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 gonna have that ability.
As much as some of what Alice said made sense, it’s just not the way I work, so I left Vinnie and his followers to it. People who I’ve gone out with have been friends of friends who I’ve got to know over time, so there was no going up to strangers and trying to chat them up needed. I didn’t even like a couple of them that much to start with, but then we ended up getting on over time. It’s like my relationship with olives. They were always plonked on a table when I went out for dinner even though they were not requested, and I didn’t like them. Couldn’t see the attraction. I didn’t even look at them. But over time I got used to seeing them, tried them one night, and now I love them. This is the way it works for me. Each to their own, though.
THE SCIENCE OF ATTRACTION
One of the main problems with trying to find a partner is that we leave too much of the decision up to our eyes. Too much is based on looks. So I was curious about where I was going next on my trip. It was a pheromone party at a bar called Los Globos in LA. This is a new way of meeting people using your nose. Rather than the way people look, you go for their smell. There must be something in this concept, as it’s going back to basics and using other senses to find the right partner, just like the cavemen and -women must have done.
The smell of someone isn’t something you ever think about, is it? On the way out to Vegas I watched the film Frankie and Johnny with Al Pacino and Michelle Pfeiffer. I thought she was quite attractive, but she might really stink, for all I know. All these good-looking Hollywood types – Angelina Jolie, Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon – they could all stink to high heaven. It makes sense now. We see all these showbiz stunners splitting up from each other all the time and we think, ‘God, why aren’t they happy, she’s really nice.’ It’s probably cos they stink. If someone stinks, how can you live with them? If you’ve ever had dogshit on your shoe, you’ll know you can’t think about anything until you get rid of the smell. You can trust your nose more than your eyes too, as eyes don’t focus on the right things. The number of times my eyes are busy looking at my phone or the newspaper and forget to check on the toast, it’s the nose that says, ‘Your toast is burning!’ My nose never gets tired either. After fourteen or fifteen hours eyes need to sleep, yet the nose keeps going.
The T-shirt I had been wearing since I left London was placed in a plastic freezer bag with the number fifty written on a Post-it note. Blue Post-it notes for men, pink for women. Everyone there was sniffing bags searching for a pheromone match. If you found a smell you liked, it meant you were attracted to that person’s pheromones.
WOMAN ON FRONT DESK: Pay close attention to the screen, because women who like your scent will take your bag and hold it up, and if you’d like to go and talk to that lady, go and talk to her.
There were plenty of bags on the tables as well as a few cups of coffee beans. These were there to be sniffed between each bag to reset your nose senses. A bit like a palate cleanser, like a sorbet. It wasn’t long before I found a smell that I liked, so I went and had my photo taken with it like the woman on the front desk told me to. I went back to the table and found another. Either there were quite a few women who were well suited to me, or I’d just found out that my nose is a bit of a slag.
It’s funny how smells stay with you and bring back memories, even horrible smells. The mustiness of one bag I smelled reminded me of a woman from the estate I grew up on who was known as Scruffy Sandra. She used to get a full seat to herself on the bus cos of her smell. The thing is, though, sometimes women wear so much perfume it makes me wonder what they are trying to hide. It makes me suspicious. My favourite smell is fresh air. When Suzanne has been out and comes in I like that smell. And it’s free. Or when she’s cooked a Sunday dinner and her hair smells of lamb chops.
MAN: The first one is better than the second one?
KARL: Yeah, because that was forced on me when the woman sort of said you’ve got to smell this. I was expecting something better.
MAN: Right, right, right, yeah, that kinda turned me off too.
KARL: Oh Jesus, that should be binned.
MAN: Do you go for guys too?
KARL: No. Oh, is that a bloke’s?
MAN: Blue Post-it is guys.
KARL: Oh yeah . . . Forgot. Jesus. It wants bloody burning that does.
Getting
