[PREV - DANGER] [TOP]
BACKING_IN
April 2000
In DANGER, I said:
I sat down with my back to
her. That was a policy I'd
adopted recently: always sit
with your back to beautiful
women. If you don't do that
you're always fighting your
impulse to stare at them,
and it's typically just
really embarrassing.
No woman I've ever told this
story to has understood this.
Every one of them seems to have
this romantic script in mind that
goes something like this:
A man and a womman look up at
each other at the same time,
their eyes meet, they smile
at each other. He moves
over closer to her. They
begin to talk together.
Try this as a more realistic
scenario:
She realizes that he's
staring at her, and looks
up. Startled at being
caught, he suddenly looks
down, realizes this looks
lame, then forces himself
to look back up. She's
then startled and looks
back down. Both of them
look really nervous to
each other, and their
nervousness feeds off of
each other.
In all likelyhood that's it,
end of story. But let's say he's
more determined (experienced?)
than that:
He tries to decide if she looks
nervous because she doesn't
like him or because she
does. Then thinks "What the
hell, nothing ventured --"
and tries to pysche himself
up to look confident, get up,
walk around the table, and
say... Uh, say what?
"Hi, sorry about staring at
you like that, but you're
looking very beautiful
tonight." Yeah right, that's
going to go over well. But
when you're drawing a blank,
what can you do but say the
obvious? Actually the other thing
you can do is recite a line.
Okay, let's try it. He gets To my knowledge, there are
up, starts to move towards. no standard pick-up lines
She sees him coming, thinking appropriate for use in a
"Oh, no, this is it. What if a coffee house setting.
he's a psycho, has rabies,
works for Microsoft--" etc. "Can I buy you a drink?"
She looks a hell of a lot "Do you want to dance?"
like someone who doesn't want
to hear from any strange men. LINES
He forces out his one line
more than a little awkwardly.
She says "Uh, thanks. That's
okay." And the blank grows
even blanker, the silence
grows rapidly into a void,
and he says "Well see you
around", and shuffles back to
his table.
Now imagine it the other way around:
You see a woman you're
interested in, so you sit
down close to her, *but* you
sit with your back to her.
You're thereby:
(1) putting out conflicting
signals, acting both
interested and uninterested.
If you sat facing her it
would be *immediately*
apparent what you were about,
you'd be telling her that she
had hooked you. On the other At least I'm pretty
hand, if you can work out a sure that this is how
dance like "one step closer, it works. I'm not very
one step back" you may be good at these kind of
able to drive your hook into power games myself, but
her. I've seen other guys
in action who are, and
"driving the hook in"
is something they
seem to excel at. HOOK
It's hard to get away
from the idea that if
you've got to play a
game like this there's
just nothing there worth
winning...
But then, elements like
this have a way of creeping
their way into the heads
of even the best people.
Ignoring the "power game"
aspect of things entirely
is probably a mistake.
"You just need to act FEAR
interesting and aloof."
Well there you go. What's
more aloof than presenting
your back?
(2) putting yourself within easy
conversational range.
This is the really key thing:
If you're really going to
try laying a line on a woman you
haven't been introduced to, you
need to do it "casually". It's The need to appear
a lot easier to speak casually casual is probably
to somone if you're already another manifestation
inside their space bubble. Sit of the power game...
with two tables and an aisle between
you, and you're going to have to
shout across the gap. Sit on the
aisle, and you can just turn around
and deliver your lines from half
the distance.
This also makes it a lot easier to go
back for additional attempts:
"Excuse me, would you have a pen I
could borrow?"; "Hey, do you know
what time it is -- oh there's a clock
right in front of me!"; "Do you know
if the Mocha's are any good here?";
"By the way, could I lick your
spoon?"
But then, it's not clear how
any of this applies to the
boy-meets-girl story I was
telling... except that DANGER
maybe I "hooked" someone by
accident with this manuever.
And if I'd done it any other
way, maybe I'd have scared her
away, and made our second meeting
awkward to deal with.
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