Designated Bat-factor

The moment I got a boyfriend it was meant to happen: I became the designated bat-factor. Like the nonalcoholic person in a group becomes the designated driver, having a boyfriend makes you perfect to get rid of the not-so-charming guys that might get fixated on one of your friends.

I know, I know, bat factor, mother-hen, cock block, many names to describe a supposedly ugly friend who is jealous and doesn’t want her friend to get guys, right? Wrong.

We do want our friends to have fun and get guys that they like. That is the key. As any woman can tell you, many times the guys that hit on you aren’t the ones you like. And some refuse to take no for an answer or are too dense to understand rejection. These are the times when your friend looks at you with pleading eyes hoping to be saved from those dudes who seem to think that negging them would convince your friend to settle for them as if they were hot shit.

I mean, how many times does she need to say no for the guy to get it? One night we were dancing and there was this old man who kept coming. I counted eight “no” and he kept coming. Each time he returned, he was drunker than before. Eight. And that is when I stepped in.

“She doesn’t like you” Here I earned the Mrs. Obvious title. The guy looked me up and down.

“You are just jealous and don’t want your friend getting attention,” I think he was trying to put me in my place or something. I was just annoyed at having to deal with him. I tried again.

“She has said “no” eight times. I’ve been counting. How many times does she need to say it?”

Guys always complain that women aren’t clear, but you can’t be more clear than repeating “no” over and over. Yet, he kept coming and making her uncomfortable.

The men look at me angrily. For a moment, I thought he might try to hit me. But he ended up just insulting me. Ugly bitch, cunt, no man would like you, the usual. I counted that as a victory since finally, he left my friend alone so she could go flirting with the man she has been eyeing all night.

Then you have the ones who seem to go for the blind drunk. Literally, they need you to be blind, deaf, and numb. And if you aren’t, they will buy you drinks until you are. You don’t want to drink? Too bad, they’ll insist that you must drink. And they won’t take no for an answer.

“You are killing the mood” “Why are you so serious?” They’ll ask.

Nerd as I am, I can’t help but smile, they kind of remind me of the joker. And aren’t I supposed to be the bat factor? But they aren’t interested in my terrible jokes, they just want us to get drunk. It doesn’t matter, a drink can be left untouched and forgotten or passed to another person.

They, of course, would feel that you owe them for the drink you didn’t want or asked for. Cue the angry fits when they realize they are not getting their way. But let’s be honest here, they are not the ones who would hold your friend’s hair if she ends up vomiting. Not the ones who would take care of her when she has a hangover. That is not sexy. So yeah, I might have very good reasons for not letting them get her drunk.

But the weirdest situations I’ve experienced have been with so-called “pick up artists” or “PUA’s”. For some reason, they seem to think that subtly insulting someone, also called “negging” is the best way to make that someone horny.

I know, I know, it is not exactly like that. Is more about self-loathing sex. The one you have not because you feel good, but because you hate yourself so much that you need validation from someone you just met. Charming.

Then again, what are friends for if not to make you feel better? To remind you how great you are and to tell off to anyone who insults you. Subtle or not subtle. And if that gets in the way of someone getting laid, well, tough shit.

Because many times it feels as if so-called PUA’s follow a script written by the same person who wrote “the room”. There even was one who asked me:

“How can I get a date with your friend?”

For real, as if we were still in high school. But we were past 30 so it sounded sad. Really sad. I looked at my friend, talking with his friend, then back at him.

“Talk to her”

Yet he insisted on the same question. As if I had offered the wrong answer and he was giving me another chance to get it right. From there, the conversation got weirder and weirder. He told me that he asked because my friend looked “unlikeable and stuck up” which to me, translated as “She doesn’t like his friend”. I shrugged. And by the way, why would anyone want to hook up with someone they considered unlikeable?

So I defended my friend and told him she was likable and great. The guy insisted, repeating that my friend, who kept talking to his friend, was unlikeable and stuck up. And I was getting angry. So I warned him:

“I don’t like people who insult my friends”

He tried to “fix” his mistake by saying that, unlike my friend, I looked “easy”. Implying that I was a whore should have been a clue for me. But at that point, I still thought that he was just a wingman and since my friend seemed perfectly able to handle the other guy, I had decided to stand aside.

I tried something new. I explained to him that from my perspective, it was his friend who was hitting on my friend and that I wasn’t going to intervene, that he didn’t need to distract me. I hoped that maybe if they remembered that women also have access to the internet, they would drop the twisted tactics and just have a normal conversation. I don’t know, about sports, movies, traveling, books, comics, obscure sci-fi shows, anything.

No luck. That was when he dropped the bomb:

“Actually, I’m interested in you”

I side-eyed him. What kind of deranged logic made him think that asking me about my friend was going to work? Or insult her. And me. I mean, what the hell? At this point, we do know that the wingman is supposed to “bite the bullet” and hook up with the “ugly” friend to distract her. So clumsy attempts were to be expected. But pretending to be into her?

And then it hit me: Black mirror. Of course, it was like that episode where the guy was told to pretend to like the friend so the actual “target” became jealous. The tactic was idiotic, but I guess some people can’t tell that not only the gadgets are fiction. Or maybe that was the point, he wanted to fail.

So I told him I wasn’t interested and ended the conversation. The guy looked both confused and not happy. Anyway, by that point, my friend had got rid of his friend and we decided to leave for another pub with better music.

And while I’d like to say that we learned something, we didn’t. But we remembered something that we always have known: friends are the ones who have your back. We’ll be there until you tell us to make ourselves scarce when you finally meet someone you like.

In need, don’t be afraid to use the bat signal. We’ll come to the rescue.