I found out that one of these guys, named Mystery, is doing his first workshop. A workshop is he meets you out in quote, “The Field.” In a club, or a bar, and he shows you how to approach women, then has you do it.
It was six hundred dollars. I put the money in an envelope, terrified to meet this guy, and terrified that anyone would find out I work for The New York Times. Then I remember we were at the Standard Hotel. It was the cool place then, the bar there. Scott Baio was there, with this beautiful woman. Mystery walked in, started doing magic tricks, and next thing I know, Scott Baio turns to me and goes, “Is this a magic trick, or is he stealing my girlfriend?”
“Whoa, this is amazing, this guy can walk the walk.” Just anyone who could talk to a woman is my hero, and this guy’s walking in, stealing a celebrity’s girlfriend. I’m like, that was it, I was done. Cocaine did nothing for me, but watching Mystery do this thing was my coke. My reality was blown.
Then I just tried to start to hang around him as much as I could. Eventually he’s like, “I need a wingman for my workshop.” I’m like, “I want to do that, just to learn what you’re doing.”
Marc
Is he an attractive guy, this guy?
Neil
It depends on how you see him. He’s tall, he’s like six feet tall, but it’s funny that we go to looks. I don’t think it has anything to do with looks.
Marc
Would you classify him as a guy who was once like you?
Neil
He’s super nerdy, if he’s not going out and putting on a whole show, it’s like long, greasy hair in a ponytail, computer nerd guy. But then he’d go out, and really dress up, and act tall and confident, and become that other guy. That was an illusion.
It’s embarrassing. My biggest opportunity in life was not when The New York Times called me and said, “Will you write for us?” It was when Mystery asked me to be his wingman. Obviously it spoke to some deep need inside me to finally really get acceptance.
Marc
There’s nothing like getting sex. It’s exciting, and it means a lot.
Neil
Yes, thank you for validating that. Then we started traveling around the world doing workshops, and eventually I started to get good at it. I found all the other guys who I read about in that community, and befriended them all, and learned their different tips and tricks.
The surreal thing that happened was about maybe two years into it, they did a survey in this weird world of pickup artists, of the top pickup artist. I was number one, and Mystery was number two. The student had surpassed the master.
I would decide each night, “Am I going to call someone over, or go out with someone I’ve met, or am I going to go out and meet new people?”
It was weird, it was like a skill set you would work on. It wasn’t enough to have sex, it was like, “How can I turn getting a threesome into a science?” We’d work through all this stuff, and at this point, we’re all living together in a house too. I had done an article for Rolling Stone about Courtney Love, and she moved into the house. We had a house with maybe six pickup artists and Courtney Love.
These guys would be in the living room, doing the pickup workshop, and Courtney Love would come careening through, topless. For some guys, that was their first sight of a female breast.
Some were guys who were really good-looking, cool guys, but they didn’t know it inside, they didn’t have that esteem. Other guys were over as exchange students from somewhere else, and just felt out of place in the culture. A lot of guys like that.
In retrospect, I realize what the Game was. The Game was having an overbearing, dominant, neurotic mom, having a total fear of women, and feeling like you need to have some power, or control, over the situation. It had nothing even to do with sex, it was just about self-esteem and fear.
If you’re just having sex, it’s pleasurable, and it’s nice, and it feels good, and you enjoy people, that’s great. If you’re doing it to fill some hole, that’s the addiction.
I was really cynical about the whole rehab, sex addiction thing. When I checked in, they said, “Anyone who masturbates is a sex addict, anyone who watches porn is a sex addict.” There are some groups, not this one, that say anyone who has premarital sex is a sex addict. Basically everyone listening would be a sex addict by someone’s definition.
If you already have that compulsion, it’s really easy to dive into it.
Marc
Yeah, I track my entire perception of sex to seeing porn too young. It fucking hobbled me, man.
Neil
What did you see that did that?
Marc
When I was fourteen, we found a Betamax of Deep Throat and The Opening of Misty Beethoven. Then when I was fifteen, we actually had fake IDs and went to porn theaters, but the assumption at that age, especially for a socially awkward, sexually awkward kid was that’s the way it’s done. Anything below that, or that doesn’t happen that way, is not good sex. I was fucked from the get-go.
Neil
Yeah, that’s called your attraction template. It sets a template in your mind for what sex is supposed to be. Your first experience molds you, it creates those neuro-connections that don’t exist.
NICK GRIFFIN
I feel the same way about sex as I do about stand-up at this point. I only feel like in the last five years that I’ve really gotten the hang. I had sex and I did it right and it was all fine and sex with my wife was good, but I think I just started to relax in the last five years.
AMY POEHLER—COMEDIAN, WRITER, PRODUCER, ACTOR
It’s very interesting when you’re no longer being sexualized what happens. When you’re pregnant, men act really weird. Some of them act really into you and interested in you. A lot of guys, really they don’t even want to make eye contact with you. It’s very strange.
JONATHAN AMES
I feel sexuality for me has been, as an easy phrase, acting out. But acting out pain and trying to re-create psychodynamics usually of humiliation to get to a place of profound self-loathing. But sometimes, though, there is a great comfort in the humiliation because now I’m at the place that I want to be.
I was reading some book on people with sexual problems and I only read the introduction. I tend to only enjoy genre fiction, so once I pick up nonfiction, I peter out after the intros.