Chapter 22: The Last Pickup

Let me step out of the immediate narrative for a second to make the big picture clear. The Gemini Escalation was our turning point. We weren’t certain of it at the time, but in retrospect it’s clear. We hit the big time that night in Summers at Fort Lauderdale. In the second Decan we showed the boys that we could give them a really fun, naughty time. But our show is grounded in finding new, innovative and entertaining methods of separating cute young ladies from their clothing — we were never going to lack for a male audience at shows.

But we also showed the girls, in a really visceral fashion, just how potent Livia’s hypnotism can be in commanding the human body — and in liberating the mind. In the third Decan, we proved to every woman present just how far we can push the feminine pleasure as well. And this is in an era when the female orgasm is not as talked about. The girls liked what they saw — a lot.

Some of you might be wondering if we will ever do for women en masse what we did for the boys en masse at Summers. All I’m going to say for now on that topic is, have patience. Anticipation is a wonderful thing! But I will tell you three reasons why we don’t immediately follow the second Gemini Decan with a mirror inverse for the other gender. The first is that we just can’t. Women are harder to get off than men. When was the last time a man had to fake an orgasm?

We didn’t expect to pop five hundred guys, but doing that to mass numbers of girls would be even harder — and, it would require a mood quite different to that of Spring Break. Until we hammer our cultural message through even harder, it would also be likely to traumatize and horrify the women involved. Maybe. In retrospect I’m less sure of this, in light of things that you’ve no doubt already heard about in newspapers that will happen at some of the later Escalations — but that is our rationale right now.

We have more ruthless reasons, too. One is money. In the wake of the Gemini Escalation, and the tidal wave of word-of-mouth publicity our Spring Break shows caused, Livia will acquire several clients. These are mostly but not exclusively women, and are uniformly ridiculously wealthy. Livia and I have private appointments with them — sometimes just Livia, sometimes I go along. This could be to make the lady feel comfortable in her heterosexuality, or for more direct physical activities. These usually end up looking a lot like the climax of Cherry’s show, albeit minus the humiliating and kinky buildup. These appointments are often fun and only occasionally a real chore, but not the high point of either of our sex lives.

And this memoir is not going to touch on this topic in any great depth, because these women (and men) are still alive, and they are very rich, and very powerful, and they value discretion. But the core point you have to understand is that the net profit the Gemini Escalation turns us is about seven million dollars, over the course of the next year and a half.

Yeah, no kidding, those older society ladies sign six-figure paycheques to get the Jeri special. There was even a memorable seven-figure one. I feel a bit sorry for them, actually — with their level of cash there are so many more entertaining ways to get off. But we get them off, harder and longer than women are usually capable of going with their inhibitions intact. And we get rich doing so. I bring this up, because starting around midway through our visit to Los Angeles, money just isn’t an issue to us any more. We aren’t doing dumb shit like Livia did the first time she was flush, either. We’re sociologically minded and have an amateur statistician on the team. We invest.

This market will dry up after about three years. There are other hypnotists out there, and some of them are frauds, and some of them bungle the part that involves discretion. So high society get a little more watchful, and potential clients spend a lot less. But by that time, we’re set for life in the stock markets, so it doesn’t matter to us. But that’s still in the future at this point.

To wrap up this volume, I want to tell you about one last, very special, hookup. It happens in Daytona, two weeks after Spring Break when Livia and I aren’t fucking due to my ill-thought comment. Things are pretty tense and it’s a dark time for me. I hit the research hard with Mimi as Livia shuns us and prepare for the coming road trip and what will ultimately become the Phoenix show — which has a ton of rehearsal and gadgetry. But you’ve probably figured out by now that I am a man of exceedingly high libido, so eventually despite all the tense psychology I do go out on the prowl. Sex can be for joy, and it can be carefree — but it can also be a quite necessary form of escapism when other things aren’t carefree.

Ironically, given the vaguely existential context, this is actually one of my candidates for Best Pickup Ever — and frankly, you should know by now that’s saying something. I’m not talking about my best actual sex, mind you — I’m talking about the most audacious tale I have about meeting total strangers and fucking them very shortly after. The sex is still pretty damn good, mind you. So, O Piqued Reader, are you ready for a lurid and over-the-top story of sexual excess and rampant debauchery? Oh, who am I even kidding? If you weren’t up for it you’d have thrown my memoir against the wall and turned to something more wholesome long, long before this point.

So, I have already observed the decidedly casual attitude Fort Lauderdale seems to take to public nudity and sex, and have been considering trying something like this for a while. However, there’s a reason this particular story takes place after Spring Break proper has wrapped up — this stunt could get me arrested (again) or kicked out of Fort Lauderdale (or is more likely to than the stunt with Diane under the beach bridge), so I didn’t want to try it until all the shows were wrapped up and everyone else had done everything they wanted.

I didn’t plan it out from the beginning, mind you — my primary young conquest isn’t a ‘mark’ in that sense. I just have it in the back of my mind and decide to act on opportunities when they present themselves to me while wandering Daytona Beach. The weather is a bit chillier now, and the beach is more desolate in the aftermath of Spring Break — Daytona is nearly as active that way as Lauderdale, even if not quite as iconic.

Her name is Leah. I see her on the beach blatantly ogling hardbodies of both genders — I’m sure she thinks her behavior is absolutely subtle, but her social skills are not the best. Her Aura is strong, filled with unfulfilled sexual desires and tinged with deep streaks of fear, self-loathing and bitterness. At this point, I can relate; maybe that’s why I choose her over the other generic beach bunnies.

She’s certainly cute, though, with a fresh heart-shaped face and glossy black hair in a symmetrically-parted bobcut. But the Spring Break aesthetic is not kind to her — she’s flat up top, her bikini is more conservative than the norm for Spring Break (much like a sports bra and track shorts) and her body implies she’s more used to intellectual pursuits than either athletics or carnal games.

She is, in short, a nerd — cute and desirable in a scholastic setting, but not able to stand out during Spring Break. She even brought books to the beach — not the classy chick lit reads or high literature older women bring with them to look sophisticated, but some kind of reference books and notebooks and a jar of spare pencils. And there’s some shyness and awkwardness at work for sure. She looks at hot people hungrily, but she never goes up and makes a move toward anyone.

I profile her fairly quickly — she likely came to Daytona Beach for Spring Break with female friends in the hopes of getting laid. Maybe, secretly, even with said female friends. Like many horny guys and fewer horny women, she failed. Her friends all got their requisite guys and wild hookup stories. She didn’t. And then she just didn’t get on the plane back, filled with bitterness and want. Spring Break is now over, and all she can do is ogle, fantasize and recriminate.

I don’t think she is a college student. Her circumstances must have let her stay behind. She was probably a fourth-year when her friends were freshmen, and is now a slacker without a job. Maybe she takes time to work on research for her Masters, I don’t know. But she looks lost and desperate and horny, wandering about amidst the fading detritus and quiet ruin left in the wake of the world’s most bodacious week of partying. I quietly decide I will buy her a flight home, even if she blows off my best attempts to hook up with her with brazen contempt. (I haven’t got the NCSS checks from Livia yet at this point, but a plane ticket’s well within my standard expenses.)

I wander up to her slowly. She starts at me, then looks away and blushes. She quickly tidies up her books, folding over page corners to remember where she is. I’m in a nut-hugger Speedo, and I’m wearing suntan lotion and a quality aftershave. Yeah, I’m being pretty blatant with the sexuality here — I want something tonight, and I’m not interested in second and third dates to get it. She looks up when I move to sit down beside her. She’s clearly into me — into anyone, but me more than most — but she also doesn’t recognize me, which is great. I really want someone who hasn’t heard anything about the recent Escalations or the Trips at all. I want something that reminds me of the pickups from a simpler time, before I was tangled up with Livia.

It’s a sign of my changing tastes, though, that I open with something knowingly cheesy rather than more sincerely suave. “Are you sure you’re not getting tired? Because you’ve been running through my mind since I first laid eyes on you.”

Girls usually either giggle, roll their eyes or throw out a sassy putdown when you drop a cheesy line (or they get really offended and angry, but I’m usually good enough to filter those ones out), even if they’re into you. But Leah doesn’t. She kind of chokes. She’s staring at my torso and genitals, and she just says, “Um, thanks. That’s really nice.”

“No, no,” I admonish her playfully. “You’re not allowed to respond like that to a pickup artist. It’s in the Universal Guide for Hot Girls. You have to diss me or prove you’re smarter than me.”

Now, Leah is a genuinely smart lady, but witty repartee is not her strong suit. It’s like I’m a telepath and can hear the thoughts in her head: Wow, he’s hot! Think of something clever to say back! No, not that! Don’t mess this up, Leah! You can do it! It’s no exceptional talent to realize that’s what she’s thinking — you probably would in my place, too. “You’re a pickup artist? That’s neat. I’ve never met one before. It sounds exciting. And I don’t know you, so I don’t have any frame of reference to know if I’m smarter than you.”

“You’ve never met one before? A girl like you, out on this beach, with the sun going down soon? I figured I’d be like the tenth guy to try a sweet line on you today alone! Did you just get here?”

Well, that’s a remarkable amount of conversational real estate already covered there in an economical word count — I’ve admitted to being a pickup guy, so there’s no deception, and dropped a relatively subtle compliment. I wouldn’t try the latter with a lady wielding a real verbal rapier, but Leah isn’t. She’s actually having trouble meeting my gaze and not focusing on my abs. I don’t pull an “eyes are up here” thing, because why ruin her fun or make her feel weird? I can actually believe I’m the first to approach her, at least overtly; she’s cute but not the stereotypical bikini babe most of the amateurs go for, and her lust and awkwardness could be off-putting or even threatening to many guys.

Not gonna lie, the conversational bit is hard here because she’s so awkward. I pull out a well-rehearsed monologue about trivia from the history of Daytona Beach, which includes a few innuendos alluding to my skill at cunnilingus. She gets them, I think, but just responds with “um” and “yeah” and “that’s neat”. She’s a smart lady, but really awkward, and her confidence is not at its high-water mark right now.

Her topic of study is apparently research into mating hierarchies and sexual competition among bonobos. I follow what she’s saying loosely at first, and can engage with her on evolutionary biology — and use a bit of ape-human social similarity innuendo to make her blush and giggle. Soon, though, I’m getting a weirdly passionate stream-of-consciousness diatribe too heavy in the social sciences jargon for me to really understand. It’s her Masters’ research. (Called it!) When she realizes she’s babbling, she clams up.

“Sorry,” she says. “I can be such a spaz sometimes.”

“Don’t worry about it,” I reassure her. “It’s nothing to be ashamed of. This is the modern era. You big-brain types are gonna rule the world.”

That gets a laugh, at least.

I’ve got her, I realize, and she really wants it — but the conversation is nerve-wracking for her. So I give her lots of sentences she can just give more indifferent replies to, and talk more aggressively like a narcissistic guy. Not normally a good poise for a pickup — but it becomes so when your partner is horny and too nervous to talk, but also needs to be taken through all the expected social hoops before we get down to the banging. But I’m horny, and I’m feeling reckless, so I decide to really go for the gold. The sun is setting, and I maneuver her into asking me out to dinner.

We go back to her car — a blue Volkswagen Beetle — and I pull on jeans and a leather half-top from the gym bag I brought with me, leaving much of my chest exposed. That’s socially acceptable in the summer around Daytona Beach — I look like a typical rough-and-tumble beach stud, but I’m a lot more affable and pleasant than the baseline, insecure-macho model. She just pulls on a faded grey university t-shirt, leaving her legs bare.

I’ve been strolling the beach for about two hours now, just walking about and trying to enjoy the palm trees and the sight of pretty ladies and not brood about NCSS, so I don’t have a vehicle anywhere near here. Usually a lack of hot wheels is something you cover over or make excuses for in pickup, but I really doubt she cares, nor is actually dumb enough to buy the typical excuses. As we’re driving about, I time the question perfectly, just as we’re passing a diner Livia and I visited two days ago: “do you want an upscale place, or a more cozy environment like that?”

Well, she obviously wants cozy over upscale for a potential hookup, and never even suspects that I chose this diner specifically. Nice!

Pam’s Diner is pure Americana, a real mom-and-pop greasy spoon. It was built in the fifties and looks kinda retro — though it’s way more authentic and real than Remedial’s glossy caricature look. It’s worn down and rough-hewn, but clean — a real diner that just happens to have history, not a polished rendition of the kind of malt shop that never actually existed.

The staff are rather friendly — both in the flirty sense and the just comfortable sense. They dress real sexy in a subdued way, too — those old-style powder blue waitress uniforms with the skirts, white trim and bibs, like on Twin Peaks. Best of all, one particular one I found especially desirable was looking openly at Livia as well as me when we were first there.

Well, luck is with me tonight, as the same waitress that served me and Livia is on shift. Her name, according to the cute little nametag (am I developing a nametag fetish now? really?), is Darcy. She’s not a classical beauty, being a bit gawkish and angular, but she’s still really hot: a stacked redhead with wild, curly hair, playful green eyes, a ton of freckles, big lips and crooked teeth. She’s a bit older than me — late thirties or early forties — and gives off a vibe of being sexually experienced, but unashamed of that fact and still capable of a girlish playfulness after those many years of experience. Put succinctly: a damn fine lady, and potentially up for what I have in mind.

I was always going to do something with Darcy, if Livia didn’t beat me to it — I suspect we both have her earmarked. Normally, Livia and I would want to share a lady like this — but right now, that obviously isn’t on the table. I feel a sharp and pervasively disquieting pang as I realize how unpleasant it is to view Livia as a competitor rather than the gleeful partner in crime I have grown so comfortable trusting and having beside me. I hope I can fix things with her. But I do not want to dwell on that tonight, so I forcefully put it out of my mind.

Let me, at this point, explain a concept known as the magician’s force. It’s used in card tricks, but pickup artists have more nefarious applications for the same rough idea. The basic concept is that you ask someone to pick an arbitrary item, like a card out of a deck. However, the magician uses subtle cues and guidance, or misdirection, to control the card the spectator picks.

Using much the same principles combined with a knowledge of cliché structures in semi-flirtatious dialogue, a pickup artist can provide subtle prompts that get his marks to say or ask specific things. This is the “dialogic programming” technique I talked about pioneering way back at the beginning of this book. It all comes down to seeding ideas earlier in the conversation, and understanding how a (less carefully trained) human brain is going to mentally compose an attempt at ‘clever’ dialogue. You can be witty at a girl, and get her trying to be witty back at you.

But you’ve put hundreds of hours into working out the various unexpected places where the conversation trees actually go, and she hasn’t, so the end result is that you guide her into saying exactly what you want her to say. And she doesn’t resist it, because from her perspective it was her own idea! Of course, people only go along with this if they want to, or at least want to seem flirty — but when they do, you can lead people into proposing some things with wonderfully lewd outcomes without thinking it through.

Obviously, pickup artistry is not usually a desirable topic of conversation with a girl you are trying to pick up (except with Livia, but she’s one of a kind). Many pickup artists don’t want girls to know they’re pickup artists, which is why they avoid the cheesy lines. I’m an exception there, because I generally want to be more transparent, and just try to blow through any backlash with raw charm.

There is, however, a narrow exception to this rule, and it focuses around bi-curious girls — ones who seem genuinely curious about pickup and how it works and what it can do, in a perhaps slightly vicarious sense. It’s still going to dock you points with the lady to actually talk about pickup, but it can lead places that are worthwhile. Very worthwhile, in exactly the way you, O Eager Reader, are no doubt already anticipating. (Isn’t anticipation a hell of a drug? Beats out cocaine any day of the week!)

So, already wearing a vaguely narcissistic persona, I drop some subtle pickup boasts into my diner-conversation with Leah, and also mention a few romantic comedies. She doesn’t strike me as the jealous type, and seems more intrigued with the whole thing — but I drop the comedies as subtle cues, as Hollywood has set up certain kinds of dialogue that are almost programmed. So I elicit the expected incredulity from Leah though a display of arrogance that dialogic programming demands be challenged, and I’ve already subtly seeded the idea of a wager in her mind by casually mentioning comedies that have racy wagers in them half an hour back.

So, wouldn’t you know it, Leah then decides on her own initiative (in her own internal narrative, at least) to spontaneously challenge me to a fifty-dollar bet that I can get the number of any girl she selects. And wouldn’t you know it, we’re just coincidentally at a random diner that happens to have an exquisitely sexy waitress willing to flirt with both genders. I’m not sure if Leah’s conscious mind picks up on said flirting, but her unconscious mind sure does — and it apparently likes it a lot!

Pickup artistry is not, at its most fundamental, about manipulating girls into doing things they don’t want to do — at least, not if you’re doing it right. (Guys like the pickup wannabe from Swank would obviously disagree, but, well, fuck those guys.) It’s about manipulating social conventions to get girls to feel comfortable doing things they actually do really, really want to do. The actual opponent here is not the girls, it’s the social norms that stand between them and their own desires. Making things seem to happen spontaneously is a great weapon for slaying said norms while keeping the ladies comfortable — wild shit just happens sometimes, you know?

Science teaches us to think in terms of conserved qualities, given that some its most famous discoveries are conservation laws — matter and energy can’t be created or destroyed, entropy never decreases, that kind of thing. Then you throw in economics and the TANSTAAFL principle, and you’ve educated humans to think of things as a zero-sum game. Well, here’s something that shouldn’t be all that mind-blowing to people — but all too often really is. Pleasure is not a conserved quantity. It doesn’t have an innate resource cost.

Human beings are able to make other human beings feel really good, and feel really good themselves, and there’s no inherent cost to that. It’s just an infinite well of sensual gratification. You can dip into it as much as you want, and it never runs out — well, not until menopause or age-induced impotence, at least.

And yet, the majority of humanity just doesn’t do that. And there were good reasons for that — before contraceptives were invented. I always laugh when I hear people talk about the Space Age as if it was some kind of milestone of scientific progress. You know what’s really revolutionary, the one single discovery that changed the world more than anything since the alphabet and penicillin?

It’s not the space shuttle going up to a big dead useless rock in space and collecting a bunch of smaller rocks. If you doubt that, ask yourself what impact that ever had on your life, other than hiding under desks in mortal fear of Russkie nukes. You know what really transformed the world, changed the basic rules of everything? Yeah, it’s the condom. You’re damn right it is.

I’m not saying sex and hedonism can’t have consequences. They clearly can, in realms including the emotional, social, biological, epidemiological and others. But pleasure has no inherent consequences, in a world with condoms. Anything bad that comes forth from it can be avoided by forethought and cleverness — and I specialize in being clever nearly as much as I specialize in being naughty.

I doubted these long-held beliefs — that pleasure is infinite and free for the taking rather than a zero-sum game, that it can be done right, that it has no resource cost and improves the lives of the people who engage in it, and that a pickup artist’s real opponents are the social norms and comfort zones, not the girls — after the NCSS debacle. Well, I’m about to describe a very special night at a quaint Daytona diner that helped me to reorient myself and reaffirm my faith in these principles.

I take Leah up on her wager, and ask her to name a girl. “Where would you like to go?”

“Right here is fine,” she tells me. “How about that waitress? The redhead with the lovely freckles.”

“You really want to lose fifty bucks?” I ask her cockily.

She laughs. “You’re pretty confident. Show me these moves of yours.”

“Wait,” I suggest. “The evening is still young.”

So I kill time. Finally, it’s around 1 AM and we’re talking about movies — I’ve managed to get Leah to open up a fair bit, and it turns out she’s a decent if not witty conversationalist when she’s less nervous (and probably a way better fuck, too), and fairly erudite. By now the diner is mostly deserted. There’s an older, mellow-looking biker couple and a vaguely bored-looking nerd peering into a HAM radio workbook. Darcy brings us a last cup of coffee and tells us the diner closes in an hour. I wait for her to walk back into the double sliding kitchen doors with their ship-like porthole windows, then walk into the kitchen after her. She’s alone in there.

“Hey, babe.”

“Marcelo, right?”

“Yup. When are you off shift?”

She groans. “I need like an extra hour to shut this place down, so three.”

I walk into her personal space. It’s always a chancy thing to do with women, but my instincts tell me this one will respond well — and she does. It probably helps that my torso is mostly exposed, and she’s more conventionally attractive than my date.

“Got any plans?”

“Naw,” she says with a playful smile, “but Ah might have some aspirations. How about you? Date not as steamy as you expected? Honestly, you’re out of her league, sugar.”

“That’s Leah,” I tell Darcy. “Take a second look at her, a careful one. You might find you like what you see.”

“Ah like what Ah see right now. And that lady you came in wit’ two days back, she was ah-mazin — hotter’en a billy goat with a blowtorch! Damn, Ah wanna know how she gets ‘er hair all fancy like that...”

“Her name’s Livia. I can give you her number — but I suspect she’ll be back on her own sometime in the near future anyway.”

“How’d a guy like you go from Livia to Leah?”

This was one thing I didn’t quite anticipate — the need to sell Darcy on Leah. If you can read Auras, you can see how much fun she’s going to be. Darcy can’t, so she sees a cute but homely girl, gangly and awkward.

“To tell the truth, I may not be the most monogamous guy in the world. I like to play the field, so to speak.”

Darcy cackles. “Ah never would have guessed,” she says sarcastically. But there’s no judgement or contempt in her voice, only interest and amusement.

“Livia doesn’t mind that. I’m a bit of a pickup artist, honestly. And Leah — well, I have an eye for a certain kind of woman. Looks plain on the surface, maybe a bit repressed, but get her horizontal and she turns into a wild animal. Leah is that. Like the archetypal Catholic Schoolgirl, but without the Catholicism ... or the school.”

“No way.”

“Way. Heck, I’d bet you fifty bucks on it.”

“How would I know you’re tellin’ the truth?”

“Well, you could trust me — or, if I play my cards right, you could end up with some hands-on experience.”

Darcy laughs. “Yer a real wolf in the fold, ain’tcha? Ah been around the block, sugar. Ah see what yer anglin’ for.”

I flash her a playful smile. “So that’s a no?”

“Now, Ah didn’t say that, exactly. Ah didn’t actually answer at all.”

That might as well be a yes, or at least a conditional ‘as long as it stays in my comfort zone’ kind of yes.

“Speaking of wagers,” I ask Darcy, “how pissed would you be if I told you I made a bet with Leah that I could score your number?”

“That depends,” Darcy tells me, “on whether’n ya plan to carry through on any promises ya make, or just wanna fluff yer ruffles.”

“Write you number on the bill,” I tell her, “and I promise you won’t regret it.”

So I chat with Leah a bit more, and nudge the conversation in the direction of female sex fantasies. She gets more awkward again, obviously. I work in a mention of the statistic that four out of five women have fantasized about having sex in an “unusual” place. She blushes and says, “Guilty.”

Then I shift back to innocuous topics. They clearly don’t hold her attention, though, and she eventually asks, “What do you think that would be like? I mean, the sex in pu— in an unusual place.”

“It’s hard to describe,” I tell her. “You have to have the right people watching, or be sneaky about it. It’s exciting, but unless you set it up right it doesn’t usually last long.”

“You mean you’ve done it?”

I nod slowly, meet her gaze and Eyefuck her a bit. “Let’s just say I know how to set it up right.”

There’s a lot of things she wants to say, but doesn’t. Finally I put in some more safe, innocuous chatter to fill the time. She’s not listening, and she’s not supposed to be. It’s just to take the tension off, so she doesn’t feel she has to say something and gets more nervous as a result. “I like your voice,” she finally says honestly.

“Thanks,” I reply.

Darcy finally brings the bill. Leah picks it up, looks at it and turns beet red. Finally she hands it to me. There’s a number written on the back in red pen, with words under it: “Call me — either of you.”

Nice. “What can I say,” I tell Leah. “I know a good bet when I see one.”

Then I guide the conversation a bit, with a suspiciously-specific denial. “It was a totally honest, natural pickup. Pay up.”

“Wait a minute,” Leah says. “You went in the kitchen. I bet you just gave her a twenty to write that on the bill, so you could impress me and get in my pants.”

“Well,” I reply. “I do want to impress you, and I do want to get in your pants, but it was a 100% legit pickup, and I can prove it.”

“Go on, then,” Leah says. “Prove it.”

Leah and I are sitting in a booth with a white laminate table between us. The seats are red vinyl, and there’s a black and white checkerboard wall behind us, with framed black and white photos from the 1950s on it. The table is pretty sturdy, bolted to the floor and the structure of the booth.