Tuesday, October 26, 2010

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.

Monday, October 11, 2010

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.