Kevin Collins: The confessions of a typical Nice Guy

Reader Alert: this week's column is not about politics. Rather, following the dictum "write what you know," I write this week on rejection.

There are, in my experience, two types of rejection. First is the de facto denial of avoidance. Say, for example, that every time you try to move conversation from her questions about your common class to weekend plans, she immediately remembers an unspecified "something" that she must run off to do. The unavoidable translation leaves a sinking feeling in your stomach as you walk away.

Cues are not always so clear though. Mixed signals befuddle men's minds and just generally mean trouble, for when we read them wrong and ask a girl out for coffee or similar pleasantries, rejection arrives overtly.

It is much like how I imagine Wile E. Coyote must feel after running off the side of a cliff, only to look down and see nothing but air between him and the canyon floor; he shrugs and begins his whistling fall to the inevitable crash far below.

You see that look in her eyes, hear the awkward pause in her voice and know what she's going to say before she says it. In that stark moment of realization, you miss hearing all the words she says except for the one that matters: "Friends."

Whhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhw. Splat.

Of course, there are plenty of guys without such problems; this column mostly applies to one subgroup of my gender: "Nice Guys." Who are they? The Nice Guy is the one who walks you women to Freshgrocer for Kleenex and H„agen-Dazs to reassure you that not all men are assholes; as Eliot Sherman wrote last year, "He's the one you call when your boyfriend spends your anniversary at Club Wizzards."

We listen, laugh and do our best to make you laugh, too. We'll help you out with your paper even though we have to write our own as well. We put you first because that's what friendship means, even if "friends" necessarily follows "just."

Alternatively, you might know us by our wistfully optimistic music: Counting Crows, Coldplay and Maroon 5 for good days, with David Gray and Dashboard Confessional in reserve for the not-so-good days. We own and constantly reference Casablanca and High Fidelity (well, that might just be me), and our literacy extends well beyond Maxim.

However, the Nice Guy can be understood best by contrast to his opposite. At Penn's recent Model U.N. conference, I met the person who embodies all that I am not. Herr Eurotrash, as I will refer to this particular staff member, had hands that quickly attached themselves to the body of whichever woman was nearest at the time, regardless of whether she wanted them there or not.

Over the course of the conference, I personally saw his florescent orange-shirted arm wrap around at least 10 different women, most with anxiety visible on their faces. He blatantly grabbed one female staffer's ass, claiming afterwards that he "tripped," and at another point was alone in a hotel room with two naked 40-year-old drunk women. Isn't sketchiness grand?

Herr Eurotrash was attempting what I will charitably call the direct approach. Even if it fails 49 times out of 50, the ass-grab is time- and cost-efficient because he can find out real damn fast if she's interested in hooking up -- considerations Wharton student Herr Eurotrash probably takes into account. The direct approach, however, is not me, and if I ever try it, I sincerely hope that someone slaps some civility back into me.

There are also hot-yet-sketchy guys who are currently interviewing candidates for their hookup waitlists, and if that's what you want, I can forward your application. That, however, is not me either. Furthermore, there are also those who don't take the risk to ask that girl out, and such a spinal deficiency is a common criticism of Nice Guys. But that too is not me, at least not all of the time -- this column is about rejection, remember?

Who am I then? I love to watch indie films in darkened theaters, to listen to live music and to do both, and for that matter most things, alongside someone else. I fritter away hours over steaming mugs of tea and apple cider discussing great ideas and splendid trivialities. I can rock out but chill out too. I make simple pleasures complex but continually seek to simplify complexity. I am practically an idealist, only slightly jaded around the edges.

And no, I don't enjoy long walks on the beach; that's not my point, and don't get any ideas. What I'm saying is that I am uniquely me, yet just like other Nice Guys: real people who go unnoticed all around you. The only difference is that I have a column.

Honestly, I'm not bitter. Really, I'm not; sometimes things just don't work out, a fact that I fully understand and for which I blame no one. And somewhere, there's someone who thinks in the same ways as me. To quote Adam Duritz, "All my friends and lovers leave me behind. I'm still looking for a girl."Kevin Collins is a sophomore Political Science major from Milwaukee, Wis.

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