Flirting for foreigners

Dear Sasha

—Love

Dear Love,

Your letter makes me think about the time I was on yet another low-budget art porn set and Christofluffer, our make-up artist and makeshift locations coordinator, was making sure people didn’t walk into an establishing shot we were filming outdoors.

Christofluffer was holding one gentleman back, asking him to kindly wait a second please. This fellow, like yourself, was new to Canada and had similarly optimistic ideas about what the country had to offer him. First of all, he immediately wanted some money from the production, because you know how North American film sets are: there’s just heaps of it lying around for people whose lives are inconvenienced for even just a few seconds. As he was trying to fleece the ’Fluff, our director yelled “Action!” and Christofluffer hastily shoved him out of the way. “And now you are pushing me?” the man said with the outrage of a well-apprised new citizen, “What is this Canada?”

What indeed, is this Canada? And are there indigenous perks to be had in the beautiful lady department? The word “relationship” implies you don’t want something where money is exchanged so conspicuously but relationships with ladies, beautiful or otherwise, can be tricky business.

Everyone I’ve spoken to agrees that good flirting skills are paramount for a strong first impression and beyond. I’ve begun slugging through some flirting handbooks and have yet to find one that is entirely commendable. The Fine Art of Flirting written and published in the mid-’80s by Joyce Jillson is, for the most part, mind bogglingly offensive. Apparently you have to be slender to even consider appearing publicly, and Jillson drivels on about money and status in an arriviste-y, ’80s way (“Were you at the ski lodge modelling party hosted by the lawyers where they served that ghastly duck à l’orange?” sort of thing). Honestly, if you think ’50s dating handbooks are laughably obsolete, wait till you read this howler. It’s unfortunate, because some of the truly helpful insights—not getting all out of sorts regarding perceived and past rejections, being friendly with everyone, setting little goals rather than unattainable agendas—get lost in all the vacuous indignity. I’m on to Flirting 101 next. I’ll let you know how it fares.

Dear Sasha

Are the crura on the left and right (opposite) sides of the vagina? I do not understand how they can be so far apart.

—Trev

Dear Trev,

The best thing to do is to get your hands on a book that actually shows where the crura are. Basically, the whole clitoris is shaped like the Gumby de Milo, but the cunt in general is pretty fancy and can be hard to describe without a sample at hand (and even with a sample at hand, is there ever some outrageous variety!). I highly recommend Paul Joannides’ book The Guide to Getting it On! for accurate and super accessible physiological information. Make sure you nab the fifth edition though, because there are a couple of new and totally amazing chapters; I simply gobbled up the addition on sex in America in the 1800’s. Among other things, Joannides posits that masturbation became associated with insanity because doctors would observe some of the first mental patients openly jerking off. Rather than concluding that they did this because there was so little other pleasure in being crazy and incarcerated, they assumed it was a symptom of madness. Fascinating stuff.

ABOVE AVERAGE RESPONSE

I’m beside myself, absolutely tickled by the response to Average Walking Cliché [Sasha, March 8]. We’ve got a potential profile writer and two people who have some Web skills, and I’ve even managed to secure us an inside man at Godaddy, where by the way, part of their hosting package contains the fixings for a multilingual dating Web site. As of writing this, I haven’t heard from our original AWC, but that doesn’t mean I’m not assembling the AWC Army. Guys, let’s give it a few weeks, get some more troops in order and then we’ll move ahead. Keep the letters coming.

Got any questions for Sasha? E-MAIL: POULEDELUXE@YAHOO.COM