Dive Boy
it's an attitude thing

Text by: Mark Brill

Louise was sounding curious. 'These techie dive blokes, they seem to spend most of their time running decompression profiles and boasting about the size of their long hose. Do you think they've got any interest in women?' 'Women? They don't come with a double bladder, you can't unbolt them at the back and theres a distinct lack of O rings; so I think you'll find they don't count' I started to explain. But I could see she didn't get it. 'Look, there's basically three ways for techie dive blokes to get their kicks: 1. Talking about kit Going into a long, incredibly detailed discussion of your current equipment, the configuration, the pros and cons 2. Tinkering with kit Spending hours with a set of allen keys, an adjustable spanner and a length of surgical tubing fine-tuning your equipment configuration 3. Fantasising about kit Drooling over the latest highly expensive gadgets such as trimix computers, gas switching blocks, and huge Aquazepp scooters' 'But hang on,' says Louise 'what about the actual diving? Surely the whole point is to do the dive.' Where has the woman been? 'It's not the doing that counts!' I told her 'They take the same approach to women: they don't actually want anything to happen (far too scary!) so they've deliberately developed really rubbish chat-up lines. They can toy with the idea of it with none of the performance anxiety!' I could see that she didn't believe me so I decided to present the evidence: So here goes...

The Dive Boy Guide to diving chat-up lines Appearance?
Pretty infrequent. You don't want flirting to get in the way of more constructive activities like playing with kit, working out your run times or going to the pub.

No, I don't suppose you'd take up techie diving in order to get laid.

In fact some of them want to go diving to get away from women. Take this enlightened example from the April 99 issue of ScubaWorld: some Wally guy writing about cave diving in France: '... Dordogne is a great place to visit. Those that are "under the thumb" could even consider taking wives and girlfriends (or both).'

Or both? They must have some pretty interesting chat up lines to find TWO girlfriends.
Er, not exactly: read it again and it's clear he's refering to someone else being 'under the thumb' - sounds like he's a sad bloke that can't pull. And here's why : Typical approach when trying to interest women would be to start off by bragging about their diving prowess, for example... 'Did you know that I can out-swim an Aquazepp?'

Oh no! There must be better approaches than that?
Well there's this infamous chat up story from a diving instructor 'To test the narcosis levels in my students I take them to 30m and give them a slate with a couple of questions to answer - their name and a simple sum. And if it's a girl I'd ask her if she'd give a blow job on the first date.'

So did that make an impression?
Oh yes, it impressed most of the women so much that all dive knives had to be removed from the immediate vicinity.
So instead they go for the direct approach.

Like?
'Gissa shag and I'll sign off your qualification.'

And if that doesn't work?
'Gissa shag or you're out of the diving club.'

That's outragous. Do they really say those sort of things.
Well I've witnessed it first hand. You might be familiar with this example of Northern Dive Bloke charm, which goes:
'Wanna come and see my porn video?'
'No.'
'Why not... are you a lesbian?'

And what if I say no?
'Gissa shag then!'

And if I say yes??
'Can I watch?'