Congratulations on Filling Up Twenty Minutes of Her Life!

Tonight you’re going to be invited to a party at a family member’s apartment in Queens. You’ll arrive early, sit around a table of snacks with a glass of schnapps and soda (which you’ll call happyfizz, to the amusement of everyone there) and quietly make small-talk with whoever’s around for around seven hours. You won’t notice when the conversation gets awkward due to a rare social disorder, nor will you be able to perceive the relative interest or disinterest of your audience in things like Guild Wars and the show Fable.

This won’t really register much with the party-goers, since New York’s five boroughs are populated mostly by people who are either socially retarded or totally unconcerned with other human beings. But one young woman, who will be waiting for her boyfriend to get some cocaine from another party guest, will sit with you and listen to your prattle on uninterrupted for twenty whole minutes. She’ll actually be absorbed by you, and your total lack of interest in her despite how much hotter she’ll be than you (it’ll be the difference between a nine and a half and a four). As she listens to you and your genuine passion for things that other people don’t consider cool, she’ll start to see a world she’s never been exposed to before.

She’ll see a world where genuine interest isn’t just important: it’s the most important thing. A world where you don’t care what other people think about or judge you on. She’ll see a world where happiness is something you can attain simply by being yourself. She’ll wonder if she could find her way into that world if she spent a week away from the people she surrounded herself with now and just sat around on her own, thinking about what she really wants.

These thoughts will absorb her as much as your speech will right up until her boyfriend comes back with an eight ball.

“LET’S FUCKING MOOOOVE,” he’ll shout at her, already bleeding out of his nose. She’ll shake your hand briefly, awkwardly, and then look at you as she leaves. You’ll be the biggest thing on her mind right up until she does her first line of the night. And then all she’ll be able to think about is how great cocaine is.

Congratulations on Filling Up Twenty Minutes of Her Life!