and seems approachable. People like her. And because she's nice, she indulged them with a little conversation, which quickly veered into the slightly inappropriate since, as I mentioned, the men at the bar were slightly drunk and she's pretty and approachable. And apparently I was supposed to help save her, but I didn't, and as we're walking away, I remarked on how guys at bars never talk to me, and I sort of like it because I never get sucked into conversations that inevitably end up in slightly awkward territory. And apparently, according to boyfriend, this is because I'm kind of bitchy. Not that he said that of course; as a matter of fact, I did. What he actually said was that I give people such as these tipsy bar patrons a look that blatantly says "I'm so not interested, so don't even bother." I'm unapproachable, shall we say. To which I responded that being a bitch had worked for me for 26 years, because I rarely have to talk to people that I don't want to. I'm not mean to everyone. I just have no desire to talk to you if you're a horny middle aged dude who thinks it's fun to hit on girls who are too young for you. Anyway, the conversation continued, and eventually, sick of being the snobby one, I blurted out that it was really an utter lack of social skills, not snobbery, and that I just didn't do small talk well and thus avoided it. Which is really more true. I'm not actually a bitch. I just don't know what to say to people. I never mastered the flirty but not really available thing that some girls seem to do so well. It's really a valuable skill, probably called charm, as a matter of fact. Anyway, I just wanted to put that out there. If I've ever met you in a bar and looked at you as though I'd rather tongue the paint off of my walls, it's nothing personal. I just don't know what to say.