Left to fend for yourself at a party? Joe Donatelli has some tips on how to small-talk like a master.
Like most men, I dread cocktail parties. I dread them because I know what will happen before we get there. It’s what always happens. My fiancée will introduce me to another couple. The four of us will talk for a minute. Then she and her girlfriend will break away for private woman talk and I will be left alone conversing with some poor guy who wants to be there about as much as I do. Both of us know we have to pass the next few minutes together until either: 1.) One of us gets another drink, 2.) One of us goes to the bathroom, or 3.) One of us douses his sports coat with lighter fluid and sets himself on fire.
Quick notes about those strategies. 1.) Even if both guys have empty glasses, one guy often will choose not go to the bar for fear of having to continue the conversation. “Hey, Joe, you want another drink?” he’ll ask. That’s OK, I’ll say, I’m actually thinking about quitting drinking—yeah, probably stop at a meeting on the way home tonight, time to make a change, you know, but you go ahead, I’m just going stand here and turn this way slightly. 2.) Sometimes the trip to the bathroom will not involve using the toilet. It’s just the man standing with his arms arched over the sink, water running, staring at the mirror, wondering, “Is there a back way out of here?” 3.) You will often need to bring your own lighter fluid.
These parties are a drag, but as men we have to go. If it were up to us we would only leave the house to buy beer and eat pancakes, but our partners often demand outrageous things of us—things like developing a social life. So men must gather at these parties, sharing the same dead-inside, shark-eyed look that says: You gotta be here. I gotta be here. We all gotta be here. Scotch at the bar.
Because I love my fiancée and have come to accept that I will be attending these parties until I die of boredom at one of them, I have devised a system for talking to other men at parties. It’s not a plan that I put any conscious thought into. It just sort of evolved out of necessity. If you are into mnemonic devices, remember the letters BACO. BACO is the key to making small talk with men at parties.
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BCS
Suggested line: “How about this BCS? I mean, come on. Are you serious?”
Best when used during football season, but good always. You want the conversation to start from a place of agreement. Nobody likes the BCS. (The BCS, for you non-sports fans, is the college football ranking system used to determine who Ohio State loses to in the national title game every year.) The other guy, if he is a sports fan, will always agree. “The BCS is BS,” he will say, and you will both acknowledge that this little play on words is clever. Then you will respond, “It’s all about money.” He will say, “Totally. It’s the major conferences.” Then you say, “It’s politics.” Lots of nodding and agreeing here. Trust established. And now that you agree that you both dislike something every man in America dislikes, you can move on to appreciating …
Austin
Suggested line: “You been to Austin? I hear Austin is great.”
It was determined, sometime within the last six years, that Austin is the greatest city in America, if not the world. It is more hip than San Francisco, more industrious than Silicon Valley, more cultural than Los Angeles, more college-y than Boston, more beer-loving than Portland, more musical than New York, more altitudinous than Denver, etc. Austin is an oasis of un-Texas, located smack dab in the middle of Texas. It is widely agreed that anyone who hates Austin is probably a terrorist, or at the very least a disturbed malcontent contrarian who also says things like “The Who were a better band than the Beatles” and “Jimmy Carter is the best president of the last 50 years” and “The only James Bond worth a damn was George Lazenby.”
I have never been to Austin, but 98 percent of all people have, so I ask if the other guy has been there and he always says yes. Then he talks about Austin, pausing only when I interrupt with towering insights such as, “Great music scene, right?” and “How about that South by Southwest festival?” I like this strategy because I don’t have to talk much and the other guy is comfortable talking about something he knows about and I can think of things we have in …
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Common
Suggested line: “How do you know [the person we know in common]?”
By now I probably have identified several things I have in common with the other guy. Maybe we both lived in the same state at one time, or have similar jobs or like or hate the same sports teams. Those are things we share, and delving into these topics always leads to more things we have in common. If we have nothing in common yet, I pull out the old standby, “How do you know [the person here we know in common]?” You, probably, have a funny or interesting story about that person, and this is the exact right time to share it. If all goes well, the other guy will wave the person you know in common over, and suddenly there are three people in the circle, which is wonderful because now you only have to carry one-third of the conversation. And with more than two of you there, it’s time to talk …
Orgy
Suggested line: “So, this thing becomes an orgy at midnight, right?”
By this point you and the other guy have overcome your evolutionary urges to punch, distrust or run away from each other. Now—well, you’re not friends—you’re party friends. What do party friends do? They make jokes. They make horrible, horrible jokes such as “So, you’ve wife-swapped before, right?” and “I’m going to get the bowl for the key party.”
But it’s not a key party.
It’s never a key party.
(Joe Donatelli is Senior Editor at Break Media, where he writes and edits for the recently re-launched men’s lifestyle website Made Man.)
—Photo chadmagiera/Flickr
Agreed, check it twice and I agree with you on undreds of points. Also as for your soundproblem, considering what you just said, I have absolutely no horror creation experience at all, you also had to fit this into a small span of time, as in a long time you can’t scare some person, because tension must build up first. But letting tension build up, also gives folks a chance to size up the situation.
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Henry — what do you mean by downvoted? Like on Reddit?
Thanks for the comment. I think there is a trip to Austin in my future.
Best,
Joe
If you look at my comment, you’ll note that there are red and green thumbs (down and up.) Get enough downs and not enough ups, and your comment disappears. It’s claimed that you only get downvoted for being rude, but actually you can for being ideologicallly “out of touch” as well.
Ahhhh. Got it. Thanks, Henry.
Hi Joe, Well, the “orgy” line would probably get you downvoted, if you’d written this as a comment rather than as an article. I do think there’s quite a lot of sex-negativity here, mainly coming from the women, but I’m joking. It’s likely that most women won’t come to this thread, though. I have a PhD from UT, Austin and spent four years there. It’s still in Texas, though, and can alternatively be seen as Fort Worth with a few hippies and intellectuals painted on. What I do at cocktail parties, of course, is talk to women. My wife’s okay… Read more »