date machine : seduction

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 Nurse at the HIV Clinic

amboabe — Sun, 03 May 2009 00:26:00 GMT

I was arguing with my friend P about competition last night. He believes the need to compete overshadows everything in our romantic lives. This need is especially acute in men, because we have traditionally been yoked with the role of pursuer. I don’t care. I don’t want to compete against the field to wind up with someone who’s attractive and successful just to show everyone else that I can.

Relationships aren’t prizes. They’re hard work and require a lot of sacrifice. Why would anyone want to compete to get into a bind like that? Why would anyone want to enter into a relationship with someone that they had to convince to join them?

A few weeks ago I went to get an STD/HIV test. The clinic was intended to serve the needs of high-risk gay men. There was only one woman working there. She was short, had curly hair, and walked around with an eager smile and beaming eyes. After listening to her talk to some of the other volunteers I figured out that it was her first day on the job.

An hour later she came out into the lobby with a file in her hand and called my name. As I followed her down the short hallway to the testing room I felt a small thread of nervousness unspooling in my midsection. I was already jumpy about the test, I hadn’t expected to be going through it with someone I was attracted to.

She held the door open for me and I sat in a chair against the far wall. She closed the door behind her and sat down with her overflowing smile. For the next ten minutes we talked about my recent sexual history. Coming clean about all the lewd, kinky, and potentially infectious behavior I’d engaged in over the last half a year is not high on my list of things to do with a women I find attractive.

We got to talk about what kinds of fluids have been in my mouth, my preference for anal play, and I retold the story of my first STD from last year. You’re cute, and also I used to have dick snails.

As I was going over all the unflattering proclivities of my sexual self, she seemed unfazed. She nodded during particularly embarrassing details with normalizing statements, “Yeah, that’s totally common. I know a lot of people who are into that.” As I rambled, her fingers were in constant motion along the hem of her shirt running along the edge of the fabric and skin. She tilted her head to the side when I tilted mine, she laughed out loud at all the obvious puns that I nervously tossed out.

It came time to draw blood. She rolled her chair next to mine and straddled my knee with her legs. She took the inner part of my forearm in both hands and gently ran her thumb up and down over the crook of my elbow to find a vein. I’m lanky and have veiny forearms. It was a hot morning and I’d walked a mile and a half to get to the clinic. My veins were presenting.

She said she was having trouble finding a vein. She asked me to hold out my other arm. She took it and ran her fingers along the skin of my inner arm, leaving a warm tingly trail in their wake. Neither of us said anything. Five seconds went by. Ten seconds. Our heads were a foot away from each other, my knee was inches from her lap. I could smell the soap on her skin, the soft hint of detergent from her clothes. I had started sweating a little on the walk over. There was probably some musky remnant of it mixing with my Apricot deodorant.

She leaned in closer, looking at the veins coming down my forearm. Her breast drifted across my hand as she moved. It happened again when she sat back.

After the test was over we kept talking, our words trying to prolong the last few minutes we would have together with whatever meager excuses we could find. We talked about travel. She told me about a trip to India with “my boyf—someone I was traveling with.” A few minutes later she made the same edit, changing an unformed “b” word into “the person I live with.”

I told her I was moving to New York in a week. She mentioned meeting in New York three different times, though she had no plans to come to the city and didn’t mention any friends there.

I’m not sure what my cues of attraction are, but I was swept away with her. I must have been rambling, my sentences coming out like blushing torrents of self-deprecation. I wanted to ask her out. I knew I wouldn’t because I was leaving in a week and, though my attraction to her was strong, it wasn’t unfamiliar. It was sporting and friendly and fun, but it wasn’t overwhelming. It was just a surprise to find someone like that in a place like that.

When you really like someone you don’t need to compete for anything. You don’t need to prove anything, because the simple act of sharing your time and thoughts is entertaining enough. You can convince people to like you with a little thought and social manipulation.

It’s like doing a card trick, you can convince people that they’re seeing something extraordinary when its just sleight of hand. With the right ones you just have to be honest and find a way to stick together for as long as you can. Staying together is always the harder part. Convincing someone to come home with you is easy. It’s a cheap trick and the payoff is a lie.

How you pick up a nurse: go get an STD check.

Previous Posts:

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

Sex Machine: Checking my Oil, or the HIV Test

Date Machine: How To Pick Up a Bartender

Date Machine: Are You My Girlfriend Now?

Date Machine: Long Distance Lovers

amboabe — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 05:07:00 GMT

I was having lunch with my friend M the other day and she mentioned one of her girlfriend’s who’d been writing back and forth with a man through a dating service for an extended period of time. They’d never met in person.

It’s easy to imagine this is the worst face of internet dating.; two people so lonely for companionship that they’re willing to spend big chunks of their time emailing their daily devotional thoughts and fears. It might be one thing to have an intimate correspondence with an old friend who lives far away, but the idea of doing it with a stranger carries an undercurrent of desperation.

When I was twenty-two I wound up emailing a woman who had gone to my high school. A mutual friend thought that we might have something in common. We were both writers, read too much, and had a similar taste for deviance and disruption. She still lived in Fresno and I had been in LA for more than four years. I didn’t know anyone there anymore, and the idea that I might still have a friend in the town where I grew up, a writer no less, made me happy.

We started emailing and got along as predicted. We picked up each other’s musical references and had patience for arcane arguments about DH Lawrence versus Anais Nin. In hindsight, it was an embarrassing scrum of mutual assurance that we were separate and better than all those other slackjaws; a short-term emotional cocoon for the overly sensitive post-graduate.

Our e-mails gave way to phone calls, and after a few months I decided it was time to stop ebbing around the edges. I asked her if I could come up and visit her one weekend. She said yes.

I had no idea what she looked like. The only point of reference I had was a hazy photo from my high school yearbook. She was pale and freckly and her lips were small but puffy pink. I had the mental pre-tingle of sex the whole drive up. It was exciting imagining what she would be like in person. I had come to know her personality well enough, but there was a whole other being to be reckoned with. Her physical bearing, her mannerisms, rhythms, movements, smells. Her inner self had been a good partner so far. I was hopeful that the physical side would be a good match as well.

When she opened the door to her apartment I was overwhelmed by stale air and cat piss. She was wearing dirty blue sweat pants and a baggy t-shirt with blotchy stains spattered across it. Whatever might have been tingling inside me earlier came to a stop.

Suddenly, the idea of a long weekend with A’s company seemed like an insurmountable trudge. I had imagined a lithe kink-sprite tumbling from the pages of Delta of Venus. Instead, I was entering the zone with a pallid introvert with an over-generous tolerance for the stench of her cat’s bodily waste. For a moment I imagined turning around, walking back to my car, and driving the four hours back to LA.

“Come in,” she said.

We talked for a little while. I helped her with the last bit of tidying up which my arrival had so noticeably interrupted. The sun was going down and we decided to get some beer and watch a movie. I was nervous and tried to keep her at arm’s length with conversation, hoping I could cover my recoil with some affable chatter about anything so long as it was non-sexual. She remained quiet, answering in barely audible mumbles and short clips that I couldn’t reconcile with the woman I had gotten to know over the phone.

After a few beers and an hour of an old movie she suddenly became animated. We were sitting side by side on her couch, awash in a sea of cat hair. She reached for a small tin of lip balm and put some on. She asked if she could put some on me.

My body stiffened and I tried to keep my eyes locked on the television. This was the moment I had been dreading. She was going to try and seduce me now. I had hoped I could passively joke my way through the weekend as if we were just good buddies catching up. But she was ready for sex. I figured out some terrible excuse for not wanting to put on lip balm (“Why? I don’t really feel like I need it.”) but she persisted. After a few minutes, we came to a compromise. I would put on lip balm but I would apply it myself.

Not deterred, she bent down at my feet and started undoing my shoelaces. I was wearing heavy boots and it took some doing to unlace them. I knew what was happening but I didn’t know how to tell her no. I wished there would have been a button to push or a placard I could hold up that could settle things. Instead she pulled off my boot and smelled the inside with a giant inhale, all while looking me in the eye.

“Do you want to kiss me?” she asked.

I told her we should just watch the movie. She threw my boot across the room and then leaned over me, lowering her mouth to mine. I leaned away and held my forearm up to keep us separate. She pulled away and looked at the floor. She sat down next to me on the couch and after a few minutes I heard her crying.

We finished the movie in silence and then went to bed. I lay beside her all night, rigid and afraid to move for fear of brushing against her.

Affinity for someone’s personality is not sex. I had no idea.

Previous Posts:

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

Sex Machine: Checking my Oil, or the HIV Test

Date Machine: How To Pick Up a Bartender

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