date machine : Mystery

Date Machine: How to Pick Up Women

amboabe — Wed, 06 May 2009 19:03:00 GMT

When I was in junior high my best friend would give me the names of the girls at his school that he thought were pretty.

I would go over to his house and call them while he listened, talking with the confidence of not knowing or caring about them. I hit it off with one girl and after our first conversation she asked me to keep calling her. So I did. We talked regularly for a month before an actual date was arranged.

She was going to see Three Men and a Little Lady with some of her friends at a theater across town. I convinced a couple of my friends to come with me. We had to convince my friend M’s brother to take us, which took a lot of whining and begging, that, in turn, made us late for the movie. We snuck into the darkened theater ten minutes after it had started. We couldn’t find the girls and decided to just watch the movie and meet them outside when it was over.

After a dramatic climax on an estate somewhere in the British countryside, we shuffled outside. My friend S had half a pack of Camel Lights and he waited for the chance to go smoke, growing irritated with my insistence on meeting these random girls.

Towards the back of the exiting crowd I saw a group of four girls. One in the middle looked like a fuzzy approximation of the face I had seen in J’s yearbook. I was already nervous, and as I saw them heading our way still oblivious to our presence, my heart started throbbing and my hands tingled with new sweat.

Feeling like there was no way out, I took a few terrified steps into the crowd. As I came nearer C looked up and saw me. Her face went blank and it looked like her mouth fell open just a little bit. I thought that she might turn around and run back into the theater to seek refuge.

“Hey, I’m Mike,” I said as I stepped in front of them. C’s friends started giggling. C looked me in the eye while her legs twisted against themselves.

“Hey,” she said.

I didn’t know what else to say and after a few seconds of terrifying silence passed I asked her to come behind the theater with me and my friends to smoke cigarettes. I knew C liked to smoke, she stole her mother’s menthols.

C’s face transformed from blank to incredulous. Her eyes narrowed and her lips parted in disbelief just before she started laughing in my face.

“No way,” she said. “Why would I want to go smoke cigarettes with you?” she asked. She grabbed one of her friend’s hands and started walking quickly away, saying she was late and had to get home even though it was summer and the middle of the afternoon.

Up until that point I had the self-loathing adolescent’s hunch that everyone found me physically disgusting, and this was the irrefutable confirmation I had been waiting for.

It took a long time to realize that I was only revolting to some people, not all. It’s always a surprise when I find people who are actually attracted to me. Even when I can’t reciprocate the attraction it’s always lovely to be reminded that I am desirable to someone, somewhere. And it’s even more of a surprise when I find myself together with someone I’m attracted to. Throughout the years I’ve found myself stealing glances at the women I’ve been in love with, wondering to myself how I wound up with someone so lovely.

I’m not adept at picking up women, and I don’t really try to. I resent the notion of seduction. I don’t want to convince someone that they should be with me. If they’re not interested from the outset then neither am I. But there are two general practices I’ve used when I’m attracted to someone, which I’ll now share with you, in sequential order.

1. Say Hello
2. Shut up

There are a lot of men who’ve applied endless thought and energy to the arithmetic of seduction. They’ve created a conversational roadmap that any man can use to make himself appear more desirable. The idea of following a conversation by rote or having a specific objective in mind while talking to someone doesn’t really inspire my sense of romance. But saying hello to an attractive stranger does.

It’s obvious, I realize, but how many people ever really act on attraction when they’re out? How many people catch your eye every day, and how many do you try and connect with? I do it once a week, sometimes less, and usually without anything coming from it. It’s easier to sit back and analyze a person, imagine who they are, look at what they’re wearing, build up a nice fantasy, and then let it all evaporate in a poof as they walk out the door a few minutes later.

Deciding you’re interested enough to risk rejection and embarrassment for the sake of saying hello to someone new is always worth it. Even in the crumbling flames of rejection, the knowledge that I tried has always been better company and comfort than inaction. Like everything else, you can worry that there’s a right way and a wrong way to talk to somebody, that there’s a formal set of standards for seductive conversation. But there isn’t. You determine what’s right and wrong, seductive or unappealing with each person you meet, and the standards are in constant flux. But you can’t find out until you say hello.

The next step isn’t as intuitive. I’ve been described as aloof since I was a teenager. I can be quiet and withdrawn, disappearing into a veneer of passive gazing. But I can also go on epic runs of motor-mouthing. It alleviates my anxiety to fill in all the silences with a gush of words. I have to force myself to talk less when I’m with someone new, to be comfortable with the presence of conversational slack.

I like to use conversation and wit to make a show of how much I like someone, and my speech can become slightly manic trying to rid myself of the tantalizing burden of the attraction. Instead, I am more attractive when I shut my mouth and trust in the fact that there is an innate attraction. It doesn’t need a flood of nervous puns and embarrassing stories to make it blossom. So when I’m out with someone I really like for the first time the thought that goes through my head more than any other is, “Shut up, just shut up.”

It’s hard to trust yourself when you’re taking a chance with someone you’re attracted to. You take the spotlight for a few minutes. You become the guy in the coffee shop or the dude in the vegetable aisle trying his luck with a woman. People are watching, people are eavesdropping; you’re on stage and have to perform. When I feel strongly enough about a person, I’ll force myself out in spite of the embarrassment, and then try to keep my mouth shut for as long as I can stand.

Previous Posts:

Date Machine: Women at 30, or the Scent of the Medicine Cabinet

Date Machine: My Friend's Girlfriend is my Girlfriend

Love Machine: Dating Someone with a Handicap

Date Machine: How to Pick Up a Nurse at the HIV Clinic

Date Machine: Full Disclosure

Sex Machine: The Bare Minimum

Date Machine: The Seductive Art of Dancing

Sex Machine: Becoming A Virgin Again

Sex Machine: Come On My Face

Sex Machine: Because I Can

Love Machine: Am I Romantic Enough?

Sex Machine: Picking Up Women in Gay Bars

Sex Machine: Diary of a Sperm Donor

Date Machine: Long Distance Lovers

Sex Machine: A Revised History of Whores

Date Machine: Moving to New York in Pictures

Date Machine: Old Love Letters, or Things That Got Thrown Away in the Move

Sex Machine: Talking About Sex With Your Parents

Love Machine: Willing to Relocate

Date Machine: How to Pick Up a Bartender

amboabe — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 06:48:00 GMT

I'm sitting at a corner table in a bar watching a man with a laptop bag still around his shoulder hitting on the bartender. He's cute, curly salt and pepper hair, dressed in one layer too many for the weather. The bartender is thickish with a pretty face and small breasts mashed into a tight black top.

Everyone wants to sleep with the bartender. How could you not be attracted to a person who appears in dark and drunken light, half a body floating indifferently through the murk, looking you straight in the eye and asking you what you want? Even when they're not attractive, they're always unaffected. There is nothing I could say to a bartender that hasn't been said already.

No pun, no insinuation of attraction, no trick of eye contact during an innocuous question. Bartenders are romantic sibyls; obscure Tina Turner's waiting for someone with a grin full of hope to step up and lie to them about how great things might be. They have nothing but time. This guy at the bar has been talking, making jokes, asking questions, putting on a show of being uninterested for more than half an hour. She smiles at him. She nods in acknowledgement, walking back and forth to customers, washing glasses and working the beer spouts. She smiles, and gives nothing.

He just paid his tab and left. "Thanks for the hospitality," he said, rising from the bar stool.

I tended bar one summer. I was nineteen; it was the summer between my freshman and sophomore years at college. I got a job working in the tourist village in Yosemite. I lived in a tent cabin beside a parking lot, working split shifts all summer. 8AM until 2PM and then 5PM to Midnight. In the mornings I worked the cash register at the ice cream shop, and in the evenings I'd pour pitchers at the bar in the pizza parlor.

Most of the people I worked with were felons. At that time there was a recruitment program that offered employment in national parks to people recently released from prison. My roommate had just finished serving two years for beating another man with a tire iron. One of my neighbors had done five years for something relating to cocaine (he always demurred when I asked him for details). I cried while sitting on a log in the parking lot on my first day.

I spent the summer trying seduce H, a waitress in the pizza parlor. She was a puffy lipped brat from Orange County. She was bony and talked about ska and surfing all the time. I would watch her from behind the bar gliding through the small circular tables in the manufactured lodge where we worked. When she returned to the bar with her orders I would steal details of her face; the little fissures in her lips, the translucent freckles across her round cheeks.

I found out she had a boyfriend my last day in camp. I got drunk with my neighbors, the felons. We drank Southern Comfort and goaded another boy who had gone to my high school and had a learning disability into wrestling a bear cub in the parking lot. I had the first hangover of my life the next day.

I used to watch "The Pick-Up Artist" a couple of years ago. A lanky man in a puffy fur hat said the best way to pick up a bartender is to feign indifference. Lean against the bar with your back towards her and avoid eye contact as much as possible. Condescension about her position of servitude is advisable. "What do you have going for yourself besides looks?" he suggested to his pupils as an opening.

You can't pick up the bartender. The bartender doesn't exist. But if you keep your mouth shut and look them in the eye without flinching at the right time, they might want to pick up you. And the prize is waking up the next morning with someone completely new in bed next you. It might even be a felon.

Previous Posts:

Date Machine: Are You My Girlfriend Now?

PDA Machine: Making Out in a Bar

Sex Machine: The Cake is a Lie, or Does My Butt Show When I Walk?

Obituary Machine: Natasha Richardson, or Smoking Cigarettes on the Roof

Love Machine: Throwing Punches, or Get Your Hands Off of My Woman

Date Night: The Most Expensive Date I've Ever Been On

Sex Machine: Monogamy is for Losers

Sex Machine: I'm Not That Kind of Girl

Date Machine: Civil War and Sex on a Toliet

Date Machine: Living Like a Bachelor

Sex Machine: Chest Hair, or the Shaved Eunuch

Date Machine: Macho Voce, or Women Who Sound Like Men

Date Machine: Sex in the Office

Sex Machine: Lying Lovers; or the Padded Bra

Sex Machine: Premature Ejaculation

The Fishnets Method

fishnetsandlight — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 16:05:00 GMT

If you're recognizably female, breathing and ever been in a bar or club, you've probably been targeted by a Pick Up Artist.

For the uninitiated, PUA's are men who are so geeky that they have to reduce what is supposed to be fun flirting/hooking up to an RPG adventure in order to make any progress.

Hurry! Cast the Roofie spell while her fruity girl drink is unattended!

Probably the best known PUA is Mystery, seen in the Youtube link above. As you can see, he's stolen Pam Anderson's pink fuzzy hat and dyed it black. (I guess he figured she's sexy... so emulating her would make him sexy by extension? I can't explain the safety goggles. It's like he's trying to pick up ravers circa 1997. Man, do I miss my UFO pants.)

From what I can gather, PUA's try to be assholes to the ladies. They do something called "Negs," which are pretty much backhanded compliments. I actually had a guy say "Wow, your hair looks really great... is it yours?" before trying to up his "Kino" points by touching my back. Now, this was supposed to make me feel attracted to him because it's not the ass-kissing that I was expecting. Really, it just made me slap his hand away and go talk to someone else.

PUA's have it in their heads that if a woman is at all attractive, she doesn't want a nice guy. What they don't get is that if I'm gonna date/fuck an asshole, he should also be hot and preferably rich, with an undercurrent of vulnerability that explains why he's such an awful human being. Y'know... he should be every TV character that Julian McMahon has ever played. Guys like that don't need 1-ups and strategies to begin with.

So, if you're not the guy (and you probably aren't), you need to grow a nice personality and a pair of balls. I call it, The Fishnets Method.

1. Take pride in your appearance. I'm not saying you have to get all Queer Eye/GQ. But spend more than five seconds picking out your clothes. Maybe cultivate some perpetual five o'clock shadow, if that works for you. Try a new haircut. Figure out what hides your gut (or better yet, hit the gym.) Maybe pick up a nice, all-purpose cardigan. Ladies love cardigans. (OK, maybe just I do.)

2. Be yourself. You can't be someone else. You just can't. It'll make you look stupid if you try. Put yourself out there and see who is compatible. The secret is revealed! You have to be with women who like you. Ta-friggin'-dah.

3. Realize that there are women outside of bars and clubs. Seriously, unless you're an alcoholic or a dancing fiend, these are not the best places to meet that special someone. Everyone's drunk. Make friends with women at work and they'll introduce you to their sober girlfriends, sisters, cousins, etc.

4. Don't let some dude in a fuzzy hat tell you what to do. I mean... seriously. A fuzzy hat? What the fuck?

Now go forth and get laid.