‘How do you like your eggs in the morning, scrambled or fertilized?’

A tribute to bad pickup lines

Matthew Abbra

Within my core group I have developed something of a reputation for being chalk full of cheesy, sassy, and genuinely offensive pickup lines, yet somehow it is a reputation that’s come saddled with the massive misconception that I actually think they will work.

“Are you from Tennessee? Because you’re the only 10 I see!” Whenever I find motive to utter a question of this sort in front of friends their common reaction is to assure me I’m going to get a drink thrown in my face one day. They’re wrong. I’ve been using these quips for years and have yet to feel a drop of appletini in my eyes. That would require an actual legitimate and sleazily horn-dog attempt at picking up girls. I just use the lines because I think they are funny as hell. Quagmire from Family Guy ain’t very sexy, but don’t deny that he’s good for a chuckle or two.

I assure you, I have never been one to survey a night club and spot that well-dressed stunner across the room, slowly approach through the crowd with a cool swagger until our eyes meet in a straight and narrow embrace of invisible energy, only to arrive in front of her and seal the deal with the opening, “Is that a keg in your pants? ’Cuz I’d like to tap that ass.”

I’d want to slap myself, but if by some chance the girl didn’t do it for me, it might simply expose her as someone I shouldn’t pursue further anyway. Therein lies the beautiful irony of pickup lines — their true end result could very well be nothing more than both parties being coarsely turned off of each other. It is for this reason that I find it hard to believe when people interpret my use of them as anything but pure jest. But they do.

So in response to this, I came to wonder whether there is more to pickup lines than meets the eye. In the name of good journalism I felt it necessary to put the idea to the test for all you lonely hearts out there who might let desperate times call for desperate measures.

I chose my venue carefully. I didn’t want any place too trashy that might incur a major backfire, nor anyplace too classy that might incur a police presence. It had to be a neutral zone, absent of any stereotypical crowds. Then I got really cheap and just went to Coyotes because I have a VIP pass there.

I won’t lie, I was nervous. To that point, friends and acquaintances had been my only subjects for these shallow practices, but suddenly there I was, finally trying to attract unknown fish in the sea and entice them into my lowly “quagmire” with a well-timed one-liner. I hit the floor and undertook my experiment.

On the first girl I used my old classic, “Do you have a map? ’Cuz I keep getting lost in your eyes.”

“Wow, that’s the first time anyone has ever used a bad pickup line on me. I’m honoured,” was her exact reply. A bit of a disappointment for a first go, but I was just getting warmed up.

By the end of the night I had approached eight girls in total, using a different line on each of them. Of the highlights: to the line, “Do you believe in love at first sight, or should I walk by again?” came the response, “Are you fucking serious?” And then my personal favorite — “If beauty were sunlight, you would shine from a million miles away,” to which the girl actually stared me in the eye and said, “That’s sweet, but you’re not.”

In the name of experimental ethics, I debriefed each girl about the purpose of it all (about two believed me), but ended up abandoning my plan to quickly interview each of them afterwards when they all proved a bit too “out of sorts” for my tape-recorder to pick up coherent sounds through all the noise.

A success? I suppose. The girls were more or less repulsed by me, which is mostly what I wanted, but if the power of words had persuaded one of them to actually go home with me, I wouldn’t exactly call that a failure, either.

A friend of mine commented to me afterwards that, in reality, a person’s choice of lines at the bar is pretty incidental. No matter what methods one uses to start a conversation, if the girl likes what she sees, she’ll stay and chat. I guess if this experiment proves anything, 25 per cent of girls think I’m attractive. Remember that ladies, the next time you see a random dude at the bar holding a tape-recorder up to girls’ faces.