It would be unkind to deny you know someone in another town merely for fear that he’s perceived of as a drip and you don’t want to drip away with him. You’re under no obligation, however, to testify against yourself—indeed, bring yourself to trial—in a game that’s really been taken over by losers.
If you must play Do You Know, play it after you’ve already won.
The biggest reason not to go fishing for mutual friends with a flirtation target is that it delays your opportunity to display a form that can really win. And in those first few seconds of conversational engagement, anything that doesn’t move you forward moves you backward.
The right attitude for successful flirting is, “Those other people we may know in common, baby, have nothing to do with you and me. Let them wait!’’
Don’t say democracies never practice censorship.
Shortly after World War Two, a delegation of wives of American servicemen stationed on occupation duty in Germany protested to the Pentagon about, of all things, an English-German phrase booklet the army handed out to all American servicemen stationed in West Germany. In the entire booklet there was only one phrase they didn’t like, but the women felt that was enough.
It was, “Mein Frau versteht midi nicht“—“My wife doesn’t understand me.”
The military quickly realized they’d made a mistake, recalled the booklets, and printed new ones minus the offending sentence.
Ignoring the fact that Germany in those days was full of women willing to perform services for the American troops far beyond translation, I feel the American wives were (a) right to protest and (b) protested for the wrong reasons. It wasn’t just that the army was handing American GI’s that one inflammatory sentence. That was maybe 5 percent of the “crime”; the remaining 95 percent was that the army was providing an Aperture of Intimacy between American husbands and German Frauleinsl
In what some call a platonic relationship, conversation can ramble on for hours without ever getting intimate, or anywhere near. Books, movies, TV, plays, decor, food, sports, fashion, hobbies—conversation within these and hundreds of other topics never offers an Aperture of Intimacy, just as prudent military jets under orders to respect other countries’ airspace by an extra seventy-five miles never offer an Aperture of Hostility.
Everybody instinctively understands die Aperture of Intimacy concept and knows good and well who’s on which side of it. Pretend you’re a jealous mate, and your foray to the punch bowl takes you through the easy-eavesdropping zone of your spouse chatting with a brand-new friend. You feel quite differently if they happen to be discussing, say, the rejuvenation of old ski boots than if they’re discussing, say, die possibility of breathing new life into a sagging love relationship.
In Case One, there’s no Aperture. In Case Two, the Aperture may have already widened into an uncloseable chasm!
An Aperture of Intimacy, then, is that pinprick in the conversation that invites the conversation to turn from “Fifty minutes isn’t really a bad commute” over to “Of course love i at first sight is possible.”
You don’t need an “aperture” to achieve intimacy. Walls can eventually melt. Enough hours of non intimate but pleasant conversation punctuated by a “Wouldn’t it be fun to continue this over dinner?” can do the trick. In the old movies we knew they were falling in love by the background music. By the time they fell into each other’s arms he, she, and we in the audience were all ready for it.
Whv wait that long to find out if that outcome is mutually desired?
An unskilled attempt to achieve an Aperture of Intimacy is a major offense. (“Hey, baby, I’ve checked out every woman here and you’re the one for me! Just tell me what color your coat is and start saying good-bye!”) With sophisticated men and women, though, the opposite—the old, prudish avoidance of anything “personal”—can be almost as much of a disqualifying offense. (Speed limits came first. Minimum speed limits—punishment for going too slowly—came much later.)
Skilled attempts to reach that aperture help you (a) stimulate early real conversation—the Grand March toward Intimacy— with those who welcome it, (b) allow for gentle disengagement from those who don’t, and (c) make sure you waste no time telling the difference!
A skilled attempt should be an..invitation to join you in "personal” talk, but not a callers. It shouldn’t take more than a minute of casual cocktail conversation for a man to say something like, “My ex-wife always told me I had a giveaway grin when I get around women I’d like to talk to. Take a look!
"What do you think? Have I got it licked?”
Look at that payload of traffic and what it accomplishes. That flip little throwaway line says, “I used to be married, but I’m not anymore.” “I really enjoy communicating with women.” “I may be a little bit of a rogue, but not objectionably so.” “Because I used ‘women* in the plural, you can’t really tell from what I’ve told you whether the ‘women’ I want to talk to right now means you and only you, you plus some of the others at the party, you plus all the others at the party, or, conceivably, one, some or all the other women at the party except you!” “My dumb little question at the end, like a frisky puppy, invites you to play. Let’s see now whether you play, and how.”
Now it’s her turn. Her options are vast, if not infinite. She may ask how long you were married, how many times, how long you’ve been unmarried, how you like being single, and, if you don’t like it, what’s the hardest aspect of being single for you to handle.
She may say she likes all grins, giveaway and others. She may say all grins make her leery, she never notices grins at a nice party where so many people are grinning for one reason or another, she doesn’t know what’s so wrong about wanting to talk to women. Or, playing the other way, she may say maybe if you hadn’t wanted to talk to other women so much she wouldn’t have been your ex-wife, or since she just met you exactly ninety seconds ago, she’s got no way to compare your present grin with any of your non-giveaway grins or your face in its natural non-grinning state so, sorry, she can’t advise you!
She may “see” your attempt and raise you. She may say, “You’re asking the wrong woman. Every man who talks to me tries to wipe that anticipation grin off his face, and none of them quite makes it.”
She may, like a magnolia blossom fearful of withering if touched, pretend she didn’t hear you, put a nervous grin on her own face, and say ’‘Isn’t this a nice party?”
One thing she will not do, for sure, is scream and run tell the hostess you’re being forward or she’s being annoyed.
A good technique is to try lots of cool talk about hot things: husbands, wives, relationships, quarrels, jealousy, male and female roles, sex discrimination, sexual harassment, sex objects, pornography, eroticism and holistic health, jogging and desire, love at first sight—the works—but strictly about them out there, third parties, abstract principles in general, lofty theories. Never let on that you’re talking* *how about you and me?” until you get what the diplomats call the clear response from the other side.
A risk-free way to try to drill that Aperture of Intimacy is to play the reporter, to let your traffic say, “I’m not going to 1 get into these tacky party games of trying to win your attention and affection. You’re much too attractive a woman and I’m much too urbane a social scientist for that. As long as we’re standing here together, though, and in no immediate danger of our white wine giving out, let me take a few minutes to review today’s passing parade through the perspective of an extraordinarily appealing woman like you who’s willing to brief an objective reporter like me!”
You can then “interview” her in a manner that gives you freedom to get into areas which, if you weren’t “interviewing,” would be forward, annoying, off-limits, and even bad “““taste. “Can you tell whether a man is interested in you, or just being polite to the nearest woman at a party?” “How do most men go about their approach shots these days?” “Are they always obvious?” “About what percentage of them
do it well?” “How long does it usually take you to decide whether or not you welcome his attentions?” “How do you say, ‘Hey, I’m not uninterested, but I’m not all that overeager, either. Slow down’?” “How do you put him out of his misery if you know that’s as far as you care to go?” “How much depends on the man himself, and how much on how he conducts himself in trying to attract you?” “Has a man you’d already counted out ever made a comeback with you?” “How did he do it?” “What’s the most ingenious line a man ever used on you?” “Were you able to reward him for it?” “Do you do anything to try to rescue a man’s ego when you don’t want to pursue a relationship?” “Do you ever take the initiative and try to approach a man?’ ’ ‘ ‘Are you as obvious as you say the men are who approach you?” “What do you think has changed the most sexually [or any way] between unmarried [or any other kind of] men and women over the past ten years?”
Theoretically, it would be possible to measure everybody’s first-sight sex appeal to the opposite sex, calibrated scientifically to a fraction of a point, and pinpoint the world’s winner in both categories. Practically speaking, it’s enough to admit the existence of “superstars.” In the closing minutes of sports events they frequently announce the MVP, the one chosen by the experts as the Most Valuable Player of that particular game.
We’re too civilized to do that at parties—host or hostess clinking a glass for attention and standing on a chair to announce, “The most appealing man and woman at this party, judging from the number of people who’ve tried to start conversations with them and the intensity with which they’ve tried, are Eric and Joan!”
It really isn’t necessary. The Erics and Joans of the world know who they are, and so do the rest of us. These teachings and tactics of breaking out of small talk into the Aperture of Intimacy are compiled after years of detailed discussions with superstars of both sexes.
English and Chinese are the only two major languages that have the same word for “you” for intimates and strangers, for those higher than you and those lower. (Chinese has at least a possible alternative if the person is significantly higher or you wish to do him special honor. English, therefore, is the single most democratic language in the world!) In other languages, you use the “formal” form of “you” with almost everybody you deal with in the outside world and reserve the “familiar” form, as the grammar books tell us without a hint of a smile, for “intimates, children, and animals” (e.g., in French: vous, tu; German: Sie, du).
In Norway, during the Nazi occupation of World War Two, the formal form, De, almost melted away entirely in favor of the familiar du. It symbolized that the entire nation, strangers as well as intimates, were united in common struggle against the invader.
After the war, Norwegian liberals and sentimentalists rejoiced in the “breaking down” of those starchy old barriers erected by the two different forms of address. “We’ve finished them off for good,” they figured. After all, if the young people of Norway hear everybody addressed as du, they’ll never even realize there was a Del
Imagine their disappointment when, as the hatreds of war evaporated, so did the unifying du. Somehow the young Norwegians learned there used to be a De for people you didn’t know too well. And they liked it. Norway is now back to normal: du for intimates, children, and animals; De for everybody else.
And so is the initiative pattern of sexual attraction.
Women flirt. Women hint. Women invite response. Men move.
The reader is, therefore, begged not to bridle at what might seem an unintentional drift in these examples toward defining the opening of Apertures of Intimacy as something men try to do with women. The drift is intentional The first principle is to be aware that standing still in a conversation you’d like to result in the opening of an Aperture is losing ground.
The shy, scholarly boy who calls one of the superstar girls at home to ask her for a date doesn’t fool her when he chickens out and hides haltingly behind a bunch of ad-lib questions about algebra. He’s a pretty oafish figure. And so is the man who stands there having just met a superstar woman at the party and, long after the suitable tribute to small talk, continues, all the while smiling like the front end of a Japanese bulldozer, to emphasize the serious reading advantages of a fifty-minute commute.
Marines don’t hit the beach, then lounge around in the sand. Make a move!
In opening Apertures, the shortest distance between two points is an angle.
Obviously a Soviet aircraft flying between two points inside the Soviet Union triggers no alarm inside America’s Cheyenne Mountain command post. If that aircraft heads out across the Atlantic Ocean, America pays closer attention. If it veers peacefully off toward Cuba, it causes a different reaction than if it beelines for downtown Philadelphia.
Apertures open most easily when the conversation veers into love, lust, passion, sex, marriage, infidelity, jealousy, divorce, gossip, scandal about other people!
It’s no more difficult to provoke conversation in these topics, even with a new acquaintance of the opposite sex, than it is to tee up a golf ball on a course you’ve never played before.
“Your brooch is like the one in a picture my old college roommate showed me of a woman he was insane about. He decided to sneak a call to her after twenty years. She got all excited and wrote him a letter, which his wife found and then threw a fit. I can’t wait to hear his latest report!”
“You’ve got a smile like that woman you see in the Swiss travel posters. I just learned she’s not even Swiss. She’s Danish, and she’s famous in Europe as the model who never compromised her principles to get a gig.”
“Nice to meet you. You’re just in time to enjoy a ‘silent movie’ with me. That man who just came in—he’s taking off his coat now—has no idea the woman in green just to the left of the portrait is here. Watch his expression when he sees her!”
“For a minute I thought you were the woman who came to me for advjce about a year ago right after she joined our firm. I advised her to limit her conversations with one of our owners to office hours only. She went ahead and met him for cocktails and that led to dinner and that led to demands to go with him to Singapore, and now it’s one of those harassment suits!” Comments at more or less that level of provocation serve as good tests of attitude. She can give it short-shrift response with a minimal “Dear me.” She can be cool but not frosty with a six- to eight-word comment, and then change the subject. She can trade blow for blow and ask questions. She can see you and raise you with lurid scenarios of what might come next. She can go all the way with her own attempt to achieve an Aperture with you by asking how you would feel if you were this one or that one in the drama and what you think of people who do things like this one or that one did.
Is there “play” in her reaction? Is there “give”? Is she comfortable? Is she enjoying it? Is she glad you brought it up?
Does she appear relieved she’s finally met someone fun to talk with? Do other “magnets” in the room exert pull threatening to divert her attentions from you? Or is she “yours”?
You don’t need self-deceiving answers. You need ice-cold intelligent evaluations, before it gets too late to give her a polite good-bye and try for an Aperture with someone else.
Another effective device is to make something out of nothing, much out of little, big out of small.
“No wonder you’re in such great shape. You reached for that pickle like an aerobics teacher!”
“You really intimidated the bartender by describing that drink from Bermuda. Did you intend to?”
“Was I hallucinating, or did you just congratulate that woman for taking a man away from you? Can you teach me how to be that secure?”
“You seem so comfortable with men. Do you have a lot of brothers?”
Most talk beats no talk. Talk that leads to topics like politics, food and restaurants, clothing and fashion, fitness and health, TV and home video, travel, music, theater, and dozens of other “nonviolent” areas
of conversation are all better than “Gee, isn’t everything here nice?”
However, if your “plane” is capable, why stop at Gander, Greenland, Iceland, the Faroes, the Shetlands, and the Orkneys? Why not head straight for London—the classic and intimate man-woman topics that mark the inevitable destination of successful man-woman talk anyhow?
Making it all bounce off third parties keeps any of this “from referring to you and me.” That way you earn the comfort of remoteness and the sweet little sting of talking about things real and relevant. You have forward movement, but nothing approaching aggression.
People enjoy talking about relationships—the one they have, the one that got away, the one they want. But they first have to be made comfortable with such talk. The third-party bounce, the teasing observation-compliment, the gentle joking, all add up to a license to talk “relationship”—the Aperture of Intimacy.
“There are so many good-looking people here who’re fun ~~ to talk to,” he might safely begin, “and they may not want to hear about people over eighty, but I heard an interesting theory the other day and I want to get your opinion.
“You know how some husbands and wives well into then-eighties have such a warmth between them—they walk around holding hands and smiling at each other. And others the same age continually look at their mates and growl.
“Some people, according to a psychologist who studied it, actually ‘take a snapshot’ with their minds the instant they see someone, and that becomes their ‘official photo’ of that person forevermore. In other words, when a woman with that kind of makeup looks at her husband, he’s not eighty. He’s never a day over twenty-one.
“The other ones who don’t work like that look at him and say, ‘What in hell am I doing with this old goat?’
“Which kind are you?”
That, legally, may gualify as an intimate question. But it’s not improper. It’s charming, even when asked by a man of a woman whose last name he can’t spell yet. It doesn’t take an intimacy license to ask it. It could be asked of any woman— ‘ or man—in the world by a TV game show host! It has the power, though, to get some good things going conversationally—and about topics closer to pay dirt than the new bus lanes during morning and afternoon rush hours.
Making People Talk Page 19