I have a very tall and very attractive friend, Julia. Luckily, Julia is also a really good sport-such a good sport that she was open to the idea of having creepy club guys hit on us for an entire night, all in the good name of campus journalism. And so we hit the Queen West bar, The Social, for our own kind of target practice.
THE SOCIAL
Despite the name, no one was taking our single-girl bait. Julia and I continued to sip at our gin and tonics, hanging out by the bar like barnacles, fixing each other’s hair like Olsen Twins. Eventually two guys, wearing the standard AFC uniform of dress shirts, jeans and track jackets (always a warning sign) approached us, nervously. “I like your boots,” said one to Julia, pointing out her cowboy boots. “Oh thanks!” said Julia. “That’s like, so nice of you to say!”
We made up alternate names, personalities and occupations. I was now a nursing student from Macedonia named “Lisa.”
“Yeesa?” one AFC replied. “Wow, that’s really…ethnic sounding.”
“Thanks!” I replied. “That’s like, so nice of you to say!” Together, we fluffed about what we did, did we come here often, “Wow, you live above a beer store?” etc. And when we went to get another drink, we left them and never came back. They were boring.
The next guy I met was dancing wildly to a song involving the lyrics, “Saturday night” and “it’s alright.” He grabbed my arms, cooing the lyrics into my ears, as I observed the vertebrae visible underneath his skin-tight black T-shirt. “Wow, you really like this song,” I said. “Do you know who wrote it?”
“Don’t focus on the details baby, just listen to the music,” he replied. He really was a great dancer. It was too bad that he was about 45.
“You’re not like other girls, you know. I can tell,” said my new friend.
“Oh, really? And why’s that?” I asked, as he spun me around.
“Because you’re wearing glasses.”
With conversation this painful, it’s no wonder pick-up lines work. Lesson learned: you are worth being picked up. You are alive.
On our walk home, Julia and I spied a drunk guy eagerly leaning out of the Dundas/Ossington bar, The Communist Daughter, smoking a Belmont Mild. As we walked by he called out to us: “Hey, you guys are like 80s style, right?”
Just one more lame line at the end of a lame night, I thought to myself as we laughingly quickened our pace. The drunken guy left his stoop and started to run after us, calling for our attention. We broke into a run and crossed to the other side of the street.
“You know I tell girls that they look pretty. I tell them they are nice and then they walk to the other side of the street! Why do you do that to me?
“Hey-I’m talking to you! Come back!” he cried, gasping for air. “What am I doing wrong?”
MYSTERY
When I speak to Mystery on the phone, he has just wrapped the last episode of his VH1 Reality TV series and is standing outside on his hotel-room balcony in San Diego, smoking, a how-to-stop-smoking book spread atop his lap.
“This is an international phenomenon! An explosive topic!” he says, enthusiasm spreading through the phone line like floodwater.
“I have 40,000 people on my mailing list and-do you have a calculator?-Wait I have one on my cell phone! Yes!-Yeah well, if even two percent of those people on my mailing list buy like a tape, or a video, that’s $240,000 dollars!’
“But it’s not just about the girls. It’s about health, wealth and relationships.”
And Mystery should know, since publications such as the New York Times and Elle Magazine have called him “the greatest pick-up artist in the world.” Mystery’s story is a unique one, having grown up in a middle-class North York home as Eric Von Markovic, a self-described Dungeons and Dragons nerd. But through magic, Mystery gained the confidence to approach strangers, teaching them tricks and illusions while he earned petty cash as dinner-time entertainment. He then co-opted these techniques (based upon hypnosis and instant attraction) into his dating life, prolifically posting on the website alt-seduction-fast. Quickly, word spread about Mystery’s talents, and an associated line of videotapes, audio books and seminar sessions became available. On May 4, 2006 Mystery held his first college seminar at MIT.
“Most guys start out by saying that they just want to get laid. They leave having a direction for the rest of their lives.”
Mystery shocked the community soon after the publication of The Game by announcing his marriage to his girlfriend of two weeks, Katya, putting the world’s greatest pick-up artist out of commission. But now, Mystery tells me that he faked his marriage.
“It started when we were in the limo on the way to a Tool concert with the lead guitarist Twiggy Ramirez. Katya and I were really, really drunk and we decided it would be totally fun to get married, you know? Well, first we went to a strip club actually,” says Mystery.
“It only lasted for three weeks, but it was a real eye-opener for me, because I never wanted to get married before.” He pauses.
“Men and women are more similar than different,” says Mystery. “I learned most of my shit from girls.”
“I understand the way seduction works from a woman’s perspective. Believe me, I don’t want to see any of the women I know get hurt. I have two nieces and a sister and I don’t want any guy to hurt the people I love the fucking most in the world, you know?”
“So what do you say to critics, who say that the game is only there for anonymous hookups with hood rats?” I ask.
“What a lot of people don’t realize is that it’s only a game for 10 minutes. We call it a game to desensitize ourselves from reality. If you turn the game metaphor off, it’s only about relationship building. And the purpose of any relationship is to build a connection, replicate and build survival value. And the game allows men to become the guy that women want you to be. Why run from a woman if she has survival replication value for you? Why would you say no?”
Mystery then invites me to his hotel room in San Diego. Regretfully, as a journalist, I have to decline.
“Oh well, if you’re a journalist then you should date my friend Neil.”
“Do you mean Neil…Strauss?”
“Yeah Neil. I mean, he’s a big-time journalist. He’s written for Rolling Stone and the New York Times and everything. You guys would be so great together! Neil is such a great guy. You know what Neil is…he’s ethical. He’s so ethical! Yeah! Oh, and if you’re worried about him dating Lisa (Leveridge, the romantic interest of The Game as well as Courtney Love’s ex-guitarist) don’t worry. That thing with Lisa and him is totally over. And you should date my friend because he’s such a great guy and if you guys connect on an emotional level then you can move to Los Angeles and…”
“He’s gotta like you if you’re as yummy as you sound on the phone.”
The weird thing is, when Mystery says this, suddenly I feel delectable.
After the release of Strauss’ New York Times article, Mystery decided to pursue his other love, magic, and moved to Las Vegas. This is where he met one of the most important people in his life: David Copperfield, famous magician and ex-husband of supermodel Claudia Schiffer.
“We bonded because we both used to date supermodels. David approached me after reading the New York Times article and confessed that he needed help with his game. He was unhappy after not finding what he was looking for with Claudia. He still wasn’t over her. So together we would go out and sarge (the PUA term for hitting on women) in Vegas, and then practice magic tricks during the day.”
“And what is David Copperfield looking for?” I ask.
“David needs someone who can tolerate his lifestyle,” says Mystery.
“As a magician?” I ask.
“As a person, Chandler.”
It seemed like the game was affecting everyone. What kind of a world were we coming to when even David Copperfield couldn’t get laid?
STYLE
An AFC once confessed to Neil Strauss that they pretended to be him while they were having sex because it made them feel more confident. When I speak to Neil on the phone, he had just finished a meeting with his lawyer in Beverly Hills about a movie deal. Halfway through our conversation I could hear a British woman trying to pick him up on the street, asking if they had met before. Neil puts me on hold for three minutes as I hear him on the other line, jotting down her phone number. “Sorry about that,” he says. “I don’t know what happened.”
Since the release of The Game, Strauss has been going through some existential despair. During our lengthy phone conversation Strauss constantly drops the names of writers that allowed him to see the truth of his former career (Milan Kundera and Michel Foucault come up), and the vague principles of truth and love that seem prevalent in his mind. Male insecurity is reflected in Ulysses, a book he re-reads every three years. Strauss likens the knowledge he’s accumulated to the quest for the Holy Grail. You wouldn’t expect Strauss to spend a year of his life ghost-writing the story of Jenna Jameson (which he did) or scheming ways to get L.A. bimbos to buy him Hynotique martinis, for that matter.
“You know, it’s funny. ‘Neil and Lisa breakup’ is one of the most popular Google searches for my name,” he says when I ask him about the internet rumour that his current girlfriend, Lisa Leveridge who appeared with Strauss on The View, has left him for “rock DJ” Robbie Williams.
“[Lisa] was the girl that was out of my league, previously. But as you hang out with other people who have a higher status than you, you yourself obtain a higher status. And then you realize that it’s okay to surround yourself with other people.”
“Now I’m trying to be single and excellent. And if a woman I’m interested in happens to come my way, hopefully I’ve accumulated the tools and social intelligence to interact with her in a non-desperate, non-needy way.”
“That’s funny, since Mystery believes that the game is about relationships,” I say.
“For me, the game isn’t really about relationships,” says Strauss.
“It’s not?”
“Relationships are so much more difficult than picking up because most men and women have very different needs. Oftentimes, the man is incapable of giving the woman what she wants. I don’t know any woman who hasn’t been hurt.”
“So what’s the game like for women?”
“The game for women is about relationships. It’s about finding the right guy. And women are usually approached by the wrong guy, so they know what feels right and what feels wrong. It’s about finding the right guy, knowing whether you can trust him or not and maintaining a relationship where he doesn’t want to cheat and he doesn’t want you to either,” says Strauss knowingly.
“And how do men usually handle relationships?” I ask.
“Well they’re going to put their work in first, but men have a hard time emotionally connecting. I think most men are better at doing things for women instead of trying to spend time emotionally connecting because you don’t have to work hard at obtaining results…But eventually our eye starts wandering, it’s inevitable. We’re hard to deal with in a forever situation.”
“By playing the game you’re going to find whatever you’re looking for, whatever it is. If you’re looking to have sex, you’ll find it. If you’re looking for a serious relationship, you can find it. If you’re looking for status and power in the community, you can find that too. And if you hate yourself, you’ll find that out as well.”
“Do you hate yourself?”
“Before the game I was really insecure and didn’t like myself, yeah. But the guy who was at his peak really liked himself, maybe too much. Knowledge can be a dangerous thing. Even though I was participating in threesomes and making money, I wasn’t a good person.”
“I struggled and I think I’ve come a long way, like a zillion miles. Throughout my life there’s been this struggle to be perfect. And I think that we have to accept our imperfections, because that’s what actually is going to make us better people. And hopefully that’s what I’ll become.”
“Well at least, you’re like, an incredibly successful journalist,” I offer.
“Journalism is a lonely profession,” says Strauss.
“What do you mean?”
“Think about it. We’re trained to follow complicated stories by ourselves. We’re supposed to rely entirely on ourselves to achieve our goals. And if you get good at it, you don’t need anyone else.”
MY FRIEND DAN
“So I made out with two girls at the same time last night,” my friend Dan told me over the phone.
“And this is all thanks to the game? The stuff I told you about?” I asked him.
“Yeah. At least, I think so.”
“Wow.”
“I know. I mean in some way, that made me feel really good, that I could get two totally hot girls to make out with me at the same time. But on the other hand…I feel really, like slutty.”
“I think that’s how you’re supposed to feel,” I told him.
“Anyways, it was pretty fucking cool.”
I’ve created a monster.
THE DOUBLE DARE CLUB
The Double Dare Club, U of T’s official “dating institute for men,” got into hot water last year when SAC denied them funding because of their “discriminatory criteria.” A group that once met only for “Single Male Issues Night,” now reserves a Wednesday slot to discuss success in business. Women are welcome, although only one girl has ever shown up to “Single Male Issues Night.” She found the discussion “interesting.”
Founded by Kojo Mintah, a fourth-year psychology student and former AFC, the club started off as five guys who wanted to improve their luck with women. Mintah gleaned an interest in the game after hearing the tapes of PUA David DeAngelo and applying it to his independent study under Professor Jordan Peterson. What Mintah realized, after having anonymous women rate their ideal mate according to looks, wealth and personality, was that women didn’t have a clue. What women claimed they wanted wasn’t as important as a high attraction factor.
As I enter the tomato-red carpeted environment of AVL Room #3 in Robarts’ Media Commons, I already notice some fishy business. Like most aspiring PUAs, Kojo has another side project, selling all-natural hand sanitizer at supposed “retail value.” I watch as his friend Paulson, a baby-faced undergraduate in a Phat Farm T-shirt and Nikes, begins to enter his social insurance number online. This can’t be good. Luckily, Paulson backs out at the last second.
“Do you want to at least put in your password and we can save what you have so far?” Kojo asks. A long pause permeates the room.
With that, the president of the Double Dare Club props his smallish frame (shod in a blue button-down shirt and dress pants) up on the desk and says, “Tonight is not directly about female mate preferences…tonight is about success.”
I look over at Eric, a third-year medical student wearing a button-down dress shirt tucked into his slacks and carrying a polished briefcase. Practically everyone in the room is dressed for an executive meeting, which makes my faded Ramones T-shirt seem all the more misplaced. “Why are you here?” I ask him. Eric slides the fingers of his right hand up and down as he speaks. “These seminars…teach characteristics…”
The other guys seem the same. Nihai is a Russian foreign exchange student wearing black pants and a T-shirt advertising a video game company. Out of everyone, he seems like he needs the most help-like even being around other people is a step in the right direction. Justin, wearing a yamulka and braided pieces of yarn attached to his belt, plays backup, punctuating Kojo’s words with “Yes!” and “That’s right!” A devout Jew, Justin says the principles of the game don’t interfere with his religious faith. Except on Friday nights, that is.
“Most people’s relationship thermostat is set to…you guessed it, zero,” says Kojo. This he relates to success in business: if you believe that you will never become wealthy, you never will. “I, for instance, distinctly remember thinking it was impossible to see more than two women at a time. But then I dated a girl who wanted to see other people, and I realized that there was a whole other world of relationship opportunities for me. That I didn’t have to…settle for less.”
He then asks the room, “What kinds of qualities do you need to succeed in the business and dating world?”
“Luck!” someone says.
“That’s good…very good. What else?” asks Kojo.
“Persistence!” says Justin.
“And who do we know that’s persistent?” asks Kojo.
“Steve Urkel!” shouts Paulson.
“That’s right! Steve Urkel is persistent. And with this persistence he managed to date his next-door neighbour, Laura. He had persistence and he won. We can learn a lot from Steve Urkel.”
With that, Kojo inserts an audio CD of T. Harv Eker, “the millionaire mind intensive,” into a nearby player. A grating voice begins to fill the room, and Kojo instructs his captive audience according to the whims of a recorded millionaire. For instance, when Eker demands that we give ourselves a round of applause, Justin and Kojo clap furiously. When he asks us if we’re ready to “accomplish our dreams,” everyone in the room screams out “Yes!” Every so often, Eker will pause and Kojo will fill in the gaps with a required word or sentence the millionaire had in mind. It’s obvious that he has the tape memorized. At a certain point (something about how we should “eat like the rich to become the rich”), Kojo pauses and asks the room:
“How many people are close to their mothers here?”
Everyone raises their hand. Reluctantly, I also raise mine.
After the meeting, the group decides that they are going to show me their stuff and we taxi over to a bar adjacent to the CN Tower. It is closed. For the next half hour, I and a group of aspiring PUAs roam the downtown core, searching for an appropriate place to sarge…although I’m beginning to feel a little sick to my stomach.
Kojo tells me that he got into David DeAngelo through a well-meaning cousin and that the tapes have changed his life. His last one-itis was over a girl in U of T’s “Hip Hop Headz.” According to Kojo, he once gave her a present wrapped in pink paper with a handwritten note, which she promptly threw away.
This is all beginning to sound like a familiar melody to me: lonely guy with a lack of confidence turns to canned tactics in order to meet women. These new routines give him the esteem he needs to meet more women, but in the process he’ll lose a part of himself. Everything about this U of T PUA is smooth, secure and oddly robotic. On picking up women, Kojo says, “All I have to do is make the result happen as fast as it did in my mind when I thought it.” The game has stopped him from “being concerned about any one particular woman.” And this is sad.
The night is cold and rainy, and everyone is ready to go home. I wasn’t going to find out anything by covering these guys, the majority baffled and shy under my influence. I had already seen too much. But Kojo refuses to leave.
“I am going to pick someone up,” he says. “I have to show [you] that I can do this.”
As we stand in a practically empty bar on Richmond Street, blue lights and crashing music showcasing the severe lack of women, I see Kojo number-closing what they call in the PUA world “a hired gun.” The incredibly hot waitress yawning through her shift does appear to be interested, but it doesn’t really matter. I am sick of talking about women as objects, as points to score. I am sick of asking strangers about their love lives when I don’t seem to have one of my own.
CONCLUSION
As it turns out, there is no happy ending to this story. Playing the game won’t stop you from getting dumped in between gin and tonics with someone you weren’t even really dating, just as it won’t stop you from meeting the soul mate you’ll snuggle with in bed while eating special Valentine’s Day cookies. Love, as Wong Kar Wai’s PUA protagonist in 2046 teaches us, is a matter of timing. It is no good meeting the right person too early or too late.
Are men and women really compatible? Can love last? Is playing the game pointless? Well, maybe. But relationships have to happen for a reason, even if they hurt. We are constantly reframing ourselves in the guise of someone else. And when it works, we become better people. And when it doesn’t, well that’s what hard liquor and sleeping pills are for. Oh, and the box set of Freaks and Geeks.
Becoming a pick-up artist didn’t appear to make any of my interview subjects satisfied in the long term, but it did enrich their lives. And as much as the game is despicable, sexist and well, kind of demeaning, it’s also an honest depiction of the troubled male psyche. Men need open confidants and the ability to express their feelings just as much as women. And that’s what the seduction community offers, in the guise of picking up hot chicks and giving it to them in the washroom stall. I don’t know if anyone really believes in love, but I know how important it is not to give up. Therefore, at the risk of sounding like a low-rent Carrie Bradshaw, I leave you with a scene between MC Maax and myself for the conclusion of my romantic odyssey:
Feeling like I had nothing left to lose, I asked MC Maax if he was afraid of dying alone.
“Holy shit,” said the pick-up artist. “What kind of journalist are you anyway?”
I shrugged.
“I want to share my life with someone,” he admitted. “So I’m scared. I’m scared of just settling. Just settling for any girl, because I’m so sick of the game. I’m scared that I won’t meet anyone who meets my standards.”
“Well,” I said. “Why don’t you just lower your standards?” After all, lowered expectations seemed to be what the game was all about. At least in theory.
“Let me ask you, would you ever lower your standards?”
I had to think about that for a minute.
“No,” I answered truthfully.
“Well, neither will I.”
And so we sat, in complicated silence, until MC Maax pointed out some chick’s rack and I realized that love after all, was still a game.
