How to spot a Gold Digger (or the stupidity of shallow men)

As with most of the things that I write, I’m going to provide tips on how to spot gold diggers based on my own experiences. I am known as the shallow man for a number of reasons; one of them (according to my best female friend Anna) is due to my (former) weakness for beautiful women. Like many men, I could go from being a rational, logical, and reasonably intelligent person, and turn into a gibbering idiot at the sight of a beautiful woman. Throw in a pair of stiletto shoes, some makeup, and a tight outfit on a hot body and I’d melt like Hagelslag on a hot summer’s day.

One Saturday evening, I was in a bar in Amsterdam called the Palladium with a good friend of mine, Koen. I’d just been promoted at work that week and was in the mood to celebrate so ordered a bottle of Champagne. Now, prior to ordering this, we’d been standing at the bar, which was packed full of many fine specimens of Dutch Antelope for some time. As Koen and I were engaged in quite deep conversation about the merits of The Dark Knight compared to the latest Transformers movie,  I hadn’t even really taken too much notice of the various fine ladies who frequented the bar that evening.

Within several minutes (it could have been seconds actually) of the Champagne arriving, we were suddenly, no longer alone. Two ladies, one who was blonde and tall with the legs of a giraffe, and was wearing a skin tight spotted dress to match, and her friend who was a lot shorter, but whose top showed so much cleavage that her breasts could probably have been seen from space, were suddenly standing next to us.

“Hiiiiiiii, how you guys? Are you celebrating or just chilling?” Asked the lady whose breasts appeared to have hypnotized my friend, as he was unable to respond. “We’re celebrating actually” I responded, as the giraffe like lady squeezed in between us and gave me the kind of smile that held promises of bedroom Olympics in the near future. “Well no need to celebrate alone” shouted her friend whose breasts were attempting to make a prison break out of her top. Dus, several minutes later, there we were sharing our Champagne with two complete, (but pretty hot) strangers. I’m ashamed to say that while my brain was attempting to deliver messages to me saying, beware, these women are only after the prospect of expensive free drinks, the excitable chap in my trousers was accepting the messages on my brains behalf and throwing them in the bin.

The ladies in question (whose names have been changed to protect the guilty) I’ll call Leonie and Mieke, were both very interested in the origin of my suit (tailor made naturally) my watch (Rolex), where we lived, if we rented or bought the apartments we lived in,  and asked so many questions about the details of our jobs, that we felt as if we were having introductory meetings with a head hunter.

Tell tale signs that the shovel is out and digging for gold

There were some tell tale signs that appeared that evening that I chose to ignore:

• At no point during the evening was any attempt made by either lady to even pretend to offer to pay for any drinks
• The line of questioning undergone by my friend and I were incredibly consistent and was focused squarely on material matters
• Yes, I’m a good looking guy, but the fact that the ladies didn’t appear until the Champagne arrived was a big hint, that I chose to ignore
• Yes, I have been known to be amusing, but having two ladies screaming like banshees at every comment I made, whether they were meant to be funny or not, was also a warning sign

 

In no time at all, Leonie, she with the legs of a giraffe, and I were engaged in a manner similar to that well-known Dutch dish, sliptong. The ladies (at their suggestion) clung onto us and accompanied us to Jimmy Woo, where surprise, surprise, they were also drinking Champagne. By now, having had a reasonable amount to drink, and a rather passionate clinch with Leonie, my common sense was now set to neutral while lust was in fifth gear.

We danced; exchange tongues, groped, and danced some more. My friend Koen was similarly engaged with Mieke, who certainly kept his hands full. At the end of the night we exchanged numbers with the ladies in question and made arrangements to meet separately in the days to come.

What then transpired in my case was that upon arranging to meet Leonie, she kindly suggested that we have dinner at a two Michelin star restaurant. The shallow man loves fine dining and indeed has eaten at most, if not all of the Michelin star places in Amsterdam. However, whenever I have done so, it’s usually been either during the stage of a relationship where we’ve been celebrating some event or the other, or the personality and manner of the person I was planning to have dinner with was such that I had no qualms about inviting her to such a place as I knew that she’d appreciate it.

Disaster date

The attitude of the aesthetically pleasing Leonie irritated the hell out of me, and yet, against my better judgment, I still agreed with her request and we ended up having dinner at one of my favorite restaurants, Vinkeles.  This was the first and last time that we had dinner together. This was nothing to do with the quality of Vinkeles, which is and continues to be one of the best restaurants in the country. The reasons for the date being a disaster will be explained in my book, The Shallow Man Guide to Dating the Dutch, available at all good bookstores from February 14th.

No naive men with more money than sense were hurt during the writing of this article.

 

Read the tale of a man shallower than a childs swimming pool, The Amsterdam Confessions of a Shallow Man available from Amazon and BOL.com also at the ABC book stores in Amsterdam and Den Haag.

Till next time, slaap lekker!