“I heard an interesting discussion on a train the other day,” he might venture. “A group of men were debating the best way to tell women they’ve just met that they’re not interested in making love on the first date.”
As an umpire, I’d wave that one safe on first if a man tried to traffic that to a woman after a few minutes of good party talk today. It’s interesting, relevant, pointed, and loaded with redeeming social value. A woman who laughs and plays with that theme, perhaps offering specific suggestions or pinwheeling off into anecdotes somehow related, has been successfully engaged in conversation. One who quivers away from the whole thing is a woman who, though not responsive to that theme from that man at that time, has nonetheless not been improperly approached. All she’s done is decline to ratify an Aperture of Intimacy. That may be disappointing to a man desiring more from that woman, but it won’t likely make his memoirs of major defeats. His attempt was clean and stopped well shy of scandal.
No harm done. She may, in fact, get rabidly conversational when he downgrades the topic to, say, the joys of hot buttered asparagus! Don’t try to march too many elephants simultaneously over the rope bridge of early conversation.
Friends are those from whom no favors come by surprise. You know what your friends can be counted upon to deliver. The trophy for successful game-playing is friendship. Firewood is achieved by chopping. Crops are achieved by sowing. Friends are achieved by conversation. If you want that person as a friend, start talking—and Making Him/Her Talk!
The objective is to make that person you want to befriend leave the encounter with you glad he had it and looking forward to more. The biggest error we make, especially in the case of men trying to make women want more, is supposing we have to impress. Wrong. Dangerous.
Instead of “Is she impressed with me?” ask yourself, “Is she comfortable in conversation with me?” And “Am I giving her enough evidence to get the point that 1 am impressed with her—and impressed with her on grounds more proud and valid than mere sexual ambition!”
* * *
We aim now for a level seldom reached by those who teach How to Win the One You Love (Or Would Like the Chance to Get Close to in Hopes Love or Something Similar Might Develop). Everybody tells us if we dress right, stand right, look right, and do everything impeccably in word and deed from that point forward, things should proceed inexorably in our favor.
Such an assumption is, of course, wrong. The question least touched upon in the advice columns is the most important question of all—namely, “Have I got a shot, even if I do everything right? And how can I tell?”
Military officers who scored brilliantly on strategy and tactics in the sandbox warfare back at the academy can nonetheless come apart on the battlefield. Things in war—and love—just don’t work the way the books promise. There are women and men whose reverie can simply not be unriveted from those unexplainable losers they adore.
Success doesn’t work on some people. Failure works.
Conversation doesn’t work on some people. Muteness works.
Some worthwhile and attractive people will cling to partners who can’t complete a sentence without egregious error no matter how piercing other contenders are with their wit or pleasing with their follow-up style. Who of us can’t attest to an attraction to somebody who, from the moment of meeting onward, proceeds to do everything absolutely wrong?
It’s important to know if you’re a “player” in the estimation of the one you’ve singled out for conversational entrapment. A player isn’t necessarily somebody he or she hopes will suggest cocktails immediately followed by dinner and more of the same no later than day after tomorrow. You can be involved, too busy to be bothered, not really looking for serious attachment—and still mentally mark someone you’ve just met as a player: admittedly potential, admittedly eventual, admittedly remote and abstract, but a player nonetheless.
It’s no sin to be denied player status by someone you’d like to get to know. The sin comes in not being aware you’ve been denied player status. A higher sin is being denied player status and thinking you’re doing great.
The highest sin of all, though, is being accorded player status and, either through imperceptiveness, modesty, misread signals, or simply thinking such a victory is too good to be true, not realizing you’ve won player status.
Signals abound. Is she picking up sprightly on your conversational leads, or responding like a courageous enemy prisoner of war who knows her rights of silence under the Geneva Convention? Is he having some difficulty maintaining eye contact with you during the conversation? Does a noise, a door opening, an interruption, another person arriving break the concentrational fix between you right away? Does the spiderweb connecting you survive the wind? Or does the one you’d like to get to know latch on to the slightest interruption to use as a “rescue” from you?
Is he undergoing an internal “power struggle” with his “cabinet” divided, his “diplomats” wanting to pay attention to you, his “military” (his body) tugging him away yelling, “Enough of this already. Let’s move on!” Don’t lie to yourself. Is the connection between you congealing, or is he just being polite?
In short, is the conversation that’s linking you, after three or four developmental minutes, still an embryo m tee intensive care unit, or is it a husky football player you can enjoy watch-mg cavort as a-proud parent m the stands?
We close on a stunt of such unique power that psychologists have warned me it’s too precious to print. I suspect they’d prefer to sell it to their clients as witchcraft of their own!
There may not be a way to tell all you’d like to know about all players at all times, but there is a way a man can tell if a woman-regards him as a potential lover.
All it requires is (a) the woman must be carrying something, even a small handbag, and (b) the two of them must have the opportunity to walk together; a few dozen feet down a corridor will do.
A liaison need not be imminent for this test. He can be an employee of a company and she can be the secretary of the owner of a conglomerate come to buy it out. They can be meeting for the very first time. After the initial exploratory meeting, they can be walking down the hall to lunch—executives, support personnel, consultants, he and she, all of them together. No problem. If he stages this test, he’ll know whether she regards him as an eventual lover or, as we used to say in high school about girls we didn’t regard as lovers, as an "aunt" or a “librarian.”
He simply walks on her encumbered side.
If she’s carrying her bag or whatever in her right hand, he should be sure to walk on that side. If he happens to be on the side where her hand is free, he should cross over to the side where it’s not.
If she views him as someone she might someday choose to share intimacy with, she will subconsciously shift whatever she’s carrying over to her other side—in order to leave her closer hand free for holding!
Listening
Listening is a perversion of human nature. It must be deliberately learned. If properly mastered, listening brilliantly can move you as far forward as speaking brilliantly.
“Be a good listener” is written off as one of the standard bits of advice proper parents give their young. It deserves more excitement. It’s nothing less than a treasure map.
-For most of us, talking is simply more fun than listening.
We instinctively use the periods when other people are talking not to listen, but to decide what we’re going to say next. Since we ourselves don’t listen, we’re subconsciously smart enough not to expect to get listened to very often.
That’s where we strike. That’s where we knife in and use listening as our offensive weapon.
If you speak, are studying, or could be persuaded to learn a foreign language, you can play an elitist game that will demonstrate the power of listening. A rabbi in my hometown was so beloved—in fact revered—that he was retained by the congregation despite the fact that he was the most boring man on earth. It was impossible to
hang on to one of his sermons much longer than a green cowhand could hang onto a bucking bronco.
His sermons never lasted longer than fifteen minutes, but by that time you were long calcified. “How long did you stay with him this time?” worshipers used to ask each other as they filed out of Friday night services. Rarely had anyone outlasted the rabbi’s windup; never his pitch.
At about the time I was completing my second year of high school Spanish, I hit upon a trick that still works wonders. I pretended, as I sat there, that the rabbi was the ambassador of Israel and it was my job to translate his sermon simultaneously into Spanish for the United Nations.
It was fun. It was such fun that I remained attentive throughout. My attentiveness attracted attention. People noticed my alertness, my obvious concentration upon the rabbi’s every word. I became envied. Other congregants supposed I had plugged in to some religious resource that seemed to be eluding them.
The rabbi’s wife found a way of asking, without being unkind to her husband, how it was that I alone seemed to emerge from the sermons so refreshed.
“I get a lot out of the rabbi’s sermons,” I told her. I never felt prompted to atone for that remark on any Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement) since. It was not a lie; and I think the act of paying attention to someone else, whether through genuine interest or interest artificially contrived, is an act of kindness.
(I actually used to go home, pull down my English-Spanish dictionary, and look up the words the rabbi used that I didn’t know in Spanish!)
The “translation” game is good for looking like you’re paying attention. Translators, like newscasters, are notorious for not remembering one single item they dealt with five seconds earlier. Here’s a much better mental game that requires no expertise in any language except your own.
Opportunists have given charm a bad name. Many people even feel guilty trying to befriend someone they hold no real affection for or interest in. Civilization calls for giving a little better than you get. There’s nothing wrong—and there’s a great deal right—in operating inside an attitude that says, “I am not merely in a conversation; I’m in an endeavor to gain your esteem. I aim to win you over, whereupon you will buy my wares, vote for my candidates, accept my calls, fulfill my requests, fall in love with me, water my flowers if I miss my return flight, lend me money and, if nothing else, at least say nice things about me, thereby enhancing my reputation.”
There are alternative fantasies. Pretend the President, has called you into the Oval Office and said, “This is too important for the FBI. You and I have to deal with it personally. You’re about to meet and start a conversation with someone. It will seem like a normal conversation flowing out of your everyday life. Go ahead and play it that way, but bear in mind that that person’s thoughts and feelings are of vital importance to our national security, and we must learn everything about him!”
Or you can pretend you’ve been asked by an extraterrestrial. intelligence to audition people on earth to see who, in addition to you, might qualify for perpetual life on the planet Utopia later on.
Invent your own. Games like these work for children. They can work for any grown-up who doesn’t consider mental play childish.
Long before modem psychology began to explore hidden continents of the mind, Reader’s Digest wrote of a lifeboat survivor during the war who just didn’t look like he’d endured the same thirty-nine days afloat on the same starvation rations as the others. When rescued, far from bedraggled, he appeared almost chipper.
When asked why, he explained, “The others simply took the crackers as crackers and the water as water. I built elaborate dreams of dining in my favorite restaurants in Paris and New York with my favorite people and being hugged by my favorite chefs, who begged for the chance to delight us with their favorite gastronomical tours de force of the day—along with the proper wines, of course, and with unspeakably tempting confections to follow as dessert.”
Play whatever game succeeds in helping you start paying attention to those whose conversation ordinarily wouldn’t interest you. Even if it’s nothing but counting his words that begin with the letter n before he takes another breath!
Right away you reap part of your payoff. Most people are accustomed to being heard but not heeded. Your obvious attention to what he’s saying may be the nicest compliment he’s had in years. He will peg you immediately as a person of good taste and (even if you don’t say a word) a brilliant conversationalist! He will seek out the host, if this happens to be a party situation, and congratulate him on succeeding in luring fascinating people like you to his parties.
It’s a good idea to emphasize the fact that you’re paying attention by asking an occasional question directly related to what he is telling you. Don’t expect to hear better stories just because you’ve started paying attention, any more than a pathologist expects to see healthier tissue just because he’s got a more powerful microscope. Much of what you hear will remain long-winded and self-servipg. Interrupt with, “How many of you met with the President personally?” “How much did you say you paid for the stock in 1974?” “How’d you learn so much about Kuala Lumpur?” “How did you manage to get admitted to the Yankee dugout?”—questions that let him know you’re very much in his audience.
Successful courses have been taught in how to remember names and faces. Those courses could more honestly be named How to Remember Names and Faces for the Purpose of Flattering Those So Remembered in Hopes of Achieving Some Selfish End. Everybody knows what a knockout of an advantage you have when you remember the person’s name.
Why stop with his face and name?
Go ahead and prepare a little “dossier” on him, listing as much as you can recall of the stories he told, what he’s done, what he’s proud of, whom he adipires, what restaurants he likes, his favorite anchorman, which magazine he reads first, whom he voted for, whether or not he’d vote for him again, what sports he takes most seriously, where he grew up, what he’s drinking, what movies excited him, and any pithy little quotes or bits of philosophy that, when repeated back to him by you the next week, month, or year, will so cripple him with flattery he’ll feel like falling to his knees and paying homage to the tops of your shoes.
When you get home, take his card. If he didn’t give you a card, pull out a blank one about the size of a business card and, after his name, write down whatever chunks of data you can remember about him that, when recalled by you, will brand you in his estimation as an almost supenaturally gifted listener.
You need not complete the questionnaire suggested above. Any three, two, or even one single fact in addition to his face and name that you casually recall when you meet again will stun him, absolutely stun him into your sway. Remembering something he said will in fact forgive you for forgetting his name!
Department store Santas report that, even more rewarding than the pay, is the explosion of delight that illuminates a child’s face as he or she gets hoisted upon Santa’s knee. You will feel precisely that delight when you turn the ray gun of recollection upon people who, despite their wealth, power, and prominence, aren’t even accustomed to being heard, much less remembered.
How to drop your treasured little recollection into the next conversation with him is a separate science. Obviously you don’t just fish out the cards of those you’re likely to meet at the upcoming party, memorize their entries, and then surprise them by calling them by their name, shaking their hand, and saying, “Hey, let me tell you what I remember about you from the last _time we met.”
Once Jerry, an entrepreneur with ventures in never fewer than four or five businesses at any one time, told me a story about a man who accidentally drove his rented car off a ferryboat in Yugoslavia.
That’s a data chunk, an entry, a piece of Jerry’s “literature.” I entered it in my “Jerry” dossier.
Months later, rather than criticize one of his new ideas I happened not to like, I said, “Jerry, I honestly think you could make more money driving cars off fe
rryboats in Yugoslavia.”
Jerry was so pleased that I’d obviously been listening to him, so impressed that I’d found one of his stories worth remembering, and so amused at the way I brought it back to bite him, that my criticism became more endearing than anybody else’s praise!
And imagine the effect when, later, I used a piece of his “literature” to praise something he proposed.
Each nation has a history. The smaller the nation is, the more credit you get from its citizens for knowing something about it. You’re not likely, as a foreigner, to stagger a Russian by remarking that his country begins in eastern Europe and goes all the way eastward to the Pacific Ocean. You won’t impress an Englishman by knowing there’s a Buckingham Palace. Don’t expect a Frenchman to cry “genius” just because you know his capital city is Paris.
That’s because all three of those countries are large, important, “celebrity” countries.
You can, however, please Mexicans mightily by knowing their Independence Day is May 5. You’ll cripple Bulgarians by knowing their language belongs to the Slavic family. You’ll peel the socks off Norwegians by knowing their capital is Oslo and not Denmark.
You could probably get an Estonian to marry you just by knowing where Estonia is!
Those are smaller countries whose vital lore is not part of the world body of assumed knowledge.
Credit for knowledge increases in inverse proportion to the expectation that one might possess that knowledge.
If we can catapult an Indonesian into spontaneous folk dancing just because we know that the population of his country is predominantly Muslim, imagine how much more power we wield when we deal not with nations, but with individuals.
Making People Talk Page 20