Assaulting the Fortress
November 13th 2006 08:09
Assaulting the Fortress.
This is purely from and for the perspective of a guy. Sorry girls, but still, you may pick up some useful info here...
You’re at the pub. A cocktail lounge. A club. Wherever. You’re with a few mates. You’re sitting around having a couple of drinks, laughing, chatting, shooting shit. As usual.
Then ‘they’ turn up.
A marauding gaggle of females swarm in and arrange their seating plan (probably in a good Feng Shui manner, for all we know). Conversation trails away, concentration sails away. Jaws lower, as small mutterings begin: "Jesus, look at that one", "holy shit", "check out that arse" and so on.
’They’ have arrived.
Conversation is resumed, but it has changed. A conflict has begun. Glances like rifle shots are fired to, and fro. Sometimes a small smile, like a tracer, flashes its way across no-mans-land. Desperate on one side, knowing on the other (you figure out which). However, they are impenetrable. Impregnable.
They are in The Fortress.
Your drinks are no longer alcoholic beverages, employed for the benefits of refreshment and social lubrication; no, they are now ordinance, each sip arming you with courage, precision engineered in the Netherlands. But you have to be careful: too much firepower, and you’ll send the enemy scattering into the night, never to be seen again. So you drink, and play the waiting game.
The beauty of the fortress, from the besieger’s point of view, is that the besieged has to come out sometime: drinks must be purchased, bladders must be relieved.
A raiding party sallies forth to the bar to purchase supplies: let this one go - while each sip of alcohol makes you stronger, it makes them and their precious fortress weaker, so you wait, and continue the eye-contact bombardment.
A second party sallies forth. Now you send the best looking of you to buy drinks, get chips, look for something he dropped at the bar, who cares - just get over there and introduce yourself. Drag the prey down like a lion on the savannah. This is the most effective and simple way to disrupt the sanctity of the female fortress: wait for stragglers and pick them off, or accompany them into the fold, and attack from within, Trojan Horse-style.
However, sometimes this approach doesn’t work, and you are left with the direct assault. It has to be assault, because you cannot win a war of attrition against this foe - they hold all the resources, you just can’t outlast them.
The direct assault is hard. It requires perfect timing, and perfect balance. The balance lies in the alcohol to blood ratio. It has to be exactly right.: too little to be an incoherent slobbering mess, yet enough to provide armour against the cold, cold stares, and pointed silences, to forge on and insinuate yourself into the group. I’ve seen many a (dutch)courageous man wither beneath these terrible weapons. I myself have felt the soul-melting pain of silence and incredulous stare. I carry the scars. As I’m sure many of you also do.
But the fight lives on. So all of you guys who are fortunate (or not) enough to have girlfriends: give a thought for me and my single brethren, out there in the trenches, fighting the good fight, against an enemy better trained, better armed and just plain smarter than us. We will fight till there is no enemy.
But peace.
Amen.
This is purely from and for the perspective of a guy. Sorry girls, but still, you may pick up some useful info here...
You’re at the pub. A cocktail lounge. A club. Wherever. You’re with a few mates. You’re sitting around having a couple of drinks, laughing, chatting, shooting shit. As usual.
Then ‘they’ turn up.
A marauding gaggle of females swarm in and arrange their seating plan (probably in a good Feng Shui manner, for all we know). Conversation trails away, concentration sails away. Jaws lower, as small mutterings begin: "Jesus, look at that one", "holy shit", "check out that arse" and so on.
’They’ have arrived.
Conversation is resumed, but it has changed. A conflict has begun. Glances like rifle shots are fired to, and fro. Sometimes a small smile, like a tracer, flashes its way across no-mans-land. Desperate on one side, knowing on the other (you figure out which). However, they are impenetrable. Impregnable.
They are in The Fortress.
Your drinks are no longer alcoholic beverages, employed for the benefits of refreshment and social lubrication; no, they are now ordinance, each sip arming you with courage, precision engineered in the Netherlands. But you have to be careful: too much firepower, and you’ll send the enemy scattering into the night, never to be seen again. So you drink, and play the waiting game.
The beauty of the fortress, from the besieger’s point of view, is that the besieged has to come out sometime: drinks must be purchased, bladders must be relieved.
A raiding party sallies forth to the bar to purchase supplies: let this one go - while each sip of alcohol makes you stronger, it makes them and their precious fortress weaker, so you wait, and continue the eye-contact bombardment.
A second party sallies forth. Now you send the best looking of you to buy drinks, get chips, look for something he dropped at the bar, who cares - just get over there and introduce yourself. Drag the prey down like a lion on the savannah. This is the most effective and simple way to disrupt the sanctity of the female fortress: wait for stragglers and pick them off, or accompany them into the fold, and attack from within, Trojan Horse-style.
However, sometimes this approach doesn’t work, and you are left with the direct assault. It has to be assault, because you cannot win a war of attrition against this foe - they hold all the resources, you just can’t outlast them.
The direct assault is hard. It requires perfect timing, and perfect balance. The balance lies in the alcohol to blood ratio. It has to be exactly right.: too little to be an incoherent slobbering mess, yet enough to provide armour against the cold, cold stares, and pointed silences, to forge on and insinuate yourself into the group. I’ve seen many a (dutch)courageous man wither beneath these terrible weapons. I myself have felt the soul-melting pain of silence and incredulous stare. I carry the scars. As I’m sure many of you also do.
But the fight lives on. So all of you guys who are fortunate (or not) enough to have girlfriends: give a thought for me and my single brethren, out there in the trenches, fighting the good fight, against an enemy better trained, better armed and just plain smarter than us. We will fight till there is no enemy.
But peace.
Amen.
| 199 |
| Vote |
Subscribe to this blog
Comment by Questionable Content
That blood-to-alcohol ratio is something I've struggled to perfect for a good year now. Here's to Dutch courage - getting me almost nowhere since 2003.
I'm going to look like a Goddamn groupie for commenting on more than one of your stories. I'll keep reading, I think.