Guide To “Picking Up Women.”

“Picking Up Women” as both a term and a way of life is pretty fucking gross.

Generally the best way to “pick up women” is for both of you to be drunk somewhere and to feel like you don’t have anything to lose. This is why you don’t want to be the sort of dude who “picks up women.” The type of women who hang out in bars and talk to losers like you when they’re drunk and feel like they have nothing to lose are usually the dregs of woman society. They could do better. You could do better. But not tonight.

So if you’re in a bad place in your life and you feel like becoming a walking, talking Willie Nelson song, then by all means “pick up women.” I’m not just saying this lightly. Don’t think I haven’t been there too. Otherwise the best way to “pick up women” is to talk to everybody the same way and then keep talking to the people you tend to enjoy talking to. Some of them will be women.

Of course it’s more complicated than that. I mean, you have to at least know when you’re flirting and when you should be flirting and when they’re flirting and when you should stop flirting and forget about the whole thing. Otherwise you’re going to end up being a real sad sack dude who reads books about “How to Pick Up Women” and goes on reality television shows for sad sack dudes who learn how to pick up women from a guy who dresses like a video game character from something with the words “Snowboarding” and “Xtreme” in the title.

Talking to a woman.

Sadly, talking to women is an unavoidable part of the process of having sex with one of them. You don’t have a choice.

It’s fairly easy and straightforward in bars where both of you might be drunk and feeling like you have nothing to lose. Basically, if you see a woman at a bar and you think she’s cute and therefore find that you enjoy looking at her, then you can go talk to her after you make eye contact with her three times. This is not three times of you staring at her and her looking back to check if that creepy guy is still staring at her. This is three separate eye contact instances in between which you’re looking somewhere else and maybe doing a thing too. Then you’re allowed to go talk to her without feeling like you’re being a weirdo. Maybe on the third eye contact you can do like a self-aware wave type of thing where you roll you eyes like “eye contact from across the bar, right?” Think of yourself as the male lead in an Amy Grant video. Be ironic with it if you think she’s the type to enjoy that. If she smiles you can go talk to her. That’s if she’s all the way over there.

It’s much easier if she’s right next to you talking to another person who you don’t know, and you’re there too. Then you slide in a one-liner while there’s a lull in the conversation she’s having, something like a flat, sarcastic, “I think he’s delicious” if, say, they’re talking about Jude Law or something.

Then you’re off and running in the direction of a Willie Nelson song. You keep it light and civil without being pushy about “sealing the deal” right there, and if things go well for both you and the woman you’re talking to, you can exchange information and then set up a date with them later.

If you’re doing this while you’re drunk and she’s drunk too, then you might end up having sex later, which will be awesome. But then you’ll also wake up next to a stranger and realize that you have to be at work five minutes ago, and you’ll feel guilty for not wanting to ever call her again because she’s out there having sex with strangers like you and that means she’s probably crazy. Maybe you’ll even feel so guilty about it that you will call her again and slide down the slippery slope of calling her when you don’t want to just to be nice until you find yourself dressing up like baby new year in her insane family’s mandatory Christmas pageant and you look in the mirror and realize you’re in one of the worst relationships in the history of the world. I mean, yeah, one night stands are fun in that tingly little “Holy shit, I’m in a cab on the way to having sex at somebody’s house right now and I’m dazed and drunk and I can’t believe this is happening” kind of a way, but they get a lot worse after that. Unless you can pull it off at like noon on a day when you both have other plans later. Then it’s perfect.

But the perfect one night stand has maybe a one in thirty chance of happening, so it’s best to stick to the information exchange thing. That way the next time you talk to her you’ll be sober and hence more capable of judging whether or not she’s the type of person who might want you to dress up like a baby in front of her family. It’s just the smart play.

Some rules for what type of thing should be happening during the talking portion of the night’s events:

A. Don’t push it. From the initial one liner you’ve slid in there at the beginning, you will have to wait and take your silences when they come. You don’t treat that one thing you said like it’s opening the floodgates for a raging torrent of anecdotes. Maybe she was just giggling at you to be polite. You don’t know yet. It’s better not to talk at all unless you’ve got something cute to say. Avoid long stories or “aren’t I smart for knowing this?” fun facts. Start with just a pleasant but halting stream of light patter, and let it slowly build to a massive river of “what your father taught you to believe about God” at 1:15am after nine beers. Or don’t. That way you won’t sound like you’re like one of those guys who works at the cell phone store but you’re selling yourself instead of cell phone plans. You are not selling yourself. You are a human being talking to another human being. Relax. This is also a great approach because talking to her could end up being a drag for you and you might want to call it off.

B. Pay equal attention to the people around her and keep everybody involved. In nine out of ten romantic comedies the best friend is actually the better catch. They’re funnier, they’re often a lot cuter, and they have a wry, interesting take on the world that’s perfect for keeping things in perspective when Sarah Jessica Parker is getting totally stressed about some dumb boy thing. Talk to them too. It’s smart and it’s also what regular friendly human beings do. Don’t worry about sending a signal that you’re only going for one of them. At least not right away. If either one of them is interested at all, they’ll make a decision about it while you’re in the bathroom, and then you can just go based on that, because that’s a sacred decision and it’s not going to reverse itself. You’re just some dude at a bar and you’re not worth a lost friend. If they’re not interested, they’ll be gone by the time you get back. In the meantime, keep an open mind. See the Guide to Threesomes for an explanation of just exactly how open your mind should be.

C. Keep it positive. Sometimes the best friend is not cute or funny. Sometimes they’re a gross pig who the woman you think is cute keeps around to make herself feel better because she has low self-esteem or because the gross pig is usually fun but she just had her wallet stolen or maybe just because they’re cousins and Cousin Grosspig is in town this weekend. If this is the case and this gross pig person is really antagonizing you for some unknowable reason, then you still have to keep things positive no matter how much you’ll want to tell her off. Keep it positive and then leave. That way Cousin Grosspig is the bad guy instead of you. You don’t want to be there anyway, because if the cute one wants Cousin Grosspig around for self-esteem reasons, there are going to be problems down the line anyway.

D. Don’t worry about dudes. Yeah, it’s not like you’re going to get some dude’s girlfriend’s number after flirting with her all night under his nose, but remember, it’s not all about that. The dude could be an awesome dude too who you’d be happy to end up being friends with. You don’t know. Idly talking to a dude/girl combo at a bar is like practice for being a regular friendly human being who has no particular sexual objectives. That’s the best way to act anyway. And then also there’s a chance the dude is her super fun gay dude friend or a super unfun date. You don’t know. You don’t care. You’re just being friendly. Keep it in that territory to avoid being punched. Remember about keeping it positive.

And that’s basically how you talk to a woman at a bar or a party or a social setting that includes talking to strangers as a standard operating procedure. It’s really not all that hard. And it’s nothing like they do in the movies where there’s a bunch of dudes shouting “WE are gonna GET! YOU! LAAAAIIID!” And they’re jostling their one nerdy dude friend, and then he nerdy sees a sexy blonde from across the room and cinematically musters the courage to go over there and talk to her with hilarious consequences of some kind. It’s just more like people talking to each other.

You might also be tempted to talk to a woman in other contexts. Like you’ll see a very cute woman on the bus or at the grocery store or waiting on you at a table in the restaurant that she works at.

Guess what? There’s a reason you always chicken out in situations like that. That’s your brain telling your stupid talky face not to get pepper sprayed. And the part of you that’s thinking, “Every great couple has a cute story about how they met,” is also a stupid part of you. That’s the part of you that watches chick flics and cries into pillows when you’re mad because everything’s unfair because you’re a poet trapped in a legal clerk’s body. That part of you needs to grow up.

There’s no good way to talk to a woman if the only honest thing you can think of to say at first is, “I don’t usually do this, but…” The only people who “usually do this” are crazy-for-life Charles Manson types who are looking for a woman who’ll stand by their side when their hold on reality slips and they start preaching about truth in a cave full of bats that they have to hide in because it keeps the voices out and also they killed some people. They’re looking for the Sissy Spacek to their Martin Sheen. Those guys don’t care about decorum in the laundromat. But even when they are that nuts those guys still at least have the good sense to start their conversations with “I don’t usually do this, but…”

Women know these things. That’s why you don’t just waltz up and tell them how pretty they look while they’re smelling perfume samples. They will think you’re crazy. It doesn’t matter if they’re right or not, they will think you’re crazy. And talking to a woman in line at a Pep Boys about how pretty she is will only go well for you is she likes the idea that you’re crazy. In other words, if she’s crazy. It’s like that scene in Tootsie where real Dustin Hoffman tries to use the “everything I told fake lady Dustin Hoffman I want a man to say to me” tactic. It doesn’t work.

You do the same thing you’d do at a bar, slide in a one-liner or two, maybe get some smiles in return, but getting to the point where you’ve talked to each other enough to feel comfortable exchanging information is impossible to accomplish in the amount of time it takes for the driver to be done operating the hydraulic wheelchair-stairs-and-front-end-lowrider thing on the bus. You might get it done on like a long flight or waiting in the hallway outside of your parole hearing, but in general it’s best not to try it unless you’re going for some kind of world’s record of how sad you can be. It will only work if she’s reading a book called “I Have Super Low Self-Esteem Right Now and I’m Basically Going To Kill Myself Unless Some Dude Talks To Me In This Chipotle, Any Dude, Really, It Doesn’t Matter Who, Even If He’s Already Been In Jail For Sexual Assault, I Will Go Out With Him, I’m That Stupid Right Now.” Are you really aiming that low? You’re going to trick that person into having sex with you? Who are you?

And of course it’s not about that or exchanging information or “scoring” or any of that. It’s about just being a regular friendly human being.

Except there are a couple of classic talking fuckups to consider. And really, just consider them. You can talk any way you want to. I don’t care. But there are some classic talking fuckups.

They include:

A. Talking about sex and/or bodily functions. You can try it, but women who will comfortably talk to you about sex have generally already decided that they’re not going to have sex with you. Maybe you can still convince them to have sex with you after that, but it’s a seriously uphill battle and it’s probably not going to be very good sex because they either think of you as their little brother or their fun gay friend or they’re cockteases who’d much much much prefer have your gape-jawed attention as they tell you about how much they love to suck a dick than ever ever ever suck a dick, especially yours. If somebody’s attracted to you, talking about sex with you will make them nervous, and you should be nervous about it too, if only just to show that you’re nervous about it, because you should be, because this is a stranger. It’s cool. Sex is more fun when you don’t intellectualize it anyway.

B. Boy stuff. I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say that most women don’t want to hear your four hour treatise on Battlestar Gallactica and how it’s the perfect metaphor for modern life. They don’t want to hear your four hour treatise on anything. Not even if it’s about girl stuff like cute shoes or something. People who have four hour treatises are terrible listeners. And they’re always talking about boy stuff, even if they’re not talking about boy stuff. They’re talking like boys. Like how boys talk to boys. Booooring.

C. Being louder than necessary. You don’t need to sell your jokes with extra volume. Either they’re funny or they’re not. Loud is funny when you’re wasted and making an ass out of yourself with a couple of good friends, but it’s bad news for conversations. Especially with women. Loudness and interruptions are a turnoff for women, because dudes are always being louder than them and interrupting them with their loud, unfunny jokes all the time and it’s a drag. There’s a reason why they all want a “strong silent type.” If you feel like you have to be loud to get somebody’s attention, that’s because they don’t want to give you their attention, and instead of being a child about it, you should get the hell out of there so everybody can have a good time without you. Otherwise you’re just going to spend the whole rest of the night feeling like a leech.

D. Meanness. Don’t be mean to anybody or about anybody. A certain amount of negativity is ok, you don’t have to like everything, but you don’t want to be mean about anything, ever. Girls won’t like you if you’re cruel. In fact, most good, fun people won’t like you if you’re cruel. If they do, it’s because they’re either also cruel or they’re badly damaged by some sort of “I need people to be cruel to me” scenario.

E. Friend zone. You can get a woman to listen to what you’re saying if you compliment her handbag and then continue to talk about handbags knowledgably. Women like to talk about handbags every once in a while. With their friends. That’s fine if you actually know about handbags, but, you know, maybe don’t bust all that out right away. I’m not saying feign ignorance, just maybe try to steer things elsewhere. Like talk about handbags how a dude would. Borrow her handbag and ask her if it matches your shoes or your eyes and make a joke about it. I don’t know. Be an authority on dude stuff instead of girl stuff, but be interested in girl stuff from a dude’s perspective instead of a girl’s perspective. Just remember, you’re not just representing yourself out there. You’re representing all of us. Be a man.

So those are some classic conversational fuckups, and they’re really more about how to behave around strangers than they are about how to “talk to women.”

Flirting.

So you know all those old ridiculous tricks that “How to Pick Up Women” (fucking gross) guides tell you? You know, things like “mimic her body language,” and “compliment her appearance” and “check to make sure her pupils dilate when she talks to you, that means she’s attracted to you?”

Well those are all bullshit.

Actually, they’re not 100% bullshit, but they are bullshit things to be doing when you’re talking to somebody you think is cute. Those two tricks are things that happen naturally when two people who like each other are talking and listening to each other with ease. So basically, all those video game character dudes who can “pick up any woman” are fucking assholes who have figured out how to accurately pretend that they’re really engaged in what women are saying when they talk.

Why? Well, yeah, to get laid, but also because they’re egotistical fuckheads who aren’t good at sports and have some sort of grand delusion that what they’re doing is a part of “how the world works, bro.” Like they’re some sort of powerbroker but for people’s emotions.

What they’re leaving out is that their tricks only work on trashy girls with no self esteem who will make your life worse than it already was if you choose to get involved in them because they can’t sense that you’re bullshitting them and maybe even they can but they don’t care because they just want a shortcut to intimacy without all the mutual respect and vulnerability baggage. Basically they’re the same as the pickup artist dude, except they’re trying to snuggle instead of fuck, which is just as sad.

Anyway, the real way to “pick up women” isn’t to do all the little symptomatic things that scientifically indicate that you give a shit, it’s to actually give a shit. Then that way you’ll be doing all the tricky little things without being a manipulative weirdo who doesn’t have any real friends.

So what you do is if you find yourself talking to a woman and you’re being you, or a reasonable facsimile thereof who’s maybe choosing not to talk forever about how dumb Megatron looked in the Transformers movie (I mean, yeah, be yourself, but talking about “cool robots” to a girl is basically the same thing as farting really loud), and you find that, hey, maybe this is going well, then you know you’ve been flirting the real live human being way where you actually give a shit, and you keep doing that.

It’s not rocket science.

You talk to her in a way that allows her to speak and then you speak and you listen to each other and make observations based on the information you’ve been listening to and you’re maybe making little jokes when you think of them and so is she and you’re both laughing and enjoying yourselves. That’s all flirting is. It’s two people enjoying themselves.

If it feels difficult for some reason that’s because somebody isn’t enjoying themselves. Then you’re not flirting. Then you’re hitting on somebody who doesn’t want to hear it by using a “classic divide and conquer wingman technique” or some other bullshit thing you read in a book somewhere. Or else you’ve got a sad, lonely female pickup artist type on your hands and she’s flirting with you and you aren’t really into it. Either way, cut and run on one of these scenarios.

Otherwise, if things seem like they’re going well, it doesn’t hurt to keep in mind little things like “no cool robots right away” or “complaining is a turnoff,” but in general you’re going to be fine if you’re really enjoying yourself. If you’re really enjoying yourself and there’s a lull and you don’t know what to say, you can either say nothing or say, “I’m really enjoying myself.” It’s easy and it works great.

“Sealing the Deal” (WAY fucking gross).

So the idea of “sealing the deal” is really the worse thing that those idiot guys who talk about this sort of thing tell you how to do. It’s basically the art of deciding when and how to say “let’s go have sex on your ratty bare twin mattress.” I say ratty bare twin mattress because that’s about what you’re going to be looking at if you end up going to somebody’s house to have sex with them after having met them a few hours ago. They are not going to have a nice bed.

Chances are you don’t either if you’re low enough to go around “hunting for poon” (loud gag). You’re probably in the ninth level of “fuck it” and your socks and underwear are spread all over the place and you’ve got an empty can of Coors in your shower. So when you “seal the deal” it pretty much means you’re going to go fuck a stranger on a dirty mattress.

But “sealing the deal” does have some practical applications beyond “picking up girls,” like sometimes you have to “seal the deal” when you’re at the end of date number three and it’s important to let her know you’re into her enough to want to “seal” a “deal.” So it’s worth talking about. It’s also worth knowing in case you’re in a bad place in your life and you need to bone a stranger on a ratty bare twin mattress in order to snap yourself out of whatever funk you’re in.

The classic deal seal is when you’ve been flirting and laughing somewhere intensely enough that you haven’t even spoken to anybody else for at least an hour, and you’ve each gone to the bathroom at least once. So you’ve each had a chance to look and see what time it is. This is probably at a bar. Then there’s this perfect time when you’ve either laughed at something pretty hard or said something thoughtful and there’s a lull, but not a bad lull, more like a pregnant pause, and you ask “you wanna get out of here?”

The answer is usually yes because bars always close eventually anyway, and sometimes the answer is, “Yeah, I can’t believe how late it got. I’ve got to go to work tomorrow.” But that’s still a yes to the “get out of here” question, so you’re still in good shape.

There’s also a “no,” which is weird, because what are they going to do, stay? It’s a bar. The other version of “no” is “and go where?” This is tricky. This is the girl saying, “Whoa there guy, I’m on the fence with you, and you’re going to have to say something carefully fucking worded right now, or else there’s no ‘deal’ to be ‘sealed.’”

Just know that “and go where?” is a flirty move. It’s a classic “hey, I might have sex with you, but I’m not cheap, you’re going to have to earn it” statement. Right up there with an “I don’t’ usually do this” or a “we’re not having sex” as she opens her apartment door. So don’t’ freak out about the “and go where?” It doesn’t mean “no way,” it means “I’m willing you meet you halfway if you give me some assurances.”

So you answer the “and go where?” with another place. Just answer it. And don’t answer it with “your place” or “my place.” Answer it with something funny like “I would like to buy you a taco at the all night taco place.” And then you either end up at the all night taco place or you don’t, but at least your first offer wasn’t sex. She might counter with a “that place is gross,” but the good news is now you’re negotiating. You can do a quick funny “in that case I would like to take you to my house and make you a taco from scratch.” And she’ll be like, “I don’t really like tacos,” and you can say, “Good, because I don’t have any taco stuff at my house anyway.” And then you’ve been funny and things are probably going to work out. But you don’t want to push things. Sometimes “and go where?” really means “we’re done for the night,” just like sometimes “we’re not having sex” means “we’re not having sex.”

Anyway, you have to ask the “get out of here” question after the right pause and with the right amount of hopeful suggestiveness. You’ll probably know the right pause, because it will be one of those “look at my drink/watch/friends” pauses where there’s this unasked question of what happens now in the air. And the “You wanna get out of here?” should sound like you’re asking, “I know this is kind of forward, but do you wanna get out of here?” But without the first part. It should sound a little bit like an apology, but be forward enough to get your point across.

Then when you collect your things and say goodbyes and tumble out into the street, you’ve got options. You can go with “quick hail a cab” if there’s one right there, and then you’re both in the cab and you tell the cab driver to go to your house, and then there can be further negotiations in the cab and probably also kissing and handholding. Or you can do a “grab and kiss” where they’re looking around on the sidewalk with the “what is there to do in this neighborhood right now?” face and you turn them around into kissing you and it’s nice. Or you can do the Woody Allen, where you tell them all your thought processes about how you’d really like to go home with them but you can understand if that’s a little too much for the night, and hopefully they’ll think that’s cute instead of annoying (I don’t like the Woody Allen, because I would find it annoying).

Don’t get too upset or feel like you absolutely have to seal the deal right there and then unless you just got evicted and you really have to or else you’ll be sleeping in the park. Otherwise you can be content with a grab and kiss and then putting her in a cab and going your separate way. That’s good too. That earns you mystery points for next time where she’ll be thinking about you. If you’re savvy, you can leave it at that and not exchange information and then you can track her down with google or facebook or something, which instead of being stalkery and weird will be flattering because it means you were also thinking of her. You only want to do that if she leans in and enjoys the kiss, though. If she smacks you in the face or does the old “here’s my cheek,” then you are in fact a weird stalker and you have to go back to the drawing board. Call your Mom tomorrow. But otherwise it’s a good move to let things simmer and then come back to them in the form of a date.

So that’s the classic “seal the deal.” I know the “you wanna get out of here?” seems a little stale, but it works. Girls like sex too. You don’t have to go overkill with fancy notes on bar napkins and crazy spy subterfuges. Some clichés are clichés for a reason. They’re shorthand for more blunt things and can be more easily refused or accepted. Don’t make this any harder on yourself than it has to be.

In conclusion.

So now you know how to “pick up chicks.” The biggest obstacle that those sad dudes who “don’t know how to talk to women” face is that they don’t realize that women aren’t all that scary. They’re people. They have some of the same insecurities as you do. They like sex. You can relax. Don’t think of yourself as “talking to a woman” if you find yourself talking to a woman. You don’t have to do anything different, really. Just maybe don’t tell her all about your porn collection.

And if you find that you don’t enjoy her company, you don’t have to talk to her just because she seems nice enough and she’s clearly interested in you. That’s ridiculous. That’s how stupid regular dudes end up getting drugged and robbed by a con artist in the movies. Don’t be an easy mark. Getting laid isn’t that important.

The most important thing is to be open to the possibility. Like if you find yourself talking to somebody and enjoying it, most of the time sad lonely dudes will psyche themselves out instead of rolling with it. Don’t psyche yourself out. You’re talking to a woman, and it’s going well. No biggie. Don’t worry about “sealing the deal” or “picking her up” or anything, but just realize that this is the sort of thing that’s happening, and act according to your instincts.

It’s not all that hard. Everybody’s lonely. Not just you, shithead.