The Art of Attraction

Last night, I went out to a bar on Brunnie st and got slightly high and slightly silly with my lovely friend Chox. By slightly silly I mean, really, really silly. For instance, security wouldn't let us take our drinks upstairs so we pretended to pour them into our handbags and drink out of them with straws. We also got ourselves into rather unflattering fits of hyena-like laughter and exaggerated gestures. Obviously we weren't out to impress the boys, or anyone for that matter. So it was all very surprising when our loud, stupid conversations were continuously interrupted by guys trying to pick us up. It was uncanny as guy after guy muscled his way in and pulled out the one-liners. I wondered, could it have been my unwashed hair? My lack of make up? Or perhaps my oh-so revealing neck-high tee shirt?

No, actually we'd stumbled into a pick up workshop where newly "charismatic" students were trying out their lines on anything that moved. Or in our case, dancing with arms flailing wildly. I busted their game fairly early on when a big, obnoxious guy sat down way too close to me and said, "I'm kind of a big deal around here". Without a hint of a smile from him it didn't appear that this man was joking. If he was indeed being funny then it didn't come across, so I had no choice but to assume he was a Class A dickhead. A few seconds later I realised why that awful line he used sounded so familiar...it was taken from a book called 'The Game' written by "pick up artist" Neill Strauss. And yes I read it, well most of it because by about three quarters through I couldn't take anymore of it's bullshit. I couldn't help but take a glimpse of the sorts of ways men where trying to get our attention, unfortunately the book seemed more like a guy boasting about threesomes than really communicating with and understanding women.

It became quite entertaining as guys came up to us like excited children wanting us to watch them show off their new tricks. It was fun to flattered but perhaps even more fun to catch them at their own "game" so to speak by seeing through their cheesy, scripted conversations. One guy was throwing out every "opener" he knew before we even had time to answer the stupid questions, which sounded like "Hey whats a good pick up line?" and "You have a twinkle in your eye are you a naughty kind of girl?" etc. But it wouldn't have mattered if we had started speaking in tongues because the guy wasn't listening to anything we were saying anyway. He was too caught up in reciting every last clice he had ever learned and preventing us from moving away. Fortunately Chox lost her balance during his verbal assault and fell down a step she was standing near. This allowed us an excuse the get away and talk to each other instead of listening to Scripted-psycho.

As the night moved on we had started talking some really genuine, sweet guys who weren't like circus animals. I can't remember Chox's friend but mine was a slim, spiky haired guy called Dan. I had only just begun my complaining about the loser one-liners when the guy I was talking to told me that those boys were his students. Hmmm awkward. I then proceeded to rant about how I thought the concept of pick up classes was lame, and that tricking women through magic tricks ala Mystery was nothing short of pathetic. However Dan was quick to distance himself from the Mystery school of thought, and emphasized that his workshops were really about social skills and confidence, and that while he was a friend of Mystery he considered him to be kind of nuts.

I was on my guard for most of the night as I scrutinized Dan's every move and teased him about the stupid pick-up artist jargon I had read about in The Game, but in the end found myself relaxed and happy in his presence. He told me that the programs goal in the end was really just to make women smile, as I took this in I tried to smother the grin across my face just to prove him wrong. So I suppose even though his students were mostly retards at the present, he seemed pretty damn awesome. I guess I got charmed, no fair.

However the highlight of our night was from a completely unrelated young man. We found him muttering in a cubicle in the womens' toilets. We peered around the open cubicle door wondering why the "girl" in there sounded like a guy. "What I like about the Ladies' room is that it's a ladies room" said Chox cockily. The guy stared at us with puppy eyes, ones with inflated pupils and the started to hurriedly explain himself in half gibberish half english. "Oh, na..man! No d'ya know what? no! I'm in ere right, cos in the Men's right? In the Men's? Was like, a massive shit on the floor! Like right in da middle of the fuckin floor man! Like, some dude shit on da floor! And I was like, fuck dis! Ya know? Ya know?"

Chox and I stared in horror and then decided that if there was shit on the floor in the Men's then he was more than welcome to stay here. He was very grateful, so grateful in fact that he began offering lines of ice and smokes and chewy to every girl in the room while frantically twitching and trying engage in several conversations with himself at once, all yelling loudly. He was thoroughly entertaining, maybe he should run a workshop.

Here's some really bad pick up lines I thought you might enjoy courtesy of http://www.pickuphelp.com/,
Let me make you dinner tonight, I'm serving tube steak smothered in underwear.
You come on strong like a garlic milkshake.
Wow those are great legs. What time do they open?
If you were a Oreo baby, you'd be double stuffed!