Like every other guy, there are times when the ways of women mystify me. But at other times, I must admit, my own gender makes me shake my head in confused wonderment. I am not just talking about the alien force that compels some men to sit in the hot sun watching stock cars drive around an utterly plane oval track for hours on end, hoping someone crashes horrifically to end the boredom. I am talking about the world of romance and dating. Let’s picture two typical dating scenarios:

Scenario #1

You’re in a bar and you notice a girl smiling at you. You smile back, which prompts her to walk over to you and introduce herself. She works hard at keeping the conversation going. She laughs at all your jokes, touches you playfully, and fixes her hair a lot. At closing time she asks you to escort her home. At her door she invites you in to offer you a drink. On the couch at her place, she jumps you and you have wild sex. In response, you notch your belt, tell your friends she is too easy, and never call her again.

Scenario #2

You chat up a cute girl in a coffee shop. You get her number and go out for drinks. Nice conversation follows, she seems cool and interesting. You offer to walk her home, she says there is no need, but you insist, and after some back and forth, she reluctantly agrees. At her front door she stops to say goodnight and you tell her you have to use the bathroom, so she lets you in. After you have pretended to use the bathroom, you sit with her on the couch and bust a move. While making out, she tells you repeatedly that she can’t be up late and needs to work in the morning. She moves your hand away from whatever private part you are attempting to grope. She struggles to keep various pieces of clothing on as you attempt to remove them. Finally, either through exhaustion from fighting off your attempts, eagerness to please this cool new guy she is on a date with, or simply the natural horniness that comes from long sessions of making out and being groped, she relents and sleeps with you. In response, you notch your belt, tell your friends she is too easy, and never call her again.

What’s odd about this is that if both girls above had put up more resistance and denied their men the ultimate prize, the guys might have called again. Guys, does this make any sense? If a girl bangs on the night you met her or on the first date, she is likely to bang the next time you see her, so what exactly is the problem is here?

I’ll never understand this. To me, this kind of bait and switch thing is what we “logical” guys like to blame “emotional” girls for. We guys constantly complain how girls demand we treat them to expensive dinners and flowers, only to decide, after we dutifully comply, that we are “too nice.” They tell us they “have a lot going on right now” and are “too busy to date anyone,” but a few weeks later we see those same girls grinding on some frat boys wearing cowboy hats in Heaven & Hell.

As far I was concerned, I had no problem with a girl who was ready to get busy real quick. When that happened, I just patted myself on the back for having pimp tight game. I mean, hey, I can’t really blame a girl for having sound judgment in men, can I? Once I was done giving myself props, I started making plans to get the good stuff from her again.

When I was playing the game, I wasn’t playing for the love of opening lines, phone numbers, or first dates. I wasn’t spending weekend nights trolling in trashy Adams Morgan bars until 3:00AM for the joy of communing with sweaty, drunken humanity. I wanted the ultimate prize. When I got it, I sure didn’t want to throw it back so fast. I wanted a healthy rate of return on my investment.

Think of how many guys make promises to Satan himself that they will never be nice to a woman again because they got burned by the dinner & flowers trick all through college. Now ask yourself how many girls swear they will make guys wait at least 5 dates before sex because they got burned for giving it up “too soon.” Fellas, does it ever occur to you that if you reward “good behavior,” you’re likely to see a lot more of it?

Good news for people who have sex: Plan B is now on the shelves.

Major pharmacy chains such as CVS Corp., Rite-Aid Corp. and Walgreen Co. not only offer the pill throughout their networks, but also pledge to ensure that customers can buy Plan B onsite even if a given employee declines to provide service for reasons of conscience.

AP

Calling 1-888-NOT-2-LATE was easy enough, but you had to wait by the phone so a counselor can call back and ask your girl questions about her vagina.

Counseling fee: $20
Morning after pill: $50
Busting inside a girl because you were too drunk to notice the condom broke: PRICELESS…

…from what other guys have told me.

Loooooong time reader Eric has started a magazine in Austin with some friends called The Other Paper. He has a column that riffs on the seduction “gurus” you may have read about in The Game, with their acronyms and ridiculous war analogies.

Austin is the only American city I need to visit.

I think I will stop reading comments from now on. Several of you have interesting things to add, but every now and then I have to punch myself in the stomach. It’s almost like some of you are reading another blog and then commenting here.

If you ask one-hundred people what they like to do in their spare time, not one will say “to think.” Why would they — humans think all the time. In fact, they had to think just to answer your question. Right? But are they simply reacting to information or are they breaking it apart to create new ideas and theories? Do they just nod or frown at the news or do they take time out of their day to understand the big picture?

Unfortunately, people do not think, they consume. Sure, you read news and commentary, look up topics in Wikipedia, watch educational programs or documentaries, but do you put it together? Do you add to the conversation or do you just spit out the same statements you have always been saying? There really is no point anyway: humans are so resistant to change and forming new opinions that they will simply seek out information that validates their existing view. Growth rarely occurs. Real thinking is so rare that there is a term — ‘intellectual’ — for the class of people who actually do it.

The reason people do not think is because it is boring. Oh the torture of having to sit alone, without entertainment and without concern of what else you could be doing to only be occupied by your thoughts. Instead of being bored with the company of their mind, people seek out television or celebrity photos to consume some more. They don’t realize that they are bored with themselves. Look around and you will find people who fill their time with enough activities, distractions, and obligations so they are never forced to be alone with their own mind; so they always can say they’re “busy.” They are like the little baby who gets tired of one toy and reaches for something else, just passing the time, just playing on the surface.

I have a player friend who has 48 notches. No girl who meets him thinks he is a player, and it’s this under-the-radar feel about him which is the probable cause of his success. Girls think he is just a nice guy until he bangs them and never calls again.

This graphic gives you an idea of his accomplishment thus far:

He wants to get to 50 where he can then take a step back and look for a quality girl. And he would like to do this before January 1st, which means he has under a month to bang two girls. The Road to 50 series will detail his journey to finally becoming a real man.

Postscript: Before I can even post this, I get a text message Monday night that he got to 49. I knew I should have started earlier.

Postscript 2: Damn it, last night he got number 50. He got 3 new notches in 4 days. Oh well that was fun.

Years of trolling Craigslist daily has finally paid off: I was recently a missed connection. Behold the glory that is an anonymous female seeking me out:

Barnes & Noble? – w4m – 20
Date: 2006-11-19, 1:23AM EST

Today. Yesterday, rather. You stayed till closing.

I confirmed it was me after an email exchange. She’s an L.A. implant hipster. The first thing she noticed about me, like most girls, was my hair.

When I grew my hair out, I noticed that I would attract a different type of girl. The quantity didn’t change, but now I was spending time with art snobs, hippies, international girls, and emotional crazies.
October 25, 2006

I guess all I have left to accomplish is some sort of massive orgy.

It’s that time of year where you start asking your friends, “So what are you doing for New Years?” Panic strikes as Christmas approaches and you still have no idea what lame party you are going to. Well I’ll tell you what I’m doing for New Years: I am cooking myself a meal from my Betty Crocker cookbook, drinking a bottle of wine (probably a Riesling), turning off my phone, watching a movie, masturbating, and then going to bed. Total cost: $20. For me there will be no party, no countdown, no overpriced entry fee, no mass text messages, no cheap Champagne, and no party amateurs celebrating another year of life they wasted. Why bother? The people who love New Years Eve are the same who love making a big deal on their birthday. Well there is an age where you stop making a big deal of both — that age is 9.

Now I will not judge you if you spend $100 to pretend that you are fun. It is your money and you can do whatever you want with it, but let’s be honest: I am superior to you. I know that fun can not be bought. I know that very little good can can come out of packed crowds. I know that bar and club owners are diluting their vodka as we speak. Everyone tries so hard on New Years (“Oh my God I need to buy a new dress!”) that all you end up with is a bunch of losers acting unnatural, praying that they will find someone with a heartbeat to make out with. I will have my own party — a hand party — and I guarantee you it will be fun.

“So how’s your player book going?”

It’s going well, thanks, girl I used to date.

I never realized how appealing cleaning or peeking into an empty refrigerator is until I started this project. And I’m learning that it’s impossible to write without setting up some sort of reward system. I would start a porn download and not let myself watch it unless I write a certain amount. But then I’d take an early “break” and watch the porn anyway, and make my roommate watch it too. And then we’d play the drums and get some ice cream. After all that I’d get kind of sleepy and head to bed, but not before surfing the internet for a couple hours. Blog writing is so easy because not only are the posts short but you have immediate gratification. I can come up with a good idea tonight and by tomorrow I’d have Roissy and Hedonistic in the comments section fighting with each other, trying to hide the fact that they long for each other’s sex.

On my six page outline, I’m done with the first page. My goal is to be halfway done by the end of the December.

Word count: ~13,000

Kathryn and I pulled the plug on our baby after 11 months. Here is what I had to say:

There are only so many ways I can tell a girl that a guy isn’t into them. When starting this blog I never thought 85% of the questions would come from women. Because my main skill is in helping men, I know that my typical “move on” advice to women was probably not all that helpful to them. When the goal of a woman is to find one man to nest with, they don’t want to hear it when you tell them to find another guy. In that respect, I failed.

From working with Kathryn, I clearly see how tough dating is for people our age. Because of this there is an industry composed of dating books, seminars and workshops, and as long as men and women need to physically mate to continue the species, there will always be a demand for dating advice. While we can’t confirm if our advice helped bring two people together, I think we helped the human race more than not.

My final advice is for everyone still working on that one crush. I know it is fun to have a project, to work on that one guy or girl you really like. But it never fails that the more you really like them, the less chance you will get with them. Liking a person a lot before intimacy occurs is a good sign that they their value is considerably higher than yours. In other words, they can do better. It is not until I stopped valuing women that things fell into place for me.

Perhaps if we only answered one question a week could we keep it going and stay fresh, but the daily nature of the blog doomed us from the start.