my friend, to me, on dating and (I think) life:
do you hide your light, or cast pearls before swine?
My answer:
always.
the answer in note(card) form
3 people have
turns out I do NOT hate the ENTIRE Seduction Community, After All
Yo. I’m a fragile flower. Rejection is my nemesis.
And because of that, I’m softening up to sections of the Seduction Community.
(Also: cleavage. Dating gurus are not all teaching “How To Bed as Many Naive Twenty-Five Year Olds as Possible Through the Judicious Use of Insults”. I could be a little more sensitive to the differences and nuances and lines that cut across the “how to date better/improve your social skills” field.)
This week I read David DeAngelo’s “Double Your Dating” and was shocked – SHOCKED, I TELL YOU – to discover that it was useful and I liked it.
Sure, there were bits that irritated me – more on that, in another piece to follow – but I put myself in the shoes of his target audience and grew a little respect. Even gratitude.
DO NOT TELL ANYONE.
Because, as I mentioned, I’m a fragile, rejection-averse flower. I go on a lot of dates but I have no recollection of EVER asking a man out (unless we were, you know, married) or initiating a first kiss. I have been turned down for sex three times in my life.
So of course when I read detailed instructions on how to approach women and escalate a new relationship it seems a bit foreign to me.
It IS foreign to me – because someone else always handles it.
So maybe I should be glad that there are men teaching other men how to handle this with ease and grace (and that there are men willing to learn this, thereby making things more comfortable for me).
Because if I had to handle this I’d be paying for sex and growing old with cats.
__________________
I’m Not Picking on Pick-Up Artists. Much.
Interview with A Former Pick-Up Artist
wherein I take a (temporary) break from bitching about Pick-Up Artists
love (and Italian food, and gifts) means everything
it was my pre-birthday dinner with girlfriends last night and we covered off cleavage (everyone BROUGHT IT), as well as sex, money, and meaning.
Heather said a lot of bad words and I said, as I always do, that she is exceptionally fortunate to be good-looking because no one would put up with her otherwise. Not even me.
That’s a lie. I love her to bits. (But she is really hot.)
(She also got pretty hot ‘n bothered in the comments of my last piece. You all ignored her. That’s the right approach. DO NOT ANGER IT.)
1. sex – I can’t even go there. Wow.
2. money – I saw Real Housewives of Atlanta AND Orange County for the first time EVER on Saturday and could not tear my eyes away. There was a tupperware party with a drag queen. We’re totally having one of those. Heather and I both offered to be the drag queen.
3. meaning – I got bumpits and that meant a lot to me. It is not world peace but hot damn, I’m totally on my way to drag queen. (see #2)
(I love drag. It underlines the performativity of “feminine”.)
(I also love the make-up.)
Really, the meaning is this: my friends showed up, looking gorgeous, and celebrated with me for my birthday. This seems like simple stuff, but it feeds the soul. This is really the stuff of life: having people to love is everything.
And then, if all of this wasn’t good enough, Heather played our favourite Boyz II Men song on the way home. She really did. Gawd I love her so much.
She even e-mailed me her new thoughts on the lyrics. It is practically a dissertation:
Close your eyes, make a wish (oohh ohhh can I be alone?)
And blow out the candlelight (you are going to set off the smoke detector)
For tonight is just your night (sweet! take the kids with you)
We’re gonna celebrate, all thru the night (we…what’s this “we” shit?)
Pour the wine, light the fire (I dont like wine and if this is going to be all night you better fetch the vodka)
Girl your wish is my command (I said take the kids with you damnit)
I submit to your demands (and you could steam the floor…..)
I’ll do anything, girl you need only ask (riiight, I’ve heard this before and then all of a sudden you [KD censored what goes here])
Chorus:
I’ll make love to you (what’s this make love shit? We [bad word here and for the record neither of us like the phrase "make love"]. That’s it)
Like you want me to (I would really like to sleep to be honest)
And I’ll hold you tight (You know the rules about touching afterwards. It’s a no no)
Baby all through the night (Please no)
I’ll make love to you (This talk is giving me the heebeejeebees)
When you want me to (can we do this maybe next week after you’ve steamed the floor?)
And I will not let go (this isn’t the best way to convince me)
Till you tell me to (do we have a safe word?)
Girl relax, let’s go slow (I’m trying, close the door after you)
I ain’t got nowhere to go (we need groceries actually)
I’m just gonna concentrate on you (can I just do it myself please?)
Girl are you ready, it’s gonna be a long night (friiickkkkkkk, I’m going to chafe)
Throw your clothes on the floor (That’s how unsightly [KD censored what goes here, and, as I mentioned, thank goodness she's hot] start)
I’m gonna take my clothes off too (remember, if the ginch isn’t in the basket it doesn’t get washed…and you’ll be cold when getting the groceries)
I made plans to be with you (why am I always the last to know. We’ve talked about this shit, and fyi, who has the kids??!!)
Girl whatever you ask me you know I’ll do (the floors [bad word]er)
Chorus
Baby tonight is your night ( it’s not looking that way)
And I will do you right (mmhmmm)
Just make a wish on your night (anywhere but here lord)
Anything that you ask [again, censored. WTF, Heather.]
I will give you the love of your life (Taye Diggs? You can really do that??)
on hypnotherapy and hot grocery store mamas
Last week, after my first hypnotherapy session, I went grocery shopping.
In the store, I suspected that the young guy smiling at me - he was maybe eighteen or nineteen years old – was a kid I baby-sat when I was a teenager.
I was just a few blocks from where I grew up so it was within the neighbourhood of possibility.
He smiled at me in the produce section. He blocked my cart in the cereal aisle and held my gaze. He stared at me as I checked expiration dates on milk.
Obviously, we knew each other. I just couldn’t figure out how.
In the frozen foods aisle, he walked up to me and handed me a piece of paper and smiled. I said “Do we know each other?”
He said, “Not yet,” and turned and walked away.
On the back of a receipt was a phone number, presumably his.
What just happened here? I asked, looking around for an answer or an opinion.
(If any occasion demands an audible conversation-with-self in a public place, this was definitely it.)
When I was at the cashier, he was in line at the till beside me. He smiled at me some more while his mom paid for his groceries.
What is happening here??? This time I exclaimed it silently because other people were around and that sort of thing violates unspoken queue rules.
He checked me out in the parking lot, too.
I was so disconcerted that while driving home I had to pull over and call Heather.
I told her the story.
She was shocked, too. She’s a good friend. She doesn’t fluff up my ego. We both know I’ll be thirty-seven next week and my stomach has seen flatter days.
We tried to understand. She wanted to know what I was wearing.
“Jeans and ballet flats. Full mama regalia. My hair looks good, though.”
“What shirt are you wearing? Are your ta-tas out?”
I paused. This is basically a trick question. “Well, it doesn’t really matter what shirt I’m wearing. My breasts always obvious.”
“It matters. Are we talking turtle neck or v-neck?”
“I’m wearing a sheer tunic but it is not provocative. I’ve got a tank underneath.”
We struggled to understand a little bit more. Maybe the older woman wasn’t his mom. Maybe it was his sugar-momma. Or maybe it was his mom, but she won’t let him stay out past midnight so he’s looking for a sugar-mama. Maybe he just saw the movie Mrs. Robinson.
“Heather, of course he hasn’t seen Mrs. Robinson. He’s too young. I haven’t even seen Mrs. Robinson. Dustin Hoffman is a grandfather. That’s how old that movie is.”
We gave up trying to understand this boy’s MILF issues (it is cool when a grown-ass man like John Devore appreciates mamas but weird when a kid who still lives with his mom is hot for another mom) and talked about my hypnotherapy, instead.
It was wonderful.
Once, when I was outlining my challenges, my new projects, all the things I was excited about, and wondering aloud what my next great adventure would be, a friend said: “How about being still?”
I was almost as surprised by this question as I was when an eighteen year old boy gave me his number in Extra Foods.
I struggle with still. I can’t get there. My mind is always on and I have insomnia on a regular basis. Yoga, meditation, massage – nothing works.
In hynotherapy, I thought I might get still. I thought I’d relax into myself and find calm.
I relaxed. I surrendered. I went there. And when I got there, I felt my entire being vibrate. My body was still, but my energy was humming. And in that second, I realized: still is not my home. Buzz is where I live.
It was such a relief. I don’t have to fight who I am. I vibrate at a high frequency. Still is not for me.
So we talked about that and how I’m not going to feel guilty any more that I’m not zen.
Because I’m not zen, dammit.
I told her how being hypnotized felt like a lucid dream. You know when you wake up from a dream that is so good, you go back to it, but you’re liminal – both sleeping and awake and guiding the dream? Hypnosis is like that. Or like the flow when I’m writing. Or like sex. Hot sex is a trance, too.
And then we hung up, but not before wondering some more about this confused eighteen-year-old’s definition of “age-appropriate”.
Heather clearly kept thinking about it because she called me later that night, all a-fluster.
“Ok. Don’t be offended, but you know the movie Shallow Hal? Where Jack Black is hypnotized so that he can only see people for who they really are? And that’s why he saw fat Gwyneth Paltrow as thin?”
I was a bit panicked by the “don’t be offended” and “Shallow Hal” reference. Was she going to tell me that this eighteen year old had magical Jack Black/Shallow Hal powers and therefore could beyond my fat ass to my inner beauty? Because my outer beauty is so…lacking?
THIS WAS NOT PROMISING.
“Maybe that’s what your hypnotist did for you. Maybe now when you look at a man, you see him as he really is: eighteen, horny and fervently proud of his almost-there mustache.”
Let us pray.
sexifesto
Women, sex and religion. Jesus Christ and sacrifice. Mary and mothering through fire. (Just imagine the weight of “I’m telling Dad!”) Princess Tales. Women Who Run With the Wolves. I will no longer offer up my flesh to the cross and nails. I will not take one for the team unless the team is taking it too. (Preferably naked, and together). I will not be the sacrifice. I will not accommodate or wait. I will not earn my breadcrumbs or my man. I will not earn it, period.
2am, Friday night: no sex, no money, maybe some alcohol, and neighbours doing right by each other – and that means something
2am. The shrieked protest of braking tires against road, followed by loud and hollow connection. Metal on metal.
From my bedroom on the third floor on the hill, I can see the truck reversing and then driving away. It turns left and travels along the road parallel to the pond. I can see that, too, because my town-house faces the pond. I’ve got an unobstructed view.
The truck stops. I can still see its lights. I can see the colour, the body, and I can see the driver inspecting the front of his truck. I see him get back in his truck and drive slowly away. I see him turn left – this hill, third floor bedroom and vantage across the pond means I can see for blocks – and then park. His brake lights are on.
Now neighbours are emerging from safe havens of sleep to gather on the street. People are on cell phones.
An SUV is on the sidewalk.
I instantly believe in God and start praying no one is inside that car.
I call the police, and as I do that, I leap into jeans, a coat, and shoes and run out into the road.
My sister sees me leaving but I don’t have time to explain. I explain, instead, to the RCMP operator the location of the offending truck and driver. Everyone else is down the road, down the hill, on the street, and wondering what happened. From my perch, I could see – but I can’t see a license plate.
I cut across the grass around the pond to the SUV on the sidewalk and the three people in the street. A man is on the phone. It is his SUV. It was parked in front of their house. No one was in it, no one was on the street – it is just a parked car. Just a hit and run. Relief.
His car, though, is crumpled like a tin can at a frat party. There are chunks of his rims sprinkled across the lawn. The side of his car curves in to meet the front. It will not drive away unaided.
He asks me: Did you see what happened? I just heard the crash, came outside to see, and saw this. Did you see who did this?
I did. He’s parked two blocks away, around the pond and behind the park.
Another neighbour, who used to be a police officer in another province, says we should walk over there to see if we can see a license plate. But as we’re walking, he realizes that we can’t get close without exposing ourselves – there’s no houses, no reason for us to be there – and that’s a bad idea. A police officer, on his own, wouldn’t approach this situation, and they’ve got belts full of scary things and training. We stand beside the field. We can see across the field to the truck, which has now been joined by a car, presumably a friend.
I give my phone to my ex-police-neighbour and he calls the police, again, to explain that we can see where the truck is, and that it has been joined by another vehicle, a small white car. He walks a little further by himself to see if he can get a description of the other car.
I can hear my sister calling me but I can’t see her. Oh my goodness, she’s probably having a coronary: I rushed out the door, at 2am, in my polka-dot nightie, a suit jacket, and jeans – a confusing ensemble at any time, for sure – on the phone to the police, without saying a word to her, and disappeared across the park.
The owner of the car, a young woman, and yes, my sister, walk up the street and join us. My sister is visibly relieved. She’s been calling my name in the night; she called my phone which was answered by the neighbour – to her, some random person – to whom I lent it. (Fortunately, he said “Kelly’s phone” so it wasn’t as frightening as it could have been.)
Now we see a blue Tahoe pull up. Unmarked car. Down the block, two police cars are driving up the road. We wave the Tahoe down and direct it to the truck around the corner. As the Tahoe turns the corner, the small white car starts up and drives past it. It passes us on the street and passes the police cars, too. We can’t see who is in it, but we’re worried that the hit-and-run driver is inside.
We wave the first police car down and tell the officer about the white car. Both police cars pull hard u-turns and hit their lights which slice through the night while their sirens scream. The car engines roar.
They must have V-8s, says my sister, admiringly. And they must beat the shit out of those cars. It is all gas and brakes.
The Tahoe has reached the truck, and as it approaches, the truck starts up and starts to drive away, then stops. Another police car joins the Tahoe.
My neighbour pulls out his i-phone and starts dictating his statement while the events are still hot and sweaty.
(Is there anything an i-phone is not good for? If Triffids had i-phones, that series would have ended very differently.)
Our work here is done. We’re all relieved. We’re all convinced that the driver of the truck had to have been drunk. It is Friday, 2 am, on a sidestreet with no obstacles and no traffic, and curving lines of rubber tracks burned into the street all the way to the SUV on the sidewalk.
It is cold. I’m wearing a black and pink silky thing over jeans with a suit jacket, and I feel silly. My sister and I walk back to our house and worry out loud about drinking and driving. Just a week ago, at 2am, she was nearly sideswiped by a cadillac, which she then followed and called in to the police. She also lectures me a little about how I scared her by fleeing the house in the middle of the night without explanation.
Back in the house, I put on a bra and a shirt, tame my hair and wait in my warm living room for an officer to arrive to take my statement.
Because freshly brushed hair has “concerned citizen” combed right through it.
with this lunch, I thee love
Love is a packed lunch. This packed lunch is the future (you will be hungry) meets the present (I made this because I love you and the thought of you hungry pains me) meets the past (I have always loved you. I loved you before I knew you. Love is who we are, baby, and this lunch is our history) meets the real (the apple the sandwich the effort the caring it forward: you can eat love). Love is a packed lunch.
What do Jean Jacques Rousseau, The Seduction Community and the New York Times Have In Common? Don’t Worry, I’ll Tell You
this 1,600 or so words is part of an epic(ish) series on pick up artists, The Seduction Community, and hey, the whole damn world. That-which-came-before is below:
1. I’m Not Picking On Pick Up Artists. Much.
1.5 Interview with a Former Pick Up Artist
2. wherein I take a (temporary) break from bitching about pick up artists
______________________________
In my last essay, I wrote
But maybe that isn’t quite true. At different times, we want different things. Women want different things than it is expected that women should want; men, too. It is pretty damn difficult to say, definitely, categorically, Women are this and want this or Men are that and want that. That sort of binary approach to gender and desire pretty neatly renders everyone outside of those constructions and intentions invisible.
Like: if ciswomen want x and cismen want y, what do transwomen and men want? And what happens if you’re a woman and you don’t want a man? What if you don’t identify with either gender? What if you’re queer? What if you do identify with what it means to be a stereotypical woman, but don’t necessarily want a boyfriend or a serious relationship?
Obviously, the Seduction Community doesn’t deal with any of that or anything outside the realm of hot chick/must fuck.
~
Dating is a numbers game so it isn’t fundamentally offensive that PUAs advise their students to approach lots of women.
Women, after all, work the numbers by looking hot.
And therein lies the fucking (literally) problem.
- “Hot” is, essentially, youth – and is therefore pretty temporary and a risky foundation for feminine identity.
- There is an entire industry dedicated to teaching women that we are not attractive.
- There is an entire society dedicated to teaching women that we have no worth beyond our looks, our ability to dispense sex, and, possibly, create new life. But once we do that, the first two are shot, so society can feel free to indulge in mama-targeted misogyny.
- You know why there is misogyny in the Seduction community? Because there is misogyny in real life.
- Still, when I encounter misogyny in the Seduction Community, it freaks me out because it is so naked and explicit. The Seduction Community overtly embraces the paradigm that young, thin, curvy is a woman’s worth. These women are “HBs” = hot bitches. Everyone else is a “fattie” or “warpig”. Women are rated by their attractiveness (0-10), called “targets” and talking to them is called an “approach” or a “set”. All of these terms chess-ify human interaction and dehumanizes both parties. The man running the set becomes the wizard behind the curtain twiddling the knobs -
(and I think we can safely presume from the lessons of Oz and real life that wizards are lonely. Neil Strauss wrote that the more success he had with women, the less he respected them, which doesn’t sound terribly fulfilling)
- while the woman is just matter to manipulate. It is a science experiment and experimenting on human beings usually requires an ethics committee. I demand an ethics committee.
I also get the sense –from the forums and the language – that some PUAs feel that men are getting screwed by women who are The Keepers of The Pie and therefore have the upper hand in dating and sex.
(This is not unique to the PUA community. See, for example, the superbowl ads that amount to what Mary Elizabeth Williams calls “an annual evening of misogyny punctuated with occasional outbreaks of football”; or even the current debate in the fem-o-sphere about hook up culture.)
The very basis of the PUA methods is inversion. PUAs examine how women attract men and then mirror those techniques. They model women in order to secure the thing they want that women have: the power of sexual selection.
~
Men feel screwed. Women feel screwed. We’re all feeling screwed by each other, and by the world.
Some of it feels like a reaction against sterility and routine. We’re lusting for authenticity and creation. We suspect that we’re alienated from our wildness and our humanity, our flesh biology and imperatives, our appetites and desires, our spirits, communion, and communities. We’re fleeing corporate world; we’re making cartoons and books and blogs and art; we’re manufacturing community; we’re connecting with the divine feminine and the sacred masculine; we’re railing against commutes and building cottage industries. Maybe we’re resisting scale and reasserting the primacy of intimacy. Maybe we want to be together on our own terms rather than warehoused in cubicles and condos.
~
This anguish – about men and women, sex and commitment, intimacy and power, and nature versus the human world – is old. It reminds me of Rousseau’s Emil and Sophie, his fictional, idealized versions of men and women in his new world.
Of course, Rousseau, who wrote the Social Contract – examining the bases of political cooperation – was fixed on figuring out Woman and Man. What kind of citizens will our democratic societies need?
Answer XY: Emil. Ideal Man. Educated to be self-governing. The goal is moral mastery and individual self-sufficiency: The Citizen.
Answer XX: Sophie. Ideal Woman. Educated to be governed by her husband. The goal is to complement The Citizen.
It is an age-old story: when we’re trying to figure out our world and our future, we turn first to figuring out women, men, sex, love and babies.
Every political philosophy and most religions start with organizing sex.
~
A friend of mine told me the following story:
He’s given vibrators or sex toys to several girlfriends as gifts. And every time he has, he noted, the relationship ended. So, he told me, he thinks maybe he should not give sex toys to girlfriends any more.
I told him – all future girlfriends, you owe me a debt of gratitude, please send cash – that his conclusion was based on crap logic. Correlation is not causation. He’s single, so in fact all of his relationships have ended – not just the ones in which sex toys were exchanged. I doubt the problem vibrates.
(Which is not to say that the common denominator is him – I don’t think a history of ended relationships indicates pathology. Instead, I think it indicates being wise enough to move on when it isn’t right.)
I think this urge, though – to rationalize, systemize, isolate variables, invent causation, define a methodology – is pretty understandable.
And that’s what pick up artists do. They attempt to systemize attraction. They try to structure magic.
By most accounts, it seems to work, initially.
~
Let’s be clear:
- Men trying to get laid: ok
- Women trying to get laid: ok
- Relationships: ok
- Casual sex: ok
My issue with PUAs isn’t the pursuit of sex. I take issue with the community’s basic conception of what women are, what they are for, and why and how they are valued.
In essence: sex, sex, sex, preferably all while looking like a “hot bitch”. (Nothing against hot bitches.)
If that is all women are, and are meant for, then why are women bothering with all this education and creating and you know, thinking?
Which bring us to the the New York Times trend section.
It seems like a non sequitur, but it is not. The NY Times trend section could easily be known as “Ladies, you know it is all your fault.”
Mixed martial arts and Jesus? You made church too womanly and anti-bloodsport. Ballstealers, all of you.
Can’t get a boyfriend at college? Blame feminism. This is what happens when you get ideas and an education.
Got a hot career (thanks, college!) but can’t get married or, if you’re married (phew! Close call, that one) and you’re having problems with your earning-less-money husband? Blame your career and your buying power. ‘Cuz men don’t like it if you’re successful and money can’t buy you love, you uppity bitch. Booyah!
About the money/career/successful thing as a barrier to romance:
Really?
Because I don’t know any man who was turned off by me being, you know, self-sufficient. The cool guys I’ve liked and even loved always thought it was hot that I have ambition.
Once, when I was in the middle of a really challenging project, with a really challenging co-worker. (By “challenging” I mean we were having a pissing match that I was determined to win.) I was talking about how I fixed the problem and my beau at the time looked at me and said “that just turned me on.”
Another time, when I was talking about resolving a problem with a sort-of-bf-who-screwed-me-over, I described how I dug in my heels and got mine, a guy friend told me “that’s so hot. Hearing about you fighting back and winning makes my dick hard.”
That is hot. Only weak people – and I use people, not “men”, because this truth is universal – are intimidated by strength.
And all this handwringing about monied career chicks not getting any lovin? (New York Times, I’m a-talkin’ to you.) I call bullshit, especially in sexy cities where an aged bungalow costs a million bucks. Two fat paycheques are way better than one.
~
So the Seduction Community is just a way to talk about what the NY Times is so confused about: just what exactly are our gender roles these days? What do we do if our usual gendered shorthand doesn’t work, either for describing gender itself or the aspirations or temperaments of people? And, more pruriently, who’s doing what to whom?
~
Again, this is an old question.
The women everyone from Pick Up Artists to the New York Times seems to be longing for – the ideal mate – is Rousseau’s fictional Sophie: intelligent but decorous, educated but subservient, beautiful but without vanity, and absolutely, essentially feminine.
And she did not end well.
No woman who exists as the complement to another or for the purposes of another ever does.
wherein I take a (temporary) break from bitching about Pick Up Artists
part 1 -I’m Not Picking On Pick Up Artists. Much.
part 1.5 – Interview With a Former Pick Up Artist.
This post is part 2 (-ish, because I stopped to do an interview along the way) of my three part essay on the Seduction Community, misogny (it isn’t all their fault! but they’re not off the hook!) and The Sex ‘n Love problem.
_______________________
The last time I wrote about the Seduction Community, I said we needed to think about two aspects of it:
The social. The Seduction Community both reflects and reifies the misogyny of our culture. In other words, that shit comes from somewhere. The Seduction Community’s (sometimes) fucked-up attitudes about women come from our society’s fucked-up attitudes about women and then – sadly, arguably – reinforces them.
The personal. Some smart but socially awkward guys just want to find a way to connect with women, get confident in their company, and maybe even get a girlfriend. And that – well that’s pretty damn sweet.
So let’s talk about something personal.
My friend told me a story from several years ago.
It is the kind of story that you can only tell several years later because if you told it in the midst of it your soul would curl up and die of embarrassment.
She got divorced (and gawd, I’m glad she did. ‘Nuff said). She packed up her stuff, hired movers, and drove across the country to come home. To us. Her friends, and family.
She told me she felt like she was coming home with her tail between her legs. When you go off on a journey, you’re supposed to come home with that coat of many colours. A career, accolades, shiny things, a shiny marriage, and maybe even some sparkly babies on parade.
And she left all of these – the house, the job, the man, the apparently-pretty life – to come home and start over.
Freedom looked and felt and smelled like failure, to her. Liberty isn’t tender and doesn’t come wrapped with pretty bows and a spoonful of sugar.
She got a job. She got her bearings. She started playing ball, again, which was fantastic because it was a summer of social engagements: baseball, barbecues, beer.
Naturally, she met a guy. That’s what happens when you’re single and you leave the house.
He was a friend of her baseball-playing friends. He was divorced with kids, a business, a house, and an easy smile. He’d been engaged, after his divorce – recently, in fact – but it didn’t work out. Still, he didn’t seem to have any barriers to a relationship. He invited her in. Instantly, she bought into the insta-family fantasy: hung out with his kids, watched movies, made popcorn, re-arranged the living room furniture, accessorized his kitchen, picked out his new backsplash. And since his friends were her friends, too, parties and group things were easy and awesome.
It was all pretty easy and awesome.
A few months later their mutual friends were getting married in Jamaica and forty of their closest friends tagged along for seven days.
The first five days were fantastic: sun, sand, super-hot-sex.
Then, at the reception, in the midst of the speeches, he abruptly excused himself to make a call.
That call took two hours.
People were looking for him. His friends were irritated and kept asking her: what’s up? Where’d he go? He’s missing the wedding. Isn’t that why he’s here?
When he returned, hours later, she was worried. She asked him: were you talking to your kids? Is everything ok at home?
He snapped at her: I had to make a call.
Everyone else who asked got the same pissy reply: I had to make a call.
The next day was weird – he didn’t seem to want to talk to her or be near her.
She thought, okay, we’ve been together 24-7 (less disappearances for mystery phone calls) for nearly a week; we’re tired of each other. No biggie.
The last day, he said he wanted to go into town to go shopping. She wanted to lie on the beach but thought, ok, let’s do that, instead.
Two hours into their day – and two hours away from their hotel – he said, you know, I kind of wanted to spend the day by myself.
Whoakay.
And then there was the plane ride home. They were three to a row: her, him, their mutual friend J.
She’d say something and he’d look out the window. J would look at her, with a WTF eyebrow raise, and she’d shrug. Seven days together. Maybe a little space would help.
In front of the airport, the big group divided into small groups. One group was going home – they all lived in the same area – in a limo; the others were going home in their cars. He called out a general “ok, see ya everyone, great trip!” and got in the back of the limo.
Without her.
She stood on the sidewalk in front of the airport with her suitcases, her suntan, and her shock.
His best friend since childhood was shocked, too.
Did that just happen? Did he really just leave you here?
Yes. Yes he did.
~
So his friend and his friend’s wife took her home, hung out with her, and fed her Chinese food.
The next day, he unfriended her on facebook. And didn’t call again.
Days later, his former-fiancee moved in with him.
~
Stupid is stupid. Weak character is weak character. Narcissism is narcissism. This stuff follows you, because it is you.
~
So that’s the thing. This is why I’m not eviscerating the seduction community.
Seduction techniques – like money, fame, power, beauty – just amplify what and who you already are.
If you are an asshole then you will use PUA techniques to be a bit more of an asshole because that is what you are. An asshole.
This is just popeye wisdom: ‘yam what I ‘yam.
If, however, you are a basically good-hearted lusty lad who is a touch socially awkward, then you will use seduction techniques to be a basically good-hearted lusty lad who is less socially awkward – and hopefully you won’t absorb the misogyny along the way.
(Although I’m not convinced, entirely, that this is possible).
A friend of mine who might know a lil’ something about The Community told me that in his experience most guys last three weeks: they start rocking the script, have some success and end up with a girlfriend right away.
Our Anonymous Source said the same thing: most guys start studying this stuff because they want a nice girlfriend.
~
All of this is to say that – hopefully, hopefully, hopefully – we’re all trying to get the same thing.
Together.
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that’s me playing nice. There’s more to come, and it isn’t all gumdrops and buttercups.
but please play nice in the comments. Andrew’s getting tired.
Interview With a Former Pick Up Artist
After I published part 1 (I’m Not Picking on Pick Up Artists. Much) of my essay on The Seduction Community, a guy got in touch with me. He used to study pick up and he had lots to say about it.
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The Seduction Community made me socially awkward. I’m not socially awkward. I’m extroverted, friendly, comfortable with people. Still, I didn’t have a girlfriend until I was 25. I got in it because I wanted a girlfriend, and I got a girlfriend, fast.
I went in it wanting a girlfriend, and I got one, but once I was in it I think my expectations changed a bit because I realized other things were possible and that maybe I could have a lot of women.
The biggest thing I learned – from studying this stuff, and spending time with these guys, and then getting disillusioned with it – is that whatever your issue is, it isn’t with women. The issue is with you.
I had no issues with women. I had issues with me.
I wanted to fix that – and the truth is, most of the guys in the community are genuinely good guys trying to fix shit in their life. It really is nothing more than personal development disguised as pick up. Half these guys, though, are just painful to be around. Not just with girls. With everyone.
Honestly, I don’t know how the gurus teach this stuff. It has to be draining, like being a therapist and all day, day after day, you’re listening to people tell you how fucked up their lives are.
And some of the people who teach this shit? Some of the teachers are genuinely good guys and want to help people but lots of them are just a whole ‘nother level of fucked up.
I spent a weekend at Project Hollywood with Style (Neil Strauss) and Mystery and I can tell you that my biggest problem with these guys – outside of Neil Strauss, who’s really funny and cool – is that they are utterly one-dimensional. All they think about talk about and do, is pickup. Every human interaction is transformed from a conversation with a person into a set or an approach. It was disturbing to me to spend three days, twenty-four/seven in a house together and leave without knowing a thing about each other beyond pick up.
Pick up is personal development, but it is the inverse of personal development, because personal development teaches you to rely on yourself, validate yourself and that everything is supposed to be easy. In pick up, though you’re trying so hard to gain someone’s approval even though you’re pretending otherwise, and that’s just the opposite of any useful kind of personal growth.
The whole thing is based on scripted, unnatural interactions that don’t lead to anything substantial.
From my experience, 70% of guys say fuck it and give up.
A small percentage of guys figure out that it is about personal development and life in general and apply the principles of persuasion and personal improvement to life…
…I can say that I think that pick up artists and porn creates barriers to real relationships. Now, I would never tell a woman I was in the community because it is too much of a risk and she’ll assume that I’m sleeping with a million women.
The biggest thing I’ve learned from the community – and this applies to all of us – is that the amount of shit that we’ll put up with because we like someone is extraordinary.
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This interview is a bit of an interlude – the original essay isn’t finished yet. I’ll be posting parts 2 and 3 this week.
If you’ve got stories and opinions to contribute, please e-mail me or let’s hear them in the comments.
thanks so much.