Sige, Lumapit ka

Yup, D’Hotdogs were on to something there. And it wasn’t their favorite ’70s pastime.

But first, I must apologize to my three female readers who were expecting my column on Stage 2 of the flirting process to come out last week. I was held up from producing my column by the League of Professional Romantics (composed mostly of 96.3 WRock listeners and wayward souls whose love notes have yet to be answered by Joe D’Mango) who condemned me for making flirting sound as romantic as artificial insemination. "Where has all the magic gone?" they screamed. "It was stolen by that damn David Pomeranz!" I wailed back.

Again, I digress. Sigh, it just hurts to recall that Joe D’Mango still hasn’t answered the letter I sent him back in 1989. So anyway, after Flirting Stage 1 ("The Attention-Getting Phase," a.k.a. "Kulang sa Pansin phase"), when a woman has finally caught you in her super wan-tu-tri glare, it is time for both of you to move on to Flirting Stage 2: "Recognition stage," a.k.a. "Closer You and I stage." (Don’t deny it, I know you can sing the refrain from memory, you big Gino Padilla fan club president, you.)

However, some Martians are just so damn clueless that even when a woman stares at him hard enough to burn a hole through his skull, he might think that he was probably just getting a free lobotomy. At this point, some women grow more irate, more ballistic, more homicidal, more suicidal, want to hit the roof and, to top it all off, gustong kumagat ng tao than Senators who aren’t nominated for the Chief Justice position, so they employ more cunning measures to drag the man into Gino Padilla territory.

According to Flirting 101, The first measure is known as "not da pinger not da pinger yes da pinger yes da pinger": This gesture can be as subtle as a woman staring at the man while curling her fingers with her hands held by the side as a way to beckon him towards her. But if this gesture is too subtle, then she can use the finger curl on the lobotomized Martian: as the woman walks past her victim, she can curl her pointer and middle finger, shove them into his nostrils, and drag him by his nose to her seat.

If the nostrils are not large enough for the ladies to hook their fingers into, the last-ditch measure the woman will employ is called the Todo todo walang preno: This occurs when a woman parades herself in front of a man while pretending to be headed "somewhere" – like towards the wall. As she strolls past him, she will hold her head up high, sway her booty, suck in her puson and arch her back to push out her, ahem, "mimic-buttocks." Fellow Martians who have been fingered, please take note: the woman who passed in front of you was not auditioning for a fashion show, she was flirting with you. If you still let her walk past you and failed to give her any sign that you were interested when she was already sucking in her puson, you have already missed the opportunity to flirt with her and are probably better off pursuing a career as a eunuch.

Now, how do we men make it obvious to the ladies that we are not all a bunch of clueless eunuchs? We learn to flirt back. But trust me, swaying your booty for the ladies does not help. What we need to do instead is to send out our own set of male body language signals that will spell out to the ladies the following: 1) that we are not comatose, 2) that we have a complete and functioning set of equipment and, most importantly, 3) that we are cool.

For those of us who continue to squat at home because we need our yayas cleaning up after us, the idea of being cool may seem as attainable as clean elections. Unfortunately, only by being "cool" can men convey a set of non-verbal signals that make the women more blatant with their own set of flirting cues. But remember, we don’t really need to be cool, we can just pretend to be cool. Or we can channel someone whom we perceive to be cool.

Some people define "cool" as a state of mind where you don’t give a f*^& about what other people think, because you feel that your opinions are superior to those of the socially-inept rabble. If this were the baseline definition of coolness, then I would have to say that the administration congressmen who convened Congress into a Con-ASS are just so waaaay cool. Like the rest of you uncool rabble, I had to take sedatives to prevent from hurting myself when I saw how the way cool congressmen were making the rounds of the news talk shows explaining how the Con-Ass represented the will of the Filipino people. And I thought I was good at making jokes.

Once you are able to channel these honorable gentlemen, then you will have enough confidence to swagger into a bar with your shoulders squared, your stomach held in, your hands tucked into your pockets, and brag to the girls at the bar, "The Senate is so uncool."

However, if channeling congressmen is too much for you too handle, you may want to channel safer although not quite as cool icons. After all, there are a lot of less powerful nevertheless pa-cool ’80s icons you can choose from. For starters, you can look at the picture that appears by the start of this column. But be forewarned: Channeling a pa-cool ’80s person can be just as dangerous because you could end up channeling the wrong icon. Like Jojo Alejar.

After you have exorcised Jojo Alejar from your system, then we can finally move on to channeling Gino Padilla, a.k.a. the "Recognition" stage. There are two steps in the second stage of flirting, wherein women check you out like a dressed chicken.

Step 1: Walk This Way. According to the article "Flirting Female Body Language for Dating," a woman’s DNA is finely tuned to evaluate a man’s body language as they approach her. That is why after a man has been given the "eye," he should approach the woman in a slow and calculated manner. If the man makes one misstep, she will stab him in the gut. This is the reason why men evolved beer bellies: women have been stabbing men in the guts for millions of years. As our beer-bellied ancestors clambered towards a female, the woman had to make a quick decision about whether to stick around and see if this Neanderthal was worthy enough to propagate his genetic material or if he should have his entrails splattered all over the floor.

A woman has a built-in alert/early warning system that allows her to detect both a D.O.M (dirty old man) and a D.O.M.-in-training from a mile away merely by observing how they move towards her. She will first scrutinize his fashion sense from head to toe: if he happens to be wearing a cell phone on his belt or white socks with black shoes or a pair of pleated pants, the woman doesn’t even have to wait for him to come any closer before stabbing him. She can just throw the knife in his general direction, and then run away as fast as she can on her three-inch heels.

The next thing she will observe is the man’s arm movements: if you approach her with your arms or hands on your stomach, she will interpret this as you are preparing to protect your beer gut from the impact of her knife. So approach her with your empty hands by your side. This body language indicates that you are hiding nothing in your palms and that you are a little bit terrified of her. Females find your fear of them amusing and even slightly attractive, as long as you don’t pee in your pants. Then as you come closer to her, smile meekly to indicate, "Please don’t reject me. Can’t you tell that I’ve been channeling Jojo A?" If she smiles back at you as you come closer, this is a sign that she is welcoming you into her personal space. And then you can finally pee in your pants.

Step 2: The Closer I Get to Touching You. The distance you keep from the woman while flirting is important because it will not only affect the quality of the interaction, but it will also keep you out of knife-stabbing range.

After years of countless knife injuries, researchers from the Social Issues Research Center have actually computed the appropriate distance you should maintain from a woman while flirting for the first time. When you are four feet away from her (about two small steps away), you are on the borderline between what is known as the "Social Zone" (or the Willie Revillame Zone), somewhere between four and 12 feet, and the "Personal Zone" (or the Jojo Alejar Zone), somewhere between 18 inches to four feet. This is the average distance that you can maintain in which she can still reject you without having to resort to bodily harm. If you are more or less certain that she is not concealing any bladed weapons, you can move into the "Arm’s Length Zone" (or the Vic Sotto Zone), within two feet six inches (I’m not kidding). However, do not attempt to cross the Sotto Zone and move within 18 inches of her unless you are her gynecologist. The "Intimate Zone" (a level that few mortals have achieved, so I have labeled this the legendary "Dolphy Zone") is reserved only for lovers, family members, close friends and domestic animals.

If a man moves towards a woman from the Willie to the Dolphy Zone in three seconds flat, he deserves to get a free vasectomy. Studies by irate women who have left the League of Professional Romantics reveal that men who invade their personal space – like American servicemen – often turn out to be pushy, controlling and manipulative. There is actually a scientific term for men like these. They are called "leeches." I’m sorry if I have offended any leeches. As a rule of thumb, I usually stand within a 30-foot radius from most women. But this mostly has to do with temporary restraining orders.

Remember, men: any social setting is an opportunity for you to display your inner Jojo A. There are always women who are discreetly watching your every move to see if you can carry yourself like a sociable, well-adjusted male who can interact well with other females in public. Thus, it might be good if you could take along another woman with you to the bar who can help you demonstrate what a ladies’ man you are to those stealthy females. It would be preferable to take someone whom you are comfortable with in social situations, and who wouldn’t mind it so much if you had to leave her for a bit to talk to other women. In fact, this woman would be glad that other women are finally paying attention to you. This is a woman whom you have been intimate with, but not on a romantic level.

Although I notice when I bring my mom with me to bars, the girls still don’t seem to pay attention to me. I really don’t know why.

* * *

For comments, suggestions or if you can’t exorcise Jojo A, please email ledesma.rj@gmail.com or visit www.rjledesma.com