Would you like to jingle my bells?

Welcome to the third part of our series on flirting. After the Attention-Getting a.k.a. "Kulang sa Pansin" Stage and the Recognition (a.k.a "Closer You and I") Stage comes the riskiest escalation point in the flirting game: the Small Talk (a.k.a. "More Than Words") Stage. And small talk begins with the most dreaded one-sided conversation known to modern man: the pickup line. 

In legitimate establishments, the pickup line is the first comment a man makes when approaching a woman. The pickup line is a rite of passage, much like adolescent circumcision, but much more painful.  

Why are we men (and women) so wary of pickup lines? Is it because they sound more contrived than the plots of Pinoy teleseryes?  Or is it because any sane non-medicated female can see through the pathetic wordplay and interpret your pickup line as "I am making a horribly clumsy pass at you because I want to know if there is an infinitesimal chance that you might want to voluntarily remove your clothes and share genetic material with me"?

If you think about it, the only people who will ever know that you failed miserably while using a pickup line aside from your friends would be her friends, the customers at the bar, the bartender, the waiters, the parking attendants, the takatak boys spying you from the street corner and that usyusero beside your table who recorded the whole fiasco on his cellphone and plans to upload it onto the Internet once he gets home.   

There is actually some basis for this fear. According to the online article Flirting Female Body Language for Dating, there are three primal needs that lie in the old limbic system of the male brain: the desire to hunt, the desire to propagate our genes, and the desire to drink hideous amounts of alcohol. So whenever a man approaches a woman with a pickup line, he feels as if everyone in the room is watching him to see how good a hunter he is. But after the woman shoves the pickup line up the man’s least favorite orifice, the man limps away and prepares to make out with as many beer bottles as humanly possible.  

Since I enjoy experimenting on myself, I fabricated my own witty pickup lines, infused them with some holiday cheer, and field-tested their effectiveness among my female cousins during our Christmas reunion. I recommend you try these pickup lines yourself, if you are into sadomasochism: "Hi, do you want me to stuff your stocking?" or "Do you want to check out my red-nosed reindeer?" or "Did you know that you look good enough to elf?" After these pickup lines escaped my lips, my female relatives were jockeying for the opportunity to crush my jingle bells. 

The second problem with pickup lines lies with our livers — that organ is just too damn slow at metabolizing alcohol. And this is something women must learn to accept about men and alcohol: Anything we say when we are drunk will always sound like it deserves a Nobel Prize. Think about it: Don’t most pickup lines sound like they’ve been belched out from the minds of piss-drunk men? "Yeah, you gotta compliment the laaaydeess beeefore you shtaaart talking to them. Shhaay something niiice about their makeup, or outfit or… soooomething.  And don’t talk toooo long ‘coz you wanna get into their paaants right after dat. So whaddayasay to the laaaydees? Hmmm… oh, I got it! (belch) Nice shoes, wanna f%^&…?"

Unfortunately, as long as our testicles and our livers are attached to our bodies, there may be no biological means to develop better pickup lines. Nevertheless, we can still jazz up our lines while at the same minimizing bodily harm. In other words, we can still be crass, but crass with style.   

• We can try to be clever and intellectual (i.e. "What a fine pair of shoes. I like the way the strap hugs your ankle. Those must be Manolo Blahniks. Can we have sex now?").

• We can try to be unique and show that we’re not like the rest of those perverts (i.e. "Nice shoes. And I haven’t had fantasies about you in chocolate body frosting and coconut shavings. Yet. Can we have sex later?").

• We can go for a cavalier and even rude approach (i.e. "Those shoes are so out of season! Can we have sex right here?").

So, is there any hope for the pickup line? Or should the clueless single man just stay at home, lock himself in his banyo, and enjoy the company of his favorite men’s magazines? 

As you contemplate which pickup line will work better than my jingle bell one, allow me to leave you with a little cautionary tale. This was an actual line used on my girlfriend while she was still in law school. 

Legal eagle: "Excuse me, do you know how much a penguin weighs?"

Incredulous girlfriend: "What!? No." 

Legal eggless: "Well, neither do I. But don’t worry, I just wanted to find a way to break the ice."

He is now facing the death penalty.

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For comments, suggestions or the worst pickup lines that have made you think twice about producing offspring, e-mail me at ledesma.rj@gmail.com.