Emergency Update: Another Reason for Flirting
Getting your cellphone back. It seems some
guy stole a Nextel cellphone from a small company. The employees had a woman "with a good voice" call the phone, flirt with the thief, and arrange to meet him at a mall. Then they ALL went to meet him.
Look, look, don't look, look away!
You've seen the commercial. A guy, making spaghetti, waiting for his girl to come home. Her cat, a very, very, white cat manages to knock over the sauce, getting the red sauce on the fur. The guy, holding a large carving knife, picks up the cat, just as his girl walks in. There he is, holding a white-furred cat dripping red in one hand, a huge knife in the other. Hilarious.
What the heck were they advertising?
I'm walking into a coffee shop, one of the major chains. A woman is sharing a table with two guys, leaning foward, talking to them. Around her bare shoulders, a sweater, drapped down the back to reveal, nothing. What the heck is she wearing, I wonder. As I walk across in front of them, my eyes glance over, the sweater is hanging wide open creating a display of assets that are quite impressive.
Like every guy on the planet (and I believe this includes gay men, too) I am always drawn by this display. Two voices always start running in my head, the Look, Wow, Boobs, voice, and the Look Away, Look Away, you Aren't Supposed to See That voice. I've been around long enough to develop a discreet balance between those voices and rarely embarrass myself. This time, though, my casual glance noticed that this display was as open as the classic "Wardrobe Malfunction." Both voices went into overdrive, forcing me through the door and away from the event.
Later, after buying coffee and sitting down I reviewed the whole thing from "her" point of view. She wanted attention, and at least two boys were sitting at her knees, lapping up every word. Every male passerby noticed her. But, much like the product being advertised in the example above, her face was lost to me. I couldn't remember seeing her, and wouldn't know her again in more conventional clothes.
Flirting on the Metro
Metro station, Farragut North. Trains coming and going, men in blue navy suits flowing in and out the doors and up the elevators. Women are wearing anything from conservative navy suits to hootchie-mama skirts and low-cut blouses, all pouring down from the giant pile of lawfirms up above the station. One woman in a beige pants-suit stands near the edge, toes just touching the “Do Not Stand Any Closer” barrier. Tall, beautiful, sweet-faced and athletic body. I have a comment inside me, just wanting to come out. But will she turn to me in horror: “Oh my god, a Man is talking to me?” Because we know that is something that women both love and hate. And you never know what side of the coin will come up.
She’s balancing a lot of stuff, the kind of stuff they give you at your first day somewhere.
“First day?” I ask.
She turns, and [moment of fear] starts talking. Yes, she’s a summer associate at a law-firm. She’s from somewhere, is going somewhere, will be here all summer and, yes, she’s terribly afraid she’ll be bored. Doesn’t know anyone, nowhere to go, nothing to do. I know many, many things to do. I live here.
Then my brain chokes. What’s the best, most casual way to ask for her number? To tell her that, yes, I could entertain her all summer? While those thoughts swim around in my mind, the train comes, the doors open, and we’re swept in. Now bodies separate us, my nerve fails, and her stop comes. Sweetly, she waves goodby. Forever.
Other Dating/Flirting/Relationship Blogs
A lot of interesting people are out there, putting up secrets behind the distancing screen of the blogiverse. I think it's great, people are often more honest than in other situations, and the information, transmitted among and between groups that might not otherwise share, is valuable. Recent blogs that I've stumbled across include:
The
Empress of Emeralds, who
notes that a friend of hers went to a speed-dating event and got only 11 of 17 possible suitors. She thinks her friend should have taken a CV of relationship experience, and proposes one.
The Cake Eater Chronicles gives a pretty
good set of tips for men who want to flirt. They're a bit basic, but if you don't know these, you should go home, sign onto the internet, and download porn. Or play Everquest until the sun rises and you go to bed.
Don't Waste the Pretty has been trying to get the attention of a guy at work. Even though he sent out all the "i'm interested" signs, he declined her invitation to lunch. My theory? He's interested but afraid of work situations.
The Cake Eater seems to be part of a larger circle of women who call themselves the Demystifying Divas. When she did her thing on flirting, others also did columns, including:
Just Breathe,
Fiesty Repartee, and, for the really advance flirt,
Fistful of Fortnights.
Girls dig guys with Mad Skillz
If you can do this, for instance, women will come up and talk to you. I'm not sure Nunchucks would be quite as approachable.
See? (she walked over from across the circle to talk to him. I'm pretty sure she'd never met him.)
Are they a couple?
Two people, about the same age, are getting on the bus. Guy looks relatively clean, Girl is dressed in tight hootchie pants. He is talking on the cell phone, walks down the aisle, sits down beside me. She is still up at the front of the bus, talking on her cell phone. I think, well, they couldn't possibly be together. Then she's coming down the aisle, pauses next to me to randomly sway back and forth, then finally swings around to sit next to the guy behind me. Certainly they are together, then. But both continue talking to their cell phones, not to each other. Finally, I hear her say: "he's on the phone right now." Then, I hear him say: "I'm on the bus and I don't like talking on my cell phone in public." They both hang up, and finally begin talking to each other, each reporting on their various conversations. They get off the bus together, but he's already marching ahead, focused on something else.
Who is Ted and what's he doing with all these women?
Why Do Married Men Still Flirt? Why do married women still flirt?
These are search terms people have used to find the Cityflirting website. I don't know if they found the answer, though it seems to me that it's sort of distributed across all the entries. Let's unify the question into this: "Why do people in happy relationships still flirt?"
The answer: "Why not?"
Which seems simple, but may be unsatisfying to someone who asked the question. But the question only makes sense if you believe that the only purpose of flirting is to find a mate. (or if you believe flirting is a precursor to infidelity, in which case that's the question you should be asking directly.) Obviously, if flirting is something that only serves to get you into a good relationship, then doing so once you've achieved that would be a waste of effort. Once you find a job you like, you probably don't keep going to job interviews. But finding a mate is only one of the reasons for flirting. Others include:
Validating your attractiveness and sexuality. Maybe you have a significant other who has seen you through thick and thin, fat spells and bad hair, sickness and bodily embarrassment. You love that person, but you may also want to hear that others, who don't have to go home with you, think you are attractive.
Networking. If you want to leave a good impression, whether you're looking for work, business, making political contacts, or selling a book, your best bet is to add some of the energy that comes from flirting.
Fun. Flirting is, above all, a game of the mind. It's an intellectual engagement, sometimes with only the lightest hint of sexuality. Flirting keeps the mind sharp.
Also:
Protestors flirt.
Job interviews often involve flirting.
Chefs flirt to make their food taste better.
Flirting can get you a
free hair cut.
Giving away free samples takes a little flirting.
IT guys develop business with flirting.
And teenagers flirt,
using firecrackers, just to get squeals.
There are so many reasons to flirt. Only two of which go away when one is in a relationship. Of course if you don't like what your partner is doing, you can address it. But if your real fear is that he or she is considering cheating, that's a whole other problem.
Does Word Association Turn People On?
Some dating sites seriously suggest you can subliminally get someone excited by using terms with vaguely sexual overtones. Presumably, the person you're talking to won't notice anything unusual when you describe the weather as "hot, throbbing, sweaty, and bodice ripping." The best take on this
is this article, by a woman who found research showing that men get excited when they hear alcohol-related words. Check it out.
Oh, and I left one site off my wrap-up of dating niche sites. Apparently there is a place to go if you are a
Celibate Chinese Person.
High School as Hell, Episode I: Are Cheerleaders Really Evil?
Many male screenwriters seem to have had hellish high school experiences. The movies tend to be about the outsider, often a nerd, who somehow both hooks up with the hot cheerleader AND ends up with the girl next door. This kind of stuff can only be written by guys who didn't get either.
The subtext is often that the cheerleaders are mean, vain creatures who look down at the nerdy guys and often go out of their way to humiliate them. I always thought this had happened to me, but on further review, it did not. In the early days of high school, I had a "growth spurt." One day I was normal, maybe a little tall. The next, I think I was thirteen, I was 6'1" tall, and with only 130 pounds to show for all that height. Over the next couple years I filled out, though I continued growing all the way up to the 6'4" level. But that skinny kid got stuck in my head. I also grew my hair in ways it was never designed to grow, skipped class, and played guitar. I was kind of a drop-out, though I did graduate.
Apparently, chicks dig that. I wish I had known. Of course my crowd considered cheerleaders to be a ridiculous anachronism, but they were very hot. Some of them seemed to like me, too. They would smile, wave at us playing guitars. When I joked, these girls would laugh as if I were the cleverest guy in school.
One very hot cheerleader, way out of my league, walked over to where I was having lunch with my friend, who also was tall and long of hair.
"Would you like a banana?" she asked.
I looked at her. The inner idiot that haunts most teenaged boys rose up and took control of my voice.
“Not particularly,” I said.
She walked away. My friend and I laughed.
But why? I think I was afraid that she was somehow setting me up, belittling me in some subtle way. That if I had responded, she would have laughed at me. Perhaps a bucket of pig’s blood would drop on my head. (Carrie reference). So I was a jerk, though I couldn’t see it at the time.
Years later, I wonder. Of all my encounters with cheerleaders and the like, none ever put me down in the way my imagination remembers. It was only my fear, my memory of that skinny kid who only existed for the first couple years of high school.
If I had me a time machine, I’d go back and have a talk with my young self.
Online Dating Finds Many New Niches
Online dating is growing in popularity and reputation. No longer a last refuge for losers or even a compromise for "busy singles," it is often a prefered method. Some online services offer niche communities an environment that they cannot find in the real world. Some of the most interesting:
Druze Dating. The Druze are a small religious community that broke off of Islam some thousand years ago. They are scattered across the Middle East, and strongly discourage marrying outside the community. Teenagers have started turning to Druzedate.com to find other Druze with similar interests.
Seniors. Amazingly, seniors have taken to the internet in a big way. Many who have a hard time finding compabitable companions through the limited socializing available, are discovering senior dating services. Many of these seniors, widowed or divorced, would probably have given into living out their days alone in a previous era.
Leftists. Not too long ago, there was a steady stream of radical college students who, after graduation, shaved their legs/cut their hair, and married Republicans. Fortunately, there is now a place to find more compatible mates. I know there are also plenty of Conservative and Religious based dating websites.
Geeks. Blogs have recently been linking to some "defense-of-nerd" postings, supposedly by a woman. And rich nerds, of course, can marry trophy wives/husbands. But by and large, many nerds are still best off coupled up and removed from the general population. (Okay, I have a few Geek features my own-self, but still...)
In Defense of Pick-Up Lines
The latest popular line is “Did it hurt when you fell from heaven?” which is far better than “I’d like to see those earrings on my bedpost in the morning.” Though I suppose if you were selling earrings you’d like to hear the second line as often as possible. The “fall from heaven” line has already passed through obvious to trite to retro, thus giving it a certain self-ironic charm, when said properly. Properly means that the voice implies, simultaneously, “We both know this is a stupid but kind of funny line and I’m saying it for your amusement,” and “It’s just a line but you look so hot I almost kind of mean it.”
The endpoint of all this would be a line that everyone uses. Nobody really thinks they’re clever for thinking of it first, it doesn’t risk being misinterpreted or taken wrong. People will always know what you’re saying even if you mumble it, because they know the line. The number of people saying really, really stupid things would be greatly reduced. This is the same theory that has allowed most men to go to work wearing the same suit. The line is standard, but it’s all in how you say it.
I had this theory, I decided to test it. A woman friend of mine who is both quite attractive and an experienced club-goer walked up just as I was thinking this all through.
“Did it hurt,” I asked, “when you fell from heaven?”
Hunh?
My friend, Sturgeon John, had already been exposed to my developing theory.
“It’s a line,” he said, helpfully, “it’s supposed to be ironic.”
“Oh,” she said, “try it again.”
“Did it hurt,” I said, IRONICALLY, “when you fell from heaven?”
“It just sounds stupid,” she said.
“Well,” I asked, “what kind of lines do you like?”
“I just like it when someone says: Hi, I’m so-and-so, what’s your name?” she said.
“I know that’s what we’re supposed to say, but that’s not really a line,” I said.
“I don’t really get lines,” she said.
“But you go to clubs,” I said.
“I know,” she said, “but when those kinds of guys talk, I just tune them out.”
We all went to dinner, and I explained again the ironic, retro, one-line-fits-all theory. It sounded good to me as I talked. Then, on the way out, I turned to her:
“Did it hurt when you fell from heaven?” I asked.
“It still sounds stupid,” she said.
If you think she's flirting with you, she's flirting with you.
But only because she's responding to what you think. Apparently.
This Psychology Today article plays hell with causality. Apparently. Researchers had males interview several different women. The males were told that certain women were interested in them, others were not. Naturally, when a guy is told a woman is interested in him, he percieves her to be flirting with him. This, though the interest/non-interest line was drawn randomly, and the women had no idea. The simple conclusion seems obvious, the men are misled by their own perceptions and expectations.
But the wrench in the mechanism comes when the researchers had third-party observers tracking who they thought to be flirting. Somehow, the women who the men had been told were interested were also percieved by the third-party observers to be flirting. The researchers conclude that the men sent out signals, based on their perception that the women were intersested. The women, receiving these signals, unconsciously reciprocated, flirting with men in ways they may not have been aware of. But the researchers didn't do anything to prove that the women were actually "unaware."
Flirting for the fully covered woman
This article is on the newest fashion among veiled women in Yemen. The best quote is:
" Women, in general think of their own beauty whether inside their homes or outside within the community, without realizing the consequences in overreacting on how they should look, but as we come to logic we tend to have an answer to all our problems: so long as it is long-sleeved, not tight or figured and not sheer then you’re all safe girls .As for the color, there’s no beating black."
The point, of course, is that whatever the baseline, there will always be room for a bit of fashion and flirtation, even if the women are covered head to toe because:
"However, as most of us know the garment was made to hide the women’s’ feminine look, not to make them a source of attraction to men as is meant in Islam for the protection of women and not otherwise."
Haloscan commenting and trackback have been added to this blog.
Flirting Chef Makes Food Taste Better
I once read a novel and, well, ended up thinking I didn't like it. It was a close call, because often it seemed challenging, even brilliant. But there was also a long, grinding quality to much of it. So, because we all have to decide whether we like things or not, I picked not. Then I met the author. He was fun, friendly, instantly likeable. If he were of that other gender, I'd say he was flirting, but we're both straight guys, so we were "bonding." I changed my pick on the novel, too. Not consciously, at least in the sense of thinking, "well, since he wrote it, I'll decide it's good." No, it's just that the elements of goodness and badness seemed to rebalance. My familiarity with his personality infused my reading, and inclined me to be more favorable. I like it now, and I can't go back and make myself feel the way I felt when I didn't like it.
What brought this memory up was a
couple articles about a chef on some reality show who was getting better reviews by flirting with the patrons. Apparently, to make things fair, they actually nailed the door to the kitchen shut. That's a laboratory approach, isolating just the taste of the food, I guess. But it's also flase, because chemical taste is only one factor, anyway. The delightfulness of a meal is always contingent on other factors, like the atmosphere, conversation, company. A flirting server really does make the food taste better.
Sunglasses: hot, but ambiguous. Is she looking at you or that guy behind you? Or off into space? Expression, not much help. Could have a smile in it, but it's not obvious. The eyebrow is the key. It isn't exactly a validation of you as a human being, but it does kind of say: "go on, keep talking." Or, take as much rope as you need.
Elements of flirting
We can expand on this later, but let's just get some stuff down on paper. Flirting can occur in any of the following situations:
- Complete strangers. On a bus, metro, coffeeshop, bookstore, bar, party, or just on the street.
- Recent acquantance. Someone in a class, perhaps. Someone at a party where people mostly know each other. You are introduced to someone, maybe you are sitting down, in a group, to dinner.
- Friend. Short-term, long-term, available, or walled-off. Maybe you flirt because there are unresolved tensions, or you flirt because all possibilities are exhausted and it's non-threatening.
- Frenemy. Like a friend, only there is antagonism and competitiveness involved.
- Romantic other. Whether dating, hooking up, seeing each other, living together, or married for a long time, flirting is still part of the equation. Sometimes takes the form of needling.
The basic forms of flirting are:
- Eye contact. Whether direct or glancing, one at a time or both together, the eyes are key. One friend, a woman, likes to play a game where she tricks randomly selected men on the subway to look at her.
- Physical gestures. Body language. Playing with hair, neckline, stretching, puffing one's chest out.
- Opening conversation. The comment/line/question that tries to open up two-way communication.
- Follow-up. More questions, comments, playing off the other person's responses. Sometimes paced to allow the other person a sense of being able to escape if she/he chooses.
- Touching. A way to sort out the possible from the not likely. Casual touches can be clearly reciprocated, shrugged off, or ignored without bringing up the issue directly.
- Ongoing conversation. Ideally, flirting is a game played mind to mind. Conversation, accompanied by eye-contact, some touching, and body language is the road to, whatever is next. (which could be friendship/business relations/romance/whatever)
Dude, you should have been there
On the Metro, she was reading a book. I don't know, it was white. Black blouse open half-way to her navel already, yet she had to constantly play with her shoulders, exposing a little more. Yes, she was pretty. She played with her hair, over her ears. No, she never looked up. Then she'd run her fingers across her mostly exposed chest. I don't know, maybe it was the book. Blank cover, far as I could tell.
But then, at the bus stop, it was raining. Pouring. Four hot club-hunting young ladies come up, each wearing the same tight jeans, but a lot of variation in the tops. Not covering a lot, but there's the peach blouse with plunging neckline, a couple spaghetti-strapped numbers, and, well, a tank-top? Anyway, they're all wearing strappy high-heels. How do I know? Well, I'm standing there watching as they fiddle away with the straps, looking out into the downpour. As if getting the straps just right will help against the rain. Me? I'm wearing a light sweater, raincoat, carrying a large umbrella. The weather predictions have all said rain, and the skies have been clear with their intent most of the afternoon. Still, not an umbrella, not a coat, not even a sweater among the four girls. Dude, the blondest, hottest one with the tightest jeans and most tastefully exposed cleavage looks over at me. They're talking, trying to figure out the rain problem. One says, "maybe someone around has an umbrella." I have an umbrella. A huge umbrella.
"Maybe," the blondest one (with the peach blouse and some kind of intricate necklace hanging down into the opening) says, "if someone's going that way."
She says that, and she's looking right at me. I'm not going that way. I'm going home. It's wet, rainy, getting cold, I've got a cough, I've got Vick's Vapor Rub, I want to lie down. I say nothing.
Finally, they strap up their high heels again, and sprint out into the curtain of water. Dude, four hot chicks running in the rain. You should have been there.
