Woody Allen

Maybe it's something about being from a small, insular town where I was regarded for most of my teenage years as a gangly, undesirable freak by pretty much everyone except the acid taking skateboarder crowd (I say crowd, there were possibly two of them) in the year above. Where I was regularly  heckled by fourteen year old, radge kids in the sterile corridors of high school for being awkward, and openly mocked for my strange sartorial choices in the sixth form common room. Or perhaps since I was rejected by my former loved one this summer I've realised that failing to ever brush my hair and dressing like a twelve year old Blue Peter contestant might not go down well with university educated boys. But either way I'm still taken aback when I discover that people might actually want to, well, sleep with me. Usually subtle references to wanting to engage in such carnal acts completely escape me, naively dismissing late night, alcohol induced invitations to watch films as nothing more than that. There was a night in the summer when my friends looked horrified at my choice not to ignore a talkative old man I hadn't yet classified as an obvious pervert.

But there's something of a recurrent 'meme', if you will, in our friendship group that has the potential to be an outright euphemism for coitus, but with the perfect subtle pretence of cultural acceptability. I was first asked, "Want to come back to mine and watch that Woody Allen film we were talking about?" almost four months ago, following an ill advised game of Amy Winehands and a club experience I have almost no memory of (to the extent I didn't recognise the interior, save for the bathroom cubicle, on my return). For those of you who aren't familiar with Amy Winehands, the hardcore cousin of Edward Ciderhands, it is a debauched drinking games of the sorts entirely responsible for desecrating the student name. A bottle of finest rose in the price range of about £2 was gaffa taped to each of my hands, where upon I was forced to drink each bottle in quick succession to regain the use of my limbs properly, thus inhibiting going to the toilet, getting a drink of water, or brushing my ludicrously long hair out of my drunken, shameful phizog. Following two bottles of wine, a double vodka and three lines of kiddy coke, the Woody Allen line worked a charm, and although thankfully my memory was completely cleared of the events that followed, I think it was safe to say we never did get to the end of Manhattan.

Now that our memories have been both psychologically and chemically wiped, I'm actually really great friends with the instigator of that line, and he let me in on the shocking news that this was not indeed the first time he had used it. In fact, I was equally appalled and impressed to find out he's had a 100% success rate ever since it's aphrodisiac qualities were confirmed and he started using it on a regular basis. To add this this, as Wednesday night's events showed, it was spreading to the masses. I though it would be hilarious to turn the tables on the creator of the line, encouraging a very drunk and attractive girl who had the hots for him to ask him the very same. It won her a snog and a phone number, and, before the night was through, I had myself experienced the deja-vu of being invited to a Woody Allen marathon (the bare confidence implied of suggesting an entire collection and not just the one film is admirable).

I passed it off in my usual way as a drunken joke, or perhaps a coincidence that should only be taken at face value, but following the in depth conversation the Woody Allen Line creator  and I had this afternoon, I came to the conclusion that it may have possibly meant more. I've given it some thought, and although Woody Allen's socks and white underpants in Annie Hall immediately springs to mind, as not exactly the sort of sexual experience most red-blooded women pine after, I think it's something about the theme of an awkward, intellectual, neurotic who manages to secure absolute babes that does it. That and the sexual content of the films itself. The sort of guys who use this line are making their good taste in films obvious, as well as the parallel, 'well if a neurotic weed like Woody Allen can pull, so can I'. Not that they need someone as physically unstimulating as Woody Allen to bolster up their own comparative attractiveness, but maybe on some level they think just that. Or maybe it's just a perfect excuse to be able to get a girl back to theirs to watch the sort of hip films they know they'd love, but haven't worked their way through the entire back catalogue of. Opening my inbox once he'd left I pondered as I saw the message, you still up for that Woody Allen film night? x....