I appreciate your taking the time to respond to my story at such length, so please don't think this is combative. I'm just trying to get you to understand where I'm coming from.

You sound like many people I met in college. Classic law-school type, entirely goal-oriented. You visualize everything in terms of power relations. You view the sort of analysis that we're engaging here as mainly a tool to be used for your own advantage in 'the game' - you have no patience for idle philosophical speculation or idealism. You are also dismissive of feminism or attempts to move beyond traditional gender roles; rather, you've formed a game plan based around the existing dynamics that has worked for you, and thus you have no problem with them. That's fine.

But for some of us nothing could be more abhorrent than approaching interaction with women the way you or that Mystery guy do - as a game to be manipulated and won. Your comment about Blake was perceptive - I've never been able to let go of the Romantic impulse either, which I suppose does mean I'm a childish idealist. I simply cannot accept the dictum of "men are like this, women are like that, so here's how to play the game and get ahead". I fully realize that as it stands, it may be true in most cases and that the guys with the frat guy mentality do have infinitely more success. If I took your advice, perhaps I would too. But none of that means that my ideal - honest, sincere communication in which each person is interested in the other as a complete human being rather than as someone who is able to play the bullshit game of ingrained social expectations - is wrong. It simply means the world has yet to catch up.

You can keep the girls who are impressed by the relative size of a beer can in your hand and the ones who don't want to discuss Thoreau. I'll keep looking, even if it means I'm destined to fail.

I'm not sure why you're so hung up on Oprah and Dr. Phil. You do realize there are other cultural sources out there, right? My personal gospel comes from Dostoyevsky, but if you wanna go down the low road, you sound like someone who worships at the altar of Mystery the Pick-up Artist and The Seven Habits of Highly Successful Assholes.

Once again, I do understand. It's just what your advice is meant to achieve is not what I want.

P.S. There are also those who would consider bragging about how many dates you have in order to win an argument on an Internet messageboard pretty pathetic and perhaps even indicative of the fact that you've built up this whole womanizing thing to mask some deeper insecurity, but I'm not gonna get all Dr. Phil on you.

I had a longer post, but it got eaten. So I'll just say this: it is possible just to have good taste and a functioning brain, and if someone doesn't like self-help books or Shania Twain, it's not necessarily because they're 'elitist'. I've flipped through self-help books when I'm bored at my mom's house. They are tripe, and they say absolutely nothing that wasn't already self-evident. And if you purchase and enjoy them, that does say something about the kind of person you are, like it or not.

I see the trite cries of "why do we need lists on the internet when we can take the time to get to know each other?" Yea, maybe we can write each other hand-written letters too. God, are all Salon readers aging hippies?