#YOLO! 5 ABSURDLY Creepy Things I've Done To Get The Guy

Summer, 2000: I was 27, living in London in a bright airy flat with a group of 4 girlfriends. We were all single. One evening (after drinking far too much wine and lamenting our single statuses) we came up with a foolproof plan: to kiss as many cute boys over the summer as we could, with the hope that come end of summer, maybe we'd find THE ONE. Armed with make-up and brimming with confidence (mostly from the wine-coolers), we promised each other to be be bold, be brazen, and do whatever it took to snag the man of our dreams... or bedroom. Whatever. Here's a few, uh, of the slightly more insane things we tried that actually worked:

1. Hitting on someone at a funeral. Some places may not seem like an appropriate venue to flirt with a hot guy, but if you see a ringless man loitering around a baby shower, looking somber at your Great Aunt Mildred's funeral, or pacing the hospital ward while awaiting the results of his sister's fibroid removal operation, STRIKE. This is when he is most vulnerable. My friend A had a 3 month fling with a man she met at her uncle's funeral in Ireland. Turns out he was very good at helping her handle her grief. Likewise, if you're a single mom and your kid has a hot, new kindergarden teacher, why not ask him out for coffee? All he can say is no.

Bold takeaway: No moment is inappropriate to meet Mr. Right.

2. Writing your name and number on a boy's arm. Or leg. Or anywhere he'll let you.  The greatest dating tactic I ever used was whipping out a pen and writing my number on a boy's arm. Trying to put your name and number in their phone is too fiddly and writing it in bold ink on their flesh meant they'd wake up to your digits all over them.

Bold takeaway: Sometimes you (literally) need to make your mark.

3. Say yes to anything. Literally anything. Sometimes it's easier to curl up with a good book than debate what to wear, plaster on make-up, trek across town in heels to attend a party that might end up being super-lame and full of duds. But that summer, we vowed to say yes to every offer presented to us. That meant attending a wedding of someone I didn't even know, crashing a party in our apartment complex (our neighbors didn't speak to us again for a year after that, OOPS), and hitching a ride to festivals, house parties and blind dates aplenty.

Bold takeaway: You may be broke and tired, but you'll sure as hell have a LOT of fun.

4. Using your job to stalk/meet men. That summer, I convinced the fashion show I was working on to do a piece on "A Day In The Life Of A Hot Male Model" simply so I could stalk, er, follow said hot model around for 24 hours. M bosses dispatched me, along with a camera/mic team, to film said model as he attended castings and walked for a fashion show that evening. We bonded and he invited me to a club afterwards. I distinctly remember drunkenly using the pick-up line: Can I kiss your neck? He said yes. So I slowly kissed my way up his God-like neck and then... he didn't kiss ME. CRINGE! I made a swift exit. (But still, I kissed his neck.)

Bold takeway: Don't wait until 5pm to get your dating groove on. Work is just another opportunity.

5. Throwing a "trash or treasure" party. The premise is simple: Every girl has to bring along one or two single guys that they had no romantic interest in. (The "trash.") Meanwhile, the other attendees might hit it off with one of them, in which case the lucky gentleman became her "treasure." The party was a roaring success. Every woman there managed to secure a date, except me. I took the bus home with a "trash" wearing brown cords who made me a cup of tea and cried about his ex-girlfriend. 

Bold takeway: Women have different tastes; take advantage of that fact.

6. Going out without any makeup on. We've all had nights where we spend three hours getting ready, an hour travelng via foot/bus/subway, only to arrive at a houseparty full of the most boring and unattractive men you've ever laid eyes on. You wish you'd stayed at home watching When Harry Met Sally. Interestingly, my best, most epic nights weren't the ones where I was dolled up. Rather, they were the unplanned adventures where you head somewhere straight from work, wearing barely any make-up with unwashed hair, thinking you'd stay for "just a drink." Three drinks later, you've met a guy who's funny in the way that you're funny, weird in the way that you're weird, and a month later, you've got a boyfriend, girl.

Bold takeaway: You don't need to be dressed to the nines to the land the man of your dreams.