This is my first FR, and I am going to list some personal details right away so you can frame the situation for yourselves. I would actually really appreciate if people would follow this convention!

22 Year Old Male
Ontario, Canada
6'2" - 175lb
Girls Would Rate Me (be realistic) - HB7
In between AFC and PUA

Anyway,

I attended a house party at a friend-of-a-friend's place on Saturday. I was "with" two friends but I showed up alone just a few minutes after them. I showed up just a little shy of completely sober and planned to stay that way for the remainder of the night as I was driving. NOTE: This has typically been very difficult for me and I have heavily relied on alcohol in the past (and still do but I'm trying to work on it).

The party was in an unfinished basement with the friend-of-a-friend (let's call him Ryan) DJing dance beats in the corner. He's also a punk-metal-screamo drummer and the dissonance of people at his party is obvious right away. There are clearly "screamo kids" and clearly "dance party" people and then also a solid section of "gangsters" and then "normal ass white people". That wouldn't typically matter, but I later realized a lot of the people there were 17-20 and they let those differences define them and get in the way of having a good time. But that's for later on.

I immediately went to Ryan's DJ booth, said hello and thanks for inviting me. On the way I made sure to obviously check out every girl in the room. By the time I turned back around there were girls (HB 6,7,7,8) who had moved into the area. One was my best friend's ex-gf, and she was with her friends. I was immediately face-to-face with a beautiful HB8 with long curly black hair and a somewhat Latina look but dressed sort of classy-hippie. This is my ideal woman.

I introduced myself - she seemed immediately intrigued. I had my hand on her lower back within a minute of the conversation starting - she responded warmly and I didn't move it for quite some time. These things are still a conscious effort for me but I feel I was natural with it. I didn't let go of her for quite a while. Looking around, she was definitely the prize of the party yet nobody seemed to be approaching her. I warmed up to her friends (some of whom I already know via my friend's ex) and they all seemed to be enjoying themselves and my attention. I flirted with all of them but still had my hand on HB8. Eventually HB8 disappeared for a bit, and I was with the friends. I suggested playing beer pong. They were down. At that point Ryan left the DJ booth and played as my partner and we played two of the girls (one of whom he has a thing with). It was a slow, messy game as most of them were pretty wasted.

HB8 returned and sort of watched the game, and my buddies were also around the table (moving in on HB8). She was also very receptive to them, which made me feel a little less impressed with myself but it didn't deter me. I made eye contact quite a lot, included her in all of the talking/jokes around the table and made sure she knew my focus was on her while still staying a little flirty with the other girls. Eventually the game ended and my team had won. I received congratulations from HB8 and I asked if she wanted to take on the winners but she said she sucked at beer pong. I said, "Great! We're looking for someone who sucks because I don't plan on drinking a lot - I'm driving home tonight." I made sure she knew I lived close-by and could potentially drive a few people back to my place. My friends chimed in that I have a hot-tub (this is excellent, btw) and the girls said they were interested but it was still fairly early. So I ejected for a bit and attempted to mingle.

I tried to make sure I was the most social person there, meeting everybody I didn't know, but many of them were cold or just boring. There were a lot of objectively stupid people who could hardly hold a conversation. So after a while I mostly stuck with my original beer-pong table crowd for the night.

Time passed and we were all having a good time and acting normal, things were going very well with HB8 but eventually all around us a shit storm was brewing. People were fighting and breaking stuff and Ryan had to bust it up and kick a guy out. This sort of thing throws me off my game a little bit. I'm not really much of an "enforcer". I'm a bigger guy, but when things start getting physical I try not to involve myself. Depending on the girl, this can portray you as a pussy. Luckily, HB8 and her closest friend (HB7) were pretty level-headed and didn't want to be involved in the stupidity, but the whole thing seemed to actually throw them off a bit too. I said things were getting messy and we should get out of here. Reminded of the hot tub, HB8 says she doesn't have a bathing suit. I say, "Well that's not a problem!" and she laughed but actually seriously considered it. I let the silence/sexual tension mount, until she said, "Well can I wear one of your bathing suits?" to which I replied, "Well... I guess to start, yeah."

Then one of her other friends overhears and says, "Hey HB8, are you sure your boyfriend would be okay with that?"

Fuck. There's been a lot of debate about it on here lately, but I'm still in the mindset where if a girl has a boyfriend I back off. I didn't stop talking to her, but I turned down the sexual vibe quite a bit. It just baffled me. I realize that she was obviously interested but a big part of me despised her for either a) leading me on, or b) being sneaky. I always feel for the boyfriend. I can't help it. I am genuinely a nice, empathetic guy and hearing the word boyfriend just turned me right off. The other girls then admitted they had boyfriends as well. It seemed to ruin all of our fun. It's like they were just reminded of the fact. In hindsight, I really should have kept pushing but in the moment it fucked with my head (another situation where I may have been more DGAF if I had been drinking.. something to ponder..). So instead, we stayed for awhile and those girls eventually disappeared without really saying goodbye.

It was getting late and I quickly opened another HB7 but it felt very rehearsed to me. Despite this, she actually responded pretty well and I actually ended up #-closing her using the recently-posted technique of handing the girl my phone and giving her a sense that I trust her. She left the room almost immediately after, and I thought she had left the party so I texted her something silly. No reply. I genuinely didn't care much about this girl, and unfortunately managed to get myself pretty hung up on HB8 from earlier (I'm bad for this... but she was seriously awesome.)

All in all, it was good practice. I need to focus on not giving a fuck, especially while sober. If I would have isolated HB8 earlier, I could have either found out she had a boyfriend sooner, or not found out she had a boyfriend at all and carried on with her in private (remember, it was the friend who mentioned the bf). I still don't know exactly where I stand on chicks with boyfriends but we'll see.

Fuck that was long.