Step 2: Choosing a Venue

This is the highest-stakes part of your night. You could end up somewhere with cheap drinks, ample seating, and, if you play your cards right, a table with Pac-Man built right into it. (THEY CAN DO THAT NOW. TAKE THAT, EVERYONE WHO SAYS MAGIC ISN'T REAL.) Let your guard down for even a second, though, and you could end up at a club. Clubs are grad-school level social interaction. You'll have to manage your sensory overload while maintaining a face shape that says "I am interested in what you are saying, and also I am enjoying this experience much like any other normal human adult would" while a guy yells in your ear about how important Hangover 3 was to the integrity of the franchise.

Starline Hodge
Left: bar, and eternal happiness. Right: club, and pants you'll never be able to wear again because a weird guy spilled something on them.

Step 3: Being One of the Girls

Your friends are like an aging alcoholic and you're their new liver: You've got a lot of great things to offer, like your ability to filter out toxins from their bloodstream and your encyclopedic knowledge of Pop-Tart flavors, but if you don't fit in like you've been there all along, you run the risk of being rejected and causing symptoms like jaundice and abdominal pain. This analogy got away from me a little bit, but the point is, your goal here is to fit in. Be one of the girls. Don't talk too much about organ transplant rejection.

Starline Hodge

Step 4: Flirting

Boy, you're just ... just really going for it, aren't you? Doing the whole thing. OK. You're in luck; I'm actually kind of a flirting expert. Eye contact and sexy sneezes and Fat Albert impressions? And the parts where you talk at each other? That's my jam.

First, pick your target. They say we're most attracted to people who look familiar, which is why we often go for people who look a little bit like us. Save some time by printing out a selfie and holding it up next to every guy in the bar for comparison. Found the boy version of you? Time to turn up the charm. Here's a tip: Offer him a delicious hard candy. It will subconsciously make him think about old people, and old people have cumulatively had the most sex of anyone, because they've been alive and doin' it for the longest.

Starline Hodge

Step 5: Dancing

I can't teach you how to let the rhythm take control; you either have it or you don't. (Spoiler alert: I have it.) Just get all up on your new man and wiggle like one of those inflatable car dealership mascots in heat. You'll know you're doing it right when he asks you to please move away because your sweat has soaked through every layer of his clothing. He calls it "disgusting, just unbelievably unpleasant"; I call it drenched in your pheromones.

Starline Hodge

Step 6: Making Your Exit

You drank something pink and only marginally alcoholic out of a sugar-rimmed glass, you winked at boys until they tried to put their wallets in your mouth so you wouldn't bite off your tongue during the seizure you appeared to be having, you even marked a man with your lady-musk. I'd say you earned that block of cheddar, you stunning, successful-social-interaction-having Batman of a woman.

Making an exit can be tricky. Due to liquor licensing ordinances and the way time works, you will have to leave this bar eventually, but your friends will still see it as a Lando Calrissian-level betrayal when you finally reach for your purse. Since they probably won't take "Are you fucking kidding me, I've been here for five fucking hours already, what more do you people want from me, Jesus mothershitting Christ" as a viable excuse, have a backup ready to go: maybe you have a cat that needs feeding, or hair that needs washing. If you still live with your parents, all you need to do is check your watch: "Sorry, my parents said they need me home by 1:18 a.m., and -- oh no, it's 1:17 now!"

You're done! You did it. No -- we did it. Once you're safely back at your apartment, you get the greatest reward of all: finally, finally being allowed to take off your bra. Let 'em breathe, ladies. You earned it.

Starline Hodge

You can follow Alli Reed on Twitter or visit her website.