one way ticket to loserville

Tonight I had to stay to work an author reading/signing for Neil Strauss, the fellow who wrote The Game and who now has a new book called Rules of the Game. When The Game came out Balgavy loaned it to me and while I found it funny and entertaining, I couldn't imagine who would actually take this kind of crap to heart. I mean, this guy spawned Mystery. yecchh. Basically it's all about being totally sleazy and disingenuous to get women into bed. In some ways, the author would disagree with this, but that is how a lot of what he proposes has been skewed. I could only imagine that this event was going to bring in slimeballs, jerks and dorky guys trying to learn the techniques. And guess what? That's exactly who showed up.

It was a big event for our store; probably 300-350 people. And being one of the 10 women there, I was forced to indulge these losers all night. "Can you please take 2 steps back? Seriously, back off. " All. Night. Long.

But it was all worth it when it came to the signing part of the night. I got the awesome job of going the length of the line and asking people if they'd like the author to personalize their book inscription and I then write on a post-it with a sharpie so the author doesn't have to fuss with spelling and the post it spells it all out for him. Easy enough. The beauty is that in The Game, he recommended that each man create his own PUA (Pick Up Artist) nickname ala Mystery. So as I'm asking these guys to whom their book will be inscribed, I'm barely holding it together. A sample:

Guy1: Steve aka Ironman
Guy2: John aka Ramrod
Guy3: George aka Aries
Guy4: Sean aka Sex Machine

But this was the best:
Guy5:"First word M-U-F-F, second word D-Y-V-E-R, third word D-A-N. Pretty funny, right?"
Me:"Uh huh."

So as I am back up at the table where the author is I am telling our Event Coordinator, a middle aged British woman, that Muff Dyver Dan is coming up on the right. When he gets up to the table, she takes the post it, puts it on his book and says in the most upper class English accent, "Muff Dyver Dan, pleased to meet you."
It was brilliant.