She Licked Her Pinky at a Party and Nobody Bought ...

She Licked Her Pinky at a Party and Nobody Bought It So Steve Harvey Stepped In and Taught Two Women Everything They Got Wrong About Flirting

The pinky was the beginning of all of this.
Not the end of it — the beginning.
A few weeks earlier, a woman named Reece had walked onto the Steve Harvey stage with one simple request.
She wanted to turn heads when she walked into a club.
That was it.
Just heads turning.
And Steve Harvey — a man who has spent decades studying exactly this kind of human moment, who has written books about it, who has built a career on the space between what people want and what they actually do — looked at Reece and gave her the tool.
Shoulders back.
Slow down halfway across the room.
Let them see you hit it.
The swagger walk.
She practiced it.
She got it.
She went out into the world with her new walk and her new confidence and her shoulders back.
And then she licked her pinky at a party and nobody bought it.

This is the story of two women who knew, in theory, that they were attractive.
Who knew, in theory, that men were noticing them.
Who had no idea — zero, none, absolutely not — what to do once the noticing started.
Reece had the walk.
She’d mastered the entrance.
Men were turning their heads exactly the way she’d hoped.
And then a man would open his mouth to flirt, and Reece would stand there like someone had asked her a question in a language she’d studied for three weeks and then promptly forgotten.
Malikia had a different problem.
Malikia couldn’t even tell when it was happening.
A man had spent 10 minutes talking to her in a store.
Ten minutes.

A conversation that went nowhere near products and everywhere near her.
He said goodbye.
He walked away.
He didn’t even buy anything.
And it was Malikia’s friend — standing right there, watching the whole thing — who had to pull her aside afterward and explain what had just happened.
“You know he was totally flirting with you, right?”
Malikia had not known.
Malikia had genuinely, completely not known.

The promise Steve Harvey made, implicitly, the moment both women appeared on that stage was this:
By the end of this, you will know.
You will know when it’s happening.
You will know what to do when it happens.
You will walk out of this studio with something you cannot buy, cannot fake, and cannot borrow from anyone — the actual, real, functional ability to flirt.
Not the idea of flirting.
Not the theory of flirting.
The thing itself.
That was the promise.
And the way Steve Harvey was going to deliver on it was not by standing at a whiteboard and explaining attraction mechanics.
He was going to show them.
He was going to put them in front of real men — men they didn’t know were working for him — and he was going to watch what happened.
All the information he needed was already there.
He just had to create the conditions for it to appear.

“Ladies, you’re really not alone in this,” Steve told them, standing in front of the studio audience.
His voice had the particular quality it gets when he’s shifting from entertainer to teacher.
Still warm.
Still funny.
But aimed now at something real.
“Flirting — it’s gotta be subtle for women, because if it’s too aggressive it can be misunderstood.”
He let that land.
“So today I’m gonna be helping y’all to help develop some of your flirting skills.”
The audience cheered the way audiences cheer when they know they’re about to see something honest happen.
Not performed.
Honest.
“It’s time for — This Is How You Do It.”

The first experiment played out exactly the way a first experiment plays out.
Which is to say: messily, with good intentions and bad execution, in ways that were almost painful to watch and somehow also completely endearing.
Reece sat down next to a man at a bar setup.
The man — working for Steve, though she didn’t know that — opened the conversation the way a man opens a conversation when he is definitely flirting.
“What’s in that glass?”
She told him.
“Is it dirty or—”
“Very dirty,” she said.
And then she said, “Sorry, that was weird.”
Which — yes.
But also no, because the dirty martini line was actually a small, accidental flash of wit, the kind of quick response that flirting is made of.
She just didn’t recognize it as such, and so she apologized for it, which is the conversational equivalent of scoring a goal and then immediately picking up the ball and handing it back.
The man kept going.
He told her she had nice skin.
He guessed she drank a lot of water.
It was a compliment wrapped inside an observation — a classic move, the kind designed to invite a response, to open a door and stand there holding it.
Reece walked through the door and said, “I can’t tell if you’re joking or not.”
She kept the door open with one hand while she went back to talking about walking dogs.
The man asked if she was dating anyone.
She said she’d wait.
She said cheers.
She forgot to actually drink.
When he reminded her that you’re supposed to drink after you cheers, she responded with the kind of “Oh my god” that sounded like someone realizing they’d left their keys in the car.

Steve watched the tape and pulled out the specific moments, the way a coach pulls out the specific moments from game film.
Not to embarrass.
To teach.
“Reece, the guy was flirting with you. He said, what are you drinking? You said a martini. He said is it dirty — then you said very dirty.”
He paused.
“I’m assuming that was an attempt at humor.”
“Yeah,” Reece said. “My sad attempt.”
“No, no — it’s cool. You can do humor if you funny.”
The audience laughed, because it was funny, but it was also true.
If your instinct is to be funny, be funny.
The instinct itself is information.
“But see, what you gotta do, ladies — always just go with your strong suits. If you don’t do jokes, don’t do jokes.”
Then he said the thing that was really going to stay.
“The next thing — flirting is laughing at a guy’s jokes even if they ain’t funny.”
He looked at the camera.
“Not ‘I can’t tell if you joking.’ Well, what the hell?”

Here is the mechanics of what Steve was describing, if you slow it down and look at it carefully.
Flirting is not about impressing someone.
Flirting is about making someone feel seen.
When a man tells a joke — even a bad joke, even a reaching joke, even a joke that technically doesn’t land — what he is actually doing is extending an invitation.
He is saying: I am trying to make this enjoyable for you.
The response to that is not a performance review.
The response is participation.
You laugh.
Not a fake laugh, not a sycophantic laugh, but the small, warm laugh that says: I caught what you threw.
I’m in this with you.
That is the entire game.
Not wit.
Not cleverness.
Not knowing exactly what to say.
Just: I see that you’re trying, and I’m trying too, and we’re both in this together right now and that is enough.

Malikia’s tape was different.
Malikia could talk to anyone.
That was the problem.
When you can talk to anyone about anything, you sometimes miss the signals that someone isn’t just talking to you — they’re talking at you specifically, with an agenda that has nothing to do with the conversation and everything to do with you.
She sat at the bar setup.
A man came over.
He said, “How’s it going?”
She said, “Oh well.”
He introduced himself.
She introduced herself.
He told her she had a beautiful name.
She said thank you.
This was all fine.
This was actually good.
But then he said she was a Cali girl, and she asked if he was.
He pointed out, gently, that he was not, in fact, a girl.
And instead of taking that small, playful moment and running with it — instead of smiling and saying “fair point” or “you know what I meant” or anything that acknowledged the lightness of the exchange — Malikia pivoted.
She started talking about her work.
She mentioned that older men — fathers, grandfathers — often approach her because of her profession.
She held her phone.
She multitasked.
When he asked if she’d rather handle her business or have a conversation, she said she could do both.
She could multitask.
He said, “Wow, okay.”
And then he left.
Politely.
Genuinely.
With a “have a good one” that was warm but final.

Steve looked at Malikia.
“You’re making it very difficult for a guy to flirt with you.”
He ticked off the specific violations.
One: she talked about other men — other men who approach her, other men who notice her.
This is never the move.
No man standing in front of you wants to hear about the parade of men who were there before him.
He knows there’s a parade.
He does not need the details.
Two: the phone.
Put it down.
“Put your phone down,” Steve said simply.
The audience laughed in the particular way people laugh when they’ve been caught.
Three: stop trying to win.
“You ain’t gotta top this guy, let him win.”
This is the one that sounds counterintuitive until you understand what it means.
It doesn’t mean pretend to be less than you are.
It doesn’t mean shrink yourself.
It means: the first conversation is not a competition.
Nobody should be keeping score.
“All you’re trying to do,” Steve said, “is see if he’s worth a second date. That’s your only objective.”
He let it land.
“You ain’t trying to figure out if he gonna be your baby daddy, if he gonna be the man you walk across the threshold with.”
Another pause.
“You gotta first find out if you just like the man, okay.”

That sentence — you gotta first find out if you just like the man — is the one that should be printed somewhere accessible.
Because this is the error.
This is the thing that happens in the first conversation, before a person even knows the other person’s last name, before they’ve established whether they share any values or any interests or any vision of a future.
The full weight of all possible futures lands on that first exchange.
And then people do what Malikia did.
They armor up.
They multitask.
They talk about other men to establish that they have options.
They demonstrate their competence, their independence, their ability to function without whoever is currently standing in front of them.
All of which is real.
All of which is true.
All of which is absolutely not what this moment calls for.
This moment calls for one thing.
Can I enjoy the next ten minutes with this person?
That’s the whole question.
That’s all you’re answering.

After the break, Steve set up the redemption rounds.
Two women.
Two new men.
Justin for Reece.
Jeremy for Malikia.
This time, the women knew they were being watched.
This time, they had the notes.

Justin sat down with Reece and opened the way Justin opened.
“Reece, you look amazing in that dress. You’re wearing it really well.”
Reece said, “Thank you, that’s very nice of you.”
Which was good.
Clean, warm, direct.
Not “oh, this old thing.”
Not “really? I wasn’t sure about it.”
Just: received, acknowledged, thank you.
Justin kept going.
“All the jewelry popping girl, I see you.”
“Oh, thank you.”
Still good.
Still clean.
He asked if she came here often.
She said no, just having a nice night out.
He offered her a drink or a dance.
Whatever she wanted.
And here is where the old Reece would have frozen.
This is the exact moment — an offer, an opening, a man standing at the door holding it — where she would have fumbled.
She didn’t freeze.
But she also didn’t quite walk through.
She laughed.
She hesitated.
Steve, watching, stepped in to demonstrate.
“When he said you look nice tonight, that’s your opportunity to say — well, you know what? I think you look rather handsome yourself.”
He made it simple.
Reciprocate the compliment.
It doesn’t have to be elaborate.
It doesn’t have to be clever.
It just has to be mutual.
“You do look handsome,” Reece said then, turning to Justin.
“Oh, thank you,” Justin said.
And the audience applauded, because yes — that.
Exactly that.
That small, warm, mutual exchange is the entire foundation of it.

The drink conversation came next, and this is where the lesson got specific.
“What’s your drink of choice, what do you like?” Justin asked.
“I drink pretty much anything, honestly,” Reece said.
The audience laughed immediately.
Steve Harvey looked at her.
“What woman drinks pretty much anything? You don’t drink anything.”
He was making a point about presentation.
Not about honesty — nobody is saying lie about what you drink.
The point is that “I drink pretty much anything” is not an answer.
It’s a deflection.
It’s the conversational version of saying “I don’t know, what do you want to do?”
It pushes the decision back.
It gives the man nothing to work with.
It is the opposite of an invitation.
“Always present yourself the way you—”
He caught himself.
“Let’s try it again. Ask again.”
Justin asked again.
“I like red wine,” Reece said.
The audience applauded like she’d done something significant.
Because she had.
Two words.
A preference.
Something real.
Something specific.
Something that tells a person who you are, even in miniature — that you have a taste, that you’ve thought about what you like, that you show up to a conversation with opinions.
“That’s classy, that’s real nice,” Steve said.

The dog conversation was the last lesson, and it was the most specific one.
Justin had a dog.
Reece walked dogs for a living.
This should have been easy.
This should have been the moment where everything clicked, where two people found the shared thing and leaned into it and let it carry the conversation forward naturally.
“What kind of dog?” Reece asked.
“A schnauzer,” Justin said.
“What’s your favorite dog?”
“My favorite,” Justin said, “probably weenie dogs.”
And here is where Reece — a dog walker, a person whose entire professional life is spent around animals, a woman who knows every breed by its technical name — looked at the man across from her and said:
“Weenie dogs?”
She said it the way you say something when you’ve caught someone.
When you’re pointing at a small error and making sure everyone in the room notices.
Steve Harvey looked at her.
“You thought it’d be a good idea, with a man you just met, to — instead of using — and you walk dogs for a living. So the technical name would be a Dachshund.”
The audience was already laughing.
“You thought it’d be real sexy if you say my favorite dog is a weenie dog.”
He shook his head, but he was smiling.
Because this was not cruelty.
This was the thing that separates a good teacher from a lecturer.
He saw exactly what had happened, and he named it with enough specificity that Reece could see it too.
She knew Dachshund.
She used “weenie dog” because she was nervous.
Or because it was cute.
Or because she was trying to match his casual energy and overshot it.
None of that is a crime.
But in the moment of connection — in the moment where two people find a shared thing and the conversation could open up into something real — correcting the other person’s vocabulary is the single most reliable way to close it back down.
“You ain’t there,” Steve said, “but you didn’t do bad.”
He looked at her with something that was genuinely warm.
“You got pretty eyes and everything, so you got a lot of stuff working for you.”
He paused.
“Just gotta relax and be conversational, that’s all, okay?”

The pinky.
It comes back here.
The pinky that she had licked at a party, that nobody had bought, that had sent her back to Steve Harvey for a second round of lessons.
The pinky was Steve’s earlier trick — a way of signaling interest, of creating a small, intimate moment that said: I see you, I’m playful, I’m here.
It’s a good trick.
But a trick without context is just a trick.
You can have the move and not have the foundation under it.
You can lick the pinky and then apologize for the dirty martini joke.
You can walk into the room with your shoulders back and then tell the man his dog’s correct scientific name when he calls it something cute.
You can have all the individual pieces and still fumble the ball.
Because flirting isn’t a collection of moves.
It’s a posture.
It’s the decision — made before you open your mouth, before you sit down, before the man even notices you — that you are going to be present.
That you are going to put the phone down.
That you are not going to audition the man for a role he hasn’t applied for yet.
That you are going to find out, simply and without pressure, whether you can enjoy the next ten minutes.
That’s the pinky.
Not the gesture itself — the spirit under it.

Jeremy and Malikia.
This was the one Steve had been waiting to see.
Because Malikia was the more interesting problem.
Reece struggled with execution — she knew something was supposed to happen and couldn’t quite land it.
Malikia struggled with recognition — she couldn’t tell when something was happening at all.
Jeremy walked over.
“How are you?”
“I’m great,” Malikia said.
Good start.
“I noticed that piece of arm candy you have right there, it’s beautiful.”
He was complimenting her jewelry.
She looked at his watch.
“Thank you, that’s a nice watch you have on.”
She gave it back.
Equal, immediate, genuine.
Jeremy smiled.
“You have a glam squad to help put you together. Everything is just laying just right.”
“Yes I did, thank you very much.”
She accepted the compliment without deflecting, without minimizing, without turning it around into self-deprecation or a question about how he knew or a long explanation of who the glam squad was.
Just: received.
Thank you.
He asked if she was there alone.
She said just her.
He said good, nice to meet new people.
She said yes.
She was present.
She was warm.
She was smiling without performing the smile.
When he told her his name, she repeated it — “Jeremy” — in a way that sounded like she was putting it somewhere safe, somewhere she’d be able to find it again.
“Nice to meet you,” she said.
“Nice to meet you,” he said.
And then she said the thing that made Steve Harvey straighten up.
“I picked up your tent.”
She saw him.
She told him she saw him.
Not with coyness, not with a game, not with a test or a performance or a correction.
With directness.
With the quiet confidence of a woman who has been paying attention and isn’t afraid to say so.
“I was watching you,” Jeremy said.
“I was paying attention,” she confirmed.

Steve Harvey looked at the scene.
He looked at Jeremy.
He looked at Malikia.
“Malikia went over there, and I was paying attention. He complimented her, she complimented him. She smiled. She kept — you have not made a single mistake.”
Malikia said, “Good, thank you.”
“Congratulations.”
“Thank you.”
And then Steve said the thing he’d been building toward the entire episode.
“Look — the key for ladies on the date. Remember: your only objective on the first date is to see if you can enjoy each other’s company. That’s the goal.”
He paused.
“I can’t really give you no notes. You did it absolutely perfect. You listened, everything.”

The transformation between Malikia’s first tape and this moment is worth slowing down to look at.
Because nothing about Malikia changed.
She didn’t become a different person.
She didn’t get a new personality or a new set of social skills or a crash course in attraction theory.
What changed was the frame she put around the moment.
In the first tape, she was a busy woman who also happened to be talking to someone.
She was multitasking.
She was defending her time, establishing her credentials, making sure this person understood that her attention had value.
All of which is true.
None of which is flirting.
In the second tape, she was a woman who had chosen to be present.
She had put down the phone.
She had stopped performing her independence and simply exercised it — quietly, confidently, by being fully in the conversation without needing it to be more than it was.
She wasn’t auditioning him for a role.
She was just finding out if she liked him.
That’s the whole thing.
That is the entire game, laid out in two minutes and forty seconds of bar conversation.

Here is what Steve Harvey knows about flirting that most people spend years learning the hard way:
The first conversation is not a destination.
It is a door.
You are not walking through it to a permanent address.
You are walking through it to see what’s on the other side.
Maybe it’s something.
Maybe it’s nothing.
But you will never find out if you walk to the door and then stand there reading the fine print on the lease before you’ve even opened it.
Open the door.
Step through.
Be in the room.
That’s all.
Strong suits — use them.
Jokes — if you’re funny, be funny. If you’re not, don’t.
Compliments — receive them. Give them back. Equal exchange.
Phone — in your bag. In your pocket. Anywhere but your hand.
Other men — not a topic. Save it for never.
His vocabulary — let it be his. Don’t correct it.
His jokes — laugh. Not because they’re funny. Because he’s trying.
And when someone tells you his name, repeat it.
Put it somewhere safe.
Because that’s the thing about the people worth meeting.
You’re going to want to be able to find them again.

Reece walked out of that studio with something she hadn’t walked in with.
Not a magic move.
Not a secret phrase.
Not the pinky trick, though she had that too, she’d always had that.
She walked out with the understanding that the entrance was never the hard part.
She’d mastered the entrance.
Shoulders back, halfway across the room, let them see you hit it.
The hard part was what happened after the turn.
After the heads moved.
After the eye contact.
After the man walked over and opened his mouth.
The hard part was staying in the room.
Not retreating behind a joke she wasn’t sure of.
Not hiding in information about her job.
Not forgetting to drink after the cheers.
Just staying.
Open.
Present.
Herself.

Malikia walked out with something different.
She walked out with the knowledge that she had already been doing it.
Not in the first tape.
But in her life — in the store, with the man who didn’t buy anything, who spent 10 minutes in her orbit and left without what he came for because what he came for wasn’t a product.
It was her.
She had been giving it to men without knowing she was giving it.
All that warmth.
All that easy conversation.
All that natural, unforced attention.
She’d been flirting without a label on it, without realizing what it was, because she’d been told that flirting was a performance — something you do, a skill you deploy.
But it isn’t.
It’s already in you.
It’s already in the way you say someone’s name back to them.
It’s already in the way you look at a watch and say that’s a nice watch.
It’s already in the way you say “I was paying attention” to someone who was watching you.
You’ve been doing it your whole life.
You just needed someone to tell you that that’s what it was.

The pinky.
One more time.
Reece licked it at a party and nobody bought it.
She went back to Steve Harvey and said: I’m out here licking my pinky and nobody’s buying it.
That sentence — delivered with the honesty of someone who has no ego left to protect — is why the lesson landed.
Because she knew something wasn’t working.
She knew she had the move and not the thing beneath it.
She came back.
She asked for more.
She sat in front of a camera with a man she didn’t know was working for her teacher, and she apologized for the dirty martini joke, and she told a man that she’d “pretty much drink anything,” and she corrected the word “weenie dog” — and she took all of it.
She sat there while Steve Harvey broke it down piece by piece.
She laughed at the weenie dog thing, because even she knew.
And then she sat next to Justin, and she said “you do look handsome,” and she said “I like red wine,” and she let the small, warm, ordinary exchange of two people who are just finding out if they like each other happen around her.
And the audience applauded.
Not because she was perfect.
Because she was trying.
Because she came back.
Because she asked for more.
The pinky was never the point.
The point was that she kept showing up.
The point is that she always showed up.
And the man worth finding — the one who’s also showing up, who’s also trying, who’s also asking questions he already knows the answer to because the answer isn’t the point —
he’s going to see that.
He’s going to see her.
And this time, she’s going to know that he does.

Steve Harvey said: your only objective on the first date is to see if you can enjoy each other’s company.
That’s the goal.
That’s the whole thing.
Not the threshold.
Not the baby daddy.
Not the forever.
Just the next ten minutes.
Just the door.
Just the room on the other side.
Step through it.
Stay.
That’s all.
That’s the whole game.
And it turns out — you already know how to play it.