Cock and Awe

Picking up a woman, says Trix, is not a matter of luck, but a skill he's spent years polishing. "I'm a perfectionist," he boasts.

Other guys might obsess over video games or fantasy baseball. Not Trix. He's busy padding stats. Ladies of St. Louis: consider yourselves warned. Unless, of course, you are looking to hop in the sack with a perfect stranger, and Trix fervently believes you are, even if you're married or otherwise attached.

"Girls like sex as much as guys," he says. "They just like to pretend they don't. When I'd meet a married woman, I would say, 'Hi, I'm Mr. Discreet.'"

Trix decided to become a pickup artist five years ago. "My girlfriend of two years cheated on me," he explains. "It broke my heart. I became very depressed." Operating on the age-old principle that the best way to get over one woman is to "bang ten others," he turned for guidance to the source of all knowledge: the Internet.

These days, anybody can read up on pickup techniques in books like Rules of the Game or watch them on YouTube or the VH1 show The Pick-up Artist. When Trix began his mating games, the pickup community was still safely sequestered on a few Web sites, most notably Fast Seduction 101, an extensive clearinghouse of pickup lore.

To be a pickup artist is to speak in acronyms and code. Fortunately, Fast Seduction links to a fifteen-page glossary of terms. An AFC, one learns, is an average frustrated chump. A PUA is a pickup artist. SHB is a super hot babe, as opposed to FUG, a fucking ugly girl.

The Fast Seduction forums are full of field and lay reports and big-brotherly advice on how to get over "approach anxiety" and "close" with a woman — meaning anything from getting her phone number to getting into her pants. PUAs seldom work alone. It is considered essential to have a good wingman for support when you go out "sarging," or looking for pickups. (The term originated not with the military, but with Sargy, pickup guru Ross Jeffries' pet cat.)

It was the guys in the forums who got Trix to stop tallying his sexual prey. "They said I was seeking validation," he says.

The life of a PUA, though, isn't all about sex, partying and peacocking (another pickup expression that means wearing silly hats and feather boas to attract attention in bars and clubs). The community has its — dare we say — intellectual side. Pickup literature is full of theories gleaned from social anthropology about how to become the alpha male, to be pursued by women — not the pursuer.

"It's based on survival of the fittest," says Cougar Hunter (his made-up name), a Washington University student. "Life is about surviving and replicating your genes."

Fellow Wash. U. student, Ikon, a 23-year-old math major, takes a break from a game of darts with Cougar Hunter (his made-up name) to talk about his transformation into a pickup artist. "A year ago," Ikon confides, "I was a nerdy math guy. I had poor social skills. I thought, 'If I get really good at math, I will attract women.'"

Cougar Hunter snorts in disbelief. "You actually believed that?"

"It wasn't conscious," Ikon protests. "But I asked myself, 'Why am I so competitive?' I realized it was to get women." And so he decided to try a more direct strategy. He discarded his glasses and spruced up his wardrobe. "When I started sarging," he says, "people would guess I studied engineering. Now they don't even suspect I'm a Wash. U. student."

But dressing well can only get you so far. It is a truth generally accepted among pickup artists that, given a choice, women will pick the confident man over the one who is merely good-looking. A well-trained PUA would never break dance in a club to attract a woman, as one contestant did on The Pick-up Artist.

"It tells people that you're trying to impress them," Ikon explains. "It tells the girl she's the prize. That lowers your value. You want to be the prize. Girls are turned off by guys who are trying too hard to impress them."

That is why a pickup artist will never buy a woman a drink. Ever.

Attention ladies: Here's how to tell you're in the presence of a novice pickup artist:

He will approach you and your friends, suddenly, as if shoved in your direction. (And perhaps he was, by his wingman.)

He will say, "I can only stay a minute, but can I get your opinion on something?"

His pockets will bulge with breath mints and condoms in case he closes.

He will ask if you floss before you brush, or if you think his friend should go on Jerry Springer to meet a secret admirer.

He will address his opening remarks to your friend so you will feel compelled to compete for his attention.

He will pretend he has something important to tell you, in order to get you alone.

He will try to read your mind or, if you are especially lucky, your tarot cards. (The pickup community refers to this sort of pseudo-spirituality as "chick crack.")

He will have memorized all his lines in advance from a cheat sheet he carries in his back pocket.

This is the textbook pickup, and it is regarded with scorn by any PUA with more than one night's experience in the field. "I hate the pickup community," Cougar Hunter grumbles. "It's insane crap. It puts the rest of us in a bad light. For a normal guy, it's just self-improvement relating to how to act with girls."

"The mainstream caters to the nerdy type who has to have everything broken down in a nerd-like fashion," says the Real Assanova, a blogger in Columbus, Ohio, who sarges across the Midwest. "When you're yourself, you have a better chance. Women admire confidence. Just say what's on your mind. Why even bother with 'Let me get your opinion on this'?"

The experienced pickup artist has created his own variation on the basic routine that better suits his personality and that savvier targets may not have already seen on VH1. He aims to distinguish himself. He won't ask you inane questions, like where you're from or if you come here often. He's above all that. He also knows it doesn't pay to be too free with compliments.

"From the time a girl is sixteen or seventeen and starts going to parties, she's always hit on and pursued," Cougar Hunter explains. "She starts noticing that guys do the same things. They say, 'You're so cute' and buy her a drink."

"By the time she's 23," Ikon adds, "that's seven years, and even if she only goes out twice a week, she'll have heard it 3,050 times."

Instead of commenting on your pretty eyes, a pickup artist will make a shrewd observation about your personality. "If you convey positive things, people tend to agree," says Monty, a 31-year-old manager at an engineering company in Fairview Heights. "I say very general things. When someone is cold, I'll say, 'I'll bet people think you're cold, but it just takes time for you to warm up.' That's true about every single person in the world.

"The 'game' is about having canned openers," Monty continues. "I don't believe in being untruthful. I don't read something out of a book and spit it back to a woman. Women are highly intuitive. If you lie, you're going to get caught."

Some of Monty's openers stem from genuine questions. "I was hanging out with this girl," he remembers. "We had a good conversation and she offered me her phone number. Then she said, 'I kind of have a boyfriend.' What does that even mean?"