

Other tricks: Intrigue a beautiful woman by pretending to be unaffected by her charm also, never hit on a woman right away. He employs the "three-second rule"-always approach a woman within three seconds of first seeing her in order to avoid getting shy. His technique sounds like a car salesman's tip sheet: his main rule is FMAC-find, meet, attract, close. But by using high-powered marketing techniques he's turned seduction into an effortless craft-even inventing his own vocabulary. He is not much to look at: a cross between a vampire and a computer geek.

Mystery is an aspiring Toronto magician who charges $2,250 for a weekend pickup workshop. He spent two years bedding some fine chiquitas and studying with some of the North America's most suave gents-including the best of them all, the God of the pickup "community," a man named Mystery. He felt like "half a man." That is, until a book editor asked him to investigate the community of pickup artists. Strauss was a self-described chick repellant-complete with large, bumpy nose, small, beady eyes, glasses, balding head, and, worst of all, painful shyness around women. Are you just another AFC ("average frustrated chump") trying to meet an HB ("hot babe")? How would you like to "full-close" with a Penthouse Pet of the Year? The answers, my friend, are in Neil Strauss's entertaining book The Game.
