The Art Of Unbuttoning Your Shirt At The Bar

Dan Regester9 years ago

Look at you not wearing a dip-stained polo or a top tier sorority tank top, despite never speaking more than four words to any of their sisters and only running their 5k for the shirt to falsely announce to the world that they’d even give you the time of day. Instead you decided to switch it up — pulling off something previously incomprehensible to your peers beforehand — and look halfway decent for a change with a button down shirt. You classy motherfucker, you. Talk about versatility.

No, this isn’t Easter mass, but you choosing to dust off your Sunday best for the dive bar certainly increases the chances he’ll rise from the dead. And by he, I mean your dick. It just took a little longer than that overachieving showboat, Jesus. Rome wasn’t built in a day. Or three. Or six months. But that won’t stop her from shouting to the heavens “Oh, God! Oh, God! Yes!” when you give her your lord delivered sword. Suck it, virgin Messiah.

Sure, it might be a short sleeve PFG, and the nearest large body of water may be hundreds, if not thousands, of miles away, but the effort certainly won’t go unnoticed. Who said you’d never amount to anything? Your parents? What do they know? Yes, that bachelor’s of arts from a middling state school isn’t doing you many favors with mom and pops, or society as a whole. But you just went from your usual “I still don’t know how to do my laundry” self to a business casual casanova all while mastering basic motor functions, but not quite an ironing board. That’s progress in every sense of the word, all with a simple switch to a higher quality torso condom.

If that faded, boxy Ralph Lauren you got at the outlet mall is the no-name, off-brand rubber you’ve had in your wallet since snagging it at the health center during freshman year orientation, a slim, form-fitting oxford is a fresh bareskin Trojan directly off the factory line. You want to give off the vibe that you’re a semi-responsible, not completely helpless and undesirable individual to the ladies, but, like any jimmie, still want to eventually slide that shit off by night’s end.

That’s the play when you rock a button down to the bar. If you’re not pushing the limits of human decency, flaunting a barbaric amount of chest hair, and eventually undoing the whole damn thing to unleash that rock hard 18 percent body fat core of yours, you might as well call yourself Macaulay Culkin, because you’re going home alone. Dude is hard to look at. The higher up your buttons are fastened, the more your crippling insecurities are visible and the more you’ll blame your failures and misfortunes on others. See Bubba Watson.

That doesn’t mean you show up to the establishment like a divorced mid-life crisis stricken dad sitting poolside at a Vegas casino with his fupa sticking out of his Tommy Bahama and on full display for everyone to see. You arrive to the bar already fully unbuttoned and people are going to think you either just got done blowing glitter out of some twink’s dirtstar over at Meatspin Saloon, or are just an overcompensating douchebag that just knocked out a few hundred pushups on the sidewalk to get a deceptive pump. It’s a delicate process that can’t be forced.

The button down shirt is the curtain before a broadway musical building suspense. It’s the bullpen jacket that keeps the closer’s prized rocket arm warm. The cocoon a caterpillar enters before morphing into a majestic dick-slinging butterfly. Shed that pod too early and you’ll be as attractive of a mate as a deformed, one-winged moth fluttering around the kitchen floor before getting mercy stomped into oblivion.

There’s no by-the-books-rule-of-thumb when it comes to splitting threads, but I think we can generally agree one button per every two drinks before midnight — starting with the top two already open — is an acceptable pace. Though, like any great form of expressionism, rules and conventions are meant to be bent and even broken. The faster you engage in either the dance floor, karaoke machine, or the opposite sex, the more leniency you’re typically given by fellow patrons and employees. So it’s all about feeling out the environment around you, adapting accordingly, and bringing down the damn house with some performance art accomplishment unparalleled to any other: going shirtless at the bar without getting your shit pushed in by the bouncers, a public intoxication arrest, or universal distain from every piece of tail at the joint. Remember, heroes are remembered, but legends never die..

Image via Youtube