by KRISTIAN GRAVENOR

Daddies, lock up your daughters! The science of seduction is being passed down from expert hands and is spreading through this town, as young male armies of seducers learn new ways to break female hearts, lovin’ and leavin’ ’em with nothin’ but tears on their pillows and memories of ecstatic bliss.

Late this summer, Mystery, a leading PUG (pick up guru), held a seminar for a handful of lucky learners. You might have seen him on Crescent hovering over the crowd with his 6-foot-5 frame, heightened by five-inch platforms and red- and black-striped cowboy hat, red leather pants and black nails. Mystery often introduces himself by slapping his black-manicured hand in front of females and saying: “Ladies, give me your first impressions.” By the end of the night, Mystery had a bunch of phone numbers and an intimate invitation to finish his evening in the combined company of two young ladies. One of Mystery’s once-awkward students of seduction was seen smooching with a new female friend on Prince Arthur. Other lucky recipients of Mystery’s pick-up tips have no doubt stripped for a few women since then (undoubtedly including doctors at the STD clinic).

Mystery and a handful of seduction experts are training a new generation of shock troops of romance, turning them from - according to their arcane system of terminology (see www.fastseduction.com/acronyms.shtml) - RAFCs (Recovering Average Frustrated Chumps) into PUAs (Pick Up Artists). The landmines faced by these dauntless, wannabe seducers include flat-out female rejection in the form of LJBFs (“Let’s-just-be-friends”) or anything else from the UFEA (Universal Female Excuse Archive, i.e.: “I’m washing my hair that night”). These hunters in the jungle of love manoeuvre to avoid CB (cockblock: when an obstacle takes your target away from you), and the disease of One-itis (a disorder that leads men to think one girl is more special than another).

These loverboys will shoot Cupid’s arrows by practicing the 3SR, the three-second-rule, which dictates that you must “try to meet a woman within three seconds of seeing her.” One seduction guru named Ross Jeffries, who charged $500 (U.S.) for a workshop he hosted here a year ago, counsels pick-up artists to employ “ambiguity,” for example, using subliminally resonant expressions like “below me.” Jeffries believes that when you say “below me,” a woman will get turned on because she subconsciously hears “BLOW ME!”

Another seduction guru named David DeAngelo urges pick-up artists to be “cocky and funny.” His literary contributions to the field include such titles as: “How to Tell Her That You Like Her: DON’T!” and “STOP BEING A WUSS... And Other Profound Ideas.”

When followers aren’t learning new techniques, they’re holding discussion groups, analyzing their techniques, bouncing ideas back and forth. Nothing is below them. Ladies, resistance is obviously futile!

I’m compelled to offer some “perspective” on this phenomenon, mainly because it’s advertised in the title of this column. Like any powerful tool - ammonia, rifles etc. - such advanced seduction methods must be used properly and for good, not evil. There’s something fantastic about anything that promotes a shy, lonely guy to overcome his social anxieties and approach a woman. But there’s nothing more annoying than a serial Romeo hitting on every girl in the room. I’ve got it out for self-proclaimed Casanovas, who seem to me sleazy, indiscreet, vain and untrustworthy, with the unique power to annoy and irritate both genders equally. It can be dangerous too, as cops report that last weekend a man shot another man to death at the McDonald’s on Guy and Ste-Catherine because he was reportedly irritated at the guy constantly flirting with his girlfriend.

But it’s part of male nature to be drawn to god-like activities that exercise a Neitzschean will to conquer and that don’t involve cleaning up. In that way, seduction is a safer, easier thrill than knocking over supermarkets or rock climbing. But one would have to be a real ween to talk subliminally to women, telling them your middle name is BJ or that you covet “sexcess.” Even in my most hard-up days of bachelorhood that would have been below me. :

Comments? kgravy@openface.ca