A couple weeks ago I attended the dance party at Trio’s.

It sucked.

The building was rather nice. The music didn’t bother me despite the fact that none of the songs played had any actual instruments. It was the people there. Several of them seemed to have a problem with me.

On a positive note, a girl who likes my columns, which gave me a soon-to-be discovered false sense of confidence, immediately greeted me. The rest of the night was one shoot-down, after another, after another.

Several women gave me strange looks or decided texting was more interesting than I was. Several more just walked away. One of them ran away screaming – literally.

There was another girl I thought I was hitting it off with really well, until her interpreter showed up. I wish that was the punch line of this column, but it is actually just the beginning. We began with basic chitchat. What’s your name? How old are you? What’s your major?

Eventually she asked if I had a second major or minor. I told her I didn’t have a minor but was thinking about picking one up in psychology. When she asked why, I told her about my aunt. She worked for California State Penitentiary Psychiatric Unit for about 30 years. She dealt with some high profile cases including the Ramirez brothers and Charles Manson, which I casually mentioned. The girl didn’t have a clue who Charles Manson was, and even though I wanted to tell her, I decided it would lower my chances of dancing with her if I elaborated.

Enter interpreter.

She mentioned the name to him and he elaborated for me. I don’t speak any Japanese, but his semi-graphic hand gestures allowed me to keep up extra emphasis on the gutting, uh, put the writing on the wall for me. All I could say was, “Yeah. He was a pretty bad dude.”

In the end I learned some valuable lessons, though. First is to keep writing these columns well because pretty women like it. The other is when attempting to make conversation with pretty women, don’t mention Charles Manson. It won’t give you any headway in conversations with them.

You have been warned.