Fellas, say you find yourself in a situation where this woman who just came back to your crib is absotively, posilutely irresistible. She digs you or she wouldn’t be there. But that doesn’t mean she wants to do what you’ve wanted her to do since you first set sight on her at the club.
You and the lady have been chatting back and forth with small talk. Her half-finished drink rests on the coffee table. You’re being about as perfect a gentleman as you possibly can know how to be. And things remain stuck in neutral.
She’s still glad to keep your company, but hasn’t given you the green light. The longer she lingers, the more you want to tip the scales in your favor.
Here’s some free advice, worth all the gold they say is in Fort Knox, on turning a maybe into a yes. Keep going with your rap. If it wasn’t working, she’d’ve left the club alone, with her girlfriends or on some other guy’s arm.
At some point she will get up and go to the bathroom. This is where you make your move.
No, stupid, you don’t slip Love Potion #9 in her drink. You go over to the stereo and put on some Smokey Robinson. If you don’t have any Smokey, you can always pray. And next time have one of his CDs directly on hand, maybe on the wall as one of them break-glass-in-case-of-emergency things.
There has yet to be born the lady who doesn’t respond to the immortal master of romantic circumstance. Smokey Robinson, singing like an angel, talks more sweet trash than the garbage man can take away and wrote the book on how to beg.
You can have all the style and profile in the world, but women love to be begged. They just don’t want you looking desperate while you’re doing it. (They don’t care if you is desperate, just can’t let ‘em see y’ sweat).
Let Smokey do your begging for you. Drop the disc in the box, go back to the couch, so innocent butter wouldn’t melt in your mouth. Give her a gentle smile, taste your drink and, if God’s on your side, she’ll lift hers as ”Something New,” ”If You Can Want” or ”Whatever Makes You Happy” comes on.
When Smokey croons, velvet smooth, ”I will build you a castle with a tower so high it reaches the moon/ I’ll gather melodies from birdies that fly and compose you a tune/ Give you lovin’ warm as Mama’s oven/ And if that don’t do/ I’ll try something new.” He has her attention and, reasonably guessing, so do you by association.
Stay chilled. No sudden moves. Lay back, as it were, in the tall grass. Let Smokey flush her out, as he sighs, ”You may not love me, now/ But, I’m stayin’ around, ‘cause you want my company/ Just like push can come to shove/ Like can turn to love/ And it’s my philosophy/ If you can want, you can need/ If you can need, you can care/ If you can care, you can love/ Say when you want me, I’ll be there.”
Faster than pizza delivery. The clincher: ”If my sadness brought you gladness/ I’d be glad to be sad/ If my feeling bad made you feel good/ I would always feel bad/ And I wouldn’t think twice about the sacrifice/ Anything I’d have to you/ Because, whatever makes you happy/ Makes me happy, too.”
If she listens to give or take a half hour and hasn’t inched closer on the couch, check her pulse. She may be dead and not know it. At any rate, chalk it up, turn in, and better luck next time. And those aren’t even Smokey’s greatest hits.
Robinson leaves William Shakespeare’s poetry choking in the dust. It’s so good even husbands can wear the wifey’s resistance down with a good dose of Smokey.
Bottom line, any time you need a little help wooing a special lady, odds are, all she needs is the right frame of heart and mind. Smokey Robinson is going to put her there.
Dwight Hobbes welcomes reader responses to P.O. Box 50357, Mpls., 55403.
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