ATOMIC DOG

It's sunny and oh-so warm and I'm drinking coffee at an outside café and it's only February, but this is California so the months and seasons don't really mean shit and the girls who walk by are already wearing short-shorts, and their silky legs and the little slices of tantalizing ass that flash a fleshy smile every time they take a step are already starting to take on the color of a Cadbury caramel candy.

I'm sitting there with my friends and we're feeling a potent little buzz from the caffeine, the solar energy, and the libidinous depth charges that every third or fourth girl who sashays by drops onto the submarines in our pants.

It is mighty fine.

But it's all we can do to stay focused on our conversation and for all we know, our level of discourse might be on the same level as a group of guys who've been passing a bong:

"You know that cranberry scone you're eating? What if...what if that scone were like another universe, and in that universe there were like, millions of planets and on those planets, there were like billions of guys eating billions of cranberry scones, each with universes inside them!?!? Whoa...I just blew my mind."

But it at least seems like we're having a serious discussion, mostly about economics, believe it or not, which is a subject I'm not well-versed in, so I'm mostly asking questions.

Poops Her Agent Provocateur Panties

I need to tell you a little about my coffee-shop friends before I go on. Coincidentally, nearly every one of them owns a business. Many of them are highly regarded in their professions and a lot of them make some serious coin, so much coin that they seem to actually be embarrassed about it; actually go to great lengths to hide it and seem at least a little blue collar.

Their education levels range from dropped-out-of-high-school to PhDs, but all are smart and all have been pretty successful in life.

So the conversation is fairly sophisticated and intellectual, but lest you think they're just garden variety stuffed shirts, the conversation is almost always peppered with at least a few jokes and plenty of inappropriate remarks about women.

But this is until Kelsey walks up. Kelsey is in her twenties, blond, and oh-so fine. She's dressed in business-slut wear, which in this case means a tight, black, belted shirt dress that's just long enough to be semi-appropriate for business, but short enough to make you want to bend her over the copier and collate and hole-punch her vagina a couple dozen times.

Likewise, the black stiletto heels are low enough to allow her to navigate the tight corners of an office, but high enough to make you want to throw her on her back, grab those pointy heels, pull her legs apart, and hold onto them as if they were the handlebars of a chopper as you pile drive her across the boardroom table, her peach-fuzz covered ass squeak-squeaking against the Lemon Pledge shiny finish a half-a-foot per passionate thrust.

So how do these powerful, accomplished men relate to Kelsey, who is obviously drawn to them because of their status, power, and money? Do they include her in the conversation, or do they pepper her with sophisticated flirtations?

Guess again. Alex, captain of industry, a PhD, literally one-degree of separation from anyone in Washington, stands up and proceeds to tell Kelsey a freakin' knock-knock joke:

ALEX: "Hey Kelsey, knock-knock!"

KELSEY: "Uhh, o-kayyy, 'Who's there?'"

ALEX: Gestapo.

KELSEY: Gesta – .

ALEX: (Blitzkrieg fast, before Kelsey can get "Gestapo who?" out of her mouth, Alex grabs her by the lapels with his left arm, raises his right arm as if to strike her, and shouts the punch line) "THE GESTAPO VILL ASK ZE QUESTIONS, FEMALE SCHWEIN!!!"

Granted, it's a good knock-knock joke, quite possibly the best one of all time – if performed on the right person and in the right manner – but for chrissake, the poor girl flinches and nearly poops her Agent Provocateur panties.

She turns red, regains her composure enough to laugh politely, and then leaves, post-haste.

 And therein lies the crux of my lament.

Men, regardless of what power they might have, regardless of what intelligence they might have, and in stark contrast to their normal acumen, use the same tactics to relate to women when they're 40 as they do when they're in 4^th grade, or at best, as when they're 14.

Why Do the Female Na'vi Have Tits?

You know, the Anglo birth rate in this country is 1.6, which is about 25 to 30% below the number needed for replacement (that number being 2.1). It's no surprise we've stopped breeding since half of us couldn't get to first base without purchasing a "girlfriend experience" from a hooker, let alone find a woman with which to procreate.

Before moving on, I have to offer full disclosure: I've never been particularly gifted at walking up to women and laying a rap on them. There were/are plenty of reasons: I was often overly focused on the goal (pussy), overly conscious of the absurdity of the whole ritual, unable to discuss mundane topics without a glaze forming over my eyes, or lastly, being unable to curb what I call my Trekkie-Tourette's Syndrome.

Trekkie-Tourette's doesn't involve shouting "SPOCK'S A COCKSUCKER!" in the middle of discussing favorite lunch spots. Rather, it's a propensity to start slightly weird, slightly geeky, and usually inappropriate discussions. Think Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory meets Chris Rock:

"Hey Britney, you know that blue chick in Avatar? Did you ever wonder why she had tits? I mean, it's not like the Na'vi were even mammals! It wasn't expressly discussed, but I suspect they were fuckin' oviparous!"

You might think that some chicks like that sort of stuff, but they don't. Noooo they don't. Sigh.

Anyhow, let me serve as a cautionary tale to all who might otherwise follow in my footsteps. But despite my lack of high skill in this area, I can at least say that I don't regress to the level of an adolescent when it comes to talking to women.

I'm not sure why this happens to men. Maybe it's because they're used to having discussions where demonstrating power and business acumen is the primary goal and as such they haven't had practice trying to be friendly, vulnerable, sensitive, attentive, and playful at the same time.

So they resort to telling jokes, usually bad ones.  Or they resort to bragging, busting the chops of other males that may also be vying for attention, or laughing overly hard at anything the female says.

I'm surprised some of them don't paint a clown face on their dick, drop their pants, and do a blue Henny Youngman imitation:

Take my penis–please!

Or better yet, glue some dog hair on their cock so that it looks like that hunky-hunky werewolf from the Twilight sequel.

Trouble is, women are keenly aware of this social ineptitude, causing them to mentally roll their eyes, go home agitated and have sex with a cucumber, that, if not necessarily more entertaining than the schlubs she just encountered, can at least be added to a salad after doing the deed.

Just Like the Mona Lisa's Smile

Oh, there are plenty of dating gurus out there who suggest all kinds of methods. Most famous, perhaps, is Mystery, who devised all kinds of jargon and tactics for picking up women.

Beautiful women, according to Mystery, rarely travel alone, so you have to target a "set," which is a group of two or more people that the "target" woman travels with. In order to acquire your goal, you have to befriend the entire set.

There's also "the 3-second rule," which states that you have to approach a girl you're interested in within 3 seconds, lest you overanalyze the situation and cause your balls to retreat, frightened turtle like, into the abdominal cavity from where they can't be coaxed from without affixing a bit of used panty to a fish hook and dangling it in front of them provocatively.

Mystery also advocates using "negs," which are backhanded compliments of a sort that telegraph a supposed lack of interest (supposedly, girls get off on guys who aren't interested in them—how fucked up is that?) and cause a woman to drop her "bitch shield."

It appears, though, that a delicate touch is necessary. For instance, saying something like, "My God, were you the only lesbian to survive the fire?" to your "target" would probably be considered, in Texas Hold Em' terms, as "coming over the top."

Maybe something more subtle would work, maybe something like, "I can tell by your camel toe that your vagina is a little crooked, but then again so was the Mona Lisa's smile, and it was thought that her crooked smile suggested that she was perhaps a bit enigmatic and quirky, and by extrapolation, I can venture a guess that maybe your hoo-hah is a bit enigmatic and quirky."

Okay, that probably wouldn't work either. Like I said, I have Trekkie-Tourette's Syndrome.

It's more likely Mystery had something a little more subtle in mind, like saying, "An attractive girl like you should take better care of her nails."

Supposedly, that would cause her to be confused and wonder why a guy who presumably wanted to bed her would insult her, however mildly.

Dating guru Dave Wygart's approach is a bit more conventional. He lists common sense tips like smiling, positive body language, moving slowly (as not to alarm her), not fidgeting, maintaining eye contact, and perhaps most importantly, observing something in the environment and commenting on it (in lieu of some snappy but ultimately lame line).

While most of his list seems to be a no-brainer, I've observed that the last point deserves some serious thought. Like I said, I was never particularly gifted in approaching beautiful women, but I've observed plenty of guys who were and the one thing—maybe the only thing—they shared in common was that they appeared to have mastered the art of trivial conversation.

It may sound like I'm belittling the concept, but I'm not. Being able to lay an innocent (in tone, at least), semi-engaging, "trivial" rap on women is the Rosetta Stone. All that other stuff doesn't matter. In fact, remembering all that other stuff probably creates anxiety in males, thus causing them to go home alone night after night to make bittersweet video love to Tifa Lockheart from Final Fantasy VII.

Being able to converse easily leads to confidence, no matter how delicious your "target" is. Confidence allows you to come across as a sexual being and not an accountant. Confidence creates chemistry, which increases the chances of you combining with her chemistry and acquiring the soft, moist alloy that's the real-life unobtainium.

Hell, I recommend practicing trivial conversation, practicing it on the family dog, old people, geeks, corpses, whoever, and then progressing upwards, sexually speaking, to female types, first practicing on women who don't make you sweat like you're a member of the prison work crew in Cool Hand Luke.

Once you master that, you'll be ready to kill the lion, fly solo, go on your Walkabout, whatever analogy you prefer to describe your rite of babe passage where you approach a beautiful woman and communicate with her.

Listen, it's the only reason you see all those smarmy, greasy, often goofy-looking guys with good-looking women... well, except that they might have money. Of course, you can see that money hasn't really helped my friends who, because of their inability to carry on trivial conversations, are still making little league plays for major league women.