OPINION: Our version of courtship involves getting drunk, tripping over the nearest body and a fumble behind the skip out back. Lord help you’re looking for real love – or sober.
But the very worst week of the year to be single was last week. The week directly after Valentine’s. The week when all your happily coupled up friends levitated about, like Botticelli cherubs in Birkenstocks, showing off their chocolates and gold harps.
And you, single pringle, were on the couch staring into the polystyrene abyss of an Uber Eats order for one, thinking: “God, how do you even meet people these days?”
Now I know there’s nothing more delightful than a smugly paired off person, doling out how-to-meet-people advice to singletons with the air of explaining farm yard animals to a four-year-old. But since it’s the week for it, I am going to do it anyway.
But unlike all your other irritatingly paired off friends, my advice is useful.
See, I’ve spent the last decade on the front line of attraction. First as an MC at a male strip club, now at a burlesque club, where it’s my job to meet, host, and charm crowds of emotionally constipated strangers into a state of flirtatious bliss.
I’ve spent a whole decade making extensive notes on the mating ritual of the Kiwi bird. I’m basically David Attenborough with a spray tan. So if you’re looking to bag and tag a dotteral, and whisk them away to the Chathams, this is what I’d say.
You need to talk to a new person every day.
“What,” I hear you snort, “isn’t that a bit excessive??!” No. Not at all. I’m not suggesting you hit on a new person every day. I’m telling you that you need to meet a new person every day and practice talking to strangers.
Firstly on the logic that, if you want to meet people, you need to dramatically increase the number of new people you actually meet. (Crazy, right? Think of it as widening the statistical sample size of the experiment to increase chances of a positive result.)
And secondly, you’re probably bad at it. Which is why you avoid it. Which is why you say it’s hard to meet people. Which is why, when you read that, your first reaction was, “ugh, Vee, I suck at meeting people!”
Precisely. Everyone does – until they have to do it every weekend for a living. But talking to strangers isn’t magical, it’s muscular. Doing it well is just about doing it often. So often that it doesn’t scare you any more. So often that, when someone interesting finally comes along, you’re not scared of striking up a conversation.
And how do you do that? You complement them. Honestly. I swear this is 87% of charm Find something you like about a person – and tell them. Everyone craves praise. But especially in NZ, where we dole it out as parsimoniously as a Victorian mill-owner counting out wages to emaciated 12-year-olds. Everyone is starved for affection – and yet everyone wants to feel special.
So stand in the car park of the gym and tell a man his reverse parking is really impressive. Go to a book launch, sit next to a woman, tell them that their literary themed tote bag is so funny. Sincerity matters. (We know when we’re being lied to.) And context matters. (Don’t do this on the street, do it in a bar.) But do it. (And if they brush you off, it doesn’t matter. You’re just being nice.)
The best piece of advice I ever had for my job is that sex appeal doesn’t start on stage – it starts on the door. The part where someone walks in, and you say hi and ask them how their night is. Because the thing humans crave above all else, is someone who makes us feel noticed. Special. Seen. And, unless you’re an exceptional interpretive dancer, that’ll come down to how you talk to them.
Ask any good stripper, the ones who make serious bank, and they’ll say they’ve got great chat. They make the other person feel like they’re the most fascinating person in the room. And if you can nail that, you’re off to the Chathams. So you need to practice.
But, Vee, can’t I do this on my phone? Nope. All the research consistently finds that our pre-determined ideas of what we think we’re looking for bears virtually no resemblance to what we actually find attractive, i.e. you don’t know what you really like until it pops up in front of you in real life. It’s why apps are so hit and miss. You’re swiping based on what you think you know about your wants. But the truth is, you don’t know yourself. None of us do.
So put your phone down, your headphones out, and talk to the person next to you.
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