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Monday, August 6, 2007 12:00 AM

The artful seducer

Erik Von Markovik, aka the pickup master "Mystery," chats about the "Venusian Arts," sexual psychology and why he can help 40-year-old virgins everywhere get laid.

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  • Monday, August 6, 2007 01:57 PM

    one cheerleader/beefcake for now, and a companion for the road

    I know a guy who does exactly this and it works like a charm. He's usually more self-parodic than straight-up obnoxious, but all kinds of lines get blurred and he charms intelligent feminist women with outrageous sexed up behavior.

    It's foolishly reductive to say we're only instincts, but naive to pretend new age enlightenment blots out millions of years of desire for strength, comfidence, or a body well-suited for birthing.

    One woman, I noticed, took to task a "nice guy" who lamented that the women he was interested in always went after "jerks." Maybe, she suggested, he should've screwed up his courage and made a move. But--if we're all just human beings here--why must the man (a "real" man) make the first move?

    Generally speaking, it's true that women are attracted to money and power and men to youth and boobs. It's also true, of course, that we're all attracted to individual human beings for their unique personalities...

    Maybe the task for us as people is to acknowledge and try to understand the forces that drive us, then try to reconcile them with our higher aspirations.

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