and that.” We got our drinks and moved away from the bar. “Now,” she said, “what’s up with the mufti?”
“I assume you mean the word in the sense of civilian clothing, not interpreter of Muslim law.”
“Now you’re just showing off,” she said. I shrugged. “So. The costume?”
“I’m a party crasher.”
She gave me a long, blank look before saying, “Oh, I get it.”
You ever get that feeling like you just farted in church?
With four simple words—“Oh, I get it”—Allie ruled my noncostume not charming and not conceptual but merely self-conscious and lame. This would have bothered me were it not for the known true truth that women seduce men precisely by making them feel self-conscious and lame. It’s the first move of an elegant and time-tested three-act play.
Act one: Steal status. Like it or not, in the world of women and men, men hold the high ground. True, women man the sex valve and can shut it off at will, but as long as man has hand, this problem is not irresolvable. Meantime, whether in negotiation, sales, or seduction, it’s difficult to win uphill battles against status, so job one is to level the playing field. Women can do this to a man just by judging. Mock his haircut. Laugh at his ignorance. Look down your nose at his nose. Dis his supposedly clever costume concept.
Belittle a man and he will be little. This is a known true truth.
Once he’s weak and vulnerable, it’s time for act two: Initiate intimacy. To make a man covet your opinion (and therefore covet you), you need to create a bond, and the best way to do this is to touch. Brush a hand along a shoulder. Stand too close. Push a random strand of hair out of his eyes. Pluck lint, even. Your tender touch renders him like a dog in submission position.
Now comes the third act in this little passion play: Extend validation.
Validation (and this is an absolutely historically verified known true truth) is a mighty aphrodisiac. Let a man feel good about himself, and he will adore you out of gratitude. Tell me I’m wrong, guys. Tell me you haven’t ever thought, “I like her because she likes me.” You can’t help it. It’s human nature.
This is why hospitalized soldiers fall in love with their nurses, and not just in movies but in real life. First they experience this steep status drop from warrior to patient, and they’re forced to surrender control, which they hate. Next, it’s meet the new boss—this nurse who initiates intimacy in all sorts of sponge-bath and bedpanny ways. Finally, the intravenous validation drip: You’re a good man, soldier, and a good patient; you’re going to be okay.
So there you have it. Steal status with a mock or a smugly held opinion. Slice through defenses with the stiletto of intimacy. Then make ’im feel good. After that, you can write your own ticket.
So when Allie absently reached behind my neck to flip down the label on my shirt, I had to believe she was on script.
And when she suddenly started liking my jokes, I knew I was being played.
* * *
* Or even ever. The day I’m sniffing through panty drawers for loose change is the day my big toe starts itching for the trigger.
* * *
3.
dilated in
W hen you lie for a living like I do, you become pretty sensitive to the lies of others. This isn’t telepathy, telemetry, or tele-anything else. It’s just looking for the bedrock rationale. It didn’t take a particularly large leap of insight for me to realize that by plan and design, Allie had laid siege to my company. I couldn’t help wondering why. You might think she just liked the cut of my jib, but I’ve seen my jib and I’m here to tell you it’s not cut that cute.
So I decided to do a drunk check, because drunks will make choices that only make sense by way of drunk logic. This is useful to men, who often have no card of seduction to play, save a woman’s impaired judgment. What you do is, you hold up your hand, fingers spread, really close to her face, and ask how many hands you’re holding up. If she says one, she’s sober. If she says five, she’s drunk. If she says, “Five … wait … one,” and then falls out laughing, the pump is, shall we say, primed. The element of surprise is critical for a fair reading, so I sprang it on