Action: A Book About Sex (7 page)

You don’t have to “volunteer” quite so overtly, either. As I mentioned, not everyone has that temporal luxury—and maybe you don’t WANT to plant a rain forest on an oil spill! Find your own version of answering to the itchy beliefs you’re inclined to scratch at most persistently by quizzing yourself thusly:
Did I add worth and/or goodness to another person’s life today?
If the answer is yes: You are closer to whole than you would have been otherwise, and more appealing, because there is nothing hotter than a person unafraid of actively executing what they think is true.

Treat life’s quotidian-seeming offerings and tasks like parties, or at least non-annoyances.
This concept is similar to macking on every single piece of your encountered universe. If you dress for errands, greet your commute with a rapacious sense of… if not avidity, at least tolerant acceptance (and hand sanitizer), and clean your room with as close to zeal as you can muster, you triangulate your proficiency in meeting real-McCoy celebrations and social gatherings with ease and grace. Plus, take it from the don himself, the writer David Foster Wallace, whose “This Is Water”
speech-turned-book included this bulletproof aphorism: “If you’ve really learned how to think [… ] it will actually be within your power to experience a crowded, hot, loud, slow, consumer-hell-type situation as not only meaningful, but sacred, on fire with the same force that lit the stars—compassion, love, the subsurface unity of all things.” Imagine meeting a person who comported themselves this way—what could prove their sexiness more convincingly than the assured belief that everything is divine, even if it blows tuna chunks? I have a wonderful bulletin for you: You don’t have to
meet
that person to experience the gratification that comes with translating “consumer hell” into “star-arson” when you can just choose to
be
that person instead. Also, complaining is off-putting unless you’re already in love, in which case you’ve both made a compact that you get to bitch to each other; opt for perceiving annoyances as meaningful/sacred instead whenever you can.

At the risk of sounding like a warm slice of cornbread, I present the final and most crucial of all these sexiness-inducing life rules: LIFE RULES. You don’t have to convey that by trying to morph into some sunny, uncritical goon who is NEVER in a bad mood, 100 percent into their surroundings, or best friends with each and every conscious being they encounter. But you can use whatever pieces of the above strategies to identify, chase after, and highlight the parts of yourself and your life to which you grant the most merit. Prioritize them, and you’re bound to cross bods with plenty of salacious compatriots who find them worth responding to in sexual overtures, too.

From the Inside Out

When you launch yourself into the world you’ve chosen, there’s no need to do so with the first-priority end goal of getting it in with a fellow world-attendee. But there are certainly times when you’ll turn around to find:
There is someone beautiful here.
What will you say to them? Because, look, you
are
going to go up to them. If that seems intimidating: Rejection is the universe’s protection, as a creaky adage goes. Whether or not you’re aggravated by platitudes, this one is accurate—you can court dismissal as doggedly as you do success, because it’s just as good for you… and a little easier to accomplish, hee! If you sidle up to someone with a genteel, well-intentioned manner about you, then it’s their decision as to whether their personality meshes with the truth of what you’re presenting. If it doesn’t, that’s fine, and the only thing you’ve “lost” is the non-opportunity to have sex with someone who doesn’t get you.

On Winking

I find friendly winking totally harmless and equal parts coy and magnetic, and so do the solid handful of people I’ve picked up after
I closed my eye at them suggestively
. (When you break down the facts of this pick-up move: How is it sexy?! I love the world sometimes.) Winking is ridiculous, but at least it’s not meek.

We’re livin’ in a weird zone, more so than ever, when it comes to gauging whether someone wants to hook up or just hang out. Luckily, everyone is trying to squint through the same murky atmosphere to ascertain this. It can be a relief to have someone just tell you what they want. Being amorously point-of-fact reads as daring—even courageous. It distinguishes you as a deliberate and self-assured character, aka the sexiest kind of person.

The main tenet of nonchalantly scamming on cool babes is acting like you know and agree that you are a person others would be stoked to be close to, even if you don’t, in fact, know/agree with that. Per Kurt Vonnegut, “We are what we pretend to be,” and that extends to acting like your face is 10 times hotter than you think it is while maintaining your specific personal charms. Eight times out of ten, if you introduce yourself to a new person, assume some air of great purpose about you, and tell them something honest and enticing in its irregularity (especially if it also happens to be funny), that person will talk to you. If they’re receptive to your flirtatious attempts at conversation, then probably two times out of that eight, minimum, you can kiss them if you want later on. (These are bullshit statistics culled from the field. I am not a numbers guy, but they feel really true?)

You can safely presage action so long as you ask enough questions to allow another person to be up front, which is to say, bizarre—and laugh at their jokes, especially if they’re bad as much as they are sweet. Two of my favorite lines that amorous strangers have chanced my way: “If you were a hamburger at McDonald’s, I would call you McBeautiful”; “I want to make out with you in a kitchen made of fur.” McBeautiful here entertained both prospects, even if the re-fur-idgerator was only theoretical—I just started picturing it, and next thing you know, I was sucking face. It was trancelike; disorienting. If either had chosen to blandly say, instead, “Hello, you’re hot and also sexy, and I like that about you,” I would have been less amenable to their advances, plus creeped out about their odd, forward, and formal choices of language.

Being forthcoming has its merits if you do it right. You have to jazz an introductory statement up a little, but I still believe in making your intentions more or less clear. Liking that someone is
hot and also sexy
is not enough, seduction-wise, as its own sentiment. Bluntness takes some maneuvering, and when you’ve made a pointed effort toward cleverness, it carries the subtext of respect. It demonstrates that you’re allowing room for conversational parrying, which is so often the gateway to
ssseduction
.

When I’m introducing myself to a vulpine stranger, I look them squarely in the face with an expression on my own that says, “DAAANG WITH ALL THAT, YA FOX.” After our initial name-exchange and other hey-how-are-yas, if it’s just the two of us talking and not a big group in front of which this person might feel embarrassed or put on the spot, I let my intended know what I find captivating about them. This can be as general—“I like your hair”—or as specific as you see fit. Be sure to drop your compliment(s) casually and then keep the conversation moving, as though you just emitted some drab remark about the doggone weather, and can now get to the heart of a conversation, having put the necessary small talk behind you. Give them time to say “thank you,” or let them protest, but then say, “Ha! So…,” and then advance with the encounter, having nicely established your motivations here while also having given them room to play along.

Making good conversation hinges on actually having something to say. If you’re digging around in your brain-pockets for some loose change plus a fossilized piece of gum–type thoughts to offer up,
stop
. Do not do what I often do and unspool at the mouth like a pair of windup chattering teeth! “The fact that it’s raining outside today is kind of like this city’s baseball team that I know nothing about in actuality, huh? Heh… h-heh,” is a verbal mess providing no hint as to what’s intriguing about you. Instead, be intrigued by
them
. Taking a vested interest in the hot person at hand won’t be hard, since it’s already
truthfully how you feel
. You’re all about getting to know them, so ask questions like you’re
a paradoxically laconic and laid-back investigative reporter. (“Oh, the big scoop? Yeah, I got it… just a minute.”)

The easiest question in the world: “How was your day?” Even if it’s matched with the easiest answer in the world, the dreaded and static-at-best, untrue-at-worst “good,” you can volley it back without seeming like a voyeur or a try-hard: “Oh, yeah? What’d you do?” If they say, “Oh, I worked/went to school/hung out with some friends,” don’t wilt yet. They’re still talking to you! They’re likely just shy, so don’t take their cue and cover up the nuance of their personality, like,
Ugh, this person is a dullard who is indentured to a thudding, plain-gelatin-flavored life and mind
. That’s harsh, plus false, since no one really is.

I recently met a person from out of town with whom I have a mutual friend, and though I didn’t want to bone him, I make a habit of enjoying this miniature-personal-history-style introduction regardless of from whom I’m extricating it. A few days later, our mutual friend ran into the person I had spoken with, and my pal told me that the latter effused, “Amy Rose was THE BEST!” I couldn’t remember having performed any particularly dazzling feat and am also an occasional ham sandwich, so I asked why he had seen fit to indirectly make my day. “He’s been hanging with all his tightest old friends all week, but you’re the only person who asked him how he was and concentrated on the answer.” I glowed to my furthest corners at hearing this… and wasn’t too sad for that guy, because I’m sure none of his long-standing friends meant to slight him, plus, he
did
get asked by somebody in the end! It was cheering to have been that person.

There are all kinds of variants on this informal model for demonstrating sincere curiosity about a person, too. I’m reluctant to link attraction and career work, because that assigns sexual value to something that can be pretty mechanical and/or bureaucratic, but if you’re not as precious about this, another version of the aforementioned question is, “What are you working on lately?” You can—and should—specify that you don’t necessarily mean
within a profession
: I do this by leading, “Man, it’s so nice to be
out of the house tonight—I’ve been so focused on this one heroic couplet [insert your own less revolting priorities here!].” Then fire off the above question, having left room that can be filled by your interest’s non-vocational pursuits. Also useful: “How do you know the host?” “Are you familiar with this band/artist/whatever?” “How did you get involved with [whatever you’re both doing]?” As long as your prompt cannot be successfully met with the word “yes” or “no,” you’re doing a valiant job at this.

Kid around about a person’s answers whenever you can—being funny or at least playful works muscularly in the favor of getting you laid—but most important is taking in what a person is saying to you in response instead of inwardly composing the witticisms you’re about to lob back. What is even the point of talking to others if you’re just concerned about what comes out of you next? Conversation should be allowed to race along directionlessly, and that’s unlikely to happen if anybody’s overthinking it. Stick to general questions with personalized answers, then ditch the script. Act under the thought that you
do
want to hear what the person has to say, without expectation. And mean it, as much for your sake as for theirs! They might, after all, say something that changes your mind about their boneability. But let’s continue as though this is a negligible potential outcome. (If it is: Treat yourself with the same regard, affection, and attention you would someone else, and respect your feelings—just because you established this flirtation-station doesn’t mean you have to see it through.)

After you charm in your singular, polite way, disappear for a moment. Dip to the bar, bathroom, or another conversation to allow your intentioned brain/body-latcher the pleasure of seeking you. You know how when you have a crush, it’s your captor? When you like or want to get with somebody, you feel this churning happy bereft desperation: THAT PERSON EXISTS, AND I NEED THEM NEAR ME SO I CAN AFFIX MYSELF TO THEM EITHER PHYSICALLY OR BY LATCHING BRAINS. That feeling is what life is for. At its core, it’s
ambition
, which is
borne of a
lack
of something—or someone. Let the other person cultivate the insistent
lack
of your knowing each other, whether the capacity in which that’ll be is to be “casual” (read: orgasm-related) or more sustained, in tandem with you.

Okay! Let’s say all’s swell, you’ve hung out and established a mutual attraction, and are now hoping to abscond to the bone zone (wherever that may be for you—your place, theirs, the backseat of someone’s Buick, etc.). When you feel the time is right, phrase your proposal by framing it as an offer of a different breed—saying “Let’s go home and fuck”
can
work (and has for me before), but much like tempering your initial approach with a bit of discretion, you’d do better to posit the idea that you should share a trip to your next immediate locale (read: BONE-A-ZONA) for a more innocuous purpose. None of these propositions, if accepted, guarantee sex (because not-nothin’ does that besides verbalized consent), but the honey in question is likely intelligent enough to pick up the subtext of what these suggestions mean. Depending on what you’ve been up to, say, “Do you want to go listen to records/have a glass of wine/make some coffee/smoke a joint at [X SEX LOCALE]?” See what unfolds from there.