T - the Pick Up Artist

Are you sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin. 


Firstly, and very importantly, have you ever heard of this guy?

His name is Erik von Markovik, but he’s better known by his professional name – ‘Mystery’. Mystery is what’s known in the ‘seduction community’ (yes, such a thing apparently does exist) as a professional pick up artist. 

He has his own show on VH1 called The Pick Up Artist, and despite looking like the slightly consumptive lovechild of Richard O’Brien and early Jamiroquai, he’s apparently something of an expert when it comes to picking up ladies. Not engaging with them as human beings with a view to treating them decently and maybe forming a meaningful relationship with them – just picking them up. That is Mystery.

(this is all relevant, I promise)

A few months ago, I went a house party. There, two events took place (well, rather a lot of events took place, and a good number of them involved erections and a trampoline, but I digress).

Event One: I had rather a decent amount of wine. 

Event Two: I met T. 

T is a friend of a friend, although we’d never met before. Thanks to Event One, I can’t really remember the finer details, but I’m reliably assured that T spent quite a lot of the evening pursuing me, and the two of us seemed to spend the entire evening together, chatting, flirting, and generally getting along famously. Which would explain one of my clearer memories from the evening – a long, slow, soft, gorgeous kiss in the kitchen.

This basically set the tone for the rest of the evening – a lot more kissing and quite a bit of rolling around and visible male sexual excitement on a trampoline (out of view of the other guests, I must point out). At the end of the night, he walked me to my train, there was a lot more kissing, a lot of laughing and smiling, and some teenage-style wandering of hands, and generally, all in all, it had been a good night.

A few weeks later, after a little Facebook flirting, we went on a date. Which I shan’t harp on about, because subsequent events and discoveries have basically rendered the entire evening null and void, but suffice it to say, on the night at least, it was basically as perfect a first date as you could ask for. Conversation flowed all night, we got on amazingly, laughed a lot, had unabashedly geeky conversations, high-fived (don’t ask), made plans to meet again, and shared a number of utterly spine-tingling kisses in the incomparably twinkly setting of South Bank at night.

There then followed weeks which turned into months, of texts, promises (from him) that he wanted to see me as soon as it had all calmed down for him at work, but after two months (Yes. Embarrassingly, it did take me that long), I was sick of waiting for him, and sick of the sporadic contact, so I deleted his number and chalked it up to experience.

Then, by means which shall remain anonymous, I found something. Something which was quite an eye opener. Something which made my jaw drop, made my eyes bug out, and made my workmates endure the sound of my incredulous, hysterical laughter for an inhuman amount of time. And alas, due to the means it came to my attention, something which is pretty much inadmissible as a means of revenge or humiliation. Which is a shame, because this particular something is pure comedy gold. 

Because what I found was this - a comment T left on the VH1 website, on an article called ‘Ask Mystery Anything’.

Oh where, where, where to start?

‘Dude’? 

Always a natural word to trip off the tongue of a white middle class nerd from the suburbs, with a background in IT.

‘More exciting women in my life’

Charming. So glad I could join the queue.

‘Cowboy hat’

Really? I mean really? Are you actually trying to get the shit kicked out of you? Don't get me wrong, I'll gladly arrange it if that's what you desire...

The ‘alter ego’

Now, at first glance, this just looked plain weird and quite sad, but then I actually did some research into this whole ‘pick up’ scene thing, which confirmed that it is indeed very very weird, and truly truly sad. Basically, there are a staggering number of forums and chat rooms out there, where would-be pick up artists discuss their various conquests, in tales known as ‘field reports’. They do this by posting under an assumed name of their choosing – hence the alter ego. 

So….yeah. That would be my first post-relationship experience with dating. What a way to start.

Thing is though, supposedly following Mystery’s teachings is meant to make you devastatingly attractive and desirable to any woman. I’m not sure which piece of his advice is supposed to result in five women (me, my flatmate J, and my friends D, G, and H) one of whom previously thought quite a lot of you, four of whom are total strangers to you, discussing what a complete and utter freak you are.

When I told my best guy friend, also K, about this whole sorry situation, he asked me (after turning the air every colour between  turquoise and indigo): ‘But aren’t you furious?’

In a way, yes, but mostly with myself for falling for T’s mind games, and not having the smarts to give up on him quicker than I did. But as for him…I actually just feel sorry for him. Whatever strategies and mind games he pulled out of the bag on our date, I can honestly say that I went out there, and was myself. I was comfortable enough to be completely genuine and put myself honestly and openly out there.

Now if he didn’t like what he saw, fair enough. That’s dating – it happens, and I expect it to happen a lot more. But at least, unlike him, I feel secure enough in myself to meet and engage with people on my own merit – instead of being so devoid of confidence and personality that I have to resort to manipulating people into liking a sad, pathetic, peacocking façade of what I wish I was like.

But mostly? I’m just shaking my head and laughing. Evilly and vindictively.