i used to use "wanna cuddle" or "wanna spoon", or "wanna hold hand" as a line of attack during boat trips with private banking groupie girls on husband-hunting boat trips organized by demented buddies, a hit or miss proposition that had the advantage of instant-knowing and quick dissemination of "availability" knowledge.
once one of two conversing korean girls along a chain of fellows and fellowettes on mid-boat-trip hike asked me, "are you with anyone now?" as a opening line, and my then girlfriend and current wife zoomed in from the back of the hiking line up, breaking conversation with whomever, and responded, "yeah, he is with me" - what a conversation stopper ;0)
that was when i knew my future was determined and fate sealed.
another time, wife had just returned to hk from biz school but was unable to make a boat/hike/bbq outing, and i joined the action for exercise. chatted with a robust girl in healthy hiking outfit but, inexplicably did not exercise my propositional lines probably due to laziness.
my wife called mid trip and said she can join the bbq on mid-island at end of outing; and did. it turned out the robust girl, unknown to me, was a good friend of my wife's.
at the burger flipping station, my buddy alerted to me that i was a fortunate person for being lazy.
in any and all cases, i was not clever enough to turn fun into profit as folks in america are apparently able to ...
just in in-tray,
Cuddle Parties Heat Up
Published: Thursday, 2 Jul 2009 | 12:15 PM ET
By: Jane Wells
Correspondent
Feeling down? A lot of people are in this economy. That may be one reason why cuddle parties are big business.
cnbc.com
CuddleParty.com started five years ago as a business which hosts parties where people touch each other in a "structured, safe workshop on boundaries, communication, intimacy and affection." Business is booming. "It's a fantastic way to be busy with people," says Len Daley, one of the company's volunteer staff members. He insists, however, that this is not anything close to an orgy. "We take sex off the table."
Check out the video here
For one thing, there are specific rules at cuddle parties, like not wearing risqué pajamas, and no booze. After an hour of getting to know each other, potential strangers at these parties learn that when asked to cuddle, they should say "yes" if they agree, "no" if they don't, and if they're not sure, say "no". Also, my favorite rule: "Be hygienically savvy".
Each cuddle party (and there are a lot of them around the country, check the schedule), is hosted by a trained facilitator. Sometimes they charge participants as much as $40 to attend the three and a half hour get-togethers, sometimes they throw parties for free.
Daley first thought up the idea of people getting together for group hugs back in 1978, but he never got it off the ground. Then, in 2004, he discovered that Reid Mihalko and Marcia Baczynski had created Cuddle Party. "It's like Tupperware," Daley says.
So, do you make money doing this?
Daley says Cuddy Party is a non-profit which makes money by training facilitators. It costs $495 for a session to learn basic skills, another $995 for a 10-session teleconference on how to hold a cuddle party effectively, and then $195 a year to stay professionally affiliated with the main website, where Cuddle Party will help you take reservations for your own parties. Daley says individual facilitators may run for-profit enterprises, but headquarters does not get a commission.
Business is growing. In the first five years, Daley says they trained 50 facilitators, including some in Australia, Denmark, and Canada. "Over the next five years, we're on track to train 500 facilitators." He says the economy is having no negative impact on business. If anything, the number of parties is increasing. "It's not something people are getting rich at," Daley says, but the biggest challenge is fighting the sexual image conjured up reading about Cuddle Parties. "We do not like the name, but we can't find a better one."
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