Here’s a modified neg, only with more fondling. You load your dollars into the jukebox, and if you’re lucky, it’s not just one of those internet jukeboxes that download whatever song you want. (The whole pleasure of the jukebox is scarcity.) She sidles up next to you and you say Pick some, go ahead and you lean in over the volume to see what she’s going to choose. Really, U2?
She’ll punch you on the shoulder and tell you to shut the fuck up, she still likes “Pride (In the name of love)” and also Phil Collins. You aren’t standing too well and then wheel around and start yelling to the other patrons, “Excuse me, did you play U2? Oh you didn’t? Because they’re crap, that’s why!”
Best case flirt scenario: she will buy you another round to repay her musical debt and be on her way. Worst? She offers you a prolonged and sloppydrunk blowjob, under her Bono poster.
Mash notes are a time-honored playground tradition, also beloved of fun-seeking hipsters or other semi-adults with senses of humor. The deal is that you play a game that establishes your future spouse, a home, an occupation, and a type of vehicle you might drive.
Putting a fellow in your mash note is the rough equivalent of engaging in the classic flower-destruction exercise “he loves me, he loves me not,” and counts more as some kind of arcane shamanic love ritual than as an honest-to-goodness flirt. Unless he’s playing it with you, and you give him a meaningful look as you add his name to the list, announcing it in a tone that could easily be mistaken for joking, just to give yourself an out …yeah, that’s the stuff.
Send your questions and Mash notes to: amiflirting [at the] gmail [one, dot] com.
[photo via robotpolisher on Flickr]
There was a couple on my flight last night, who maybe even weren’t a couple. He kept touching her touchscreen for her, ordering Seagram’s ginger ale and Pringles and she leaned in towards him and laughed and pushed her half-cup of soda closer to his tray and there is nothing more obviously flirty. It was like watching a really good first date with every excuse to listen in because where else was there to go?
I remembered the best people I’ve sat next to on planes: the Sufi with the rose oil who wanted to ‘anoint’ my forehead on the way to South Africa. A few months ago it was the American on the flight from Bangalore to Dubai that offered to let me plug my headphones into his jack since my tv wouldn’t work, requiring that I turn my body to his and crane my neck close to his shoulder to watch the shows I thought may not have too much subtext for so little shared space. When the attendant bumped me to business class, she apologized that there was only one seat.
Proximity isn’t license here; it’s how you use it, without imposing on her. Flirting in the sky is the safest kind. You’re trapped together, but only for a few hours. And who knows what real world love is waiting for her at the baggage claim. You can really walk right by him. He won’t mind. Besides plane blankets are too scratchy these days to get too exciting under.
The dynamics of flirting become more complex when those infuriating significant others enter the picture. You’re completely screwed, because every effort to downplay your homewrecking intentions by sweetly bringing up his girlfriend in conversation has a flipside as an attempt to locate some critical missing scale in the armor of his relationship. If you’re interested, perhaps you’re better off letting him do the talking about his current relationship. You’ll learn more by listening than by bringing it up yourself, and you won’t risk blowing your cover by insinuating yourself into something that’s off-limits. It doesn’t help to convey that you want him when you’re sabotaging yourself by reminding him of what he’s already got. Because, let’s face it, she’s probably really cute.
An unauthorized guest post (don’t call it a reblog!) from lenachen:
“Do you live alone?”
Actually, no. I live with a man who’s 6’ 2”, muscular, intimidating, and conveniently out of town if you plan on following me home. Not that the latter piece of information needs to be shared.
(P.S. It is super creepy that you patted at the seat next to yours when we entered the train and even creepier that you moved next to me when I didn’t sit next to you. Also, I really didn’t feel like sharing my Nerds candy, but thanks for holding your hand out for it anyway. I so need to buy pepper spray.)
The neg? Are you fucking serious? Are you a pheromone salesman who just lied and said you liked Hendricks and tonic because? Because you thought you were turning us on? Oh no now you say you are comfortable telling us what you do for a living. Never put your real name on a dating profile site, you say. I WONDER WHY because you, bald-assed motherfucker, just insulted US for being BLONDE.
Who knows you aren’t?
“Oh, but you’re not really blonde are you so you aren’t as stupid as you look either!”
Hit the back-button, now. Get your greasy mitts off this blog, you fuck. The neg is not, never can be, never will be, flirting.
And we can’t say it strongly enough.
Even if we thought about sucking your cock for a second.
Baseball season is upon us, and it’s that time again: time to either deeply love or deeply pretend to love America’s game. If you put on a show of being impressed and fascinated by your amour’s knowledge of slugging percentages and deep bullpens, are you flirting? Oh, most definitely.
As Irving Goffman explains in The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, we often offer idealized versions of ourselves to others, carrying out a performance based on our audience’s expectations. When you do this by acting interested in sport, it can play out in a handful of different ways. Maybe, in the process of pretending, you actually come to enjoy stick-and-ball games, and everyone wins. Maybe the flirtee sees right through you, but finds it charming that you’re making the effort, or thinks it’s cute when you say “Pujols.” Again, win-win. The only way you can lose is if you find yourself having to keep up the act too long. Taking him out to a ballgame is flirting. Buying season tickets from your office pool for all the games he goes to is just desperate.
You’re a modern guy. (Of course you’ve had it in the ear before.) There was that britpop girl back who got off campus early, sophomore year, who invited you to her house party? She told you it would be “wicked” and you went anyway. You met her boyfriend there. It was. They were both so good to make out with, you never just assumed every cute girl was into the strict Noah’s Ark thing.
So if in the course of getting to know a girl, over a vague and non-committal burger, you might get onto the topic of who she’s seeing. You tell yourself since you’ve done the open relationship thing, too, it’s not definitely flirting. It’s pre-flirting. It’s getting the lay of the land. You’re pussy surveying. You’re asking the terms before you get lost. And so what, what gets girls to open up more than talking about dating? (Even when a girl resigns herself NOT TO TELL the boy she’s going to hang out with platonic-like about the Sadness and Current Dilemma with her boyfriend? She will.)
Here’s a few ways she’s going to take it. In the spirit of the question, there’s no one right answer.
A. She figures you either want to be The Guy With the Shoulder She Cries On, or The Guy Who’s Shoulder She Used to Cry On and Now Sleeps With Every Once In A While
B. She imagines bringing you home to her boyfriend as she’s chatting with you one night, then spills her drink on herself, and excuses herself to the bathroom to text him eight times to ask if it’s okay to bring you home.
C. Yes, she says, she’s slutty, and she’s still just not that into you.
This question is older than time, older than Dire Straits, and almost as old as guitars themselves. If that guy on the steps of his apartment building or out on the campus lawn just wanted to practice some Jack-Johnson-ass modern rock hits, he would do it in his room. That’s not going to happen, though, because that destroys his chances of being able to casually refer to a passing girl’s body as “a wonderland” without getting spit on.
If that guy is you, you should be aware that you’re emitting a semi-spherical aura of flirtation. Casting a wide net has its pluses and minuses. Plus: if you’re talented and not obnoxious, you could potentially strike up some good, productive conversations. Minus: if you’re either a horrible musician or a really skeevy individual, EVERYONE CAN HEAR YOU. The moral of this story is that flirting is hard work, which means you might have to actually practice music and/or basic hygeine before you take your game out in public.
