1. He tells you he loves your
shoes—the best chat-up line ever—
complimentary without being
cheesy, kind of neutral, but kind of
flirty, and always appropriate, regardless
of the time of day/scenario/how
drunk everyone is. Unless, of course,
you’ve got your most foul-smelling
trainers on—in which case you’ll know
it’s a well-practised line.
2. He sends you a text message
that, crucially, is longer than the
male-standard length of four
words, that doesn’t contain any rude
pictures made out of text symbols, and
abides by the rules of grammar. Virtually
a love poem.
3. He contrives dates that aren’t
really dates–work events if he’s
your colleague, or residents’
meetings if he’s your neighbour.
4. He starts swinging invisible golf
clubs while talking to you. This
gives him something to do with
his hands, which would otherwise be fluttering
around nervously in his attempts to
stop himself groping you, but also draws
attention to his macho, sporty nature.
5. He starts being mean to you.
He disses your opinion on last
night’s reality TV tensions. Or,
he makes some obscure observation
about you, such as, ‘Haven’t you got
small ear lobes?’ This just means he’s
obsessing over everything you do/say/
think/are.
6. He quotes lines from Dirty Dancing
or any other girlie classic.
This recent addition to men’s
chat-up repertoire (aka chick-flick
Rohypnol) is a devastatingly effective
ploy suggesting an ability to enjoy all
aspects of girl culture.
7. He asks you for advice on his love
life, thus alerting you to the fact
that he has one and, furthermore,
that there might be an imminent vacancy.
8. He employs techniques that
are recommended on TV
shows and magazines: he
‘mirrors your gestures’, he looks from
your eyes to your lips to your eyes
again (as opposed to the straight-intoyour-
cleavage gaze), and touches
you, gently, to make sure you’ve ‘engaged
with him completely’.
9. He does really, really obvious
stuff, but ironically. He tries to
slow-dance with you, he asks,
‘Do you come here often?’, all the
time acting a bit wryly. This implies
he has a post-modern sense of humour,
which doesn’t require him to
update the seduction techniques that
worked so well when he was fifteen.
10. He tells everyone you fancy
him. Recently, a man in our
office told a female colleague
of ours that another girl had
‘been sniffing round his desk’ predatorily.
Now, until this was revealed to
us, the girl in question had absolutely
no idea that this man even existed.
Clearly, however, he had noticed that
she existed. One word: projection.
11. He starts doing weird things
with his e-mails. Using obscure
techno tools that tell
him when you got his mail/how quickly
you read it/what your facial expression
was at the time, etc. (Where
straightforward charm fails men, a
thorough knowledge of gadgetry will
simply take over).
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