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{shortcode-21cc3534b02e5a90dd1b6e61be0fe28423896a7e}nd the Lord said to Adam, “Be fruitful and multiply.”
At least in terms of friendship, Adam S. Mohamed ’25 is a very fruitful man — in the dining hall, friends of Adam are multiplying like mushrooms, clinging to him like barnacles to a barge. They are all around him, chatting with him, laughing with him, waving at him from neighboring tables. If the original Adam was made in the image of God, this Adam was surely made in the image of the Rizz God.
“I definitely think I carry flirtatious energy in everything I do most of the time,” Adam tells me when I manage to corner him alone. He is sitting in an armchair in the Adams lobby, a small plate of apple crumble balanced on one hand and a fork hovering in the other. “There are different types of flirting,” he says. “Sometimes I think of it as sexual energy, but it doesn’t necessarily involve actual sex, or romantic feelings. I think it’s just this openness to the world in a way that’s commonly seen as romantic, or sexual, but not necessarily so.”
There’s no doubt that Adam is open to the world. For instance, against all odds, he’s somehow still open to me even after witnessing what I now recognize was alarming, stalkerly behavior. In order to secure this journalistic rendezvous, I sent Adam a formal email, “bumped into him” at a flea market hosted by the Harvard Advocate a few days later, texted him at precise nine-hour intervals (3:43 p.m. followed by 12:43 a.m.) inquiring about when we could meet, and then began our conversation by letting slip that while perusing his LinkedIn, I discovered he had been a web developer for Datamatch since his freshman year. “Oh god!” he exclaims. “I have not updated that in years!”
He initially joined Datamatch, he tells me, both because he is a Computer Science concentrator and “because I thought that the web design was cool.” But he is equally ready to admit that the amorous mission of Datamatch may have also whispered in his ear: “My subconscious always knew that I am motivated by love and connection. So Datamatch naturally drew me in.”
How did he come to be this way? Adam reckons he may have been born with the kiss of Cupid on his cheek. “I crawled out of my mother’s womb and winked at the doctor,” he says, laughing. But he soon makes a slide from the silly to the serious. This is part of Adam’s charm. Adam tells me that it was only later in life, when other people began to call him “flirty,” that this adjective joined the dictionary of words Adam used to describe himself.
“When other people brought it to my attention, I started to consider it more,” he says. “And that’s when I was like, ‘Oh, people think I am very flirty.’ So I started to think about myself that way. But before, I think it was more a natural way of just talking to people, since a young age.” Even the way Adam pronounces the word “flirty” sounds flirty; he doesn’t rush through the word, or dull the “t” to a “d” the way we Americans do with words like “dirty.” He enunciates the word each time, tasting the “t” on the tip of his tongue: flir-tee.
Adam is from Durban, South Africa. He credits his motherland for much of his flir-tee-ness, his openness, and even his rizz, though he has too much rizz to use that word often. “I think in South Africa, a lot of people are very open, just in general,” he tells me. “So where I’m from, that openness — not necessarily flirtatiousness — but that openness, was more natural for me.”
Adam doesn’t have to think hard about being a charmer. Maybe that’s another thing that makes him charming, or maybe what makes any charmer charming is that we never know just how the spell is cast. But for those less naturally blessed by the Rizz God, Adam has some tips. “I usually smile,” he says, “and then I look in the mirror and calibrate a bit.” I gnash my incisors at him. “Yes! Just like that!”
But the real secret of flirting runs deeper than a simple flash of the fangs. To Adam, the essence of flirting is noticing. “You have to be observant and pay attention,” he explains. The observations, he says, can be as small as the earrings a person is wearing to “something they might say that maybe resonates with you and ends up being the start to a conversation.”
Adam’s openness to others sometimes opens doors for him, too. He tells me about a time just last week when he went on a quest to the bakery When Pigs Fly for some $3 sourdough loaves to share with fellow Eliot residents, only to find out about a three-loaves-per-person limit. But outside the bakery, tormented by “overwhelming guilt” at not being able to provide the bread he had promised, Adam noticed two people about to head into the bakery. “I started talking to them, and with my natural charisma, they were able to help me get enough bread for everyone. It was very clutch,” he laughs. “Sometimes you can get yourself out of more serious situations just by reading the room.”
Still, the charm is not always a faucet that can simply be switched on. Something inside can clog the way. “It doesn’t always work,” Adam tells me. “Sometimes the stress gets to you.” It’s this stress, this worrying about yourself and how you might be perceived, that Adam finds so poisonous to good flirting and good connection. “The times I feel the most open and able to talk to people are when I don’t have that fear or anxiety, and I think that it’s difficult to come up with why,” he says. “Some days, I feel better or more confident than others.”
Adam is quiet. On his sweater, camo-green, I notice that there is a small pink heart, almost imperceptible, embroidered onto the left side. I point it out. “Love is everywhere!” I yell, thrilled by the discovery.
“Oh, shit. Yeah,” says Adam. “It’s everywhere.”
— Magazine writer Clara E. Shapiro can be reached at clara.shapiro@thecrimson.com.
