Romantically Challenged

by Sami Lukis

  Maybe the reason I’ve been single so often and for so long is because I don’t take enough chances. That stranger knocking on my car window might have turned out to be the greatest love affair of my life.

  But in my defence, he caught me at an especially unfortunate moment. I’d just walked out of my GP’s office after getting a pap smear. So I was feeling about as desirable as a warm glass of champagne. And to make matters worse, it was one of those really hideous paps, where the doc missed on her first attempt so she had to have a second try. Lucky me! If this has ever happened to you, you’ll know that you don’t leave the doctor’s office feeling fabulous and flirty after you’ve had a giant speculum shoved up your vag. Twice.

  That stupid speculum may just have ruined the most spectacular sliding door moment of my life. I guess I’ll never know.

  I once felt that unexpected, inexplicable and yet undeniable spark of chemistry with a guy I met randomly in a café. The conversation started veering into some oh-so-subtle flirty territory, but then we reached the ‘so what do you do’ part of the exchange. And, suddenly, the hot guy was talking to me about pads.

  Without a hint of embarrassment or inhibition, he told me that he owned a company that made sanitary napkins.

  I pretended not to be totally weirded out by it all. Like I talk about pads with hot guys every other day. We actually had a fairly lengthy discussion about them and he seemed very knowledgeable about all things of a sanitary nature. He explained that his company produced more of the adult nappy–type pads than the regular, straight-up period pads. There’s more money to be made with the oldies, he told me. Supply could barely keep up with demand from retirement villages and hospitals.

  And it was sometime around that point, while we were discussing lady periods and old peoples’ poo, that I realised . . . this guy’s just not into me. Everyone knows pads are a passion killer. The fact that this guy was discussing pads with me so openly clearly indicated that he was not interested in getting into my pants at all.

  Maybe my assumption was wrong. I mean, if the guy really did own a sanitary pad company, why should he lie about it? It actually sounded like a very profitable venture. But can we all please agree that it’s an incredibly unsexy business for a man to work in? How would I possibly tell my friends that I was dating the ‘pad guy’? Imagine the nicknames they’d give him? Menstrual Man. The Pad Prick. Sami’s Sanitary Sexbomb. They would dine out on that one for years. (Oh yes, rest assured my friends have had way too much fun making up naughty monikers for all the guys I’ve dated over the years. They treat it like some kind of sport.)

  ‘Director of The Pad Factory’ is not even the most bizarre occupation I’ve heard from a guy in the dating arena.

  I found myself at a cosy little bar in Sydney’s CBD after a long boozy lunch, where I met a tall, handsome (in a nerdy way) stranger. This time, when we reached the ‘so what do you do’ part of the exchange, he said, ‘I’m a butterfly doctor’.

  I laughed in his face and called bullshit on his occupation, although I was secretly impressed that he’d come up with such a creative twist on the more commonly used ‘dolphin trainer’.

  But, straight-faced and perfectly sober, the guy insisted that he was, in fact, a butterfly doctor.

  I simply could not process what he was telling me. And I couldn’t stop giggling at how ridiculous it sounded. It just didn’t seem possible. Is there really a need for butterfly specialists in the veterinary profession? Do they need tiny little operating tables? Did butterflies even live long enough to require medical assistance? Why would anyone bother?

  But he wasn’t laughing. ‘I’m actually not a vet,’ he explained. ‘I have a PhD specialising in the study of butterflies.’

  Okaaaay then, so you’re that kind of doctor.

  Actual job title: ‘Lepidopterist’, he told me. A person who studies the nature, behaviour and habitats of moths and butterflies.

  He said he thought ‘lepidopterist’ didn’t sound sexy enough and most people didn’t know what it was anyway (you got that right, buddy!), so he just went with the much simpler job description of ‘butterfly doctor’ instead.

  Not terribly sexy either, if you ask me. But at least it’s better than Menstrual Man.

  So, in my slightly buzzed, post-long-lunch state, I decided to have some fun. ‘So you’re the guy who really can make butter fly?’ I laughed. ‘That’s actually a really fly job.’ Ha ha ha ha ha! ‘So when you walk into a bar, is it easy for you to spot the most social butterflies?’ I thought I was hilarious.

  Conversation with the Butterfly Doc sort of stalled when it became embarrassingly clear that we didn’t share the same sense of humour. I decided to move on. The lovely lepidopterist didn’t give me butterflies anyway. (Boom-tish!)

  My girlfriends and I went through a phase of making up fake jobs when we were out on the town meeting men. Yes, it was every bit as silly as it sounds and we found it wildly amusing. However, what started out as harmless fun developed into a really interesting social experiment and an intriguing study in human nature. The way people react and respond to you when you tell them what you do for a living can tell you a lot about them.

  I’ve told guys I’m a dog catcher for the city council. That one always gets a raised eyebrow – they usually don’t believe me. I’ve said I’m the person who sits at the end of the production line at the Cadbury’s Chocolate Factory in Tasmania, measuring the Picnic bars to make sure they’re not one millimetre longer than they’re supposed to be (I’ve heard that was a real job, by the way). Some guys actually believe that one.

  I especially enjoyed watching men’s reactions when I told them I was a heart surgeon. Usually, they’d straight up laugh in my face, which was actually pretty rude. Why couldn’t I be a heart surgeon at face value? My tertiary entrance score was almost high enough to get me into Medicine at uni. The one time a guy didn’t react when I told him I was a cardiovascular surgeon was when he told me that he was one too (a real one, I assume). I reckon I held up my end of the conversation fairly convincingly until he started asking for my opinion about invasive versus non-invasive surgery. That was my cue to leave.

  I decided to stop telling guys I was a heart surgeon after I casually mentioned it to a fellow once and his eyes filled with tears as he spent the next five minutes praising me with gratitude for my profession, because a triple bypass had just saved his father’s life. Seeing the admiration and respect in his eyes and hearing all that tender emotion in his voice after I had just flat out lied to him for shits and giggles was not a pleasant experience. I’m a terrible person, I thought to myself. And now the only thing worse than telling him I’m a heart surgeon would be confessing that I’m not a heart surgeon at all. I bought him a beer and did a runner.

  Surprisingly, one of my most convincing fake jobs has been hostage negotiator. I was inspired to give this one a go after a lawyer I know attended a course at Harvard, where one of her lecturers was an actual hostage negotiator. Apparently lawyers can learn all kinds of valuable skills and awesome tools from the experts in this field. Who knew?

  Well I thought hostage negotiator sounded like an especially awesome and glamorous profession, so I decided I would quite like to be a fake one. Now and then.

  I must be really convincing in the role too, because no one has ever questioned it. They usually seem super interested. I’ve even made up a whole fake backstory to go with my fake job, about how I used to be a lawyer so it was a natural transition into this field for a master negotiator like myself. See, I’m a terrible person.

  There’s another profession I’m apparently quite convincing at. One night I was out with a few girlfriends when a young pup sat down and tried valiantly to chat us up. He wasn’t focused on any one of us in particular. He was just putting it out there and having a crack at anyone who might be silly (or desperate) enough to take the bait. We told him we were flattered by his attention but we were actually high-class escorts, having a well-earned and much-need
ed night off.

  His little beady eyes almost popped out of his head. He left us alone but we could see him lurking nearby for most of the night. Sure enough, as we were preparing to leave the bar, he tentatively approached and nervously whispered in my ear, ‘I’m wondering if I could grab your business card. And could you tell me how much it would cost to hire you for a night?’

  I resisted the urge to laugh in his face, looked at him and very calmly said, ‘I’m not taking on any new clients at the moment. But here’s a tip darling: if you have to ask, you can’t afford it.’

  I moved to Sydney in my early twenties and while I have absolutely adored living in this glorious harbour city for most of my adult life, it really hasn’t been very kind to me on the dating front.

  Some nights I can go to three different bars or pubs and, despite my best efforts to exude a fun, flirty and entirely approachable demeanour, not one guy will speak to me, buy me a drink or even make eye contact with me. I feel like I either have a serious case of Resting What-the-Fuck Face or I’m surrounded by some kind of invisible man-repellent shield. My friends say guys are too shy to approach me because I’m the girl they’ve seen on the telly. But I just don’t buy it.

  On the rare occasion that a guy does hit on me in Sydney, he’s usually drunk. Or a fuckwit. Or both. And it’s always very entertaining.

  Some of the most bizarre introductory conversations I’ve had with men refer either directly or indirectly to my age. I can only assume that my appearance confuses these guys, who watched me on the kids TV show Totally Wild when they were still in school. Then, when they’re all grown up, they see me at a pub and expect me to be around sixty years old, so they get confused about just how old, or young, I really am. It’s actually not that confusing. It’s called botox, boys. Botox.

  And the help of some pretty good Dutch genes from my mother and a dedicated skin care regime.

  One of the funniest opening lines came from a guy who walked straight up to me in a Paddington pub one night and said, ‘We should talk about pubes.’

  Surprisingly unfazed, I promptly replied, ‘And what exactly would you like to discuss about pubes, buddy?’

  And he said, ‘Well, for a start, do you have any?’

  I mean, come on. What kind of conversation starter is that?

  I can only imagine the guy was trying to work out if I was pre-or post-Brazilian generation. If I’d told him that I did in fact, have pubes, it would indicate that I was probably over the age of thirty-five. But had I screamed in horror at the mere suggestion that I might have one strand of hair anywhere on my body, it would imply to this charming lad that I was probably younger than thirty-five and with Brazilian.

  Maybe I’m overthinking it. But what other possible reason could there be for a man to walk up to a woman and immediately request a chinwag about pubic hair? Was he training to be a beautician? Did he work for the Bureau of Statistics? Was he knitting a merkin?

  Then he announced, a little too proudly for my liking, that he had not seen a pube since he was fourteen years old. On himself, or any girl he’d ever been with. No map of Tassie. No landing strip or lightning bolt. Not even a cheeky little Chaplin. This young chap had not encountered one single pube in any form, in more than a decade. ‘I think I’d actually freak out if I saw one,’ he told me. Which was my cue to end the discussion and move on.

  Some men are much more direct when it comes to the age game. Like the young fella I’d noticed perving at me from across the room at that same pub in Paddo. I was standing at the bar ordering drinks when he eventually sidled up next to me and said with a smirk, ‘So, how old are you?’ That was his opening line. No ‘Hi’, ‘Hello’, ‘Come here often?’ Just cut to the chase.

  I’d like to make it really clear here that I don’t have any hang-ups about my age. It is what it is (although I do give myself mental high fives when people tell me I look way younger than my actual age). But this guy’s attitude and approach were downright offensive. He had the arrogant air of that obnoxious prick who thinks he’s irresistible, so he can be a complete dickwad and still expect women to fawn all over him. You know, that guy.

  So I looked at him for a beat and then replied with a big smile, ‘Well, why don’t I save us both some valuable time here? You tell me what your preferred age range is and I’ll tell you if I’m in it. Okay?’

  ‘Sure,’ he said, eager to play. He smiled back at me, like the cat that ate the canary. Then he thought about it for a moment and said, ‘Twenty-five to . . . thirty-five.’

  I gave him an overly dramatic look of disappointment and said, ‘Nooo. What a shame. I’m just outside your age range. I guess I missed out!’ And I picked up my drink and walked back to my friends.

  He eventually realised I was taking the piss out of him and I’m pretty sure he went away and googled my actual age (which was forty-four at the time) because he came back and said, loudly, ‘Well, you must have a really good surgeon.’ And he walked away.

  See? Fuckwit.

  That’s when I made a mental note to stop frequenting that particular pub, where the fuckwit ratio seemed to be significantly higher than in any of my other favourite Sydney drinking spots. But man morons do exist in every postcode. Like the young fella I met in a CBD pub one Friday afternoon. I rarely go out in the city but every now and then my single squad decides to mix it up with the corporate crowd. We were at the busy Argyle Bar in The Rocks when a young guy approached me and said, ‘Are you Sami Lukis?’

  ‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘Have we met?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘My mate and I were just trying to work out if it was you. He thought it was you but I wasn’t sure. So I just wanted to find out.’

  ‘Oh, okay,’ I said. ‘Yep, it’s me.’

  Then he said, ‘Wow. I can’t believe it’s Sami Lukis. I used to watch you on the Today show . . . back when you were hot!’

  I took it as a compliment.

  One of the most dangerous predators I’ve encountered in the dating jungle is ‘the troublemaker ex-girlfriend’.

  I’d just started dating a guy who was A-grade, ten-out-of-ten, five-star boyfriend material. He ticked all the boxes. Handsome and charming and funny and sexy and an all-round nice guy. We fell madly in love and things got serious pretty quickly.

  Unfortunately, one of his exes got her knickers in a twizzle when she heard we were dating, and she embarked on some evil shenanigans to try to win him back.

  Her first attempt was apparently to call my boyfriend and inform him that I was a total slutguts because she’d heard that I was dating three different guys and he, like, really needed to know, so he wouldn’t get hurt.

  Well, this ridiculous high-school melodrama was complete bullshit. I was not dating three guys. Bitch, please! Gag me with a spoon!

  Luckily it didn’t turn into a game of ‘she said, she said’ because my gorgeous fella agreed that the ex was just jealous and talking total bollocks.

  I brushed it off at the time and thought, Wow, that girl really needs to take a chill pill. But girlfriend clearly forgot to get her prescription filled because she then turned up the crazy, tenfold. My boyfriend was mortified when Miss Ex called his sister to warn her that old slutguts Sami had been sprung giving a blow job to a colleague under the table during the live telecast of the TV Week Logie Awards. That is what the ex-girlfriend apparently told my new boyfriend’s family. What a completely heinous thing to do!

  Look, I can appreciate that seeing the man you love with someone new can be tough. And, yes, sometimes women do desperate things to try to rekindle a lost love. But on a scale of one to the-astronaut-who-was-so-desperate-to-get-to-her-lover-that-she-drove-across-America-in-an-adult-nappy-so-she-didn’t-need-to-stop-for-toilet-breaks kind of desperation, Miss Ex was sitting at around an eight. Nudging a nine, even.

  To make matters worse, I hadn’t even met my boyfriend’s family yet. The idea of meeting the parents made me nervous enough already, without having to worry about them thinking I was
some kind of Sami Lewinsky freak as well.

  And just in case you’re wondering about the whole blow job under the table caper? It never happened. At the Logies or anywhere else, for that matter!

  The craziest thing I’ve ever done at the Logies was taking off the million-dollar flawless diamond ring I’d been lent for the night and passing it around the table for everyone to try on. Because who doesn’t want to know what it feels like to wear a million-dollar sparkler, right? It was all fun and games until the security guard who’d been assigned to keep me and the ring company for the evening quietly whispered in my ear, ‘If anyone drops that ring or scratches it, it will no longer be flawless. I suggest you put it back on your finger and stop sharing it around like a bag of chips.’

  Oops. My bad.

  I guess my boyfriend’s family must have already suspected that Miss Ex was telling porkies, because I was welcomed into the family from the moment I met them.

  This ridiculous ex devilry all happened a very long time ago, but it still saddens me to think about it. Mainly because I just don’t understand how a woman could be so despicable to another woman, regardless of how hopelessly lovesick she might be. It’s a bit of a shock to realise that mean-spirited, crazy-arse women don’t only exist as characters in far-fetched daytime TV soaps. Sometimes they are real people who appear in your real life and create real problems that you cannot prevent. It’s how you deal with them that counts.