What If You Actually Gave Every Girl Your Number?

It’s a Friday night.

I’m playing pool in a crowded bar when a blonde walks in, triggering that most primal of instincts: Me. Want. Her. Typically I’d suppress the urge to approach. Maybe it’s because I’m lame, but straight-up hitting on women seems uncouth to me.

Thanks to the ultimate wingman (my smartphone), I prefer a lazier, no-risk way to reach out. I’ll scroll through Tinder, hoping that now that we’ve seen each other, we might also right-swipe to bypass some small talk. Or take a little trip through Instagram to see if she geo-tagged a selfie that I could comment on. (Think that’s weird? Go tweet about it, mate.)

Tonight I call an audible. Pulling a pen and notepad out of my back pocket, I jot down my number and head on over. “Hey, I’m David,” I say as I hand her the slip of paper.

“You’re compelling. Call me.” What exactly has gotten into me?

Well, my usual approach doesn’t work that well. In fact, it never works. (One caveat: It does attract some crazy people.)

So I made a pact with myself: whenever I noticed an attractive woman, I would simply stop and give her my number. Then I’d be standing in front of her and could make a snap decision: head for the exit or see if she wants me to stick around. “Hysterical,” says the woman at the bar – my first foray into this experiment. She tells me her name is Alexandra. “Women can’t help but be impressed by a man who’s willing to make a fool of himself.”

The night doesn’t stop there. We have a few drinks, and I walk her back to her hotel for a goodnight kiss. “The next time I’m in town, I’ll give you a call,” she says. Emboldened, I give my number out to a dozen more women over the next few days. There’s no plan or script: just be nonchalant, not aggressive, and empower her to make the next move.

Yeah, it’s gimmicky. But guess what? Most ladies are intrigued. True, a woman in yoga class rolls her eyes and walks off in a huff, but later that day I top up my courage and hand my digits to another gorgeous woman outside a hardware store. She asks me to stick around and have a coffee. A few hours later I try the same thing on another woman inside a bookstore. “You’re funny,” she says, smiling. We end up having martinis at a nearby bar.

While initially embarrassing, the gesture soon becomes exciting, even liberating: Instead of feeling like a cybergeek, I’m a new man. A man who’s bold enough to face rejection. But you know what? At least half the women I give my number to call or text to meet up. According to psychologist Dr Edward Royzman, it’s the directness of this tactic that’s so alluring to women. “You’re revealing character traits, like boldness and a willingness to take chances, that from an evolutionary psychology standpoint are appealing to the opposite sex.” And Royzman says we also have our Wi-Fi–enabled hyperconnectivity to thank, in part: “People now post information about themselves online that thousands of people they don’t know can see, which in a sense trains them to be receptive to the idea of being intimate with total strangers.”

Plus, there’s the modern role reversal. She has my number. I don’t have hers. That means I can sit back and wait for the phone to ring. At one point I give my number to a woman who’s waiting outside a coffee shop. “Um, thanks?” she says dubiously. But the next day I get a text: “You may be nuts, but who isn’t? Coffee sometime?”

Hmm . . . Maybe. After all, my schedule is filling up fast.

David Amsden is the author of Important Things That Don’t Matter