Connell Barrett

Hell's Kitchen neighborhood of Manhattan.

And at the time, I was really leaning into this idea of, oh, cocky.

Cocky and funny, that's the secret.

Cocky and funny is the magic potion.

I don't know how far back your dating content history goes, but back in the day, there was a guy who went by the name of David DeAngelo.

And his whole thing was be cocky, funny, cocky, funny, be cocky, funny.

And actually for me, that was good advice up to a point because I'm a natural born smart ass.

I love to bust balls.

I love to tease.

But I didn't just take a couple pills of cocky, funny.

I took the whole bottle on this date.

And I'm sitting on the date and I'm saying, I don't know if I can date you.

You're not, you know, X, Y, Z enough for me.

Oh, what you just said didn't work.

You're going to have to try harder to impress me.

And I just had this veneer of oozing fake cool boredom, completely fake bullshit.

And about 15, 20 minutes into the date, she looked me in the eye and she said, can I ask you a question?

does this work for you, what you're doing right now?

And I said, what do you mean?

She said, this, whatever this is.