We learned about family planning with the help of Makati City Hall, the Department of Health (DOH) and a wooden phallic symbol.

After enduring government-mandated mental torture with a Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) pre-marriage counselor for the better part of the morning, my fiancée was ready to lubricate the wheels of City Hall bureaucracy just so that we could avoid the afternoon session with a representative from the DOH.

“But pangga (dear),” I pleaded. “We have to attend the afternoon session! It’s about family planning and responsible parenthood!”

“Tell them you will get a vasectomy!” she fumed.

“But there’s a big surprise during the session, I promise you!”

“What!?” she folded her arms. “A free Pap smear!?”

“More than just that, pangga!” I beamed. “Two years ago, a friend of mine attended the same pre-marriage session, and he said that the health official showed them something that has greatly aided in their marriage.”

My fiancée smirked. “And what exactly is that? Edible underwear? Chocolate body frosting? A face mask of Piolo Pascual?”

I scanned the area to make sure no one was in earshot. Then I turned back to my fiancée and whispered in her ear, “It was a wooden penis.”

My fiancée quickly reached into her handbag and pulled out her cellphone. “Dad, you were right about him. Please call the authorities. We’re still here at City Hall.”

“No, no, no you don’t understand.” I waved both my hands furiously in front of my face. “I mean she uses it for demonstrations during the family planning session!!”

“Stay away you sick &^$#^%@! I have five-inch heels and I am not afraid to use them!!” she shrieked.

“But we need that wooden penis, pangga! And not just for illustrative purposes, I might add.”

“We!? Weeee!? What do you mean we!? Why in God’s name would we need a wooden penis!? Is there something wrong with the one you already have!?”

I edged closer to her. “No, no it’s nothing like that at all pangga. I mean –”

I tried to explain further but it is hard to string a sentence together when five-inch heels make sudden contact with your right scrotum. “We… need… it… for… fertility.”

“Why, what do you plan to fertilize? A Barbie doll!? You’re a sick sick man!”

After several minutes of rolling around on the floor in a fetal position, I finally moaned a reply, “Pangga, that wooden penis has magical powers of fertility. Think of how effective it will be, I think, for a stressed person like me.”

“You think you’re stressed!?” she said while popping several pills of Norvasc. “I’m the one who has to marry a person who thinks a wooden penis can make hocus-pocus!”

I cupped my groin. “Pangga, before you attack my left scrotum, please hear me out.” I breathed in deeply. “I have unusually high cholesterol levels for a vegetarian. I have irregular sleeping habits. I have a stomach that breaks down more regularly than a secondhand truck on Edsa. I go to the bathroom every thirty minutes. I cannot sleep with the lights off and without yaya beside me. I have lost enough hair on my forehead for me to lease space to Shoemart. I am a victim of constant groin injury. And now, you and I are getting married. I am the product endorser for stress. And stress can cause impotence. Promise.”

“Are you saying that I am stressing you out!?” she growled.

“Noooo pangga of course not!” I insisted as a few thousand hairs on my head made way for more real estate.

“And what, pray tell, makes you think that magical wooden penis will help?”

“Those wooden penises are like fertility symbols! They go back many generations and cultures!” I reached into my clutch bag and pulled out a dog-eared copy of my book The Natural History of Love. “Look here! On Velia, one of the first hills of Rome, there was a temple dedicated to the Mutanus Tutunus who was represented in the form of a penis.” I flipped over a couple of pages. “Then here, in Tantric Shavaism, the lingam is a phallic-shaped symbol of worship for the Hindu god Shiva.” My fiancée flinched. Ah, I had her on the ropes, I thought. “And in the Philippines,” I proudly declared. “We have a symbol that is not only worshipped by souvenir hunters worldwide but also provides hours of lowbrow entertainment. Our well-endowed spring-loaded wooden barrel man from Baguio! ”

She rolled her eyes. “I wonder if we can still cancel our contract with the church.”

“Pangga, my friend tells me that after his wife visited the wooden penis, she has been pregnant every year since they got married. In fact, he has to take out a restraining order on her or else they might have a basketball team!” I gushed.

My fiancée’s eyes grew large. “You are NOT taking off that chastity belt my dad gave you when we get married.”

“Think about it, pangga! After our visit to City Hall, our babies will be more ubiquitous than the posters of Bayani Fernando on EDSA.”

She sighed. “And what are we supposed to do when we see that wooden penis? Light some incense? Give it a floral offering? Show it some dirty magazines?”

“Well, we’re –” I coughed. “We’re supposed to rub it, pangga. Vigorously.”

And her other foot found its way to my left scrotum. After I had regained sensation in my nether regions, I continued my explanation. “Love, these symbols have miraculous powers when you rub up against them! Promise. It’s like when you rub a rabbit’s foot for good luck. Or when you rub Buddha’s belly for good fortune. Or when you rub the Blarney Stone in Ireland to get the gift of language. Ask any teenage boy, he will tell you that vigorous rubbing always produces good results!”

My fiancée lifted the cellphone to her ear and muffled her mouth. “Dad, are you near? He’s scaring me.”

“And if that health worker is more accommodating, baka (maybe) we can have some take home pa! In Naples, Italy, there is an image of Saint Guignole who is depicted with a large erect, uhm, symbol which is referred to as ‘the Holy Member.’ Women actually approach the image and scrape off a splint from the Holy Member as a conception charm! You can do some scraping of your own in City Hall.”

“Please, for the love of God, stop before I make sure that both of us cannot have any children through regular means.”

“But that’s not all, pangga!” I raised my index finger into the air.

She smacked the side of her head. “How can there be more?”

“The wooden penis can also help ward off evil spirits!”

“What else can I hit you with so that you shut up?”

“No, really! Really! Did you know that in ancient Rome, they worshiped the phallic God Fascinus? Their children were made to wear erect penis-shaped amulets with wings to avert the evil eye,” I enthused. “Maybe after the DOH gives me that free vasectomy, they might also give us a matching pair of souvenir wooden penises that we can wear around our necks! Imagine what you could ward off with that amulet – muggers, kotong (corrupt) cops, Dirty Old Men (DOMs)! Heck, I’d be scared of you too if you wore a wooden penis around your neck.”

She pulled her cellphone close to her ear. “Dad, call the SWAT Team. Malala na ‘to (This is too much).”

“Think about it. That DOH representative must keep a wooden penis on her person wherever she goes! It’s with her when she takes the bus to work, when she goes to the grocery store, when she takes merienda, and when she goes to sleep at night. Man, she must be the safest woman in the world!” I flipped my arms into the air. “And aside from being a teaching device and an amulet to ward off evil, the wooden penis has other uses as well. It can be used as a conversation piece! As a confidante! And, when the need calls for it, an embarrassingly lethal weapon.”

But before my fiancée could reply, my face was crunched to the ground while a chorus of SWAT police boots rained down my back. “Fascinus, protect me!” I begged.

“Can I borrow your night stick, officer?” my fiancée’s eyes glowed fiercely. “I would like to show my husband another use for a phallic symbol.”

Later that afternoon, after my fiancée tired of showing me the several hundred ways that a batuta (nightstick) can be used on a human body, the SWAT escorted both of us into the family counseling session. I slumped down on my seat and sat beside an engaged man who looked old enough to be my grandfather. “He must have a life-size Baguio barrel man at home,” I thought. I looked up from my seat and saw our DOH representative scribbling on the board. While she scribbled away, I spied an unfamiliar bulge in her left pants pocket. “Fascinus, protect me.” And I smiled a toothless smile to myself.

But before the lecture could start, an announcement rang out in the PA system. “For the armed men who are inside City Hall: You are strongly advised to vacate these premises immediately. We have captured your photos with our closed circuit television cameras and we will not hesitate to send these pictures to the media if you attempt to commit any acts of violence inside the building.”

Normally, this type of announcement would result in my involuntary bladder discharge. Fact is, most of the people inside City Hall at that time must have spontaneously soiled their underwear when that announcement was blurted out. But as for me? Ha! I was as calm as our Chief Executive. After all, I was under the protection of a wooden penis.

As explosive as an outburst by the insanely popular and artistic fashion designer Boyet Fajardo (don’t you all know who he is!?) is the revelation that women, and not men, are initiators of the explosive ‘first move’. Psychologist Monica Moore of Webster University once spent two thousand hours observing women’s flirting maneuvers at bars and parties and reported that women transmit body language signals two thirds of the time to get the sex with protruding genitals to flirt with them (We have tried to contact Dr. Moore for the names of these flirting women, but she is still nursing a major hangover).

Oftentimes, a man thinks he is making that perilous first move because he is the one who gets his pwet off the barstool, wobbles over to the woman, spews forth a highly flammable pick up line, then offers to buy her (depending on his level of kapal mukhattitude) a drink, breakfast, or jewelry. But, in reality, it was the woman who was subtly transmitting a series of subtle yet deceptive body and facial signals to gain the victim’s, este, the man’s attention such as flicking her fair, rolling her hips or throwing her knife. During this time, nary a word need be exchanged between the flirter and the flirtee during the first move, except for maybe “That was just gas”, “Police!” or “Cash first”.

In fact, the highly academic tome Superflirt says that women send out flirting signals five times more often than a man. The problem is that whenever women send out these signals, most men are often out of the coverage area. For a man to be successful in the dating and mating game, according to body language expert Allan Pease, he has to be perceptive at picking up the courtship signals the woman bombards him with during the first few minutes of their encounter. And the operative word here is perceptive. Unfortunately, most men are as perceptive to these signals as Congress is perceptive to public opinion about charter change.

So if men desire to read women as easily as they can read a text message, men need to learn how to read female body language. And some men are willing to unnecessary lengths to decipher it. Take for example my now penniless No Girlfriend Since Birth (NGSB) barkada, whose ability to pick up women was as hopeless as the chief executive’s popularity ratings. He had read about the legendary Blarney Stone in Ireland, a miraculous chunk of stone that had the ability to gift you with a new language if kissed it full on the lips. My NGSB, who shall remain nameless for public health reasons, blew off a year’s worth of salary, made his way to the Blarney stone, promptly took off all his clothes, and rubbed the length of his body (pink parts included) vigorously against the poor, hapless rock, with the hope that this pricey tryst would bless him with the gift of body language. Much to his dismay though, my barkada did not gain the gift of body language. He did, however, gain a new strain of gonorrhea.

What is more diabolical about female flirting signals is that women perform these moves as intentionally as term extension. “I do these things incidentally but not accidentally.” one particularly adept female flirter confessed to social psychologist Dr. Timothy Perper. She wanted her movements and gestures to look spontaneous enough even though she knew it was partly planned. Yes, that’s right, spontaneous. As spontaneous as combustion. “In general”, Dr. Perper says, “women are more aware than men of what exactly they do, why they do it and what effect it has on the opposite sex.” A man might simply think that he saw a woman whom he was attracted to, struck up a conversation with her, and, when she finds out that he is not her type, kicks him in the DNA delivery equipment. However, a woman astoundingly remembers all the little steps in her flirtation tango. Women have so mastered the science of flirting that they can place men, domesticated animals and even whole congresses under their thrall.

Some women even relish how they can torture the bemoustached sex to sustain the flirtation process. According to Dr. Perper, “Some flirters appear to want to prolong the interaction because it’s pleasurable and erotic in its own right, regardless of where it might lead.” In fact, women have the infernal ability to escalate or de-escalate a flirtation’s progress. To slow down a flirtation, she might orient her body away slightly from the man, cross her arms across her chest or avoid meeting the man’s eyes. To stop her flirtation in its tracks, she can yawn, frown, sneer, shake her head from side to side, avoid meeting the man’s gaze or resume flirting with other men. However, if there are some foolhardy men who risk approaching a woman after she unilaterally ended the flirtation, then she is allowed to club him repeatedly over the head with a blunt, heavy object until he gets the message. Then hit him again just for fun.

That is why, durnig the whole flirtation mambo, the woman is always on her guard. According to US body language expert Jan Hargrave, there are three lines of “distances” associated to flirtation levels. The first is the ‘screening line’, a comfortable distance from where a woman will first try to draw a man’s attention. This is usually from a distance of twenty feet from the woman. As far as a woman is concerned, this distance is far enough for comfort, but near enough to toss a hand grenade. If the man catches on to a woman’s flirtation overtures, then he will approach the ‘attraction line’ which is five feet away from a woman. This is when the man is deciding whether or not he will urinate into his bikini briefs if he introduces himself to the woman. For a woman, this distance is far enough to run away, but near enough for pepper spray. Finally, when the man crosses the ‘finish line’, which is barely a foot from the woman’s face, then it means he will attempt contact whether or not the woman escalated or de-escalated the flirtation. For a woman, this distance is too near for her to escape, but near enough for a suicide bombing.

Face it: if flirting were a language, then men would be illiterate. It doesn’t matter how many MDs, PhDs and Double Ds you hang on your office wall. Look at John Nash, the brilliant but socially inept mathematician portrayed by Russell Crowe in the movie A Beautiful Mind. His classic pick-up line have been used by many men who now suffer permanent groin injuries: “I don’t know exactly what I’m required to say in order for you to have intercourse with me, but can we assume I have said all that, and essentially we’re talking about fluid exchange, so we can go straight to sex”. Inexplicably, the reply that Nash received is something that I experienced many times during my heathen bachelorhood, which involved an open palm, a closed fist or a stiletto heel.

But if Nash interpreted a woman’s series of non-verbal gestures as a flirting sequence, the movie based on his life might not only have picked up four Academy Awards, but it might have also swept the Adult Movie Film Awards as well.

According to the article Biology of Attraction, a female behavior that has been observed from the remote jungles of the Amazon to the highlands of New Guinea to the dancers of Wowowee is that women flirt with the same sequence of expressions. When women first enter a room, they start with an all-encompassing gaze to check out who might be worthy sperm donors. After zeroing on the subject that she might be willing to share biological material with, the woman offers him a wide grin, then lifts her eyebrows in a swift, jerky motion as she opens her eyes wide to gaze at him. After that, she drops her eyelids, tilts her head down, then to the side, then looks away. No, no, no, she is not having convulsions, she is flirting with the unwitting male. She also covers her face frequenly with her hands, giggling nervously as she retreats behind her palms. The sequential flirting gesture was so distinctive that German ethologist Irenaus Eibl-Eibesfeldt, who has been observing women hitting on men for the past thirty years (those must have been many lonely nights at bars for Irenaus), is convinced that it is an innate female courtship ploy that evolved eons ago to signal sexual interest. As a matter of fact, this is now labeled as the Eibl-Eibesfeldt flirting sequence.

Imagine how much more interesting A Beautiful Mind would have been if John Nash used approached the ladies with the classic pick up line, “Nice Eibl-Eibesfeldt flirting sequence, so can we now go straight to sex?”

So to all of the No Girlfriends Since Birth (NGSB) out there, clip out this article, keep it in your wallet or staple it to your forehead. Because when you approach a woman in a bar, and the woman proceeds to smash her cocktail glass on your face and uses the broken shards embedded in her palm to keep you away from her, tell her that you merely misinterpreted her flirting signals. And then maybe she’ll just cut away at your extremities. Or she will get insanely popular and artistic fashion designer Boyet Fajardo to cut it away for her (Don’t you know he is by now!?).