The Pump

“The pump is better than coming in a woman.”*

It’s been a long while.  Some nagging injuries and laziness have kept me out of the gym (I mean the real gym with plates of iron, not the one you froo froos go to for your spin classes and low impact hiney-toning spazrobics), but I’ve returned. After only a couple of months the strength and the feeling of being able to take on anything that comes my way is back.  And there’s no going back to being a couch potato; weight training is just too beneficial not to make it a lifelong commitment.  Ferchrissakes, it actually reverses the aging process!

Gaining new strength and mass has always been an uphill battle for me.  I’m a natural ectomorph, which means women who like barrel-chested stocky men should look elsewhere.  If I were playing for the other team, I’d never be invited to any “bear” parties.  Getting older also means muscle gains come slower and recovery times between workouts get longer.  Injuries happen easier as well, which explains why the older guys in the gym are so focused on proper lifting form.  Going to failure on the warm-up set and crashing the bar into your chest on every rep is a fool’s game played by the wet behind the ears.

A few things I’ve noticed about gym culture:

It’s not hard to spot the roid muscle from the natural stuff.  Guys who juice have a weird inflated look to the muscles, and their skin seems paper thin.  Plus, they have the tell-tale “roid gut” which looks like they swallowed a ripped keg.  Good for impressing other guys; not so good for impressing girls.

Girls using the hip adductor machine are placing towels over the pelvis.  Sweet Jesus, is nothing free anymore?  Your privates are already clothed, it’s not like we guys are getting a zoomed porno shot of your goods. Taking recreational glimpses in between our sets of girls on this exercise machine, legs spread as wide as they’ll go, gives us masturbation material for at least a couple nights.  Don’t reduce the joy in the world.

Creatine, BCAAs, and whey protein are your best (legal) friends.

The gym pickup is totally possible.  Yeah, we’ve all heard how women don’t like to be hit on at the gym where they are “under construction” and not fully prepped to be approached by guys, but nevermind that.  I find a spot next to a cutie to do my bike or treadmill warmup, preferably one not wearing headphones, though if she is a light tap on her arm, smiling, and a motion to take off her headphones works well.  Here’s where I come in with the fun stuff.  Never be serious in a gym pickup.  That’s a killer.  Usually there’s a TV set nearby so I’ll say something like “I can’t believe what’s on this TV.  Sports again!  And golf no less.  What’s a guy gotta do to watch a little Desperate Housewives in the gym?  Is that too much to ask?” Anything to get her laughing and smiling, because if you look around that’s the last thing girls are doing in the gym.  Get her attention, open with a situational observation, then playfully flirt.  That’s the basic formula.  Once I’m in, I start vibing.  Running the treadmill is fucking boring so most girls I’ve successfully opened would welcome a 10 minute conversation.  I wait for her to start asking me questions, then move into my close.  I tell her I have to get back to my real workout but that I liked talking with her and we should hang out.  Then I suggest a date to meet, usually one not too far in the future.  I don’t have a phone with me, so I say “Just give me your number.  Don’t worry, I have a feeling I won’t forget it.” Then I get back to working out so it doesn’t look like I’m at the gym to pickup chicks.

Alright, back to throwing iron.  Here’s motivation to set an example for all those pasty-assed nerdos hiding under their mama’s beds:

*Arnold later retracted this statement

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An Open Letter to My Hypothetical Future Kids

Dear fruit of my loins, 

You’re not getting any inheritance.  I plan to blow the whole wad on booze, traveling, and Ukrainian hookers.  I’m going out with a smile on my face.  So prepare for your future.

Forget about a college fund.  You think I want to sock away a hefty percentage of my take-home so I can put your ungrateful ass through an overpriced IQ-notarizing ivory tower for the benefit of corporate human resources departments?  Fuck you.  Save up yourself, get a loan, or learn a trade.  The library is free.

Don’t come to me for a self-esteem boost.  That’s your mother’s job.  I’ll tell it like it is.  You’re getting fat?  I’ll let you know.  You throw like a girl?  I’ve got the video to prove it.  That’s a father’s job; to give you a taste of reality that’ll either motivate you to improve or divert your energies into more productive pursuits.  Fuck this kumbaya cooperative superfeminized dreamworld shit that’s killed the American spirit.  I’ll give it straight up.

If I catch you masturbating do not look me in the eye.  We are never to speak of it.  We will act as if nothing ever happened.

On a related note, you are not to disturb me while I am in my masturbatorium.

I will have mistresses because it is the French thing to do.  Get used to it.

I will flirt with your unbelievably luscious, hot teenage female friends no matter how old I get.  Get used to it.

I will never hit you.  Instead, I will mindfuck you until you are hitting yourself for your foolish behavior.

I will love you very much… unless you do things that will make me not love you.  Nothing is unconditional in this world.  Learn that lesson well.

If someone is causing you undeserved trouble or heartache in your life, you will have no more powerful ally than me.  Do not abuse this privilege.

To my daughter:  Disownable offenses include stripping, whoring, getting your vag tattooed or pierced, sex with losers, bukkake, home made porn vids, and majoring in womyn’s studies at a 36K/year no-name liberal arts college.  Choose wisely.  If necessary, I will spring for plastic surgery to improve your looks.  Trust me, it’ll be the best investment a father could possibly make in his daughter.

To my son:  You will learn how to say Hi to girls before the age of 16 if it kills you.  There will be no Star Trek or Lord of the Rings posters in your room.  You will instead have Helmut Newton photographs hanging on your walls and a copy of Mystery Method.  I will treat the family dog better than you if you major in anything that doesn’t ensure a salary high enough to keep you from grubbing off me.  Learn how to throw a punch.  If you turn out gay, don’t ever bring your “boyfriend” around me.  Certain things are best left in the realm of the abstract.

Finally…

if I find out your mother was a two-timing whore and you are not my kid, you will never hear from me again.  Kindly direct all your rage her way.

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Something flew in my eye

When is it OK for a man to cry? 

Never.
When his dog dies.

These are the two historically acceptable answers, but there’s room to open the floor for a couple more as long as certain preconditions are met.  First, one tear and one tear only is allowed.  Anymore, and the line is crossed into blubbering.  Second, the guy must be completely oblivious to his one tear.  Or at least act like he’s oblivious.  His face should be still; there should be no trembling of the lip or move to wipe away the tear.  When that tear falls he should be looking solemnly into the far distance, as if his one tear were pregnant with so much philosophical profundity the world isn’t worthy of his expression of sadness.  The right way to cry is like this guy:

not an indian!

When women cry, which they do often and unexpectedly (“why are you crying?”  “sometimes a girl just needs to cry!”), it’s like a chimney sweep for their emotions.  Similar to the way aggression and horniness gets bottled up in men, the whole panoply of emotions builds up to toxic levels in women rendering them incapacitated until they escape to a private space and unleash a torrent of tears.  The deluge scrubs their brains’ wiring and everything settles back into a normal operating state.

Men don’t need to deal with this minefield of competing emotions so when a guy sheds that one magnificent droplet you know it is full of meaning.  When you see a guy choked up, you don’t say to yourself “oh god, there he goes again”, you say “damn, that’s gotta be hard.”

A guy knows to honor the code and people’s expectations of what it means to be a man by crying only when the tragedy is grave.  For instance, a fellow soldier’s death on the battlefield.  Loss of a close family member (extended family like cousins don’t reach the level of tear-shedding.  Subdued facial demeanor is enough.)  A lump in the throat is permitted during the scene in ‘Cinderella Man’ when Russell Crowe’s Depression-era character promises his first-born son that he’ll never have to go to his aunt’s again because there wasn’t enough food on the table.

A brief glaze across the eyes is acceptable on the last note of this aria, when no one’s watching, and you understand what the lyrics are about:

ps: check out the female judge’s O-face at the 2:13 mark.

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Toilet Week Flushes On

You know how we guys are – when we get an idea in our heads we focus on it to the exclusion of all other thoughts, clinging like barnacles.  Girls don’t understand this tendency because they live in a world where conversations flit around from topic to topic like butterflies in a field of daisies.

So in keeping with the present obsession, here’s news that vindicates domesticated indentured servants married or cohabiting men everywhere:  it is actually more efficient to keep the toilet seat up.

In this paper, we show conclusively that the social norm of leaving the toilet seat down after use decreases welfare and by doing that we hope to convince the reader that social norms are not always welfare enhancing. Hence, there is a case for scientifically examining social norms and educating the masses about the fallacy of following social norms blindly.

What this paper is basically saying is that a cost-minimizing analysis of total number of toilet seat raisings and lowerings favors the man’s point of view since he uses the seat in both the down and up positions (#2 and #1) while the woman uses it only in the down position (unless she’s kinky).  But of course the norm is what it is because the toilet seat issue, like so many other ridiculously petty issues magnified to the point of craziness by women, is really a litmus test of a man’s love for her.  A woman needs constant reassurance that her man cares for her and the simple act of asking if he cares just won’t do — he has to show it even if it means incurring a time and effort cost as shown in the study above.  And my time is valuable.  If I can save 1.2 seconds not lowering the toilet seat that is an extra 1.2 seconds I have to dedicate to more productive enterprises.

Waving this paper in the face of his nagging woman will get a man nowhere.  Logic is not how to appeal to the fairer sex.  I suggest framing the debate this way:

“Baby, I know you love me, but it would be amazing if we could… {pause. gaze longingly at her}… imagine a time six months from now…. looking back on this moment…. {stroke her cheek}… as the beginning of our future together… when we reached incredible new heights of love and passion… by sharing… one for the other… the ups and downs of our beautiful toilet seat… {caress her neck}… to bring total hapPENIS to our lives… it’s like feeling like we’re on a roller coaster at the top of the hill… waiting to go over… feeling that anticipation that starts in your toes and travels your whole body through your arms and just goes… all through you… {trace your finger down her chest}… and down… here… and here… till you go over and the rush of excitement radiates out of you like a cord… growing stronger and stronger… connecting to me…. connecting us…. can you just feel that, right there?”

If she’s not blowing you with tongue action that feels like an epileptic serpent and simultaneously lowering the toilet seat before you even finish the last words, then trade her in for a chick who’s blood doesn’t run with liquid nitrogen.

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The Bachelor Party

Contrary to popular chick belief, bachelor parties are lousy last-hurrah pickup opportunities.  Nothing screams “ain’t getting laid tonight” louder than a roomful of bob evans dropping $20s on lapdances from strippers who get paid to flirt and make a guy think he’s Casanova for the time it takes him to slip a buck in her garter.  Trust me, bachelorettes, your guy has got no shot.  You should send a thank you card to all those working strippers who reminded your future husband how hard-up he’d be without your steady supply of pussy.  That’s what marriage is — a safety school, a plan B, for guys who wouldn’t know what to do with the new leads.

So when I’m at bachelor parties I know the best way to make the night worthwhile is to come with two goals in mind.  Goal one is for my buddies.  We pound shots, we eat a zoo’s worth of meat at Churrascaria, we stumble into Scores and rate the strippers until we find the perfect half-Thai, half-Norwegian beauty for the man of honor and give her a couple hundred to grind her ass into him for 3 minutes.  When they’re tapped out, they plead with some strippers to join us, after their shifts, at the next stop, a trendy upper east side lounge.  “Sure, handsome, sounds fun, but how ’bout another private dance?”

Goal two is to wipe the stink of lameness off me after having spent good money for the privilege of looking at, but not touching, naked girls.  I’m glad my buddies will have fond memories of empty wallets and killer hangovers, but I demand more of myself.  A bachelor party to me is another night out to pickup women and wing for my single friends.  Unfortunately for them and for the women who secretly want to be seduced, they have zero game.  Drunken assertiveness is not a winning formula.

We arrived at the bar/lounge where one guy’s brother bartends, and revved up the drinking once again.  I paced myself because I need my wits to run proper game.  They were disappointed the strippers didn’t show up.  The ratio was not good, so when a cute, late 20s woman walked in at 1AM and sat at the bar alone it was like tossing chum to circling sharks.  A phalanx of my friends seven deep approached this girl and opened her in unison.  Now that’s attractive.  She didn’t seem to mind, though, and I watched from a comfortable vantage point as the scene escalated into an embarrassing spectacle of seven guys sitting in a semi-circle all facing one girl peppering her with questions and meandering slice-of-life stories.  Every time she was about to speak, the whole posse leaned in like she was EF Hutton.  It was as if they took everything a guy should know about basic game and did the opposite.  One quick glance at her eyes told the tale — there wasn’t a hint of attraction.  It was the indulgent look of a dog lover watching puppies climb her leg.  This went on for almost an hour.  Occasionally, one of the guys would peel off and walk back to me with a progress report.

“hey man, check this out, I think I can get this chick’s number.”
“yo, dude, waddaya think?  she’s giving me the signals, eh!”

More useless chitchat.  By now, the guys were throwing everything at her.  There were bottles of beer and full shots all over the bar behind her; they were buying her drinks faster than she could drink them.

“I’m in, man.  don’t tell my girlfriend! this is in the vault, right? right?!?”
“she’s hot. I’m gonna get her alone and work my magic.”
“I know this is XXXXX’s night, but this chick is into me! He won’t mind if I take off with her.”

Once in a while, one of the married guys in our crew would join the fray and throw down with his rusty wingman skills.  Let me tell you, there is no worse wingman in the world than a married guy.  They mosey in, totally at ease because, you see, they’re spoken for and don’t feel any pressure to impress girls anymore, and completely monopolize the conversation with boring Adventures from Married Life.  They are like Venom’s black suit, leeching into every conversational crevice and taking hold, bonding with their hostage over recipe-swapping stories, until all sex appeal is drained out of everyone in a ten block radius.  And the best part is they think they are helping their buddies get laid!

The besieged girl finally had had enough and began closing off her body language.  Crossed legs to the side, arms folded, eyes wandering around the bar.  The guys got the hint and slowly, one by one, aborted the mission.  I think they had violated, in the course of an hour, every single rule of the Game.  It was quite an achievement.  On their way back, they bitched to me about her attitude and wished me good luck in taking a crack at her.  My attention turned to the girl, who was now sitting alone again.  I suspected she was either just out of a bad relationship or a foreigner new to the city.  How else to explain her infinite patience and good natured smiling during this debacle?  I waited 15 minutes to give her a breather before moving into position next to her at the bar.

“Do you always do this?”
“Do what?”
“Break seven guys’ hearts at once.”
“Oh really, is that what you think I did?”
[accent.  she’s foreign.  one suspicion confirmed.]
“It takes a cold person to pull that off.  I almost didn’t want to talk to you because you’re so mean.”
“Well, you don’t have to, one of those guys still wants to talk with me.”
[motioning to the other side of the room] “He’s pissed at your meanness.  I’ll do my best to fill in and prove to him that you’re really a nice girl on the inside.”

We talked for an hour, then moved to another room and sat down on a couch.  My other suspicions were confirmed when she told me she’d only been in New York 6 months and had recently broke it off with her boyfriend.  She was practically on her own with few friends, nervous about the future, and needing someone to confide in.  More than once in our conversation she cried a little.  Her Finnish homeland was far away.  My hapless buddies had primed her to soak up even minimal game like a sponge.  Everything was in place.  It was the perfect pickup storm.  Ironically, it’s situations like these when I back off on running my tightest game and prefer to connect in a very laissez-faire, casual fashion.  When a girl is not shit testing me or putting up hoops for me to jump through, when she’s genuinely vulnerable, I respond in kind.  But I never abandon the fundamentals — seven guys proved to me again what happens when female psychology is ignored in favor of being yourself.

So with a mix of game and sincere interest I learned more about this girl in a night than most husbands bother to know about their wives after years of marriage.  2 hours 45 minutes later we were in her bed.  It was the fastest non-inebriated, non-dancing meet to lay time I have ever recorded.  It helped that her place was across the street.

The next day, the guys gave me some shit about what had happened.  There weren’t any hard feelings, but there were complaints along the lines of “oh, man, I warmed her up for you” and “i do the dirty work and you come in to mop up”.  This illustrates one of those guy code issues that skirts a gray area.  No guy can claim dibs on a girl just because he talked to her or bought her a drink she didn’t want, but at the same time a good friend won’t move in on the girl or her girlfriends when his buddy’s failed pickup attempt is still fresh.  I empathize, so when something like this happens I wait until the guy(s) who opened the girl takes all the time he needs.  Usually, I simply leave them and go find a richer target environment.

Which leads me to guy code number two.  If a buddy doesn’t have game, he shouldn’t expect me to put my game on hold for him so that we can commiserate together Iron John-style over tear-stained beers.  If he doesn’t know that opening a girl with six swinging dicks in tow is an exercise in futility then I am not going to accommodate his bruised ego by letting golden opportunities slip by.  Bros before hos except at the close.

A month later I heard from the guy who was getting married that after he told his fiancee about my night he caught flak from her for associating with me as a friend.  The news put a smile on my face.  When engaged women think I’m a bad influence on their beloveds I know I’m doing something right.

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How to Win Back an Ex-Girlfriend

If you are the sort of vengeful prick who’d put real effort into bedding an ex just to turn the tables on her with a grandiose post-coitus exit, then you’ll need a proven method for achieving your goal.  One of the hardest feats to accomplish is re-igniting an ex-girlfriend’s attraction for you, especially if she initiated the breakup.  Unlike guys, who are perfectly OK with return trips to the well no matter how dry, women have a no-looking-back switch that, when flipped, desexualizes the man she had spent months or years enslaving with her body.  In her eyes, he is reduced to possessing the animal magnetism of a toll booth operator or a paperboy.  Once she has crossed this rubicon of fatal unattraction, his chances of re-bedding her dwindle to zilch.  You may think that the wild uninhibited sex bonded you two securely for the ages, but you can forget it – girls are creatures of the moment and if she dumped you you can bet she dumped all those memorable sex scenes, too.  She’s saving her inner dirty whore for a new man now.

Given this reality, your best bet for turning her around is to put your plan into action *before* she formally becomes your ex.   You have a short window of opportunity to do this.  The longer you have been with her the more warning she will give you with her change in behavior.  She won’t end a 2 year relationship overnight; you’ll have at least a month to clue in to the red flags.  Your number one priority, then, is recognizing the danger signals.  Infrequent or bland sex is of course an obvious indicator.  Look for delays in returning your calls and texts.  See if her eyes follow suit when she smiles (dead eyes are a dead giveaway).  Tone of voice will always betray a woman — musical when she’s happy, girlish when she’s affectionate, breathy when she’s horny, monotone when she’s lost respect for you.  Watch for contemptuous mannerisms like eye-rolling or tch-ing.  If she starts asking you strange questions or leading conversations down bizarre paths, that is her way of smoking you out.  She no longer trusts you to engage in normal playful conversation with you.  Go with your gut.  90% of the time it will be right.

Awareness of changes in her demeanor wins you half the battle.  You must also maintain complete state control.  If you give in to the rush of emotions that your traitorous brain floods you with when faced with an impending loss you will fail.  What is required of you is to CUT AND RUN before her doubts about you cement.  You must be the one to leave first.  Minimize face time.  Don’t call her.  Be friendly but ambiguous.  Don’t inquire into her life.  Laugh off her crappy attitude.  Most importantly, act as if nothing is wrong.  If she senses you are acting aloof out of spite the spell will be broken.  Eventually, she will wander back to you, bewildered and intrigued, filled with doubt about her hasty judgment.  You will resume a pattern of dating and sex that eerily resembles the first few weeks together.  NEVER give the game away that you knew she was losing attraction if you want to avoid rekindling her impression of you as a weak beta.

What I have described above is the ideal ex-GF strategy.  Like most ideals, hardly anyone lives up to them.  And with good reason – maintaining composure in the midst of a dying relationship you don’t want to end demands superhuman grace under pressure.  Only the strongest alphas with a solid stable of regulars can cavalierly brush off the prospect of one of his girls attempting to dump him.  He knows she won’t muster the willpower to leave, but if she does it won’t matter anyway.

The less experienced man caught offguard will need to learn the art of turning it around after her decision to leave is made but before she has reached the no-looking-back stage.  Chances of re-notch success are much lower once she has verbalized her need for space, but with proper post-relationship game you can improve your odds dramatically.  The key is in the timing.  A mathematician has shown that the dumper’s loneliness and nostalgia for the broken relationship peak at about 3 weeks after the breakup, unless she has found another man in the interim.  Therefore, your job is to let her go and not speak to her for 3 weeks.  This will amplify her feelings of loss.  Then, at her most vulnerable 3 weeks later, call to say hi.  Keep the convo short and friendly.  Chances are best right at this moment that she will offer to meet you for drinks.

You’ll notice the common denominator with these strategies.  They only work if you do the OPPOSITE of what the typical guy would do.  Very few men getting dumped would have the presence of mind to lay low and refrain from trying to talk her out of her decision.  But that is exactly the winning formula.  Your breezy indifference will win back more exes than all the post-breakup talks in the world.  Lean back, reap your bounty, and if you’ve got the balls calmly tell her after the post-breakup violation of all her holes “Eh, you know, I shouldn’t have taken you back.  This isn’t going to work.”

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