STEP IV

CHAPTER THREE

On my last day in San Francisco, a seductionist named David Shade informed the local lair that he would be in town and wanted to have dinner with the local pickup community. I was one of fourteen sargers at the table.

David Shade was known for the explosive David Shade Manual, a cheap-looking photocopied pamphlet about the final stage of seduction: sex. It included techniques on finding hidden erogenous zones such as a woman’s deep spot in the center of her cervix; on having threesomes, foursomes, and orgies; on seductive scripts to give a woman an orgasm over the phone; and on using hypnosis to, as he writes, “slip in the back door.”

He sat at the head of the table at Le Coloniale, sporting a smooth shaven head and a large pocket protector. He looked like a cross between Vin Diesel and Jerry Lewis. He was a different type of seducer than anyone I’d met before. With Juggler, I had terrorized San Francisco bars, leaping in front of groups of women with my fingers outstretched like pistols and yelling, “Stick ‘em up.” It was fun. David Shade, however, was deadly serious.

He belonged to the old school of seduction, Speed Seduction. However, he had chosen as his guru a character by the name of Major Mark. A former military officer who claimed thirty-seven kills to his name and had a fetish for hypnotized slave girls, Major Mark was a short, pudgy middle-aged man who wore short-sleeved Hawaiian shirts said “mmm-kay” a lot. He had helped Ross Jeffries develop Speed Seduction before branching out to write his own e-book, Scoring With Married Women, which was the definition of what Twotimer would call evil.

To show off, on my way to the table I stopped two girls with the “Do you think that spells work?” opener. I flirted for a few minutes, talked about books, took their phone numbers, and sat down at the table in a blaze of glory, introducing myself as Style. I could feel the gravity that the name now held when I spoke it, the murmurs of excitement from the students at the table. The reviews of Mystery’s Belgrade workshop had hit the Internet, and my pick-up knowledge and skills in the field had been soundly praised. People were curious to meet Mystery’s new wing.

The conversation at the table was focused on naturals (like Dustin) versus non-naturals like ourselves, who had simply learned to emulate their behavior.

“I can not pick up at will,” a buff little man, who spoke in a French accent, was saying. “I feel like seduction is something I need to turn on and warm up, like an oven, before I can use it.”

I knew what he was talking about. “That’s a problem I’m finding too,” I said. “The routines and scripts are supposed to be training wheels, to get us started talking to girls. But I find that when I don’t use them, my interactions go nowhere. Is it possible to become a natural seducer all the time?”

Shade listened, evaluated, and then weighed in. “Major Mark told me a long time ago, ‘There is no off switch,’” he said. He did not smile. He did not blink. “You’re always on and there’s no way to stop it. All of us here are always seducers. To quote Major Mark again, ‘Energy follows thought.’”

Shade’s modus operandi was to be picky. Not every girl was worth seducing. “Major Mark said a long time ago that the really worthy women will provide you with all the material you’ll ever need to seduce them,” he continued. “It’s the ones who aren’t worthy that you end up having to entertain. Seduction is not about you or your material: it’s about her.”

That night, we went out to wherever we went out to, rolling in a cockfarm of fifteen. I wanted to watch Shade work. While the other guys ran around the bar, opening every set they saw, Shade just sat on a bench and waited.

“I’m starting to have doubts about this guy,” a PUA named Adonis told me. “You know, he’s forty-six. Maybe he doesn’t feel comfortable in clubs. He doesn’t do anything but sit around.”

Adonis grabbed a seat next to me. He smelled like pea soup. “I mean, I’ve learned a lot tonight about looking for quality woman to make my girlfriend,” he said. “But I want to learn to get girls who look like bimbos. I don’t care if they have a brain the size of a pea, as long as they are fucking hot.”

Suddenly, Adonis’s dream girl walked by. She hesitated for a moment near where we were sitting. She was alone. Both Shade and Adonis rose to their feet. Shade beat him to the approach by a breath. I could only catch bits and pieces of what Shade was saying. He complimented her on her grace and energy. Then he took her hand, sat her down, and began a palm-reading. Then he dismissed her.

Was this part of Major Mark’s advice? “She wasn’t what I was looking for,” he said. “I’m very picky. A woman needs to be smart, funny, open-minded, and bisexual.”

He began to talk about his girlfriend. He was bringing her to Los Angeles, and wanted suggestions of places they could go tandem hunting for bisexual women.

I gave him some suggestions, then he turned to me and fixed my face in his intense, steely glare. “Be careful,” he warned. “You are getting caught in the middle of a lot of different agendas.”

“What do you mean?”

“You can only be a slave to one master,” he answered, cryptically.

I never saw him again. But I understood his warning the next day.