honest dave
Only those who struggle to live, truly live

I know that, among a certain cross-section of my readers, my writing has been further and further alienating me from you. No doubt the following treatise will continue that trend.

Now there are some blessed guys who can just walk into a room and fuck any sheila they see. And usually it isn’t based on anything more than winsome good looks, and a decent body.
And, really, whats to be learned about the art of seduction from these chaps ? They’ll just tell you that you just have to be confident, and that girls aren’t interested in money or good looks and blah blah blah all that fuckin’ bullshit.

Others get roots by their tenacity, and their concrete ego that is completely resistant to denials and turn-downs. There are men for whom the words ‘no’, and ‘get fucked’, mean absolutely nothing.

And on the flip-side, other guys, even good-looking rich ones, who just don’t seem to have the ability to completely self-efface and degrade themselves, which obviously is required when you want to convince some sheila to engage in primitive one-off sexual rituals.

So I am going to pass on what I have discovered. I am offensive to more than one sense, I lack any semblance of decorum, I am too lazy to even bother holding in my farts. No money. No idea of fashion. In fact I have, at first glance, absolutely nothing that a pretty lass might desire.
So it’s tough. I have had to slough away all the fluff and find the essence of it all. What is it all about ? How do us blokes find ourselves a half-decent sheila to root on a Friday night?

Seduction is that simplest of all relationships, that of killer whale and seal, eagle and hare. One person is the dingo, the other the baby; one the spider, with Armani and Rolex web, the other the fly; one the cobra, hypnotising with seductive moves and sultry smile, the other the chicken.

This is it. One chases, and one flees. Remember this always. And be conscious of which of the two you are. Because if you chase her, she will run. But if you give her a taste of something she likes, and back off, then she will chase you. So many interactions in this world are simply the echoes of anthropological archetypal roles. Knowing this allows you to better objectively view the situation.

And don’t allow yourself to become angry, or frustrated. Just remember lads – if you were a girl, would you let some hairy oaf such as yourself, penetrate your body with a sweaty and unwashed member?

The Chat-Up Line

I don’t fuckin’ know about this. All I can suggest is this: be in a foreign country when chatting up chicks. The old cowboy hat with corks swinging from it and the limp rolly dripping from my lips with a Hi I’m Dave from Australia can I buy you a drink just doesn’t seem to work so well in the Royal Hotel in Toowoomba.

In bars in America : ‘ Excuse me darling, I can never remember which one of the coins is the nickel and which is the dime.’ I mean it doesn’t matter what you fuckin’ say, they just gotta hear the accent, and you’re immediately one step ahead of all the other punters.
Her ears prick: ‘This one’s, like, the nickel, and like, this one’s the dime.’
‘Oh right, but it’s all fucked up, I mean this one is bigger than that one, but it’s worth less.’
And her face lights up when she realises how difficult it must be for me. ‘Yeah you’re right, I’d, like, never really thought about it ! So which part of England are you from ?’
A question !! Lions ask questions, deer answer them. The rule of thumb: if you’ve asked five questions, and she’s asked none, give up. Find another hunting patch.

If you absolutely have to be in your own country when chatting up girls, or in a country where your accent is reviled, then it immediately becomes a lot harder.
You could try this one: ‘Don’t you hate it that it’s the year 2007, but we still don’t have flying cars ?’
Witty as this is, it never works, apart from to mingers who would probably react well to you saying that the hormones you’ve been taking have really been making your haemorrhoids itch.

I met this Irish dude, who always appraoches women by telling them that he knows they’ve been building up the confidence to come over and chat to him, but that he thought he’d save them the anguish and come and join them himself.
He’s turning the tables. He is trying to make himself the deer, thus making them the lions. This is the goal. If they become the lion, if you just see a flash of the lion in their eyes then it is all on.
This is the juice, that ancient courtship of death and love-making.

The Approach

Little by little. Learn by the panther. He watches for their movements, he learns from them during the approach.

It’s all about two things, rhythm and momentum.
It’s gotta be reminiscent of what is to come, that being the rhythmic tattoo of your balls slapping against her arsehole, and the swelling momentum toward the kind of spine-shuddering climax that leaves her in a neck-brace.
Even if you have never given a girl a screaming spine-shuddering climax in your life, they aren’t to know. Everything about you should indicate these two things, rhythm and momentum.
NEVER PUT YOURSELF DOWN. Although feel free to leave yourself open so that she can do it ; because if she puts you down, this is the lion doing it, and you want to bring out the lion in her, so that she will want to chase you down and devour you.
So. Small steps. How do you go from not even knowing a girl, to being inside her body in the course of one evening when you are a minging bastard who doesn’t wear deodorant.
(not wearing deodorant is useful, don’t get me wrong – if you don’t manage to pick up, you can always blame that. Great for protecting the ego.)

The age-old ritual of gift exchange. Gifts are vital, especially if you don’t share a common language. If she accepts a gift, even if it’s only a peanut or some chips or a drink, this is a great sign. She has accepted something of yours, psychologically a part of you. Don’t buy off those motherfucker Iranians that wander round trying to pressure you into buying roses, don’t encourage them. And don’t kiss a chick’s hand. I used to do that gallant shit back when I had long hair, and smoked too much grass and never got laid. And it never fuckin’ works.

Get them to touch you or hit you. This is the lion that hits you. Walk around with one side of your collar upturned, it drives Virgos fuckin’ crazy, and they will accost you and fix it up. Say something rude and out of order, so they slap your arm.

Make sure the conversation is always building toward something. And make sure that it is emotional. What emotion doesn’t matter. Make sure that they can feel the chemicals burning in their blood.
You don’t remember the conversation in a night, you remember the emotion. ‘I don’t remember what I had in that restaurant, but I remember that the waiter was an arsehole.’
Make her laugh, embarrass her, annoy her, offend her, praise her (though not too much or you’ll show too much of the lion and she’ll run away), make her feel some emotion. Make shit up. Fantasise. DO NOT, AFTER A PREGNANT PAUSE, ASK HER WHAT SHE DOES FOR A LIVING. This is admission of failure on your part, a lack of imagination. Ask her what job she dreams of. Ask her what name she would like to have, and call her that all night.
And always build toward something. Keep the momentum.
Conversation is not an exchange of ideas, but an exchange of emotion, of juices.

And obviously, keep her drinking. Vital. I mean what sober woman would want some drunk munter doing that to them !

Always have your mates (preferably female if you can manage that) nearby. If this girl can see that you have friends, she can see that you are not some serial killing freak.
Same applies when hitch-hiking, if you have a chick with you you’ll get a ride that much easier.
If the girl is out with a friend, find her a guy to talk to. If you don’t there is absolutely no way this friend of hers is going to let your girl go home with you. Girls suck like that.

GET HER TO DRINK OUT OF YOUR GLASS, OR GET A WAY TO DRINK OUT OF HERS.
‘Um, Esmeralda, does this drink taste alright to you ?’
or….
‘What are you drinking ? Really, a vodka and lemonade, I’ve never tried that, do you mind… ?’

If she drinks out of your glass or lets you drink out of hers, this little mix of saliva is a definite bond, and you are that much closer. Now I am not saying that if she drinks out of your glass she will definitely fuck you, but I am saying that if she doesn’t, she won’t.

Now one definite bridge between the act of not having sex with a girl, and having sex with a girl is dancing. This, for me, is absolutely vital. I mean if you leave my conversation to it’s own devices for more than 30 minutes we are guaranteed to be talking about how as I get older my farts are starting to sound more and more like my old man’s farts, presumable because my sphincter is getting more and more slack, like the elastic on an old pair of jocks. And no girl wants to hear that.
When you’re dancing, you don’t have to talk, and this is where we can show off our rhythm ; our control, our understanding of her needs, we can hold her, all the stuff that chicks want when she is in the sack. She is transferring everything you do on the dancefloor to what you will be doing in bed.
Well I am only guessing thats what she’s doing, because that’s what I am doing.
If you can’t dance, learn. And think of all those birds you’ll meet while you’re learning.
And if the dancing goes well, the pounce is non-existent, if she’s drunk, and you’re a decent dancer, slowly she will be completely within your embrace, and not kissing her would suddenly seem wrong.

The Pounce

This is really where you really throw caution to the wind.

Watch a cat stalk a magpie. It is done in slow steps. Piece by tiny piece. Slowly, imperceptibly forward. And there is always the pounce, the hardest damn thing apart from possibly approaching her, or maintaining an interesting conversation while drunk… ok so it’s all hard. But the sad fact of the matter is, there is always the pounce, where you let out all stops, and invite her back to yours, or go in for the kiss, or whatever, where you open yourself, and wait for her to either stab you right in the ego with a shake of the head and a collecting of the handbag, or whether she gives up her pollen.
But just watch that cat. If he pounces to early, the bird will fly. If he creeps forward, slowly forward, so that the bird doesn’t even see the approach, it becomes simple mathematics.

How to know if she is willing to accept your tongue in her mouth? Is she touching you? When she goes away to the toilet, does she actually come back and sit with you? When you are slow-dancing with you, does she not recoil at your half-mongrel nestled in her groin?
Is there a mirror behind the bar – when you stand up and walk away, check to see if she is checking out your arse as you walk away.

Your inhibition is your worst enemy here.

So crush your inhibition with drugs, and strong drink. And crush hers as well with cocktails. Long Island Iced Teas are deceptively potent.

A Few Inspiring Sentences

Pray for rain, or cold weather so the two of you can huddle beneath umbrellas, or jackets.

I think first kisses have been made more in train stations than any other place, so hang around train stations.

Apparently the chemicals that induce love and lust are the same that are generated after a hot curry, or a horror movie, so keep that in mind when considering a place to go for a date.

We want distance and cool-ness in our demeanour, not the panicked desperation for sex induced by having balls filled to the brim with sperm. So have a wank before going out. Although the sex later won’t feel as gratifying, this is hardly the point.

I hope this is useful chaps. And good luck out there.

I knew the fart was coming long before it happened, and I was really anticipating it with some excitement.
Theresa once told me that I had ‘impulse-gratification’ issues. This was obviously some expression she’d picked up off Oprah, but she did have a point. I mean it doesn’t occur to me, even if I’m on a date, to hold in my farts. I just let it gush out, and then take deep breaths to try and inhale all the stink before it spreads. Denying your urges, restraint, this is what causes cancer.
I don’t know what the Japanese teachers (that is the real teachers) thought of me, this 187cm gorilla that strides in for an hour every Monday morning and can’t communicate with anyone, and strides out, having done nothing, taught nothing, and achieved nothing, and yet is probably getting paid double what the real teachers who spend all day wiping toddlers arses are getting.
But after another all night karaoke binge for no discernible reason, this particular Monday morning was something special. I dragged my hungover carcass to the kindergarten. I was hunched over double. My saggy muscles could barely haul my bulk up the stairs and over the baby-gate.
As usual the kids screamed in terror at my arrival, and scattered like pigeons. And I sat down among the shitty, snotty, slimy little creatures.
Natsuki was the only one who would ever come near me. She only did this because she enjoyed excavating bits of snot out of her nose and putting them in my mouth, or my ear. I would hold up the English flashcards. « Its an apple ! It’s a banana ! That’s it ! Good on ya Natsuki. » I’d give her the card as a reward. She would go and tear it up, or hide it, or use it to interfere with her little playmates, who were hiding in fear in different corners of the classroom.
Let me iterate: I taught these kids NOTHING.

This particular morning I had, under my armpits, huge sopping sweatstains forming replicating self-similar fractal paisleys. A waxy secretion seeped from my pores, like maggots squirming from maggot-holes attracted to carrion. My skin was lacquered – when I washed my face after class, the water beaded and raced around, like mercury.
It was while washing my face – after class, mind you, when it was too late – that I first saw my reflection that day. My teeth were all grapestained from red wine. It looked like I’d been down on my hands and knees eating the loam of gravesoil before class. My teeth were lines of half decayed tombstones.
There we were. Like a swamp. I was hot and mucky, it was damp. My teeth felt like they were falling out, loose and rattling in their gum-sockets. My scalp felt tight like the skin of a drum.
Eyes were lolling in my head and I don’t think they were mine. I was beaming on automatic, above on a flying fox.
—————————–
I could anticipate the coming fart like the way a sailor can anticipate a storm by the anvil-shaped clouds.
A stream of lumpy silver bubbles that started at the base of my throat or somewhere deep in my chest coursed through my body, exiting through my arsehole. My sphincter, slack from the amount of booze wasn’t tight enough to vibrate, it just wobbled soundlessly.
And this fart just poured out all juicy and loose. The hackles on the back of my neck started to rise, and the barometer on the piano twitched to life. The blu-tac got all moist and the posters starting peeling and sliding off the walls. A fly dropped off the ceiling.
As the putrid fetor slowly engulfed the room, the kids started going nutty, their irises reduced to pinpricks. It wasn’t as though the fart was sending them crazy, but as though it’d awakened the insanity inside them. Much as a glass of wine awakens your tastebuds in preparation for a mouthful of chocolate mousse, or masturbation enlivens your sense of hearing.
And that fart kept pouring out, foaming, frothing out, like when spring tears apart winters iron grip, and the glaciers deliquesce into streams behind the ice which pour into rivulets into tiny waterfalls into rivers carrying great cracked pieces of iceberg.
I know I am using a lot of moist-sounding words to describe this fart, but it was mostly dry. Although I was only to find this out for sure when I got home.
Actually I tell a lie, I couldn’t carry the burden of suspicion with me all the way home, and I checked my jocks after class in Daiei’s toilet.
Given the buoyancy of flatulence, it being warm air, I could slowly feel weight soaking back into my body. As the fart was freed from its confinement, I felt gravity tightening. It caressed my entire being like a sedative, with it’s soothing numbness, an old friends welcome home. I slid back into my Dave-shaped hollow in the world, like a peach pit being replaced into its perfect snug fit, into its cosy crater at the centre of the peach.
And the unholy stink. Forgive me father, a pestilential quagmire it was. It’s miasma stuck to me like chewing gum. It clung, like an unpleasant rumour, an unwanted nickname. A yeasty phantom, unable to leave the site of its death. The rank stench was so beyond that of a mortal fart that it wasn’t even recognisable as one, anymore than a baby would see it’s own potential in spilled semen. It’s smell had so eclipsed foul that I smelled it with more than one of my five senses. My tongue got hairy, and white spots splashed in my vision.
The other teacher was in fact my employer. Her name was Hiromi. She was a forty-year old Japanese woman. I tried to look everywhere save at her. “It’s a tiger! Grrrrr! It’s a cat! Meow!” But a quizzical look gathered about her brow, like clouds collecting on mountain peaks. She was on the other side of the room, far from Ground Zero.
Away from the epicentre, the stink had, no doubt, dissipated, and it probably just smelled like a fat man had defecated after eating a tin of dog food. She stood up. Suspicious. She approached. Closer. And closer. My tongue was fat and bloated with guilt. This is the end. I have nothing to my name, not a rag of decency.
The kids were going berserk, clawing at, and inserting things into one another.
Blindly, fiercely ignoring my boss, I continued handing out the cards: “It’s a motorcycle!” “It’s a rocket! That’s it Natsuki!” Hiromi entered the circle. The bunch of grapes that was my heart shriveled and shrank into a kid-size pack of sultanas.
Then she did something, which filled me with a new emotion.
It was an exquisite mélange, of equal parts humiliation and acquittal. Of base muck-dwelling shame, and relief bordering on white-light spirituality.
She reached down for Natuski, picked her up, and checked the back of her nappy. And then she did the same to the next kid, and the next. To find out which one of the dirty, filthy, unhousetrained little savages it was who had shat ‘emselves.

I meant to but I lost my phone. I lost your number. My battery was dead.
I meant to but I was busy. I was out of town. I had no credit. No battery. I had to stay late after work. There’s no reception in my apartment.
I meant to but I had an unexpected visitor. I had to go see my mum. My uncle’s sick. My grandmother’s dying. My sister just got a new job. I meant to but I had an emergency at home. I got called away. My beeper went off.

It’s not you it’s me – I’m not ready for a serious relationship.
Honestly you don’t want me, I’m crap.
You were kind of a rebound thing. I’m leaving town in a month anyway.
Listen I’m really sorry, I’m gay. I’m not a relationship kinda guy.

Christ.
It’s because you can’t dance, alright ?
You’ve got a lisp. You’ve got acne. Your left nipple is, like, three times as big as your right one.
I don’t like your fashion sense. You smell funny. You’ve got that strange kind of mutated ear thing going on. You bullshit on about crap when you’re drunk. You get jealous when I am out with my friends.
My mates wouldn’t like you. You listen to Celine Dion. You’ve got a crap job. You’ve got a flabby stomach. You’ve got big hams, big flanks. You flare your nostrils.
I can’t make you come. Your hands are bigger than mine.
You shave off your eyebrows and then draw them back on with black pen.
You don’t shave your eyebrows.
You get all gooey whenever you see kids, and then everyone realises that I am holding you back from your dream of wanting kids, and they think I’m a fuckhead.
You have an annoying accent. You watch breakfast TV. Your teeth aren’t white enough.
You chew your nails. You steal the covers. You snort when you laugh.
Is that what you wanna hear ?