Women are inundated with advice about their love lives. Author Neil Strauss believes men need guidance, too, he tells Róisín Ingle
The shaven-headed man sitting on the sofa is an unlikely Lothario. Neil Strauss has a slightly nerdy laugh and what he calls a puny body, and he is wearing a T-shirt over his
shirt and tie, a fashion statement punctuated by gold Christian Dior boots. Unlikely as it may seem, the US journalist has spent the past few years as a hero, of sorts, among the Casanovas of Los Angeles. In fact, he has grown so skilled at picking up attractive women that he has
written a book about it.
The Game: Undercover in the Secret Society of Pickup Artists is compulsive reading. One month Strauss is bemoaning his lack of ability with the opposite sex, the next he has seemingly developed enough skills to manipulate - there is no other word for it - any woman he wants into bed. In pickup parlance, women are "targets" who must be "isolated" to attain the "kiss close" and, ultimately, sex. There are as many gambits to "open" a conversation with a woman as there are tricks to get rid of the competition, or the alpha male, in the group. It's the Dungeons & Dragons of mating.
After studying its techniques, which draw on everything from neurolinguistic programming to mild hypnosis, Strauss - or, as he reinvented himself in the pickup-artist way, "Style" - went to the top of the class.
He knows his book can be an uncomfortable read, particularly for women. The group trawl clubs such as the Saddle Ranch, in Los Angeles, in packs, "sarging" - pickup-speak for seducing - women with routines they have learned by rote before moving on to their next "targets".
"I wanted to write a book that was completely honest about the male mind and male sexuality, and, obviously, that is not something that women necessarily want to know about," he says. "The reaction has been interesting. I wrote a book once about [ the heavy-metal band] Mötley Crüe, who were known to do terrible things to women. Then I write about being a nerdy journalist who just wants to get laid, and that is somehow controversial. I am a smart guy, so my aims are supposed to be higher than that. When we realise even the nerds are thinking this way about women, we find it harder to accept."
The story begins with a description of Strauss as a man who panicked around women and felt helpless when it came to approaching them. He was, according to the lingo, an "AFC", or average frustrated chump. But wasn't his high-profile job as a music journalist at the New York Times enough to attract potential girlfriends? "Some guys could make it work for them, but I am really sensitive about being used. I am a nice guy; my friendship was so easy to earn that women didn't need a relationship with me."
In the beginning the reader is with Strauss, hoping he can achieve his goal of attracting the opposite sex. But to my mind he takes it too far, becoming predatory and soulless, with several women on the go. By the time the group of nerds-turned-Casanovas rent a mansion, Playboy style, in the Hollywood Hills, Style is treating all women with a kind of contempt.
"Women have told me it gets to the stage in the book where they were thinking: 'What is that guy still doing there? Why hasn't he quit? I thought he was smart.' It took Lisa to pull me out of it," he says. Lisa Leveridge, Courtney Love's guitarist, has been his girlfriend for a year. She bought him the gold boots. "I wanted to rock'n'roll my man," she says. "Neil was always cool. He just didn't know how to express it."
She doesn't have a problem with his past or with the seduction seminars that still go on around the world. "These guys are learning to be fun, social people who are not repelling women left and right. What is wrong with that?" she says. Leveridge was in Lillies Bordello, the Dublin nightclub, last week. She says, diplomatically, that from her experience of
how they approach women, Irish men have a lot to learn. "It's about competence, not confidence."
Strauss says he is essentially the same man who started out on the journey, but, he says: "I now carry myself differently. I move through the world more effectively and with more confidence. It's not about men tricking women into bed. It's about guys finding out how to be more popular. It's about acceptance. There are people who play the game naturally, but the idea of men deliberately going out to become practised in the art is somehow disturbing."
He still helps out with the seduction schools run by "Mystery", his former mentor, because "if I can help that 40-year-old virgin or that 25-year-old with chronic shyness to meet women, I think that is worth it".
The hundreds of beer mats, cards and scraps of paper adorned with the phone numbers of smitten women he collected over the two years are in storage now. "But I want to make a coffee table out of them."
The Game, by Neil Strauss, is published by Canongate, £16.99
TALK THE TALK
SOME TERMS
AFC Or average frustrated chump. A stereotypical nice guy with no pickup skills or understanding of what attracts a woman.
Or alpha male of the group. A socially comfortable man who competes with a pickup artist's game.
Chick crack Any spiritual or psychological subject that appeals to most women but does not interest most men, such as astrology, tarot cards and personality tests. (Strauss used chick crack while interviewing Britney Spears. She gave him her number, he says.)
Doggy dinner bowl look The entranced expression a woman gets in her eyes when she is attracted to a man who is talking to her.
Kino To touch or be touched, generally with suggestive intent, such as hair-stroking, hand-holding or hip-grabbing. From "kinaesthesia".
Neg or neg hit An ambiguous statement or seemingly accidental insult delivered with the intent of demonstrating an initial lack of interest. Example: "Those are nice nails. Are they real?"