SearchA HANDY BOOK
To be honest, I’m not much of a seducer. For one thing, I never know what to say. I haven’t got the sheer brass-faced confidence to say something as obvious as “Don’t I know you from somewhere?” and even if I do get talking to a girl, I never know what to do next. So imagine my delight when I stumbled on a method of seduction that gave me an easy line of chat and was a sure fire winner every time – well almost!
It began with the discovery of a battered tome in a second-hand bookshop. Its title, “The Scientific Approach to Palmistry”, intrigued me enough to part with £2.95 so that I could give it a try.
Following the book’s guidance I found my life line and – horror! It was short! I would die young! In fact if the charts in the book were to be believed, I was already dead! But it was all nonsense, anyway, I consoled myself. The thing was to practise on somebody else’s palm – but whose? Sarah! Just the girl! Sarah was Rodney’s secretary (Rodney was Senior Human Resources Officer) and would do anything for a laugh – especially if it was in office hours!
So next morning, just before the post came in (which is when we get really busy), I asked if I could read her palm.
“As long as you don’t expect me to cross yours with silver!” she joked.
With the book in one hand, and her hot little palm in the other I worked my way through the lines.
Her life line was long and clear, so I predicted a long and healthy life. Her love line was, in the terminology of the book, “chained” – which meant that she’d had lots of affairs. Another faint line at the side of it meant that she was two-timing her boyfriend. She blushed and giggled when I told her this, but didn’t deny it. Her line of fate was a confused muddle of lines that I couldn’t make head nor tale of, so I simply said that she often felt confused about life. She nodded vigorously at this and let out a soulful sigh. I then looked at her ring finger and, helped by a chart in the book, predicted the date of her marriage and the number and sex of her children.
She was well and truly gobsmacked, and gave me a look which said, “There’s more to you than I thought!”
Looking back, I think that look also said, “Come round to my place and don’t forget the condoms,” but I was too thrilled with my success as a palmist to notice.
That night I stayed up late working through “The Scientific Approach to Palmistry” and making notes. It’s just as well that I did, because word had got round the office, and next morning a little crowd of secretaries was lying in wait for me. As soon as I walked through the door, half a dozen palms were thrust in front of my face to a chorus of: “Read mine, read mine!”
I ended up reading Maureen’s palm – with the rest as a somewhat rowdy audience. Maureen was an attractive woman of thirty-something who worked in the accounts department. I didn’t know much about her, but it was rumoured that she had seen a thing or two, including two husbands, a series of toy-boys and a fling with the Senior Human Resources Officer – it was going to be quite a challenge!
I started with her life line and predicted a long life and good health. She seemed pleased at the prediction of a long life, but poured scorn on my comment about her health and related a series of ailments that would have fascinated a gynaecologist, but left me feeling stupid – and slightly nauseous. I decided to try more certain territory and began to talk about her love line. A more complex muddle of chains, doubles and loops I have never seen from that day to this, and I waxed lyrical about her numerous love affairs, deceits and two-timings, elaborating a little on the basis of office rumours. She was not impressed. She looked me straight in the eye, and said in a challenging voice: “All right then, if you’re so clever. Tell me how many husbands I’ve had!”
I gulped nervously and stared at her palm for an answer. It stared back at me like the page of a book written in a foreign language. I had no option but to fall back once more on office rumour.
“Two?” It sounded like a question, though I had not intended it to.
“Well, Mr Clever Clogs, you’re wrong again. I’ve had three, and that’s a fact – Miriam here will bear me out if you don’t believe me!”
After that I went all to pieces. I was way out on the dates of her weddings, the number and sex of her children, and just about everything else. When I had finished I felt awful – like some kind of charlatan. I must have been blushing to the roots of my hair. But the girls didn’t mind. They said it was a good laugh and they had enjoyed it. When I got home I looked in the “The Scientific Approach to Palmistry” to find out where I had gone wrong. This is what it said:
The lines of the hand are not like the words in a book, where you can safely say “this means that”. The lines are a guide to the psychic intuition. It is the psychic intuition that makes the insights. Psychic intuition can be developed by practice and meditation, but in its fullest form it is a gift that cannot be learned.
I decided that it was all mumbo-jumbo anyway, and that, even if it wasn’t, it was no good to me because I wasn’t psychic. So it was all a waste of time – or was it? I began to think of everything that had happened since I first picked up “The Scientific Approach to Palmistry”: Sarah seemed to have taken a fancy to me, and my popularity with the girls in the office had improved no end.
Then I realised I was on to something – a system, not to tell the future, but to get girls! All it needed was a knowledge of the main lines on the hand, and series of questions that would “open up” a girl and get her talking about herself. I set to work, and by the night of the office party I had it all by heart. The only question remaining was – who should I seduce?
Luckily, that Saturday night was Bob’s twenty-third birthday party and he’d promised that it would be a wild one. “Bring a bottle and a bird,” he’d said.
“I’ll bring a crateful…” I joked in reply, “…and that’s just the birds.” It was all talk of course. As I told you, I wouldn’t be onto this supernatural lark if I found it easy to get birds. Still, I did take a crate of ale.
I’d never seen so many people crammed into one house. Bob welcomed me at the door and introduced me to his latest girlfriend. I didn’t catch her name, but that didn’t worry me. He gets through so many girlfriends that I can’t keep up with them. He’s one of those lucky guys that don’t even have to try. Girls take one look at that craggy, humorous face, those broad shoulders and hefty physique (which he works on at the gym every Friday evening) and they go all gaga. Brian, another of my “co-workers” (as the Yanks call them) was there on his own. He’s no picture to look at. He’s tall and gangling, with a big nose and a loose mouth full of crooked teeth – but he has such a great sense of humour, he just jokes them into bed. He was on his own tonight, but I knew that it was because he was hoping to score, not because he desperate. I recognised some of the other guys I knew from Human Resources, and some others I knew by sight from the other departments. Even Rodney had managed to wangle his way in like a spectre at a feast. There was no sign of Mavis, his wife. He’d probably told her he was working late and come here trying to get off with one of the secretaries. I could have told him he was wasting his time: he was past it (pushing 50), had a face that made Frankenstein look handsome, and worst of all had a case of halitosis that would strip paint at five yards (sorry, metres – we’re under strict orders to follow all EU directives). He couldn’t even make up for it by being a big spender. Oh, he had plenty of cash all right – but he was tight with his money.
Sarah, Maureen and Miriam were there, and lots of girls from the other departments. I didn’t know most of them – but there were plenty I felt like getting to know better. Unfortunately, there were lots of men, too – husbands, boyfriends, hangers-on – I don’t know who they were, but they all seemed to be six foot tall, good looking, and to know everybody.
I went over to talk to Bob, but he only had eyes for his blonde. Brian was already well tanked up and had gone into joke-telling mode, you know, a string of: “Have you heard the one about…”
Actually, Brian is pretty good a telling jokes – it’s just that I’ve heard them all by now. Then I saw Rodney heading my way. He was obviously looking for somebody to chat to so that he could look as though he was blending in – but I didn’t fancy listening to his small talk about double-entry book keeping – or trying to avoid his bad breath.
Usually, at this stage in a party, I give up, retreat to the kitchen and do my bit for the beer industry. But not tonight. Instead, I put my new system into operation. I dodged Rodney and positioned myself next to an interesting-looking group of females. After a while I managed to bring the conversation round to fortune-telling in general and palm-reading in particular. As soon as I announced that I could read palms, the magic worked. All eyes were on me, and a forest of palms were eagerly offered.
It was like one of those puzzles where you have to trace tangled pieces of string to see what they lead to. I quickly scanned each hand along the arm to the face, and when I spotted one more eager-eyed and beautiful than the rest, I squeezed her palm gently and pulled her forwards. The next job was to get rid of the audience. I explained that I needed quiet concentration, and my beautiful subject was only too eager to acquiesce. I’d be back in a minute, I promised. With that I led her into a quiet corner and set to work.
“Hi,” I said, “My name’s John.”
“Oh, mine’s Debbie,” she said in a slightly trembly voice.
I took her palm and stroked it gently, staring for a long moment into her deep brown eyes.
Then I set to work. Praise first. I pretended to read her life line, though actually I would have said exactly the same thing whatever her life line was like:
“Your life line shows that you will have a long and happy life.”
She smiled and nodded, a chestnut curl falling across her soft cheek. I had noticed before that people always believe good predictions. I added a few more:
“These faint lines near to your life line are travel lines. They mean that you will travel to exotic places and meet lots of interesting people.”
Her beautiful brown eyes widened. Now for the serious stuff.
“But your line of fate shows that you have something on your mind...”
I had worked out that everybody, but everybody, has something on their mind. It’s another comment that can’t fail.
She gasped. “That’s true! How did you know?”
So far so good. I took a chance: “It’s to do with your love life...”
She sighed, and I noticed how exquisitely her breasts heaved beneath her dress. “You’re right,” she said, “its...”
She told me. She looked deep into my eyes and poured it all out. He was rotten to her. He preferred playing football. He never took her out – except to football matches, which she hated. I nodded sympathetically, but I wasn’t really listening – not to her voice, anyway. I was listening to all the other signals sent out by her eloquent body. They were difficult to put into words, but a rough translation might be: “You are sensitive, and caring (unlike that brute) you understand me, you have probed my mind – you may probe my body if you wish!” An even rougher translation might be: “Fuck me!”
All this got me excited, and I wasn’t sure what to do next. Luckily I did the right thing. I kissed her. After that, she made all the moves. She took me back to her place where she let all that pent up emotion gush out. She moaned and sighed and laughed and cried and said how much more fun it was in bed with me than watching a football match with him with a load of his numbskull friends for company. Then, in one of those moments of quiet ecstasy between one blissful bonk and the next it suddenly came to me that there must be thousands of people like we used to be – fed up with their boring lives and even more boring partners, but unable to meet anybody else. Palmistry can change all that. It offers the perfect excuse to short circuit the small talk and get right inside a woman – literally, as well as figuratively – and you don’t have to be the world’s best looking bloke, or second cousin to Gypsy Rose Lee either!
© Jay, March 2011. All rights reserved by the author.
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