Pickup Artists?

Are you watching this new reality show The Pickup Artist on VH1? The host, Mystery (one of the dudes featured in Neil Strauss's book The Game), is kind of a doofus. I continue to be shocked that The Game has spawned so many sub-industries. Neil Strauss runs a boot camp for guys who want to learn to pick up girls; Mystery has a reality show; no doubt other stuff is in the pipeline.

Women never have the problem of not meeting people at bars. My guy friends used to complain that they had trouble meeting women at bars, and that they had trouble hooking up with women they met at bars. I always looked at them like they had two heads. If you're a vaguely attractive woman and you want to kiss someone, it takes approximately 32 minutes to accomplish. Any bar, anywhere in the world.

Now, do you really want to date/hook up with some dude you met in a bar? That's a totally different story. In general, the answer is NO.

On meeting a mate

Apropos of my recent Huff Po piece on Holly Peterson's novel The Manny, I wanted to share some thoughts on a prevailing female fantasy: the idea that Mr. Right is somewhere out there in public.

'In public' is a really bad way to meet romantic partners.

In the book, wealthy Upper East Side working mom Jamie Whitfield hires a male nanny, Peter Bailey, then falls for him. Jamie and Peter first meet in Central Park, where Peter is teaching a group of underprivileged kids how to play chess.

It’s hard to imagine any Upper East Side yummy talking to a strange guy (however cute) in Central Park, much less asking him to babysit her kids.

The probability of meeting your future partner in public is pretty remote: only 9 percent of women and 2 percent of men say they’ve formed a relationship with someone they met in a public place (including a bar or club), according to the 1994 book Sex in America: A Definitive Survey. The majority of successful couples meet through mutual friends, school, church or work.

When the meeting place is Central Park, it’s even more unusual that the guy isn’t completely nuts. The one time I went out with a guy I met in Central Park, he turned out to be a professional harmonica player with a sister who used to be his brother. He spent a good ten minutes of the date making fun of my keychain. Need I say that we never went out again?