When I was in college, I was no Casanova. It wasn't until my first year in N.A.T.O. that I discovered that getting on well with women was not a matter of truth, charm and sincerity, as I had been led to believe. It was, in fact, a matter of being able to laugh at things that I did not think were funny. It also had something to do with wearing beer boxes on your head, but I've never been clear on why.
Woman: "I'd be a lot more comfortable sitting in this bar if it weren't for this dam yeast infection!"
Me: "Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Yeah, that's great ... Ha, Ha, Ha!"
As difficult as this sometimes turned out to be, it was successful.
Women invariably like the type of guys that slap them across the face, tell them to go for beer and blow their nose on their cashmere sweater while they're gone. 'This never really suited me - I'm allegeric to cashmere.
Why women always fall for jerks is anybody's guess. The solution - if you can't beat 'em, join 'em. Just become what they want. So I did. However, I still have never stopped wearing beer boxes.
It's difficult to get a date for a male in his late twenties. The women our age are all either raising children, or are just coming out of bad relationships. This means that if you do manage to look harmless enough to go out with, you are either going to have a scintillating evening talking about her ex-husband's alchohol problem, or you are going to end up trying to eat your romantic T.V. dinner amidst a barrage of squirt-gun fire from her four neglected larvae. "That's a pretty neat gun Billy, let me show you mine."
Either of these scenarios usually leads to an alcohol problem of your own.
After a year or so of this, I made a resolution: if I was going to go out on a date I would never again do it sober. I'd just get a good head start on the evening. The last time I did this was with a girl named Clarise. I had primed myself for the evening with straight burbon, chased with a shot of Pepto-Bismol and dash of Pine Sol (fresh breath is paramount.)
Four beers later, we still weren't hitting it off, so I retired to the locker room to review my strategy. Having relieved myself, I spotted a gum machine on the wall on the way out. Fearing that my breath might be losing that evergreen freshness, I decided to pop a piece. The gum was individually wrapped (a nice touch) and said 'Antiseptic' (or something like that) on the wrapper, so I figured it would do. For a buck- fifty it had better, or I was going to complain to the management.
When I got back to the table, Clarise was staring at me with a look similar to that seen on the faces of Iraqi deer caught in the headlights of an entire armored division. I tried some small talk and jokes, before I commented, "Y'know, this gum blows the most incredible bubbles, but it tastes just like rubber."
Then I blinked, and Clarise had vanished.
After that, I tried wedding rings. Someone at work had told me that they were just like magnets. They made women feel safe. Eventually I found this to be true. You were 'married,' so you were safe company -- all the way up until when you try to run your hand up her thigh and become the Antichrist. By then, trying to explain that you were not really married was well beyond useless. Like trying to explain to the Secret Service that you were just trying to wound the president.
Dressing up in drag takes even more explaining.
Finally I decided to go back to that honesty and sensitivity thing that had always failed me back in college. However, without fail, they would get turned off when we broached the subject of "What do you do for a living?"
"Oh, I work for N.A.T.O. intelligence: espionage, international investigations, counter-terrorism, that kind of thing ... no really! Look, I even have a gun!"
And they were gone.
The dating scene was hell until one evening, in June of '91, when I was attending a function at the American embassy in London. I wasn't formally invited, but the words 'open bar' had awakened vast slumbering portions of my brain that had formerly been devoted to the useless information I had been required to learn in Forgery class.
With a quick visit to the Hallmark card shop and a few strokes of a Bic rollerball, I was sipping ambassadorial martinis - compliments of lots and lots of British tax dollars. I swapped pleasantries with all kinds of brass: such juicy conversation as Free Press, socialized medicine, the Redskins, how Diana was in bed - really - social diseases and how I came to be invited. When suddenly, I saw this incredible brunette standing over by the buffet. When she refused to go to bed with me, I became obsessed.
In the midst of my fool-proof "you make dinner, I'll make breakfast" line, a darkskinned waiter pulled a sawed-off shotgun out from under his serving cart and started yelling at the crowd. He was screaming something in Pakistani (I think) that sounded like "Wanna Lotta Falafel," and while I don't even know one Pakistani pickup line, I do hablo Smith and Wesson.
I yanked the woman under the buffet table and kissed her solidly on the mouth. "I really like you!" I said. "I gotta take care of something, but after we're done here, lemme give you a lift home. Okay?"
Having accidently left my "assault-rifle disguised-as-a pack-of-cigarettes" back on the shelf at the Sharper Image in D.C. I elected for a more impractical approach:
One of the guests at the party was the Duchess of Desenex (or something like that) and she had brought her pet poodle (who died nobly) with her. It is a little known fact that if you pick very small dogs up by their ears and spin them around, they start to squeal.
Well, perhaps that part of it is pretty well known, but what you probably don't know is that if you do it hard enough, they sound exactly like a police siren. The yapdog in question happened to be blithely scavenging for morsels from the buffet table, so he was pretty easy to snag. As it happens, the only time I get to hear British police sirens is after no less than six dry martinis - which makes my memory of them a bit fuzzy. Poodles sound like American police sirens. Oops.
Looking back, I'm thankful that this man couldn't tell the difference.
I popped up from behind the buffet to see him sidestepping quickly toward the windows, putting his back to me. I searched my vast reserves of covert ops knowlege to determine my next move Karate? Jiujitsu? Knife-throwing? My mental Wheel of Fortune came to rest on "Frisbee," and a moment later, the resounding 'spong' of a chafing dish impacting on bone filled the room.
Ducking back down under the table, I found Joanne performing CPR on the now quite enlongated Fifi.
"Stay down!" I lied mightily, "there's two of them!"
And kissed her again.
Unfortunately, this sham only held out long enough for the attendant nobles to drag us out from under the table. Eventually, the ruckus died down and Habib was carted out on a stretcher by armed SAS to go have a crumpet removed from his brain stem. Amid the enthusiastic British "Thank you's, God bless you's, and Who did invite you's," Joanne walked up and looked wryly at me. "You must be Carl Larson."
The rest was magic.
In addition to the relief of having a woman at my side who doesn't get turned off by my profession, it's wonderful to be out of the dating scene. I'd rather fight a grizzly bear with a rusty spoon than stand again on the singles battleground.
Final note: To simulate a British police claxon, try picking geese up by their bills with a pair of vise-grip pliers.
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