I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not the most suave person around when it comes to women.

Or am I? Because I have said some completely ridiculous and inappropriate things that shouldn’t have gotten anyone in this world laid, but certainly — and inexplicably — led to salacious encounters for me.

Here are a few classics, some of which would have gotten a man slapped, had he been the one to say them.

  • “I’m a jerk to women sometimes. I’ll most likely offend you, and quite possibly make you cry, sometime down the road. But this doesn’t mean you shouldn’t make out with me right now.” I was quite sober around 3 a.m. at a redneck bar in the Tampa Bay area one night last summer. I said this to a girl I had just met earlier in the evening, after she followed me out of the bar, knowing I was leaving for the night. When a girl follows you out of a bar after just meeting you and knows that you’re heading home, she can only want one thing. But don’t worry. I was a standup individual; I didn’t let her drive home drunk. Also, she was a really bad kisser.
  • “Are you even interested in women? Because I’m hitting on you quite a bit and I’d rather not waste either of our time.” This was said at nearly closing time on Christmas night at a local favorite watering hole. I’d been talking to the girl for hours and she laughed when I said it, and then gave me her number. She texted me the next morning and several months of ridiculousness ensued. (You might think I skipped over some juicy stuff, but trust me, I really didn’t “yada, yada, yada” over the good parts.)
  • “I usually only date women with really good taste in music.” The one girl I have properly dated while living in Florida listened to just two musical artists — Eminem and Ani DiFranco — and nobody else. I’ll let you come to your own conclusions about that.
  • Cute girl who was a friend of a friend said to me at the end of a night out with a large group, “We should go back to your place.” I, coming out of a bad breakup, said, “I don’t know about that. Will you make my life miserable afterwards?” She laughed, didn’t have a definitive yes or no, but since she was pretty attractive, we went back to my place anyway.
  • “Hmm, you look nothing like the pictures on your online dating profile.” It should be noted that I didn’t even meet the girl I said this to on the Internet. We dated long distance after meeting through a friend and decided the romantic way to do so would be to meet in random Midwestern cities. I said this to her loudly as I picked her up from the Nashville International Airport. At first she was mortified and annoyed, because of the weird looks she got from strangers, but she laughed about it back at the hotel.
  • “Do you have any interest in writing for the newspaper?” I ran my college newspaper and this one worked on 2.5 of the 5 girls I tried it on.
  • Anything I ever said to “Blind Date Girl.” A friend once tried to set me up on a blind date. The notion annoyed me so much that I went in and purposefully did everything you’re not supposed to do on a first date. I talked about a woman I was in love with. I talked about a different woman I had just slept with. I drank too much and told inappropriate stories. I told her about cheating on exes and about how I accidentally befriended a Nazi while in a detox facility. She texted me on her entire drive home and it took a few months to shake her loose.

This article appears in Feb 24 – Mar 2, 2011.