Ghettoization of the Chemical Body - PART ONE
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[An L.A. Miracle ŚPenetratedą:
From Über-Dork to Super Stud
By Sheelah Kolhatkar
The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists, by Neil Strauss.
ReganBooks, 452 pages, $29.95.
As I read Neil Straussą The Game, I found it impossible not to think of a
dear old friend‹letąs call her Ingrid‹whoąs the sort of woman who gets
approached by guys constantly. Watching grown men flounder and humiliate
themselves at bars, restaurants, museums and bookstores becomes agonizing
after a while; typically, they sidle over one after another, take deep
breaths and say something like łYou should smile more!˛ or łYour dress would
look great on the floor by my bed,˛ while she gives them a withering stare.
Accompanying her to a nightclub calls for deep wells of patience: You canąt
dance near her without being harassed and molested, and the evening often
devolves into a bad Saturday Night Live skit with Chris Kattan and Will
Ferrell types closing in on either side. Since Ingrid usually pretends they
arenąt even there, it falls to me to tell the poor saps to give up and move
on.
Things might have been different for picky Ingrid if sheąd been approached
by Neil Strauss. At the suggestion of a clever nonfiction book editor, Mr.
Strauss infiltrated the subculture of über-dorks who spend their free time
at pickup-artist seminars or online in chat rooms trying to break the
seduction and entrapment of women down to a formula that anyone‹no matter
how awkward, uncool or bizarre-looking‹can follow. By trading secrets and
war stories, they learn to insult women subtly to undermine their
self-esteem, to distract jealous boyfriends while they collect girlsą phone
numbers, and to ignite threesomes through sophisticated come-ons such as
łHey, letąs all massage each other!˛ After several months of this perverse
form of finishing school, Mr. Strauss became one of the very slickest pickup
artists‹or so he says‹and ended up bedding what sounds like hundreds of
women. How could Ingrid have resisted?
A former music critic for The New York Times who now contributes to Rolling
Stone, Mr. Strauss seems to understand intuitively a certain type of
narcissistic male. His writing is often hilarious and vivid (a scene in
which he races through a bar with the Hollywood madam Heidi Fleiss,
competing with her for women, is particularly entertaining). But reading
about the creepy self-help scene he łpenetrates˛ also requires heroic
suspension of disbelief: Some of the claims he puts forth sound too absurd
to be taken seriously.
He tells us about the łmost worshipped pickup artist in the community,˛ an
aspiring magician named łMystery˛ whose łnights out seducing models and
strippers in his hometown Toronto were chronicled in intimate detail online˛
(and also in a New York Times Sunday Styles article that Mr. Strauss wrote
last year). Mr. Strauss and a handful of other schlubs paid $500 each for a
łBasic Training˛ workshop with Mystery; the training consisted of four
nights of accosting women in Los Angeles nightclubs, with lectures
beforehand and critiques afterward.
Guided by a fellow who seemed to take pride in looking like a clown on acid
(on one occasion, Mystery wore ła top hat, flight goggles, six-inch platform
boots, black latex pants, and a black T-shirt with a scrolling red digital
sign that said ŚMysteryą on it˛), the trainees began preying on strippers,
porn stars and any other large-breasted women (the prey is inevitably
described as łscantily clad˛). The men were instructed to approach women
standing in groups, to ignore the one they found most attractive, and then
to subtly demean her with łnegs˛‹backhanded compliments such as łI like your
hair, is it real?˛ or łyou have eye crusties˛‹in order to undermine her
confidence, all the while dazzling her friends with tricks and psychic
readings. And the women were such morons that theyąd fall for it: The
attractive woman whoąd been ignored and łnegged˛ would follow her seducer
like a zombie into a dark corner, exchange saliva and hand over her phone
number.
Mr. Strauss soaked up these teachings and then went on to study with several
competing seduction-cult leaders. He traveled around the world and became a
pickup legend himself, complete with groupies and imitators and even a
proposition from Courtney Love.
Tagging along with Mr. Strauss is amusing. Not for long, though. Most of the
men in the pickup łcommunity˛ are unattractive, charmless and in various
states of unemployment‹the sort
of guys who probably still play Dungeons and Dragons in their free time. Yet
that doesnąt seem to stop them from every night bringing home another
Penthouse Pet of the Year. Mr. Strauss moved into a mansion in the Hollywood
Hills with a whole posse of pickup artists, each of them more irritating
than the next, and they started squabbling, scrapping like sorority sisters
over a bottle of nail polish. It was at this point that morality crept in
and Mr. Strauss came to the stunning discovery that it was all very Š
shallow.
The world described in The Game is both fascinating and horrifying. Itąs a
rubberneck experience, like passing a wreck on the highway. (Mr. Strauss
produced a similar effect as co-writer of Jenna Jamesonąs recent
best-selling memoir, How to Make Love Like a Porn Star.) You drive on,
feeling guilty and embarrassed at having overheard the fantastical ramblings
of a porn-addled fratboy: łI carried her naked and dripping to my bedroom,
put on a condom, and slowly entered her,˛ he writes, referring to one of his
roommatesą sisters. Another victim, Johanna, is a łpetite, mischievous
stripper with big saucer eyes.˛ As for Tammy, łI pressed her against the
shower door, smashing her breasts against the glass, and took her from
behind.˛ One chapter is nothing more than a list of 18 women he hooked up
with, and practically includes their bra sizes.
But then he sees the light, finds true love and settles down.
Youąre probably expecting that the author also unveils an insightful
analysis of the phenomenon heąs been studying; youąre expecting an answer,
for example, to the obvious question: Why do these pickup artists seem to
share such a deep hostility and resentment toward women? No such luck. Mr.
Strauss prefers to sprinkle his book with the pop wisdom heąs absorbed like
cheap cologne during his nights out. A typical tidbit: ł[J]ust as most men
are attracted in a Pavlovian manner to anything that is thin, has blonde
hair, and possesses large breasts, women tend to respond to status and
social proof.˛ This one very nearly scratches the surface: łPUAs [pickup
artists] do not hate women; they fear them.˛
But what I really want to know is, what are the women of Los Angeles on?]
Bob Dobbs