The Game

Okay ladies.  This is not for the faint of heart, as I am slowly learning. 

I mentioned "The Game" in my last post.  The Game is a book written by Neil Strauss that details a secret society of men known as the seduction community.  It describes artfully how to pick up women anywhere, anyhow with various not-so-nice-guy tactics.  There was a New York Times article by the author:

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/25/style/he-aims-he-shoots-yes.html?pagewanted=1

See anything of Three Downs Guy in here?

Yesterday, I perused the catalog of my local big city library to find a copy of the book.  Shockingly, there wasn't a single copy available in my entire huge Eastern Time Zone city for check out, and there were multiple holds.  However, I did find a copy of Rules of the Game by the same author which was surprisingly at my neighborhood library.  So, I headed over there, feeling like I was on some kind of quest.  I looked under the call numbers...no book.  The library was pretty small, and I searched it up and down.  The librarian assisted me in my quest.  No book.  We spent half an hour looking.  Amazing how it said it was available, but was nowhere to be found.  No metaphor for dating life there.

However, I was able to get a copy of the original The Game from the (female!) S.O. of a friend.  Now, it sits on my bedside table, and I have to say, I'm a bit nervous to open it.

I was discussing this little journey with my guy friends (a.k.a. The Brain Trust) over coffee yesterday morning.  In an interesting twist, some of them wanted me to read it and some of them didn't.  I almost felt like they were fighting for my soul.

In the "pro" argument, The Brain Trust felt that reading the book would be empowering and I could be privy to the not-so-good-guy tactics used by not-so-honest men to pick me up.  In the "con" argument, The Brain Trust felt that good guys who need help with approaching women would be blocked too.  So, this all comes to a sensitivity and specificity question.  Do I read the book and use the knowledge to block all men who try it on me, with the knowledge that I might lose the opportunity to meet a few good guys in the process, or do I just let it all play out knowing that I could get hurt by a bad guy?

Unfortunately or fortunately, I can't resist the apple of knowledge that is sitting on my bedside table.  Here goes...with a heightened sense of trepidation.