I had one option: I needed to win a bet.

I look over and see some girls at the bar. I tell my buddy, hey, I bet you $10 that I can talk to one of those girls for half an hour on the topic of your choice.

After the laughs died down, and he realized I was serious, he agreed, and even brought it down to twenty minutes. And he gave me a topic: evolutionary biology.

Now, I haven't taken a biology class since 10th grade. But I really need this ten bucks. So I go over to the bar, and I pick out the girl who sticks out at me the most. Literally.

From the condition of her face, this girl was about 28. Slightly wrinkled, but still capable of looking fresh in good lighting with good makeup. She was taller than me, and I am 5'11, with dark black hair that's slightly curly. She had long arms, long legs, and a long, bony abdomen, with barely a hint of body fat. She looked like every tall, lanky male nerd I had ever seen, if any of them wore wigs. The only things even remotely thick about her were her rectangular glasses and her eyebrows, which were a bit on the bushy side.

I make some introductory small-talk. The entire time, my buddy is standing behind me, pointing to his watch. The clock on my twenty minutes won't stop until I bring up evolutionary biology.

I learn about her life. She went to NC State, then entered a History PhD program at UVA. She dropped out of it after earning her masters, and now is in library school in DC. Her parents? Scientists.

Aha! That was my in!

"So what does your dad think of the aquatic ape theory?"

"Aquatic what?

"You know, the idea that humans went through an aquatic state early in their evolution?"

She was hooked. I led her through all of the major talking points of the hypothesis, while also making casual contact. Hairlessness, webbed feet, a descended larynx, suspiciously high encephalization. Our love of swimming, and the ease with which we learn it. The fact that there were large lakes near every single fossil site where early man was discovered.

I needed her to ask questions, to push back, and she did. She knew that macaques in Japan enjoyed taking baths in hot geothermic pools. I needed to hold my own, and I did, rebutting these with arguments I knew were shit. Thankfully, she did not know that gorillas had been observed wading for fun in the wild: if she did my night would have been over.

Twenty three minutes later, I had a phone number. Twenty four minutes later, as soon as the door closed behind her, I got ten bucks.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2214561&forum_id=2#22885477)

http://www.yelp.com/biz/bar-dupont-washington-2

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2214561&forum_id=2#22885586)

Should I introduce myself as the aquatic ape guy?

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2214561&forum_id=2#22887914)

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-BGFV7wO_34c/TwehHn5vZ3I/AAAAAAAACg4/j57hVnqd6HE/s1600/SnowMonkeys-Japan.jpg

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2214561&forum_id=2#22892027)