Trouble In A Bubble.

Lou vs Melbourne Lair

I took out my phone and took a photo of us both on a street corner in Melbourne, my arm around her, with us both smiling widely.

Lou said “Let’s do something we’ve never done before!” I thought of how she used to always say that to me, when she was my girlfriend, when I lived in Maitland. Once I said to her “alright we’re going to karaoke together, and you’re going to sing”. She protested. She was scared I guess. So was I.

“But you’re always saying we should do something new and exciting.” I said.

I had to force her to get up, and stand with her while she was singing.

What we ended up doing first on that night in Melbourne wasn’t really anything new. Actually it was one of the first things we did together. We went and saw a movie.

It must have been about two years since we’d broken up.

We saw “Sex in the City”. I couldn’t help laughing periodically. The characters were so silly, like little girls. Yet at the same time I had a startling awareness that this is a more or less reliable picture, if not a caricature, of how a woman acts. Like leaves in the wind.

Mr. Big has a moment of doubt, cold feet. Decides maybe he won’t marry Carrie. Then as he’s driving away, he changes his mind. Meanwhile, Carrie is freaking out. She’s so embarrassed that it was supposed to be her special day and her groom couldn’t even show up. Boo hoo. It takes a year to forgive him.

We’re walking down the stairs at Melbourne Central. Lou says “So what now?”

I’m like “well, I have this thing in Brunswick… You can come if you like.”

“Thing? What thing?”

“A lair meeting.”

“Huh?”

“Where guys get together and talk about how to pick up women.”

“Oh right… Okay!”

I was actually thinking to myself that it would be pretty funny to bring Lou, who is the ultimate naïve, oblivious innocent in the world, to a lair meeting. It was.

We took the tram up Sydney road. Texted Aster for the address. Got there and it was locked. Two Asian guys were choding around outside.

“Are you community?”

“Yeah.”

After standing around wondering if we were out the front of the right building, on the right road, in the right suburb… eventually I got Aster to come out and let us in.

Everyone was sitting in a sort of classroom. We were like twenty minutes late. We tried to sneak in and sit on the floor in front of the speaker without anyone noticing.

Guys from The Natural were speaking. These guys were something of an anomaly in the community. Most of them had been picking up girls, or at least trying to, before they ever heard of “The Game” or Mystery Method or any of it. The books they read when they were coming up was stuff like “Awaken the Giant Within”, “How to Win Friends and Influence People”, and Tantric sex manuals.

James was a six foot tall guy dressed simply, wearing black, with a full mane of dark hair that he would stop speaking every few minutes to flick out of his eyes in a somewhat effeminate gesture.

“So tell me, when you’re approaching a girl, what’s in your mind? What’s the thing that you want to get out of it? What do you want?”

I smiled and said “To get laid”. Everyone laughed. James is like “Absolutely, that’s definitely one reason.”

Some guy up the back was like “To find out whether she’s interesting and whether you’d want to date her.”

I forget where he went with that.

“You know, a lot of people ask me when were my best moments doing this stuff. Like which moments were the ones that gave me the mind-blowing epiphanies, or the things that changed my perspective forever. Was it the time I spent a year seducing the blonde Russian scientist that I met at Centrelink? No it wasn’t… though that was pretty cool.

“Actually one of the times I learnt the most… I was at Bimbo’s, talking to this girl for two hours. I was thinking, this is on, everything’s set… Logistics are perfect, I only live in Northcote. Then all of a sudden, she gets swept up by this other guy and leaves with him. It’s Wednesday night, 3 a.m. I walk out of Bimbo’s and there’s not a soul in sight.

“Then I think to myself… I’m going to strut home. And I did.”

The next speaker was Shae. He was a business type guy in a suit. He had a Tony Robbins vibe about him. Or more of a professional guy with not a lot of soul. He lead us through some hypnosis exercises.

Then young Tim spoke. He looked like a little boy, dressed up in his suit. I remember the tie worn bare, hanging on to itself by a thin thread, but that’s probably just how I remember it. He couldn’t have been older than 22. He did a little demonstration, talking to a guy and a girl and showing how, even though he had the same conversation, the intent was different, because he was flirting. Somehow he segued into flirting with Lou. Kind of smooth actually. Asked if I was her boyfriend. She was like “Noooo…”

The Natural took a break before opening the floor to questions.

…Lou came back from the bathroom. “You know, people think it’s weird how I stop and meet people in the bathroom”

She’d met a girl, Danni, in the bathroom. Danni was bisexual and was at the meeting with her boyfriend. She invited Lou to a party on the weekend, and got her number.

I laughed. “She was picking you up, Lou.”

“What? No, she’s got a boyfriend.”

“Yeah, she’s got a boyfriend, she’s bisexual, and she’s at a lair meeting. When you put two and two together, there’s another number that they equal. And in this case, it’s three.”

“She wasn’t trying to pick me up, Jones. She’s got a boyfriend.”

“Exactly, and she invited you to a ‘party’. Well, perhaps there is a party. But probably not.”

“What do you mean? You can come too if you like, it’ll be fun.”

“Sure, text me the details… when you get them.”

After the questions, I went to the toilet and came back.

Tim is talking to Lou afterwards… Flirts with her. I remember he kept rocking out for a moment and coming back, like he was about to leave. Somehow we’re talking about feeling a person’s presence in the room. Lou says how when she first saw me she thought “hmm who is this guy?”

“Sure, I had my nimbus on.”

Tim said “The nimbus huh? I call it the X factor.”

Lou said “The Jones factor” and Tim half-laughed.

I extended my hand to Tim and said “By the way, I’m Jones.”

he’s like oh right, that makes sense then.

I start telling him how I met Lou when we were doing drama together, we were in a play together and so on.

He’s like “oh really, that’s cool. So how do you guys know each other?” (which is actually a classic community line, to try to find out who is the boyfriend and who is the boyfriend’s brother in a group of people, but at that moment it didn’t occur to me, so I said:)

“Uh… just what I said a second ago. We did drama together.”

Months later, I heard through the grapevine that Tim didn’t do all that much picking up, he just sat at home in the Natural house and read self-help books. But then, if that was true, why would they pay him.

Lou and I had the same excitable vibe, standing there and waving our arms around. We must have seemed like brother and sister, to most people. But Tim thinks she’s there with me, not just with me.

Tim followed with another line of questioning, to Lou “So, what brings you here anyway?”

“Well I just went and watched the Sex in the City movie and Jones said I should come with him to check this out.”

Tim turned to me and said “Really? You’ve got guts.” saying it, not exactly as a compliment. Almost as if I was stupid to bring her there. Then turned to Lou “You too.”

I said “Heh yeah, I thought it would be funny. Joke’s on Lou.”

Of course Lou is like “Huh? What joke? I don’t get it.”

It’s kind of funny because Tim is obviously interested in Lou, but thinks she’s there on a date with me, but doesn’t ask directly. Lou is mostly oblivious, but she likes Tim because he flirted with her during his speech. I think I actually promised her she wouldn’t get singled out, but in the end she loved the attention. Hah. And me, i’m just sort of, there.

Tim walks off to talk to some other people. I say to Lou before we leave “so, are you going to get Tim’s number?”

She’s like “No!”, embarrassed, even though she likes him.

We catch the tram back to my place. Some guy from the lair gets Lou’s phone number and gives me a cheeky grin. I exchange phone numbers with this friendly geeky guy who does the web design for The Natural.

Lou mentions the bit where James asked what a guy’s intentions might be when he approaches a woman.

“What that other guy said sounded like such a clichéd response, like that’s what a girl would want to hear. Yours was a bit more genuine.”

“Actually, I think what I said was a textbook response. To get laid…”

“To find out if she’d make a good girlfriend…”

“Maybe it seems silly to you, but you’ve gotta believe that that guy was sincere to the heart. Guys don’t come to lair meetings because they have an overabundance of masculine energy… mostly. They come because they’re fuzzy little huggle snuggles who want affection. They come because they have too much feminine energy.”

I took her back to my place. She slept in my bed, like I was her girlfriend. She wouldn’t kiss me.

Related Posts:

• Picking-Up Artistry Tips for the Average Everyday Normal Mundane Mufker
• Pick-Up Lines For The 21st And A Halfth Century