How to Get a Man’s Telephone Number

by Taylor Jenkins Reid

About five years ago, I was in a dry spell. And by “dry spell,” I mean I hadn’t gotten any in the better part of a year. My thoughts turned to the nearest pizza delivery man.

His name was Kent. He was well over 6′. He had tattoos on his arms and a ring in his lip. And I stand by the fact that his face was conventionally very attractive. He used to deliver pizzas to my office on a semi-weekly basis, and over the course of a few weeks, he and I got on a first name basis. It was a “Hi, Kent. Hi, Taylor. That will be $14.95,” kind of relationship.

That was when someone should have stopped me. Actually, let me rephrase: That was when I should have listened to all of the women in my office who were trying to stop me.

Instead, I gave myself pep talks on how to ask a guy out. I asked bold women for advice. And then, finally, I went into the pizza place to get a soda, saw him, and somehow blurted out the worst line in the history of dating:

“I have a bet with a friend that I’d ask out a cute guy today, so … what are you doing this weekend?”

Now, before you vomit all over your computer, let me tell you that as terribly embarrassing as it is to have even uttered that to another human being in earnest, I should also add that I did this in front of all the customers, all the pizza cashiers, and the manager. Okay, now you can vomit.

Yet despite all that, he said yes. He took a piece of receipt paper (classy!), wrote his number on it, and gave it to me. And then I walked out of the pizza place like I was the Mayor of Los Angeles.

It was only when I got back to my car that I noticed the phone number was missing a digit. Like, 1–800–555–555 … nothing.

Now some women might have taken this as good reason to give up. Some women would have said, “Okay, this person is clearly trying to blow me off,” or, “This person is incredibly stupid.” But not I! No, I was far too easily sucked into the dangerous and slippery world of self-denial. So instead I did the following:

I found him again. I pointed out his mistake. He suggested we go out Saturday. I called him Saturday. He never called me back. I called him again. We set a date for the next Friday. I called him Friday. He never called me back. My office ordered another pizza. Someone else came to deliver it.

And that’s when I realized that not only was Kent the Pizza Guy rejecting me but, in fact, he was trying to do it gently. I took a good, hard look in the mirror and I deleted his number. This had gone too far.

I got up, dusted myself off and moved on with my life. Despite the fact that I never again asked out another human being, I somehow managed to find a charming man to marry.

Then, last week, Kent delivers a pizza to my old office (even though no one had seem him in years), runs into my old boss and asks if I am around. She says that I have since left to go work somewhere else. She gives him a brief update on my life in the years since he blew me off and happens to mention that I’m now married to a nice guy.

Kent responds, “Oh, weird. I always thought she was a lesbian.”

I think we can all agree that you must be a pretty shitty heterosexual man if you think the girl who asked you out is gay. So I’m going to go ahead and say that in this one particular case, it was him. Not me. Right?

Taylor Jenkins Reid spends the majority of her non-day-job time trying to get her book sold, writing screenplays with her husband, and growing out her hair. If you like her, follow her inconsistent tweets @tjenkinsreid.