Look I’m a middle-aged guy that likes to think he’s kept himself in pretty good shape. Middle-age (or you can look at it as middle adulthood) is the age range of the years halfway between childhood and old age. Others will say it’s between when your born and you die. The exact range is subject to very heated public debate, but the term is commonly used to denote the age range from around 45 to 65 years. Anyway some people say I look something like Robert Mitchum at 6 foot 1.

At 45 I had built my prestigious luxury car dealership up until I was the top of the food chain in my city, and state. For that matter, I was one of the best in the southeastern region. And then my Japanese car maker decided to merge with a South Korean car maker, and that new car maker decided they had too many dealerships in my city and state. I lost in the down sizing battle of the budgets.

The bottom line is they made me an offer I couldn’t refuse to retire my dealership. So now, I had a hefty chunk of cold hard cash in the bank, no job, or dealership anymore, and a lot of NDAs, Nondisclosure Agreements. No, I couldn’t just go out there and start another dealership in competition with them, which was the only thing I was really good at. Selling cars that is. At 45 I didn’t consider myself middle aged, or over the hill, but everybody else apparently did it seemed.

Yes, I played golf, but admittedly I wasn’t that good at it, and frankly Scarlett I find hitting the golf ball around the 18 holes (which is really only 9 holes) about as stimulating and exciting as watching paint dry on a hot summer day. I mainly stayed in the cool air-conditioned county club when I went golfing. The club was where I had made a lot of sweet deals. So, I was in the club house, and down three Jonney Walker Scotch on the rocks, bemoaning my fate to anyone that would listen. Yes, I might have been turning into a lush ... well. a drunk ... like the Mat Helm character Dino, Dean Martin, played in the movies. Anyway I was bemoaning my fate, and my good buddy Al, who is way past middle age and still works for an advertising agency, suggests that I go back to college.

At first I just laughed, go back to college? Hilarious right? I was 45, not 17, or 18, right out of high school, but Al went on to explain that I still had my good old GI Bill to pay for college. When I checked with my local college, UAB’s human relations people, I found out that AL was right. I mean it wasn’t like when I got back from Nam and needed the money to pay for college. I had plenty of money now, more money than I really needed to live on, a new car, a big house with the mortgage paid off, even a paid-up membership to the country club. But, that set me to thinking about when I had originally gone to college at UAB.

I had wound up a business major, but I had to take elective minors too. I especially remember the psychology courses I had taken, and even the counseling courses. For awhile there I had even seriously considered taking up Psychology, and counseling as a career. One of the counseling courses had dealt with the power of positive thinking, suggestibility, and hypnosis. The, “I’m OK, You’re OK”, thing. Along with, meditation, yoga, and self hypnosis, anyway, but in the end I decided that selling things was more my style. When I was good, I was very, very, good, but no, I had never sold a refrigerator to an Eskimo.

Well, not yet anyway, but the eggheads, the environmental scientist anyway, tell us the sky might not be falling Chicken Little, but the two poles are melting. Yes, climate change is causing polar ice to melt in both Antarctica, and the Arctic circle, and the impacts will be felt worldwide. So, I might live long enough to sell refrigerators to Eskimos, ha, ha.

So, after some serious consideration I went back to college. The college actually treated me like a long lost retread, and we (my 24 year old male assigned college counselor, Fred) talked about alternative trades, and careers, I could start off in. But, I had my own plans. Yes, I had married my childhood sweet heart when I was young, stupid, and naive, and didn’t know any damn better. The marriage had lasted a whole year before we both applied for a cheap no-fault divorce for incompatibility a whole year latter.

Hey, the incompatibility didn’t have anything to do with our love life. I couldn’t complain about the sex, if marriage was only about sex I’d probably still be married to Elle. Trust me Elle was a fantastic fuck in, or out of bed. But, she couldn’t cook worth a damn. Honestly, she was such a bad cook she could even manage to burn the coffee. What ruined the marriage was honestly she could spend more in a week than I earned in a month, no, make that an entire year. I was years paying off the debt she ran up in installments.

Did you know just one Russian Sable coat cost upward of $30,000.00, and since she had actually worn the damn thing once it depreciated in value because it was used. I wished her luck in finding a “Sugar Daddy” that could afford her when the divorce was finalized.

After that my love life was sort of a roller coaster of ups and downs, monsoons, followed by long dry seasons. Nothing more that one nigh stands with a understanding escort, or a working girl. Of course, there were also the occasional angry golf wife out for a little revenge sex on her uncaring, cheating, neglectful, husband that I picked up at the country club. Yes, the country club was the ideal place to pick up neglected “golf widows”. It seemed that in those years getting ahead in business was much more important than finding the next Mrs. James Hardy, or an available piece of pussy.

Don’t get me wrong about available pussy, my prestigious Japanese luxury car dealership had a very aggressive, go-get-them, sales force. I found out early in the game that the best salesmen for my overpriced, overpowered, Japanese rice rockets was saleswomen, not salesmen, ha, ha, ha. Yes, the young mature women I hired consistently outsold the men I hired. I even found that there were plenty of young qualified female mechanics out there too. And, No, I did not hit on my sales force, though I had plenty of opportunities. Of course, that’s not to say I never had sex with any of them on their terms.

So, after a few years I had ended up with a dealership staffed mostly by young attractive women, and a nonunion shop. Over here in the States we try to be egalitarian on our hiring practices. We, well me anyway, believe in the principle that all people are created equal, and deserve equal rights, and equal opportunities. But sadly, that’s not true in Japan, and especially in South Korea. Though my dealership made the most money, and had the most satisfied repeat customers which counts for a lot in the business, we were hated by all the male Asian upper management types. I figure that’s why my dealership got the ax.

So, it was time to move on, and I had a plan now. Yes, I was about to implement some power of positive thinking on my part. One of those counseling courses I had taken back then had been taught by an actual contemporary of Freud and Jung, and he claimed that with the power of positive thinking, and some inventive use of hypnosis, an older man could have as many beautiful young compliant women as he could possibly want.

They, the small class of only men he had been teaching at the time had talked, just talked, all one night at the nearby Sammy’s strip club after class about the hypothetical use of hypnosis to create a harem of compliant females from the available females on the college campus. According to him college was the perfect hunting ground for young available females the professor hypothesized.

In fact, he pointed out that Sammy’s, the strip club just off the college’s main campus, that we were all at, was a perfect example of his hypothesis. All the strippers were young, just out of high school, college students. According to him, the girls first started out as innocent, but fully clothed waitresses. The next step up was to show a little boob and tit to increase their tips. Soon after that step they were stripping for the extra easy money. Then they were giving lap dances. Soon after that they were actually prostitutes. It was a natural progression he argued, and due mostly from, “Peer Pressure”, without any help from hypnosis.

One member of our little discussion group argued that high school was the better hunting ground, because the females were younger, and more moldable, but the professor pointed out that not only were the females under age legally, they were mostly still under parental supervision. This made them officially, “a protected specie of wildlife”, and hunters, if caught poaching, were subject to severe penalties by the law, and society in general. College females on the other hand were of legal age, or older, and trying to be independent for the first time in their lives. Fair game for the hunter.

The professor also pointed out that older mature males were always dominate in the tribe going all the way back to Cro-Magnon Man, the earliest known European example of Homo sapiens sapiens, modern human beings. They lived from about 40,000 to 10,000 years ago. The professor also pointed out that middle-aged males also had the Oedipus complex thing working for them. The psychoanalytic theory introduced by Sigmund Freud, describing a child’s feelings of desire for their opposite-sex parent.

So, what it boiled down to, is a mature middlle-aged guy on a college campus using hypnosis has a natural advantage over the younger immature males around him because of the Oedipus complex. The younger women ... daughters ... will always hunger for her father’s love and approval. I’ve decided that since I have nothing better to do at the moment I’m going to put the professor’s hypothesis to the test and prove his theory.

A little disclaimer here:

Hypnosis is not currently regulated as a licensed profession in any US state. However, some states have enacted some consumer laws that restrict the use of certain titles, and/or medical credentials by individuals who practice hypnosis. The American College of Hypnotherapy provides information related to states in the United States that regulate, or do not regulate, the practice of hypnosis and hypnotherapy. The majority of the United States exert little, or no, direct regulation over the practice of Hypnosis, or Hypnotherapy. In short, the AMA isn’t going to come after you for practicing medicine without a license if your holding out to the world that your a Hypnotherapist.

I did some more reading about hypnosis, in the library and online, and decided that I needed a lot more practice and some willing volunteers. In the counseling gig we do not have patients, we have clients, who we help, not treat. There are literally thousands of self-hypnosis books, tapes, computer programs, and adds on the radio, and TV, extolling the virtues of hypnosis for weight loss, and getting rid of bad habits like smoking, and drinking. It was very easy to make up my own flyers advertising my service as a Hypnotherapist. I started off:

Want to lose weight? Decided you want to stop smoking? I’m here to help.

I’m looking for volunteers for the trial of a new weight loss program using hypnosis, also it can help with quitting smoking.

Does hypnotherapy really work for weight loss?

Hypnosis may be more effective than either diet and/or exercise alone for people really looking to lose weight, and keep it off. The idea is that the mind can be influenced by hypnosis to change bad habits like overeating, eating the wrong foods, and smoking. Exactly how effective it may be is completely up to you, the volunteer, in the end. One earlier controlled trial examined the use of hypnotherapy for weight loss in people with obstructive sleep apnea. The study looked at two specific forms of hypnotherapy versus simple diet advice for weight loss and sleep apnea.

All 60 participants in the study lost 2 to 3 percent of their body weight in 3 months. At the 18-month follow-up, the hypnotherapy group had lost another 8 pounds on average. This may not sound impressive, but remember that none of the study’s 60 participants gained any weight during the study. All of the participants lost weight, some more than others.

When you think of hypnosis, you might picture those stage shows where a hypnotist somehow encourages volunteers to do crazy things such as cluck like a chicken. However, a growing body of evidence suggests that hypnosis and other mind-body techniques, like meditation and yoga, can be surprisingly effective aids for people on their weight-loss journey.

Why? These techniques help rewire old thought patterns that make us overeat out of habit. In fact, experts say the reason most weight-loss plans fail is that they involve fighting the brain’s own programming that drives us toward those foods that packed on the pounds in the first place. The constant fight becomes so hard that we eventually give up and revert back to those bad self-defeating eating habits.

Hypnosis to the rescue: for weight loss!

If interested in trying our new hypnosis weight loss plan for free contact James at: X -XXX- XXX- XXXX

(* the add I tacked up on the bulletin boards around campus)

UAB’s campus is not too far from my house, so I made up a flyer on my computer extolling the virtues of hypnosis for weight control and getting rid of bad habits like smoking, or drinking, on my trustee computer and posted it in the campus news paper. Then I printed it out, and Xeroxed a couple of dozen copies off. These I tacked up on the bulletin boards in the lobbies of the college campus buildings. They advertised my hypnosis services for weight loss, smoking, and getting rid of bad habits generally. There was also a phone number to call if they were interested. I also bought a so-called, “Burner Phone”, just to handle any incoming calls I might get from my add. I figured that young college students wouldn’t be too picky, or too critical, of my meager hypnosis skills.

Sure enough I got my first call a few days later. It was from a 21 year old college junior named Dana Riggs who wanted my help losing weight. I finally told her that we would meet up at the lobby of the Health and Human Services building on campus and talk about it. I fixed a time for the next day, at 10:00 AM, on Wednesday, the middle of the school week. I was surprised at how calm I was about it all now that I had made the decision.

When I got there early I picked my spot carefully. I choose a chair and coach arrangement in a quiet corner of the building’s main lobby. The lobby itself is about 35 feet wide and runs all the way through the building’s center on the ground floor. The place that I chose was out of the way of most of the light foot traffic. I then sat down, and watched the entrance’s double glass doors for her arrival. And yes, I had a picture of her on my cell phone, so, I already knew what she looked like.