how to make friends and influence people

I was reading this article about flirting before bed tonight. All our lives, women are given stupid advice about how to attract guys. Three basic catagories: (a) touch his arm and act like he's really interesting, (b) do a lot of public lollipop licking, or (c) ignore him and blush, which is the literary method of looking for love.

All of the above might eventually attract someone, with (c) tending to attract that kind of psychotic love reserved for shy girls, but it's all put on and frankly not very hot. Unless you're looking for a guy who wants to replicate bad porn, in which case (b) is an advertisement only matched by plexi clear platforms.

I haven't mastered maneating, and I'm not sure I want to. I also have a lot less follow through than game, and pretty strict ethics about who buys the drinks. However, I have spent the last half decade becoming ridiculously good at figuring out how to attract people I'm attracted to. Here is my unabridged guide for picking up boys who are fun to kiss.

(1) act like they're being inconvenient, but not in a bitchy way. Friendly, lukewarm, but tell them to move out of the way. Don't ask them to play pool with you, bring a friend and put a quarter on the table. I once asked a guy if he had a monopoly on a hammock or if I was going to get to use it, after about ten girls had unsuccessfully tried "laughing at his jokes", and he more or less asked me to dinner an hour later.

(2) make fun of them, usually gently challenging their masculinity. Or, screw it, outright challenging their masculinity; for example by taking a shot he was being a suck about and then heckling and getting the bartender to heckle too. The Game basically calls this negging, though with girls it tends to be more of a backhand thing whereas with guys you can go jugular direct, or is that testicular direct, albeit with velvet gloves. Not mean, just challenging. This should never involve you bellowing and probably not arm wrestling. An alternative is to destroy a non target guy in the target's presence at a game the guy thinks is cool or aspires to be good at, like poker.

I thought this blond French DJ was incredibly hot, unattainable and someone I couldn't communicate with as a result. I was destroying my table in a game of poker one night and suddenly he was intently observing and a few days later was giving me his contact info in case I was ever in his city, so he could take me out. Note I did not destroy him at poker, that would have had another effect. And show, don't tell, modesty is golden.

(3) make eye contact, but not vampy or psychotic eye contact. Look at someone like you're both in on a secret. If you get really good at it, you will be able give a look that causes crossing of a crowded room, but what exactly is going on with this is impossible to describe. Geisha style, baby. And, in the only good magazine advice ever given, do look away first: the alternative is staring.

(4) your entourage should be guys, or very cool girls. Girls are obstacles to making contact, like big orange pylons they have to dodge or bring friends for. Girls are sitting there like big man judging packs and will rarely be approached. When other guys indicate you're not with them but they think you're great it promotes you without you looking like an egotistical jerk. Alternatively, you must have very cool girl friends who understand 1 through 3, and especially 5, with the bunch of you causing a mass effect only equaled by the gravity of planets. I swear my girl friends have scored by virtue fun osmosis.

(5) look like fun. EDIT. Be fun, be having fun. Don't be out looking to land some kind of romantic interlude. Being fun is less starting the dance party by writhing on the floor, more being really happy and unconcerned about what people think. Note that this doesn't mean mocking the scene by going all Freaks and Geeks outcast, like in junior high when you brought out the sprinkler during the first slow song. Genuine happiness is an ultimate aphrodisiac because it's rare, and it attracts better quality people than raw confidence alone.

I liked the RBH within about two minutes of meeting him, but when our conversation ended I didn't linger by the wall giving him a better opening to talk to me again. I moved on, talked to whoever else I knew at the event, and was unselfconsciously social. More tellingly, he first developed an attraction to me because I was on a stage for a charity fundraiser wearing a sweater so ugly people kept trying to buy it. After that one-two punch he was tracking me down where I worked and pretty soon I confirmed he was fun to kiss.

That's all kids.