Rather than chat-up lines and false charm I would get someone interested by telling them good animals facts like:
| • | Bats hang upside down even when they’re dead, as their claws automatically close. | |
| • | Wombat poo comes out in squares. | |
| • | A lot of koala bears have bad backs, as they sit up all day even though their spines aren’t designed for it. |
At least then, if they don’t like me, I haven’t totally wasted their time. They go away with a little nugget of information that they’ll remember, which also means they’ll remember me.
Next, Vinnie told us we were going to be walking on fire.
VINNIE: Why would we walk on fire? Well, most men see women who they want have goals and dreams, and they hesitate. So this is symbolic for charging forward. Interacting with women, you see her in the distance – what comes first? Foot first, everybody. What comes first?
MEN: Foot first.
It didn’t seem like a sensible thing to do, but neither did smashing a piece of wood with my hand. But I’d done that, so I thought I’d give this a go. Plus, I’d had a few verrucas of late from staying in hotels where the bath hadn’t been cleaned properly and I thought this might help get rid of them. While we took off our shoes and socks, Vinnie continued talking. It was relentless. He could do his speech in his sleep, that’s if he had time to sleep between all the having it away. If he wasn’t talking to us he was kissing Valerie, his French girlfriend.
I’m not a fan of people kissing in public either. Fine if it’s a quick peck, but when people are all over each other it does my head in. They seem to think it’s okay to do what they want because it’s ‘love’. Again, in the films when some bloke holds a plane up to get on board to propose to some woman and all the passengers cheer – it’s ridiculous! I wouldn’t feel like cheering. We’d probably have missed our take-off slot and we’d then be waiting on the tarmac for another forty-five minutes. Selfish, that’s what it is. It’s the same with Romeo and Juliet. She was shouting to him from her balcony, yet no one ever considers the person who lived in the ground-floor flat who might have been trying to sleep. As it happens, on this occasion I didn’t mind Vinnie kissing Valerie, as at least it meant he couldn’t speak.
Shoes and socks off, I joined the queue to fire walk. I was in agony. Not from walking on fire but from walking over to the fire. The ground was covered in sharp stones and bits of twig that I’m still removing from my feet now. Vinnie got us to chant ‘Sex NOW, Sex NOW’ as we waited in line. It came to my go. I don’t know what the fuss is about, as it actually didn’t hurt that much. Nowhere near as bad as walking over the ground to the fire. Once we crossed the coals everybody high-fived each other, and Vinnie told us we were ready to put what we’d learned into practice.
Vinnie had rented an apartment where we all met up at 7 p.m. It was a bit of a bachelor pad. Lots of black and red, dim lights, a round bed that rotated, and a shower that could fit fifteen people with a pole in it. I didn’t want to ask why you would want fifteen people in a shower cos I know for a fact that it isn’t because Vinnie wanted to be environmentally friendly. I don’t think I’ve ever had fifteen people in my house at the same time, never mind in my shower. And what is it with pole dancing? I don’t understand it. It seems like a wasted skill to me. Has anyone ever told one of them women who do it that they could probably make a fortune putting up scaffolding? They’d be able to do it in no time.
We headed to the Strip in a huge pink Hummer limo. It was stupidly long, like an aeroplane with the wings taken off. Inside, music was pumping. As we were driving about, Vinnie showed me some YouTube clips of him doing his thing around the world. Basically, videos of him going up to strangers and kissing them, and I’m not talking just a peck on the cheek either. It was like a front cover of a Mills & Boon paperback.
It was a cold night, and as we wandered about on the busy sidewalks Vinnie kept getting us to chant ‘Some will! Some won’t! So what!’, which must have been taught on another day of boot camp, as it was new to me. It has a bit more substance to it than the classic ‘It’s not gonna suck itself!’ Vinnie was also dishing out advice on how to approach girls.
VINNIE: Look both sides, be strong, you gotta go for it, start sooner and start stronger. What is it? Sooner and . . . ?
MAN: Start stronger.
VINNIE: Sooner and stronger, alright. Walk first, foot first, faster. Okay, now you’re ready.
MAN: Yeah.
Vinnie kept using the expression ‘she’s hot’, an expression I’ve never used. Vinnie was in his element, but I couldn’t help thinking he could put his skills to better use by becoming a charity collector. A lot of those blokes in bibs collecting for endangered species seem to use it as an excuse to chat up women, anyway.
Alice, Vinnie’s assistant, asked me what my ‘type’ was, but I don’t really have one. It’s not a battery I’m looking for. I’m sure there are loads of different types of people I could get on with, but I wouldn’t go for someone who is knocking around the busy streets of Vegas at this time of night, as I don’t live that sort of life. I’d prefer to be at home with a Twix watching the telly. And I don’t believe that ‘opposites attract’. Whenever I think of that phrase I always think of the film King Kong. When the big monkey starts fancying Naomi Watts, people in the cinema were crying and wondering, ‘Will they or won’t they get it on?’ As if it was ever going to work out. He was a bloody hundred-foot gorilla! You know every love story has been done when a gorilla is trying it on with a woman. Anyway, Alice wasn’t giving up.
KARL: Have you heard of Kim Wilde? The singer?
ALICE: No.
KARL: Right, well, in the 80s she was alright. In the 90s it was Patsy Kensit. Have you heard of her?
ALICE: Maybe?
KARL: In the late 80s Kylie Minogue was vaguely popular. She was in Neighbours, have you heard of that? Now, I didn’t like her in that, but, come 2000, I thought, ‘She’s alright.’ So it just goes to show, your tastes change.
Thinking about it, I reckon haircuts attract me to women. I’ve had arguments with Suzanne when she lets her hairdresser do what he wants and she comes back with a daft haircut that I then have to put up with until it grows out. Nice hair is important. Look at cats, nice and cuddly. If they were bald they’d have died out by now.
ALICE: Any situation where you’re trying to convince someone to do something, whether it’s to buy a product or to go out with you, whatever it is, the 10–10–80 rule applies. So 10 per cent of people will say no, no matter what. I mean, you can offer them everything under the sun and they’ll say no. Ten per cent will say absolutely yes. You could walk up to a girl with a sign that says ‘Will you sleep with me?’ and they’ll go for it . . . even if you are absolutely disgusting. But the remaining 80 per cent, they’re sitting on the fence, and all the techniques that the pick-up artists will teach you, everything applies to that 80 per cent, because it’s a matter of how skilled you are as to what level you can pull towards you. Those skills – practice really does make perfect, so when you do find that beautiful woman you’re already