Some Pick Up Lines That Have Been Used On Me And Their Effectiveness On A Scale Of One To Love
By Kat George
The Famous Girl That Other Girls Really Want To Look Like
The Line: Earlier this year I was at a Brooklyn bar notorious for random hookups and taco trucks (yes genius, it was either The Woods or The Union Pool), and my friends and I were, you know, smoking ciggies, drinking beers and minding our own business when a guy that looked exactly like Jon Favreau but younger sidled up next to us. He started casual conversation with us all but kept focusing his line of questioning on me until finally, he blurted out, “you look like Natalie Portman.”
The Outcome: Unfortunately for this guy, not only do I not look anything like Natalie Portman, not even vaguely close, I’d had this line used on me multiple times before, as had some of my other girlfriends, who do not look at all like Natalie Portman either. So I scoffed at him, patted him on the head, said “nice try, but you should have gone with Beyonce,” and walked away.
One To Love: 0. Dude, I know what I look like. Tell me I look like that tiny lady with the big eyebrows from Just Shoot Me if you want to seem genuine. I’m not sleeping with you let alone macking on you if you’re going to be that disingenuous just to get your dick wet.
The Apt Use Of Nostalgia
The Line: I was in my first year of university at one of those notorious student bars where mixed drinks were $2.50 all night and they played house songs like “I Like Love” and “My, My, My”. I ran into a boy there who I knew from my days as a 13-year-old wannabe skater chick. My girlfriends and I would go and sit by the skate bowl drinking multi-flavoured Surpiees on Saturday afternoons. My friends would take notes I had written to him, and his friends would bring me notes that he had written in reply. It was all very cute and Now & Then-ish. So as we were getting reacquainted in the middle of the dance floor 5 years later, he leaned into me, brushed the hair out of my ear, put his mouth very, very close to it and said, “so d’ya wanna go find some dark corner and make out like we’re 13 again?”
The Outcome: I nodded and let him lead me by the hand to some dark corner where we made out like we were 13 again.
One To Love: 8. While there was nothing lasting between us, damn, was it a smooth line. And I developed a fairly healthy pash rash as proof.
The Melted Cheese
The Line: When I was 15 I used to go to underage clubs that ran from midday to 4pm where we’d wear platform Sketchers, drink free soft drink and dance to Usher. The other thing we did a lot was mack on boys, and the boys were incredibly forthcoming in showing their interest. I remember once I had lost my friends and I was leaning against a doorway texting them to meet up, a rather innocuous event I would have otherwise forgotten, if not but for the young boy who walked past me with hair spiked so sharp you could throw yourself on it and die. He stopped next to me and said, “hey nice phone… Oh but I think there’s something wrong with it…”
The Outcome: And there’s me, being the idiot 15-year-old that I was, “what’s wrong with it?” He grinned like he’d just won the Nobel Prize in picking up. “It doesn’t have my number in it.” I pushed him in the chest because he’d cornered me against the wall with his body and told him to fuck off before storming into the girl’s bathroom to wait for my friends.
One To Love: 0. If I’m having to push you off me you’re a lecherous fail, which is saying something considering I’m a 15-year-old girl who has T-minus 4 hours to mack on a guy (almost anyone will do) before her mum comes to pick her up for dinner at yiayias.
The Bet Hedger
The Line: It was at Coachella. I was elated from the elating things that had transpired to enter my bloodstream, and because Arcade Fire was closing an epic set with “Wake Up” and giant, fluro, light filled balls were flashing rainbow colours and pouring out of the top of the stage. A (clearly inebriated) young fellow approached my friend Sofia and said something to her. She looked disgusted and turned away, at which point the guy moved along to the next girl standing in our line of friends and I caught what he said, “you’re prettier.” After she rejected him too, he progressed down the line until he finally got to me. “It’s OK, you’re prettier,” he said.
The Outcome: After it got to the point where he’d been through all our friends, he decided it was time to start groping us. One of my girlfriends pushed him away which caught the attention of some boys who physically restrained him from touching us, spun him around 3 times and sent him on his merry way.
One To Love: Negative a billion. Slime ball.