Self-help for lonely Saturday nights

By the time you read this, I’ll be twenty-one years old and girlfriendless.

Yes, I realize that not many Muse readers have fluorescent tattoos on their foreheads saying, ‘Yes Arafat, I Care!’ But you know, this is my article, and it’s my prerogative to indulge in some self-pity before I get down to the serious business of book reviewing.

It’s not like I haven’t asked girls out innumerable are the women who have been asked, ‘Hi, will you be my girlfriend?’ (Or rather, if we must stick to facts, one. But O the pain bunky, and the chords in the human heart!) But I can’t, for the life of me, find the Dark Lady who’d say, ‘I want to taste your pain all right, big boy!’

And when I do find such a lady, she always ends up asking for my credit card number before letting me go on to Page 2.

But enough rambling. I’m sure I speak for most of the male BU community when I say that we want to meet women and have sex with them. Unfortunately, however, most of us aren’t rich, good-looking or famous, and the ineffable bounty does not flock to us.

That got me thinking wouldn’t it be really cool if someone wrote a book helping us out? Turns out, they did.

It’s called Make Every Girl Want You: How to Have Sex with Hot Girls (Without Even Dating Them!) by two men of the world, Messrs. John Fate and Steve Reil. They’re over-bored, self-assured and oh, no, the dirty words ‘SEX’ and ‘HOT’ are in red capital letters. And if the image of slithering black panties sliding down some obviously ‘HOT’ woman’s calves (making it obvious that she’s about to have ‘SEX’) doesn’t get you to buy the book, well, maybe you’ve taken one cold shower too many.

Fate and Reil’s basic points are: a) 10 percent of men get 90 percent of women, and they are (as I mentioned) rich, good-looking and/or famous. b) The rest of us can meet women and have casual sex with them as well, if we abide by the rules of CCR. c) CCR stands for Compliments, Compassion, and Reassurance.

All this this is explained in elaborate detail, but here’s a summary of what the writers say (in their own words): ‘By sincerely complimenting women, showing them compassion, and reassuring them that things will be ok in times of need, you provide women with the emotional support that they so badly desire. This makes women want to be around you. When combined with a positive, confident attitude; patience and relinquishing desire; and infrastructure, women don’t just want to be around you, they WANT you.’

The writers are quick to point out, however, that living la vida CCR has its disadvantages too. As so lucidly explained in Chapter 11, these drawbacks include lack of sleep. Apparently, being a Man of CCR means that you are the person hot girls call when they want some sexin’ in the middle of the week. The down side to this is the fact that if you’re having sex all night long, whose going to stay awake in your divisional studies lecture? You’ll also have less privacy.

Since you, bunky, are now Cyril Well beloved, you’re going to be in constant demand.

Hero-worshipping guys will keep on asking you which hot girl you’re sleeping with, girls will want to know, in the authors’ words, what ‘fun event you’ve got planned for this weekend’, and well, life will be a nuisance with all this love thrown at you like so much dishwater.

There will be demands on your time and you’ll also have to put up with constant invitations to all kinds of parties, bar mitzvahs and threesomes with Swedish gymnasts. As our CCR-practicing friends Fate and Reil say, ‘Other people will make their decisions about what parties to attend based on whether or not you are going.’ Well, I’ve had that going for me for quite awhile, although not in the way these guys mean.

According to Jetsetter John and Salacious Steve, ‘Your birthday will be like a national holiday. Everyone will want to throw you a party. Everyone will want to take you out to lunch and dinner and buy you gifts.’ Being a celebrity: Everybody will know your name, face, and the flower of your reputation- without your necessarily knowing them.

Better get used to people coming up to you and introducing themselves, bunky! I hear it can get quite grating on the nerves.

As a man of CCR, you’ll be having so much sex that others of the male species of the inferior non-CCR order, will be constantly pestering you for trade secrets and advice (And of course the names of the girls who are the recipients of your kind attentions at the moment.)

In short, practicing CCR means that you’ll be living David Lee Roth’s life, except without the leopard-skin tights (although that’s a matter of personal taste.)

There’s always the off chance that some incredulous misanthrope might read the book with a grain of ungrateful salt (made from sour grapes no doubt) and accuse the writers of talking through their hats.

The founders of the CCR method, anticipating such jealousy and acrimony, have peppered their narrative with tales of men who have practiced CCR and the beautiful maidens who have surrendered their charms to these caring, complimenting and reassuring gents. There are an astounding eleven stories in Chapter 3 alone. Granted, most of these accounts sound like badly written porno movie plots, but hey, if John Fate and Steve Reil, the Men of CCR, vouch for the truth of these admittedly tallish tales, it’s good enough for me.

So I find myself thinking wishfully that ‘my’ life were like this, with all my hot girl friends wanting to do ‘the Dick Butkus thing’ with me. The thing is, though, all my hot female friends, unlike Kathy, Denise, Heather, Claudia, Sherrie, and Autumn etc, have different personalities. They’re individuals. The girls discussed in this book, however, have two common qualities- they’re hot as hell, and they’re not very smart. And I realize that any book written by guys for guys, especially a book on ‘How to Have Sex with Hot Girls’ (with ‘SEX’ and ‘HOT’ in red capital letters) necessarily involves a certain amount of us-and-themming as well as an unavoidable degree of chauvinism.

After all, we’re learning the dirty secrets on how we can make our own dirty secrets, right?

Even so, the narrative presumption on the part of Messrs. Fate and Reil is just amazing. My mind started boggling when I read this book two weeks ago, and it hasn’t stopped boggling yet.

As men of CCR, they claim to have the female psyche down pat. They play it like a stringed instrument, they treat girls like they’re the queens of the world, and, as the rules of CCR stipulate, honestly enjoy being nice to them. And yet the book is full of reassurances like ‘It’s actually kind of fun to call a female friend up just to chat.’ (This assertion is supported by the story of Matt, or Jake, who called up a female just to chat and ended up in bed with her. Men of CCR have it even better than pizza delivery boys!)

But you know, I’ll have the CCR confidence going for me, with sixty three women (in different stages of CCR relationships) all over me and men asking me about my secrets. And I’ll just smile and wink and the night will be mine to conquer.

Doing that CCR thing you do will work wonders. There’s a caveat though CCR is effective only if you’re in a world where John Fate and Steve Reil’s axioms about the Nature of Women hold true. A place where they’re emotional, irrational, and would have sex with the first person that vaguely treats them as if they were somewhat human.