After dinner one night me and soft hands boy (a true tell of a guy that has less knowledge of a Home Depot than myself) were indulging on some gelato (I found his choice of pistachio a bit disturbing but that’s another story) and he was staring right at my lips and I asked him what I had hanging from my mouth “Nothing” and then he lets out this smirk and I quip, “Come on now tell me”.  He so confidently boasts “I just find it so sexy when you lick your lips like that; I like it when you flirt with me”.   I confusedly ask “Exsqueeze me?  Baking powder? I’m flirting with you?"

SIDENOTE:  Now was I interested in this guy? Possibly.  Was I so brazenly licking my lips and flirting with him as he boasts?  Ummm no.

Now I could have been totally could have gone the route of “Ego-Killer” and put his ego driven thoughts to rest but I told him to please elaborate.  He proceeded telling about a couple of other instances where he has seen me “flirtatiously cock my head to the side and  take the tip of my tongue and slowly lick the corner of my mouth”.  I told him that while I found his analysis of obsequious, I had to tell him that my true acts of flirtation were not that elementary or that obvious. He said this was a true example of a “cock tease”, but like I told him it that it was a complete involuntarily action, “like breathing”, which he found incredibly dramatic and amusing to compare it to but I told him that I never noticed it.  Then I felt like I had to when I had to work overtime to pay my rent and compensate with some of my unequivocal flirting tactics. 

After a session of reflection (and I don’t mean the following to sound in anyway salacious), I have noticed that at times I will stick just the tip of my tongue out.  I did catch myself once cocking my head to the side in a deep thought, surely I don’t think I did it that often for it to be noticed (“And stop calling me Shirley” ha sorry had to do it).  So I turn to my tribune of good friends and ask.  Out of 8 that were questioned, 5 of them mentioned that YES they have seen me at times do that but that it wasn’t such an obvious thing and it definitely wasn’t a flirting tactic.  My friend Kevin said “Maybe is just a tick with a naughty kick”.  Damn, how many other guys have noticed me doing this and thought I was just a cheesy flirter.  Like those girls in those late night phone ads “I’m just sitting her waiting for you to call me <wink>”, then the music of the commercial sets in and its chicks singing “Piiiick up the phone”.   I was embarrassed if I had misrepresented my flirting skills as anything less than stellar.  After all I am almost 30 (holla) and those awkward flirting moments were cast off the island in my early mid 20’s. 

A week or 2 later I get an email with the subject line: “How many licks does it take to get…” (musically driven creative subject lines are such a turn on for me) and its from soft hands boy.  Here is the excerpt:

I debated long and hard (and this is where you would said “insert joke here”) about sending you the below information.  I’m one of those old school type of guys that hates proving a woman right, especially one that will tease me with “Nanny nanny booo boo” after I tell them the information I ran across, but I know that everyone needs a shining moment in their life and I figured it was about time you got yours.

“A study by Austrian anthropologist Karl Grammer has found that women could not help leading men on and that they unintentionally used methods like smiling, flipping their hair and licking their lips.  His findings were from studying 45 pairs of male and female strangers in their mid to late 20’s.   Grammer and his team discovered that the female strangers often tried to attract their male counterparts' attention by chatting happily and giving unintentional used signals.  Even when they found the men unappealing, the females did not instantly express any form of clear rejection.  Only after a few minutes did their actions reflect their feelings.  The study found that this initial subconscious flirting gave females time to assess the men.  The only time the females responded negatively was when the incidences where the men talked too much.  These simple gestures like nodding their heads, smiling, flipping their hair and licking their lips kept the males talking.  Grammer said “You can predict male behavior from female behavior, but not the other way around.'"

My apologies for overstepping my boundaries as a confident guy to think that those signs were a clear flirtation tactic, for that I apologize but my guess is what followed was one of those flirting tactics you keep in your arsenal to which I don’t want to apologize for but just  say “Please, please do it again.” 

So there you have it.  I win!  Nanny nanny boo boo.  As my friend T once justly declared “It’s so hard being up here on Mount Olympus all by myself.”  Truer words have never been spoken. Ha!  I keed, I keed.  Still pretty interesting right?  I thought it maybe was just my coquettish Latina nature, but it’s just because I’m a girl.  I tried to find the study and I just found the short version.

Later:  The list of the boys that will walk the plank on the invisible relations ship.  Ha, get it?  Sorry that was lame, I could have done so much better with that pun.  I know I’m totally a day late a dollar short on the new Nike HyperDunk ads but my thoughts.  How about all the sex going on in the Big Brother house?  How about my love for Wipeout?  And Stephen Colbert having Nas on his show.  Must see. So come back.