On my drive out to Connecticut, I was listening to a Neil Strauss book on Pick-Up Artists.  I always find that sort of mentality bizarrely science-fictionesque; here are these nerds who’ve mastered the arts of neurolinguistic programming to get over their fear of women.  And like most good science-fictionly things, the core of the Pick-Up Artists rest at this bizarre nexus of scientific theory and culture and morality.

I couldn’t help but think of “peacocking” over the past two days, though.

The theory behind “peacocking” is that you want to dress in an outlandish manner of some sort – giving women an easy excuse to talk to you, if they want to.  All they have to do is comment upon your crazy tie, and wham, you can walk them down the lines of anchoring and negging into your boudoir.

The thing is, like much of the Pick-Up Artists’ theory, though, it’s absolutely true.  Because I am peacocking now, whether I think of it that way or not.  I’m wearing a slick hat, a bright Hawaiian shirt, and I have this elaborate henna all over my hand.

At least five women have started up conversations with me in the past thirty-six hours.

Now, it’s probably some coincidence that they’ve all been women, but the whole Pick-Up Artist thing makes me wonder whether I could have leveraged some of those tenuous connections into bedroom shenanigans instead of awkward small talk.  And the answer is: probably.  Not because their talking to me meant OH TAKE ME YOU PUDGY STUDMUFFIN, but because I’m reasonably confident in my chances if I’m feeling attractive and flirty and given an option to chat.

I don’t have a spectacular need, though.  It’s cool for me just to meet people and say hello and walk away.

I dunno.  The whole Pick-Up Artist thing strikes so many chords simply because I have had, by many men’s standards, a wildly successful sexual history, and a lot of what they say resonates as, “I do that!  Without thinking about it, but I do that!”  One of the main lessons of the PUA crowd is that women actually want to have crazy, no-strings sex a lot of the time, often just as badly as men, but there’s so many societal restrictions around what women should want that men wind up having to reassure women that they won’t think less of them.

And I think one of the reasons I’ve been as successful in quote-unquote “seducing” women as I have is that I don’t think less of anyone for having sex.  I think people should have as much sex or as little as they want, and I don’t think of women as slutty for desiring it.  And upon some PUA consideration, that attitude gets me a surprisingly long way.

(The other attitude is that I don’t care if we have sex.  I mean, it’d be nice, but unlike many so-called “nice guys,” if you just wanna hang around and talk, I like that just as much.  Unless a lot of guys, who view women as a disappointment if they don’t put out, which I find more than a little reprehensible.  Which is why I have a problem of thinking of “Hey, if you want, I’m cool, or we can just play dominoes” as “a seduction technique.”)

The Pick-Up Artist thing has a potential to be a way of giving lonely nerds a pathway to find out how to be comfortable with women – which it is, on some levels – but as usual, some idiots take it to extremes and start treating women as something to be conquered.  which is just masking another form of insecurity – let’s sex up everyone just to see if we can!

Meanwhile, I’m in a hotel room in Connecticut, working alone on a Saturday night.  Could I use some company?  Sure I could.  But it’s okay to be alone, guys.  All those other women won’t fill the empty loneliness inside.  Trust me on that one.

Cross-posted from Ferrett's Real Blog.

Tags: sex

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