PUA vocab list:     http://www.fastseduction.com/acronyms.shtml

That is all.

http://www.sirc.org/publik/flirt.html

 I particularly liked what I read about gradual escalation, regarding touch and the disclosure of personal info. I do a lot of that subconsciuosly, but now I’ll pay a lot more attention to it, adn see if I can steer things a bit with these concepts in mind

Tattoo
What once was meant to be a statement,
a dripping dagger held in the fist
of a shuddering heart, is now just a bruise
on a bony old shoulder, the spot
where vanity once punched him hard
and the ache lingered on. He looks like
someone you had to reckon with,
strong as a stallion, fast and ornery,
but on this chilly morning, as he walks
between the tables at a yard sale
with the sleeves of his tight black T-shirt
rolled up to show us who he was,
he is only another old man, picking up
broken tools and putting them back,
his heart gone soft and blue with stories.

from Delights & Shadows, Copper Canyon Press, Port Townsend, WA 2004

Which got me to thinking.

And before I mentally wander all over the place, I will probably talk about women’s tattoos, some few things that attract me to some women, tattoos in general, and writing in the pages of the books of our lives.

Ready?

On the subject of women’s tattoos, I have many opinions. When and where, how much is too much, and how it all presents. And before I wade into that particular puddle, please understand that everyone is free to do whatever they want with their body. Whatever it happens to be. These are just my opinions. This is a blog, after all. I have a few little quirks, when it comes to my “type” of women. I don’t really have a set type, beyond the whole proportional thing. I could list all of the obvious deal breakers and yummy-things, but that’s the subject for another blog. One thing that can -really- draw or repel me is a woman’s tattoos; what she has, what they are, and where they’re placed.Body as canvas. What I don’t like: lots of tattoos, all over the place, like maybe they were once stickers and the girl threw them on the floor a-la 52 Pickup, got hammered, got naked, and rolled around a bit.  Lots of tattoos for no real reason- Bad. Tattoos of -stupid- things ( like a smurf, or the latest BoyBand logo ) or ones that look like you had your cellmate do them with a shiv, a Bic pen, a lighter, and some spare time. Bad as well.

Tattoos on the chest, lots of random tattoos, and crappy tattoos tend to speak with a very loud voice to me, and say things like “My old man has a hog like that ‘un. Gimmie a ride” and “after Daddy wus done beatin’ on Momma, he tole me that my tattoo of Odie was cherry” and “If I’m not getting high somewhere, you can -always- find me at the bowlin’ alley..”

And so on. Am I a snob? Could be, but like I said, my opinions.

So yea,  not-a-lot-of-thought into What or Where is not exactly a hallmark of class. Or brains. A little better but along these lines are just a few tattoos, that happen to show when you’re wearing some kind of “normal” clothing. And I guess there’s a bit of gray here; it’s like what the Supreme Court standard on “obscene”: you know it when you see it. A showing tattoo is usually bad, but not always. Hard to define.

A step or three in the right direction is the nicely done, single but asymmetrically placed tattoo on a shoulder, a hip, or other place that doesn’t show.  I don;t feel one way or the other about these. They don’t show, so who cares? But it seems like sort of a missed opportunity to do it Really Well.

To that, I say that there are -very- few tattoos on a woman’s body that wouldn’t be ten times more attractive and done Really Well if “properly placed”. I know the lower back thing is kinda played out, now…   but I like it. I’m helpless, in this. Every club bunny and mall girl and sorority pledge has a tattoo on her lower back. And God bless them all. Vince Vaughn’s Jeremy Gray and I are in perfect agreement here.

Climbing up the yummy ladder, other great spots would include:

    * Base of the neck
    * Centered on the back
    * Centered, in the tummy/navel area.

I’m not a maniac when it comes to this, or a slave to precision or centering, either. I can think of tattoos done off-center some way that look -amazing- , but I hardly ever see those. I just see the crappy I-have-one-for-every-boyfriend-I’ve-had-this-month-and-I’m-running-out-of-space variety.

Which brings me to my tie in, Teddy’s poem, women’s tattoos, and canvas of our lives.

I know one or three women that are strongly considering tattoos. Good ones, that they’d put in alluring places. But one concern is the one ( sort of ) enumerated in Ted’s poem.

“I might be a freak now, and want a sexy-hot tattoo. But I don’t want my granddaughter asking me about the faded Celtic cross I have above my  sagging grandma-ass.”            

                                                          – Miscellaneous Hottie

To that, I say this: As you grow old, the look in your eye, the lines on your face, your hair color, and a hundred other small voices speak to your experience in this life. They all make up not only who you are at this moment, but tell a story of where you’ve been, and how you came to be here. Lots of smile lines? That tells me you’ve probably laughed at funerals, in spite of what your mother told you, and that’s good. Heavy, tired eyes? My guess is you’ve seen a lot, and if I take time to sit and talk with you, your stories will beat mine, hands-down. And so on. The tattoos that we get in our youth speak to who we were when we got them, not necessarily who we’ll always be. But they might, and that’s kinds cool, too.

Not a bad thing, in my opinion.

I’m pretty sure it wasn’t a bad thing in Ted Kooser’s opinion, either. But he didn’t speak to it clearly in the poem, and somehow I think if I bend the resources of Google towards the Poet Laurate’s name, I still won’t find how if he agrees with the assessment that a woman’s lower back tattoo “might as well be a bullseye”.

~sighs~

Well well. Look at this. Another novella, and I haven’t even touched on some few things that make me go “Hmmmmmm” women-wise.

Like this is a serious agenda item, and you’re all chomping at the byte.

“So you’re saying?”

“Through sheer force of will, your reality becomes my bitch.”

“That’s great Neo.”

I’m the guy who thinks if I think long enough the answers will just appear… I think.

that’s kind’of where the name came from (remember “there is no spoon”)

I guess you can best explain me as The Fool. understand The Fool and you’ll better understand me.

I am 23 and a college student. I’m pretty confident about my looks and really don’t consider myself an average AFC. oh I definitely I’m an FC but I don’t know about the Average. I actually end up closing every now and then, but it’s usually when I’m not thinking about it. When I am thinking about though that’s when I become the AFC.

Since it I only think about it when I care (or give a damn what happens) then it seems that my real problem is that I have to stop giving a damn.

That’s why I’m doing this. I’m trying to learn to let out the more  carefree side of myself, the side that makes me happiest, and the one that let’s me close.

As far as women go I attracted to different types, as long as we stay out of extremes. thick is cool, but not fat. I’m down with slim chicks, but not anorexic. but picking up women if only part of it. what I’m really doing this for is so that I stop judging my worth by which, and how many, women want me. I want stop putting women on a pedestal when I deal with them. and I want to stop worrying so much. I’d like to keep walking even if the cliff is crumbling.

I kiss and number closed last night with a 21 year old sorority chick. Quite a feat.

Or rather, it would have been…  if it wasn’t with an HB4.

Ummm, yea.

So, alcohol and sarging don’t really go hand in hand. At least not with me. My game goes to shit after about 3 drinks. I have no idea if I could have gotten someone higher up in the spectrum; the truth is I didn’t try, and I didn’t care.

Sad, yes.      And no way to do this.

So… a vow. No more kiss closes with anyone below HB7. Last night was a departure from my normal routine, in truth. I was bolder…   but I wound up kissing a girl I would have never kissed before, even drunk. Or one like her. So… along with any new ability I develop, I also need to be pickier. I mean, I can flirt and practice with whomever…

… but no more kiss closes like that.
Heh.  I feel purged.

A field report of how this all happened would be boring. I used nothing but eye contact and body language to spark interest in a girl who was receptive to begin with.  With luck, there’ll be something a bit more interesting to read tomorrow.

So… 8 months later, the book starts making its way around my social circle of guy friends, and we decide that we’re going to actually work at this. We learn the vocabulary, challenge each other to newbie missions, scout the web for various other resources, and so on. We even start a blog. Heh.

We have not much by way of substantial activity to report as of yet; say we’re only a week into the effort in any organized way. But recently a few of us hit the bars, where we timidly started opening up strange sets. None of us number closed, but we all felt that if we would have “pushed it”, worked a bit harder or just been a little luckier, it could have happened with ease. I know that luck should be efforted out of all this, but it still plays a role, certainly.

Anyway, the main arena of practice for us was Natural’s girlfriend’s friends ( HB7 and HB8, and another below 7 but probably higher than 6 ). We met them there, and she brought these 3 friends that she worked with or knew. I won’t go into the details here except to say that our efforts were pedestrian at best… as said, we could have gotten results with a little bit more something in almost any direction, but it wasn’t happening that night. We spent the evening starting and stopping with them, more honing some ( very ) basic skills than really throwing our backs into it. Our results bore this out. But for me, the most rewarding part of the evening was at the very end. When we left, Me and Rooster said goodbye to Natural and his girl, and then we just left. We didn’t track down or say goodbye to the friends of hers we’d been talking to.

Seen through the AFC lens, this is kind of a dick move. Why not say goodbye? On the path to mPUA status, it might not be very significant, except for this: it definitely represented a change in thinking for Rooster and I. We are no longer absolute slaves to the Nice Guy thing, we no longer automatically put HBs up on pedestals. It felt good to just leave, cut it loose, and not dwell over the evening as a collection of missed opportunities; rather we saw it as the first real organized practice steps we’d taken.

The above is from Dune, and it’s a mantra of our little group. We’re studying the ways of Neil Strauss, padowans to his Mastery. We’re doing it to get the babes, and to overcome the fear.

We are : Neo, Natural, Rooster, Iceman, PenName, and Shaman. Ordinary guys with way different backgrounds, but a singlular purpose.

To become master PUAs.

…

From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered-
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;
And gentlemen in this place now-a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs’d they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That sarged with us upon this day.