Throwing A Straight Ball

History has been plagued by great mysteries, like spontaneous combustions, crop circles, how Bush ever became president and who framed Roger Rabbit.

Then came the interception of puberty and humanity was forever intrigued on the secret of sealing the deal on a date. For anyone that isn’t an insurance agent – or financial planners as they so prefer to be addressed in a futile ruse to blindside us – that would mean sex.

And yet, books have been written, dating manuals have been proliferated, movies have been made and you sometimes question the creditability of these as anything more than wank fodder. Sure, we all know what to do on a date, the things to say, the clothes to wear and the drugs to administer. Yet how much of theory do we actually practice?

Having game is all about the execution of it. Two people can do the same thing and get different results. A hot girl dancing seductively gets cheered. A whale doing the same thing gets bread thrown at her. Yes sure she’ll appreciate it but if we really could have our way, we would punch her. Twice. Then kick her when she’s down.

Yet beyond this, is a simple fabric of chance, woven so intricately in the whole complex canvas of flirting that people overlook. Most people don’t realize this, but the fastest way to sleep with anyone, is to actually be candid about it. Words may change but the gist of it should always remain. My personal preference is,

“I want to fuck you.”

The other great line to get someone into bed is to throw up that L word, that without truth sounds as vulgar as the word ‘Stop’ to me. Hands up if you ever said ‘I love you’ just to score with someone and actually succeeded, because I believe there is enough of you to contend for a new denomination. But the consequence of manipulating ‘love’ comes with the burden of trivialities like dinner, movie dates and silly late night phone sessions.

On the other hand, telling anyone that you have an interest in sleeping with them has tons of meritorious value. For one, honesty as I believe, is still a virtue even in a society with an ailing moral fibre.

Secondly, your success or failure is almost instantaneously revealed. You have now effectively eliminated all second guessing and petal peeling. If you are really lucky, you might get to skip movie dates altogether.

Their response and your subsequent reaction to it, is planned out in a simple flowchart.

If they said no, you can ascertain your success rate on the next attempt. If there was trauma or surfeit of repulsion or they attempted to hit you, then I’m pretty sure they are serious about not fucking you. If there was hesitation or any glint of a grin, then they are not being honest with you and you have to ask yourself if you really want to sleep with liars.

If they said yes, then well, you saved so much time. You can then now skip dinner, shop for a condom and thank me for everything.

Obviously, we have to practice our own discretion when it comes to this. Popping this question to a random person without the intemperate presence of alcohol is tickling success to scorn you. The other great thing about alcohol is that when someone has enough of it, ‘I want to fuck you’ sounds a lot less vulgar and a lot more romantic.

Understanding a person’s reaction is imperative to your success. Naturally, it doesn't always succeed and I’ve had people yelling at me before, but being Butterfly and my initial disclaimer of being an ass, gives me impunity for any severe backlashes. Then, there are the successes –of which a good number of you reading this should already know.

And I narrate this only as a theoretical beauty of honesty.

If you know me in person, then you would know that I sometimes have the tendency to think aloud, which includes my desire to fuck you. And I usually make this clear to people who are aware of the blog, thus saving me time to find a dictionary to highlight my name under ‘asshole’.

Me: “Here’s how it all works when we meet. You will buy me a drink and somewhere along the way, I will stick my tongue into you.”
She: “What if you buy me a drink?”
Me: “Then you get to stick your tongue into my mouth. Either way, this will never end at a kiss and you will end up fucking me.”
She: “Can’t we just meet and have drinks?”
Me: “We can. But we will fuck after that.”

Now, when you have angled something like that as I have, the person’s response is almost a direct correlation to your success. In this case, she did propose to meet up, or specifically,

She: “Where will you be? Doing anything later?”

If you took SMS flirting code classes like I did, then you would know that if you took out all the vowels and consonants and added new ones, it would spell out.

“I want to fuck you.”

Coincidence? I don't think so.

The thing is, inhibitions restrict people from life’s greater purpose; achieving orgasm. That is of course just below getting drunk on the priority list, but it is something everyone should aim for. And for your crude honesty, you might just be reciprocated with an equal quotient of desire.

By a general rule of the thumb, people sometimes already have a preconceived agreement with their conscience on whether they are going to sleep with you. And when that happens, there is usually nothing you can do to fuck it up unless you sliced off your penis by accident.

Well, this has to be so because you cannot imagine the shit that I am capable of saying sometimes, that I wonder how anyone would allow me to have alcohol prior to a conversation.

Hence, you will never really know where all this would lead to until you poke at your limits. Yes, you might fail but maybe you were born to fail, so whatever, at least you were honest. The fastest way to any object is a straight line, so why throw a curve ball when you can pitch a straight one.

Zouk Out '08

There are many reasons why I’ve never been fond of Zouk Out and my attendance, other than fundamental commitments, is kept buoyant by one indispensible bracket; babes in bikini.

And I use them inextricably because and one can turn up in a bikini but yet not contribute positively to my visual indulgence. I know this because I saw half of Ocean World turn up in bikinis. There was this one particular Whale who was so fat, her left breast weighed more than a Nissan March. I was pretty sure her bikini qualified as a hammock.

Then there was that group of ladyboys who were walking about in their bikini top with half their areola exposed. And only ladyboys can be so proud of it under all that convivial disposition. You just got to love them.

That aside, here are the other things I hate.

1. Finding friends.

There is never an event where you might actually consider having everyone be bound together by a rope. Nothing beats trying to find your friend in the midst of 26,000 people. You might actually have a better chance of finding that hammock Whale's asshole with a compass.

Then imagine you did manage to contact them and they tell you that they are at bar 12and you are stuck at bar 1. By the time you walk over, you might just be in time for the Siloso beach new year countdown party.

Which brings me to the next point.

2. Walking distance

Do you know how fucking far you have to walk? It’s like a cross country training session every time you decide to move from one stage to the other. And if you were at this Zouk Out and you love Trance, you will severe all ties with anyone who likes Hip Hop, unless of course you are prepared to have 2 inches of pure muscles added to your calves.

3. Toilets

It’s not that I have issues with portable toilets because God bless them when you are having out-field military exercises, but like 50 units for 26,000 is just about the same ratio as running shoes to Kenyans. And this ultimately equates to a 20 minute waiting time to use the toilet. Who the fuck anticipates peeing 20 minutes later?

Those aside, this year’s Zouk Out had been relatively pleasant, largely because I didn’t have to worry about running out of drinks, or queuing up for that matter. And yet even those came at a price of fatigue.

8.20pm: Pappy, CK, RedBug and I start drinking at the Singtel tent. The lure of an open bar is too hard to resist for lesser humans like us.

8.35pm: RedBug introduces me to her Caucasian male friend who takes well to my jokes. He thinks I’m hilarious and proceeds to proclaim his love for me, in the best way he knew how.

Him: “I love this guy!” (to RedBug)

8.40pm: Half convinced that I will be able to find a female to love me instead, I start drinking faster.

8.50pm: 5 vodka Red Bulls in me later. I decide to put the journey to inebriation on hold and slot in other trivialities like responsible drinking and work commitments.

9.40pm: I have not taken a drop of alcohol for almost an hour. I am not happy. Instead, I am riding around in the Buggy.
9.45pm: I bump into Jun and she tells me MissFebruary is at Zouk Out. This is the best news I’ve heard all night.

10.40pm: CokeWhore and Muthu arrive. We do two quick rounds of vodka Red Bull.

10.50pm: I tell the very cute bar maid at bar 4 that she only needs to pour me one consistent drink of vodka Red Bull all night for all my orders. I no longer need to queue for drinks. I am the envy of thirsty men.

11.30pm: My proficiency in binge drinking now puts me 13 cups. I start eyeing my slippers with contempt. Another 10 more and I will be accusing sand of trying to give me blisters.

Somewhere along the way Eve showed up with Yua. Reznor gestured for someone to come over with his hands and I said,

Me: “That doesn’t always work..”
Reznor: “Cos I’m not you right? Hahaha.”
Yua: “…”
Me: [to Yua] “You are not allowed to comment, because that worked on you.”

Apparently, 13 cups is sufficient to bring assholism out into contention for dominant character trait of the night.

12.40am: I need to pee. The toilet queue looks like the audition day for American Idol. My feet is protesting against walking out of the beach to the hotel to pee, so I poke my bladder once to see if I might survive the wait.

12.42am: Nisa offers to accompany me while I wait. I have a true friend.
12.43am: Sherri offers to help me jump to the front of the queue. I have a better friend in Sherri. I no longer need Nisa.

12.44am: Sherri goes to talk to the girl at the front of the queue and waves for me to come over as soon as the girl agrees.

12.45am: The girl starts kicking up a fuss about having two people jump her queue. I reassure that calculative bitch that only one person is doing the peeing. She shuts up and the Indian man behind her picks up from where she left.

Guy: “Hey man, dat is nort cool. You get aye girl to cut queue for you. Dat is nort cool I tell you.”

And he repeated this over and over again, it was like a Subaru radio ad. He kept going on and on about being -in his thick Indian accent - ‘not cool’ because I got some girl to jump the queue for me and it was well, ‘not cool’ too.

I tried to ignore him because I was primarily focused on holding the bladder, but he was relentless in policing the ‘cool’ factor to me. It eventually bothered him so much that he stepped out of the queue to nag in my ear.

Me: “Whatever.”
Guy: “Young man. You do nort tell me whatever. It is nort cool I tell you.”

I didn’t know whether to laugh or pee in my pants, because I knew that for the duration that I was going to be waiting for the cubicle, Mama Cool was not going to let it rest and it was amusing to see someone get so worked up over waiting 30 seconds more to pee.

When I finally got in to pee, I was so fast that I came out even before anyone else did and there stood the Indian guy, still staring at me in contempt. So I did what I presumed cool people like him would do; I smiled at him. And he waved his finger at me,

Guy: “That is nort cool.”

I can’t imagine what would happen if I stole his parking lot.

1.35am: J comes to find me. I am on my 20th cup of vodka Red Bull. Not a good idea.

Me: “Do you have a light?”
J: “My sis doesn’t know I smoke.”
Me: “What?! I hope she knows you’ve had pre-marital sex.”
J: “Shut up!”

I remembered meeting a bunch of you guys, and I remembered only because you guys called me, Butterfly. And majority of you have the same opening line.

XXX: “Butterfly! I know you! You are Butterfly!”

No shit Sherlock. And I don’t know why most of you have a pre-conceived notion that my conversational prowess is limited only to crude and mean remarks, because at least one of you said, “are you going to say something mean?”

Like seriously people..

2.10am: I finally find LB, who is still sober. I turn to see the line of drinks awaiting them and secretly make a quick prayer for him.

2.20am: I do another 2 round of binge drinking with Iko. I don’t know if it’s the long intervals between drinks or that all the walking is keeping me sober. I tell the barmaid to make mine a double shot from here on out.

2.40am: I see two men making out behind the tents while trying to find a spot to rest. I tell the random guy next to me, “How much have those two been drinking? I hope they know it’s a guy”. He ignores me anyway.

By the time it got to 5am, I was more tired from the full day’s activities than I was even remotely high and this was despite the 29 cups of vodka in me. I also had so many drinks spilled on my arm that I was convinced it qualified as a flammable product.

There was nothing comparatively interesting this time around because last year I witnessed a girl tripping and crashing head first into the toilet cubicle and getting knocked out cold as a result, and that’s a hard thing to top.

The only thing I was looking forward to was Above and Beyond, but barely a half hour into their set, I surrendered myself to fatigue. It was a submission I quite gladly bowed to even before the trio had any chance to play their famed Trance anthems.

I looked to LB and we both knew that the night was done. Somewhere, some place, some other time, another party will be conquered, but this one would just have to be spared.

Hello, I'm Getting Hitched

“I’m getting married.”

These words never fail to carry the chill of reality into my world of insouciance. And I hate it, not when my friends say it, but when people whom I’ve dated before tell me with brimming mirth that I actually wonder if they know what they are getting themselves into.

It’s like being in a departmental store shopping and you are picking out the best outfits and you don’t really know what you want so you carry a bunch of them along. Then you go into the fitting room and you try them out and you know you can only pick one, so you set aside the ones that although fits you well but you’re just not sure if you like that colour enough.

Then you go back to browsing and someone comes along and buys that outfit. And that’s it.

I always figured that people would always be around. You know, like even if they got attached, there was always going to be a chance that it would fuck up eventually and they’ll come back around at the right time.

Or by that, it seems that I have been such an emotional scar that women would leave hope of my reform in abandonment and steer a course of pursuit for stability and security in men. And there I was still thinking that a good tease and oral fellatio were still merits that women look for in a man.

So what now? They get married, and we can no longer have a quick rendezvous in the back seat of the car? Will the wrath of retribution come doubly hard, because cheating in a marriage is infinitely more grievous since it’s become a stigma?

Maybe life is meant to continue with flaws. I am not suppose to throw away shirts even if they have been stippled with stains, because I might have been too focused on them that I missed the beauty of the fabric.

I’ve never enjoyed the news of an impending marital bliss when it comes from people whom I have been romantically involved in. And by that, I mean relationships that consisted of an equal portioning of sex, laughter and arguments. Even when love has faded, memories still makes this harder to swallow than Sunday communion.

“He proposed.”

And my immediate reaction was to pause for a quick prayer that intelligence would not fall to a diamond ring. Reflex response has never been my most sociable attribute and even under a full coat of sobriety, nothing good really comes out my mouth.

Me: “Please tell me you said, no.”

Obviously it never pens out that way, because real life is hardly a magnet for drama, unless of course you jump into the lion’s den.

There was however a chain of coincidences because my mother was only just bringing up the whole marriage speech to me and I see this as a progress because 10 years ago, that talk was born from a worry that I might be gay because I wasn’t seeing any girl. Then 6 years ago when I was in a relationship, it was about ‘keeping the options open’ – I swear I thought my mum was the coolest then.

Then 2 years ago, it was about ‘finding someone special’ because she got tired of the plurality of my life and there was just too many for her to keep track. Then now, against ineluctable dawn of aging, she has decided to pitch a marriage talk to me even when I’ve been single for over 3 years.

In truth, it was like a nostalgic revisit of the dating annals.

She: “What happened to that girl driving the white car?”
Me: “She’s psycho mum. Do you want your grandchild to stab you in your sleep?”
She: “I like ‘Fire Engine’.”
Me: “She’s getting married. Too bad for you.”
She: “Then the one last Chinese New Year?”
Me: “The one I thought was damn hot and you didn’t?”
She: “Was she that pretty?”
Me: “Yes, FHM thought so. You didn’t.”

When I told LB about it, he met the news with laughter, which I didn’t see coming. He was amused on the fact that I seemed more like the rude awakening for women, because there was building evidence that women tend to get married fast after they have dated me.

LB: “You know what? People who want to get married early should just start off by dating you.”

Perhaps I had a higher calling in life. My role, other than to be an asshole, was to drive women so far down the despairs of dating that anyone that came after me would be like an iced Milo truck in the desert. As it seems, people who get over me, always come out of it stronger and smarter than when they plunged in.

And me, being me, will never let it slide this easily. I’m taking the wedding invitation and I’ll make up for that over the open bar they hopefully have and I’m extending my hand in congratulations, but it will come with a whisper.

Indecent proposals have just been made the new black.