The Jungle

When they bang us in the club baby you gotta get up, thug nigga's, drug dealas, yeah they givin it up

The darkened dance club with a modern Beowulf standing at the front door and the hobbyists boozing and gawking, waiting for a hole in the slipstream, presents both a challenge and opportunity for a young Guerilla to capture the memories of a lifetime.  The nefarious twank that goes on inside these places is legendary, and for a good reason.  I remember being at Grace Jones show in a Paris club, drunk on 25-franc Heinekens (and this was 1981, munchkins).  The Jamaican dyke had long since left the stage (after a great show I might add) and I was swirling alone at like 5 am on a postage stamp dance floor.  Suddenly I was approached by maybe the hottest bitch I have ever seen, swarthy-dark French complexion, straight black hair, exquisitely slutty get up.  She hovered over me like a UFO; I could feel her breath.  I paused, frozen in the headlights of this Athena.

Later I learned she was a whore.  Well most likely.  Well maybe. 

These places are usually set in the tony part of large cities.  They attract hot chicks who are dressed up and spending money (theirs or someone else's)--they excel at cultivation of the ingredients for an event.  If you've followed me at all you know I encourage men to look for women when there is a sense of occasion front and center.  The gonads of all ladies sweat when there is money and exclusivity, when they smell the sense of special.

But the event may turn out to be you roasting on a spit if you let it get the best of you.  Ergo should you choose to dip a toe in this River Styx here's a few hints.

Feline on Guard
One of the problems with these places is that they are as stuck on "on" as a broken vibrator.   The game is being played full tilt; no such thing as a genuinely innocent convo.  The damsels thus have their drawbridge up--way up--and if you bring it, you have to bring it strong or you'll fall in the moat.  This doesn't play into some guys' "technique" too well.   It can be daunting.  Foxy chicks, loud music, obnoxious bartenders.  It's a war.

Example:  asking a chick to dance.  If you bust out with an approach, "ask" with confidence--ask the question like there is only one answer.   And be ready to move.  One of the antidotes to these joints is authenticity.  Sincerity will sometimes beat down the player.  Dance in a groove; if you get into it and do it for what it is, do it for real--instead of using it as a pick up tool--you can sometimes snap a chick's resistance.

The Inverted 6
Another issue is that because the bitches is dressed up and because the players are out in force, a girl will upgrade herself.  Don't lose your bearings.  The same girl in a bowling alley you would barely notice has not been genetically mutuated just because she threw on her spandex and lace.  Deal accordingly.

Frustration Factor
The guys (and it is guys) that own these places have a simple business model:  get the hot gash in the door and sell pots and pans to the miners.  You are, my friend, therefore nothing but a wallet and you are dispensable--there are 50 more of you waiting at the door (that's why Beowulf is guarding it).  When you first apprehend this fact, it can be frustrating, especially if you hate being played.  But don't get frustrated--it shows immediately to the ladies.  Many clubs have outside/quiet areas.  Go and chill and get back into the action when you're ready.  You're here to hunt and have fun doing it.  Reclaim the lost property.

For more information on how the Guerilla approaches life and love go to www.guerillalover.com.

Bob Crane

I was always a fan of Bob, the genial Colonel Hogan from the TV show on CBS back in the day.  There was something about the guy that transcended the menial role he played in life.  Before he went in to acting, Bob was a disc jockey in L.A. in the 50's; I remember my dad telling me that his style was almost absurdly breezy.  He was as easy as the era.

Here's the thing.  If you want to study a true Guerilla, you need to watch the credit roll introduction to Hogan's Heroes.  As the flutes play and the POW's line up, there is a close up of Crane smiling and shifting his eyes ever so slightly.  Note his expression carefully--the smile is assured without being smug.  Crane knew the difference between the two.  Most guys don't.  Most guys trip over it and wind up coming across as soulessly cocky.  Bob Crane wasn't cocky.  He was simply confident.  He was handsome and he knew it.  He was a charmer and he knew it.  In his mind, he never had to prove anything.

This kind of even approach works well with women.  But it needs to be cultivated; you don't see, say, many 19 year olds that give you the vibe that Crane does.  The tricky bit is that there is rolling thunder behind the veneer; women need to sense the thunder while at the same time being drawn in by the equanimity, the ballroom confidence.  If you watch an episode, study how Crane flirts with Klink's secretary (Sigrid Valdis, whom he married in real life).  No sharp movements; no lurid vocals; no whacky antics.

It is the precision of the hunter.

For more on how the Guerilla approaches the game of attraction, visit http://www.guerillalover.com/.

Tails from Two Cities

On traditional dating websites like match.com the livestock announce their bill of particulars--a "soulmate" and the "true love" that fuses with a "lifetime bond" based on "mutual respect" for this "unwavering damsel."  It's Nathaniel West before he ventured out to L.A., four-cornered in the lonely Manhattan hovel of Miss Lonelyhearts, the fossilized desperation of the defined seeker.  These sites give me the spooks--simultaneously sonorous and weird; the men are no great shakes of course but take the women and (most especially) the 40-something women and brace yourself for a kind of kill pen auction; one way or another they'll be carted away by the Amish bidders that have never heard of PETA, that don't know how to treat an animal.  You just know it so you hide your eyes but even then a kind of dyspepsia arises--the screen starts to look more vertical than horizontal and the women literally all look the same.  Another high angle photo (gotta hide those extra lbs), another 14 sentence screed on the eternal female virtues delivered with an earnestness approaching Mach5.  And for dessert, any amusing, offbeat or erogenous moment will not (I repeat not) arise from a chewable reference to sexuality or  raw passion but from their collective fascination with Bill Maher and Jon Stewart, the "crush" they have on Stephen Colbert.  The smugly assured, "clever" comic is their man-hero because he appears to upbraid society (while profiting immensely from the very same), he holds sway on behalf of the downtrodden, he stands for women's rights (from the steps of the Playboy Mansion).  The faux revolutionary with a hand-picked audience is their boy, it's how they get liquid before you come in and try to prove yourself.  Plus he wears a suit.

Contrast that to other sites, like ones where cheatin' women hang.  Ashleymadison.com is an example.  You'll see very different animal indeed--no livestock here but rather a cougar of some sort, a felicitous, untamed feline filled with playful sexuality and pent-up desire.  There's no Maher/Colbert groupthink fetishism and thus ROOM for a guys like you and me.  We can sink our teeth into many of these (at both ends) and it's a kind of sanity restored.  We're in Emma Bovary's world now (in the sense of being sensually bored) or we're chilling with Atlas Shrugged (in the sense of individualized urges being lifted out of the box so they can veer off in all directions--even away from a lifetime of monogamy).  SHE has a man, SHE has her security.  So what does she desire now?  Why to branch out, of course.

Ergo, when you place your designs on a woman, dear reader, do understand the priority of needs--which comes first and which (alas) rides the caboose.  And yes, you can wonder about how these two ever shake hands; how "irony" somehow manages to be far beyond the grasp of many women.  Of course, it does help to know the old saw.  A preacher stands at the pulpit one Sunday:  "Oh good, God-fearing people, do you know of which virtue I shall preach today?"  "No, Reverend," comes the reply.  "Outrage," he thunders, "I will not deign to bother with such an ignorant, lazy bunch of non-believers!"  Next week, he asks again if they know.  "Yes, Reverend," they say recalling the disaster of the previous Sunday.  "Splendid," he replies, "then let those who do know tell those who don't."

For more information on how the Guerilla approaches life and love go to www.guerillalover.com.

Donning the Cyclodrome

Back there somewhere a friend of a friend, a woman, "encountered" Don Henley, the famed drummer and Eagle troubadour.  The story had to do with sushi and Beverly Hills and Henley never being available due his schedule and well, hell a man of his peripatectic stature--Aspen, Florida, etc., no shock there. The woman gave up on Don, or I guess it could have been vice-versa.  Hard to know these things because there are a lot of events that have fallen over the falls in the last 20 years, that have spun around the cyclodrome and dropped off the edge of the orb.

Last night a juke was playing "Victim of Love" and I heard Don croon the all time burn-on-you couplet: Some people never come clean/I think you know what I mean.  I've had the same spasmodic response for decades now; I whet my middle three, put them against my cheek and say "zzzzz."  It's that hot.

Don always was a master of the obvious, if you listen to his lyrics.  And there's nothing wrong with that.  He's successful and, as I'm proud to state with frank respect for its veracity, chicks like success.  His success was forthrightly and dutifully won by assiduous catering to American mainstream tastes.  Our chicks are American and, although Americans are fancied as being ruggedly individual self-definers, in their less considered moments they just love to have a guy like Don tell them what success is by stating it directly and fucking-A, if it rhymes all the better.

A small wrinkle arises, however, when the complexity of life, the cyclodrome, is introduced into this simple formula.  And when you watch a guy seeming to score with a girl at a venue designed for that purposes, you witness this unpleasant collision with alarming frequency.  Guy impresses, guy holds forth, guy becomes annoying, guy is undercut, chick moves on.  It's as pristine as one of Aesop's fables.

But it keeps happening and happening, so maybe this is not a fable we can learn from.  Or maybe we can.  The next song the juke played was the Psychedelic Furs' "Love My Way" and I think of Don when Richard Butler (who as far as I know has basically stayed in Surrey most of his life) puts his nose into Love my way it's a new road/I follow where my mind goes.  Certainly, Don could never guess that this song would be much of anything since it doesn't proclaim its own success but relies instead on an idiosyncratic sense of self to communicate something pleasantly unknowable.  On top of that, it doesn't clobber anyone.   So ask your yourself, do you want to be one of the Psych Furs or do you want to be a Don?

For more insight on how a Guerilla approaches the game of attraction, visit www.guerillalover.com.