I have great hindsight

It's true; it's actually better than my myopic vision. Sometimes I can't see things right in front of me, even with the proper corrective lenses. I fail to notice tiny details and peculiarities, mistaking letters and confusing strangers for friends, and every so often losing sight of the bigger picture. But not so with hindsight; mine is on point like a harpoon (you can thank Lil Wayne for that one). After the fact I always know what went wrong and usually in what manner, whether it was a verbal, physical, behavioral, or (as it mostly tends to go) psychological misstep. It's a lot like that episode of The Simpsons where Lisa breaks Ralph Wiggum's heart, and in the videotape Bart pinpoints the exact moment his heart breaks. He goes from this:

To This

Now replace Ralph Wiggum with my consciousness and insight and you get the picture. It's the ultimate "Oh, fuck!" moment because at that precise instant, your mind makes all the neural connections it failed to do earlier--when you really needed them--and you see how simple the solution was, how with a slight nudge in direction different outcomes could've been netted. Let me illustrate my point by relating the events of the weekend, at which point I'll tell you what went wrong.

Last Friday night some friends and I went to Fabric, one of the many cool clubs in the city situated in the East End of London. It's three floors of trendy club mayhem, meaning: lots of pretty people dancing, drinking, and standing around looking cool; live acts and DJs; unisex bathrooms (talk about breaking down barriers); three rooms with independent sound systems; and one of those rooms with subs on the floor, so you literally feel the music in your feet. You enter this place

See this

And go

Upon entering we walk around and survey the scene, which is code for walking around without purpose, and decide to enter one of the rooms; I forget which one, perhaps due to some alcohol that was involved that night but I'm putting my money it's because all the rooms look the same. They all had people dancing and all were playing the same music, so naturally they bled into each other, congealing into an amorphous unidentifiable blob or 'clob' (club + blob), not to be confused with 'klob,' the shitty gun in Golden Eye. So we step inside the dance floor and, naturally, we dance, not with skill but with heart. This goes on for a while and we move from floor to floor, room to room, and over the course of the evening, or rather early morning--we got there at 11ish--the group splinters and breaks off until everyone is flying solo.

I'm walking around by myself when, to my surprise, a pretty young blonde to my right waves me over. She was sitting with three other blondes in this one section of the room, all wearing black dresses, and once I get there she says "I'm Kate."

"I'm Kevin. Are these your friends?"

"We're sisters," she says and starts to laugh. This was probably a gag or an inside joke amongst her friends/sisters, but I was in no position to question. "Today's my birthday" she exclaims, and everyone around her starts whooping it up.

"Happy birthday," I responded. "Do you have any birthday wishes?" I tried to feign as much as enthusiasm as I could muster without it being too much. I wanted to hit that perfect spot between sounding cool and sounding like you just don't give a fuck, what I call the Desario spot, appropriately named after James Franco's character in Freaks and Geeks. I guess I hit it, because the next thing out of her mouth is "I want you to dance for me." My next course of action was crucial. If I obliged then I would've been nothing but a plaything for her, a top for her to spin whenever she so desired, becoming one of the many endless guys who do whatever is requested, all in the hopes of them being the one. But girls don't dig that, or at least the girls who go to clubs. If guys are puppies, they want the ones who shit and piss all over the house, the cute ones who chew their shoes and furniture and make a mess out of their belongings, not the ones who obey every command. Women like to train them, and if you already know the rules, then what's the point of picking you up?

After processing this I replied "I only dance with a partner," giving her a cool glance. She took the bait and we move to the dance floor. After a bit of dancing I ask her if she has any other birthday wishes. She says "Kiss me," and I go "You first." This went on for some time, and before my friends and I called it a night she gave me her number, telling me she had a good time.

So what went wrong? For starters, I never did or said any of those things. She told me to dance, I danced. She told me to kiss her and I did; all I got was a peck on the lips. I was her top, her toy. She knew it and I knew it, and to save face I left the area shortly after the kiss, if you can call it that. I knew it was going nowhere, but as soon as I left my hindsight came up with this alternate reality that could've been. I saw what I had done wrong: I played the fool. But why write it down? If you want to change something about yourself, the first thing you have to do is believe it as real. You have to accept it as fact and not doubt yourself about it happening or not, and this is something I keep doing, though not as much as I used to. I've got a few hurdles left that I'd like to overcome, so by writing this I'm basically saying I am going to be outgoing and cool and worry-free and unafraid to be so in the presence of the opposite sex. All I can say is I was the antithesis of those things at one time or another, but not this time. It's time I start being instead of willing or wishing.

*Edit: I realize this is a week late, but see the post above this one for the explanation.