The Observer's Irina Aleksander identifies the man-type thusly:

Often the creative type, he projects a deceptive vulnerability, while maintaining an appealing confidence. He’s usually not the best-looking guy in the room, but he is the smartest; he turns these traits to his advantage, playing up the contrast with the typical hot guy or womanizer (physical inferiority, emotional evolvement). His courtship begins with a rushed sense of intimacy and, yet, a disarming lack of forward physical advances; a first date might involve a game of Scrabble or perhaps a cup of tea; his target usually leaves wondering if in fact it was a date at all. And yet the story always has the same ending—he grows distant, stops calling and eventually disappears with little explanation, if any.

As distinct from a self-absorbed emo guy, or what Jessica has termed "the wimpster," l'Homme Fatal manufactures a semblance of emotion as part of his romantic shtick. He's less sleazy than a Gamester, but his M.O. is just as direct. Aleksander identifies several real-life examples of the type: serial womanizers like Ryan Adams, Justin Long, Josh Hartnett and the Gossip Girl character Aaron Rose, all of whom seem to project a wounded humility while surrounded by a suspiciously omnipresent harem of gorgeous women. However, while a scourge on the land, this type is not necessarily villainous: most of those quoted in the article are ready to ascribe the type's antics to immaturity. Says one victim,

“He’s not a bad dude, but he just doesn’t know how not to have this over-the-top magical romance which eventually leaves girls completely broken. He’s like a love monster...I think this type of guy is more dangerous than the typical one-night-stander because there is so much more emotion and attachment involved that is ultimately more destructive.”

Of course, such a type couldn't exist if women didn't respond to it, nor is it necessarily new. Woody Allen, after all, built a career as an unlikely womanizer on the sensitive underdog persona. It's been a while now since the guy who doesn't get the girl has morphed into the hero, but "sensitive" is still equal to "harmless" in the popular imagination. The archetype used to be "secretly-sensitive asshole"; now it's "nice guy with the heart of a jerk." Although we're surrounded by the type, we're still not, on some level, prepared for it. And because this guy is as interested in an emotional conquest as a physical one, we're not trained to fend him off. Perhaps as sexual conquest has become less taboo, a certain kind of man feels the need for another kind of challenge.

In my experience, men of this stripe have a hard time with straightforward platonic friendship with the opposite sex: while they might maintain such a relationship, they insist on introducing an often-flattering, sometimes baffling element of romantic tension into everything, either because they crave drama or need to feel wanted. And when these guys talk about their relationships, they never rule out a hint of conflict, of torture, of uncertainty -they are just that sensitive! Or that immature.

Says one "recovering H.F.," “The empathy is there, but people who do the most harm are people who don’t know what they want, and Hommes Fatales don’t know what they want.” Luckily, we do!

Beware L'Homme Fatale! [Observer]
Related: Manic Pixie Dream Girls Are The Scourge Of Modern Cinema

MEGAN: Oh, hey, so, apparently we all agree that Obama hasn't screwed anything up yet on his trip. And I think Obama knows where to recruit door-knockers for Florida, if only because I think the sight of a bunch of Palestinians knocking on doors saying "Ma'am, believe me, we know, Barack Obama isn't going to change the United States' policies on Israel one iota."
MOE: I DRANK SO MUCH LAST NIGHT actually I didn't I just drank enough. Surprising fact: I did not drink on Saturday or Sunday night at all. Not one drop! When that happens it throws my system out of whack you know.
MEGAN: I know, it's like, the sun is less bright on those days. I started buying beer, actually, because it was so hot and to get into shape for Germany but I can't consume enough of it all in one sitting to get drunk, it's a little sad still.
MOE: Oh look David Brooks is talking about debtor nation again huh cool.
MEGAN: In honor of your hangover, I recommend reading this analysis of how, by not publishing McCain's OpEd on Obama and the surge, the New York Times MOE: Holy itshay is that you Bobo??

This third position begins with the notion that people are driven by the desire to earn the respect of their fellows. Individuals don’t build their lives from scratch. They absorb the patterns and norms of the world around them.

Yeah regarding McCain, he wouldn't have looked like an idiot I don't think because who reads op-eds "written" by really important people? (Exception that proves the rule being Angelina of course.)
MEGAN: Dammit, I hate agreeing with Brooks! I mean, he does it without resorting to Marxism which is where you or I would go with it, but the idea that we're eroded a social norm by scaling down luxury goods, accept indebtedness as a way of life and normifying conspicuous consumption, man, dammit, I hate that. It's like, even my friends in Germany were surprised that as an American the only debts I have are student loans and my mortgage.
Like, even they all know we're a fucked up country when it comes to debt, even if they only know if because they're importing our debt culture like the rest of the bits of the worst of American culture we export elsewhere.
Oh, wait, phew, all is right in the world as Brooks descends into madness again.

The Treasury and the Fed are trying to stabilize the system while still ensuring that those who made mistakes feel the pain.

LOLZ, the government is trying to make sure people who made mistakes feel the pain. Sure, unless you're Bear Stearns or Freddie Mac or Fannie Mae, sure unless you're the trader that committed the frauds that undermined the stability of IndyMac and cost a bunch of old people their (uninsured) retirement savings and shit. "Feel the pain." The people that caused most of the problems won't feel any pain.
MEGAN: Anyway, so, the GOP has decided to stop suing people for using their logo which is like unAmerican to stop suing people and yet it's anti-trial lawyer and sort of pro-tort reform so perhaps more fitting with Republican ideology.
MOE: And I still don't know what to talk about, I guess there was that meme about how Colin Powell and Condi Rice may endorse Obama because of that whole identity politics factor but Condi identifies more with fellow alienbots so I'm thinking no on that one.
MEGAN: Yeah, I mean, what exactly is fitting with her political ideology that Obama espouses?
MOE: Well I think her exercise regimen is a big component of her ideology, and she totes has a crush on Michelle. But is that enough? Well shit, maybe for Condi!
MEGAN: Ok, can we talk about the fact that Cindy McCain travels with a stylist? I knew her and Megan's hair was too shiny to be true.
MOE: Oh I guess we have to talk about Obama's "fake" interviews. I mean, it would be one thing if someone said this who did not work for the memefactory, but I see what she's saying. That's the one thing I always dug about McCain is his "I'm just going to babble about whatever pops into my mind" PR strategy.
And Meghan HAS to have extensions right?
MEGAN: I don't know, I mean, I have seen her up close, if they are extensions, Ken Paves is grinding his teeth down to little points in envy.
MOE: Whoa I did not realize Cindy

fought her fear of campaigning via small planes by getting her pilot's license without telling her husband

Oh this is a good story, I love Libby Copeland.
MEGAN: I mean, you want to hate her, and then it's just hard. She's so nice-seeming.
The charity work, etc. Also, wtf, Andrea Mitchell? I'm not sure I get that, is she just mad she flew all the way over their and Obama chose Lara Logan or something?
MOE: (The writer.) (Who I was like totally jealous of for like ninety years because she went to school with me and NEVER WORKED A MILLISECOND ON THE SCHOOL PAPER WHERE I TOILED.) I did not think she was so good when she started at the Washington Post but now I love pretty much everything she does and I have to say, it is nice to suspect you would dislike someone and then turn out to be wrong. Okay, so Cindy McCain, she seems cool, I have to say. Not as cool as Michelle, but the thing about having disadvantages or whatever is that it is sometimes its own advantage, and Cindy grew up rich and blond and cheerleadery in Arizona. I wonder if she ever even saw Do The Right Thing. Nevertheless, she was just in Cambodia.
MEGAN: And for Operation Smile, which we all know I have a very soft spot for, even if the founder seemed totally amazed that I didn't have a speech impediment when we met once.
MOE:

"You just can't just help but love her, honey," says John's mother, the irrepressible 96-year-old Roberta McCain, who several times during an interview says she has nothing to say and then keeps adding things. She describes Cindy as a seamless mother who has managed her four children's lives with seeming effortlessness, all while looking fantastic and wearing the most stylish clothes. "I don't see any chink in her armor, and I'm not biased," she says.

MEGAN: Yes, as a mother-in-law, you certainly wouldn't be biased at all Roberta. Now, see, this is a serious question. I can't say from his first wife, as she's not so keen to do interviews, but between his mother, her, and Cindy, how in the world does McCain still not know better than to tell anti-woman jokes? Because, really, he's kind of surrounded by cool-seeming chicks. I want to totally be Roberta McCain when I'm 92, if I don't off myself at 60 of course.
MOE: hahaha

She is, in the words of her brother-in-law Joe McCain, a self-editor. Aware she is under a spotlight, she recognizes that everything she says must be carefully framed, or it can be taken out of context. "The best way to put it in context is to not say it," he says.

I am getting that tattooed on my knuckles.
MEGAN: Fuck my knuckles, I might be wearing gloves! I'm getting that tattooed upside down on my cleavage, the one thing that is always visible.
MOE: omg let's get tattoos together!
MEGAN: Yes, totally, I have been itching for one for years, I'd bet Attackerman knows a place, you know, somehow.
MOE: Yo this is really rough:

"John was with me the first time I lost a baby," she told Harper's Bazaar last year, "but not for those after, which was hard."

MEGAN: Yeah, I read that then and I felt awful for her. I mean, dude, as obviously as she wanted kids and as young as she apparently was, you have to wonder how they got through that. It wasn't like in the 50s or something, you know?
Also, can we all say a heart "Fuck you" to Karl Rove for this again?

She did, however, cry in front of reporters after smear attacks during the 2000 South Carolina primary insinuated that McCain had fathered an illegitimate black child — a reference to Bridget, born in Bangladesh.

All together, please: Fuck you, Karl Rove.
MOE: Here's another thing, like, she didn't feel like she was addicted because he didn't notice. Oh my, you know, like that is a lesson: do not rely on dudes to notice you have a problem, or really, anything at all about your condition unless they somehow interpret it to involve you being "mad" at them. I bet she was actually weirdly flattered that one time he called her a trollop for wearing too much makeup because it was like, you noticed?
MEGAN: Oh, God, I hear that for sure. Like, actually, a friend of a friend divorced his wife (eventually) for being a coke addict and he only noticed when he couldn't get money out of an ATM one day and went to the bank to complain and found out they didn't have any more. Like, any. That's an addiction.
Also, I stopped trying long ago with dudes. If I want them to notice, I'll say "Hey, I got my haircut, do you like it," or, "Hey, I dyed it red, what do you think," or, "Hey, I lost 30 pounds, what do you think of my ass now," you know, shit like that.
MOE: Hahaha I feel like dudes are pretty good at noticing that shit. "You look different…good" Hey thanks I washed my hair! I found that purple eyeshadow that vaguely recalls Debbie Gibson circa Electric Youth but oh well! I brushed my hair! I'm wearing a color other than black or gray! It's more like the, I dunno, subtler stuff they are shitty about. That's actually why I don't think it's such a bad thing to write about them on the internet.
MEGAN: Maybe I just date really oblivious dudes. But, also, my emotions aren't really subtle. And I try not to blog about actual dudes I'm currently dating. Dudes I used to date — particularly if they've pissed me off and aren't speaking to me anyway — somehow feel like fair game. Oh, also, before we end this, we should probably mention the fact that Radovan Karadžić was arrested yesterday.
MOE: oh right he totally was!
MEGAN: Amusingly, to tie it back into drinking, reportedly while drinking a beer on the street! Man, who knew Belgrade was so much like Boston?
MOE: This is a really educational blog post that puts things nicely in perspective! So this guy's poetry: crappy or what? Hmm.

In his defense, his supporters say that he is no more guilty than any other war-time political leader. His ability to evade capture for over a decade made him a local hero among the Bosnian Serbs.

So maybe now that he has been arrested while drinking a beer he will look less badass?
MEGAN: Hrm, well, being a bit of a translator myself, I sort of wonder if the reason these sound so incredibly shitty is translation error, but thematically I think they're also overblown and so I'm going to call crappy.
Also, I think Richard Byrne is suggesting that Ratko Mladić, the guy behind Srebrenica, might off himself rather than turn himself or be captured. And, to your point, that's totally what Byrne says, that not only will Karadžić look like a f'idiot, but that the former government that "couldn't find him" might look stupid to the people on whose support they counted. God, if only making an Administration look like a bunch of bumbling incompetent idiots would work here. God, we could dream, right?

And yet Connolly (who doesn't know what a gimlet is, poor thing) heads behind the bar to work with Andrew for one night. He learns earth-shattering stuff, like:

When a guy goes out with a bunch of women, it signals other women that he's not some kind of knucklehead. When a guy goes out with a group of guys, it means he's on the prowl.

Other tips! Men should try the "romantic return," in which they eye a woman, leave, and then come back. "Leaving the scene and then returning because you 'just couldn't let this opportunity go by' takes you out of the Lecherous category and puts you in the Romantic Fool category. It has a Hugh Grant quality that the ladies go for," Andrew explains. (Or makes you look wishy-washy! Or makes it look like asking for my number was something you had to talk yourself into!) Tip #4 is "Don't Dance (unless it's with a woman)", Tip #5 is "Have Good Follow-Up Lines." Andrew says: "Guys get too caught up in opening lines, when it's the next few things you say that make or break you." Actually, pretty much everything you say can make or break you. When you're approaching a woman, you're being judged, period. Act normal and you're gonna get a normal reaction! Act like a cheeseball or a sleaze and you're going to be dismissed. Possibly pointed at, definitely laughed at.

Last, but not least, Tip #6: Beware Of Overfriending." Quote Andrew: "If you pretend you're just a friendly guy, she'll think of you that way. Don't be afraid to get a little sexual when you're talking to women. And don't hide your intentions. It's dishonest, and they can see right through it." Hmm. Maybe. Women are not some exotic and elusive prey that you need to deconstruct the thought patterns of. I've been in plenty of bars and talked to plenty of dudes. The best pick-up line? The one that works every time? When a guy smiles and says, "Hey." But, you know, that's just me.

Find the Right Line [Men's Health]

I'll admit that casual sex for me is a total defense mechanism in order to experience intimacy without risking emotional detriment. I'd so much rather be fucked than fucked with. So when some guy suggested to me last week that we merely make out all night instead of have sex, I was immediately cautious of his intentions. It sounds backwards, I know, but it's, uh, progressive. Right?

I have a really tough exterior when it comes to these things, but that's only because what's within is extra gooey. But I've been a little worried as of late that if I keep building up this shell, it would eventually become calcified, and the real me would be trapped in forever. So for the first time in years, I decided to change it up and not be so cynical. I allowed someone to bypass my vaginal walls and penetrate my emotional one. He laid it on really thick, too. Compliments, face-caressing, never-ending cuddle-fests, and full disclosure on just how much he liked me. (Within a week's time I'd heard: "I could fall in love with you" and "When I'm with you, I'm head-over-heels.") One night when we were laying in bed, I noticed that he was sort of falling off one side, and I asked him if he wanted to scoot toward the middle. He made such a big deal about it, like it meant something. All of his past girlfriends would take up the whole bed, and he would have to sleep toward the edge. Drunk on girlie giddiness, I saw a metaphor in it, too, like, wow, I'm pulling him closer, and we're meeting in the middle. I know, I know.

To be honest, I found all this to be so dramatic and way too precious and told him so. I was also well aware of how emotionally damaged he seemed to be. But I thought that was maybe something that could go on the list of Shit We Have in Common, right under "favorite Dolly Parton song." I was like, well, maybe it is possible that things can happen this fast. Maybe this is how normal people actually start dating. Maybe I've just been this weirdo all along. And even my jaded ass couldn't deny that I was equally attracted to him physically and mentally, as evidenced by the constant butterflies in my stomach, smile on my face, and heavier laundry loads from all the tights and jeans that were getting so wet whenever we hung out.

But I totally should've trusted my instincts, because they've never failed me before. Especially when one night, he actually asked me to enumerate all the things I liked about him. I thought it was weird, but I obliged with utter honesty, "You're funny, you're smart, you're cute, you're charming, blah, blah blah." I ended with, "I like you so much it's scaring me." And it was then that he got what he wanted. About 30 hours later, after spending the entire weekend together—brunching, cuddling, kissing on the street, holding hands, playing Connect Four, while sober, mind you—I received a text that said that he really needed to be alone, and he hoped I would understand.

I wasn't shocked. Just disappointed—majorly. A few hours later I got another text that said he was being stupid, and he'd meet me at our friend's show at this bar. We spent the night with our arms around each other, kissing. On the drive home he was silent. When he got to my place he didn't even pull up to the curb. He just idled in the street. He turned to me and said, "I can't do this. I'm not ready. I don't want to hurt your feelings." Um, too late, pal. God!

I stomped my feet up the stairs in my building and realized that I'd just been used. Now I think that emotional scar tissue I already had is turning into a fucking keloid. I totally just got emotionally played. And even though my glasses are currently blurry from a dried gray mixture of salty tears and black mascara, I see clearly now that I don't blame the player, I blame the game.

I don't think I have to say that I like women, that some of my best friends are female, that my sister rocks in unimaginable ways and that a girls' night out is tons of fun. But. When I was four years old, my best friend was a boy who lived down the street. We jumped on the trampoline, played doctor and watched cartoons together until I moved away. And there have been numerous successors ever since. Some of them were gay, some of them were straight. Some were older, some were younger. But having a guy as a close friend — as a best friend — is a feeling I've always known. There's something about the dynamic between two adults who don't want to sleep together and yet have different gender perspectives on life. Being girly with the girls is one thing; having a burger and a beer with the boys (or dumplings and champagne with the gays) is another. What is it about getting close to a man (in a totally non-sexual way) that's so appealing? (And am I the only one who loves having boys as besties?)

Always a Bridesmaid, Never the . . . Groom [Washington Post]

Maybe they didn't know about the mace, stun gun and EMPTY HAND GRENADE CANISTERS cops reported finding in his room after he tried to enter a female officer's dorm? Anyway, he failed to "grow up" much, spending his residency masturbating six or seven times a day at work and garnering complaints from female patients, one of whom finally pressed sexual assault charges, to which he pled guilty and got out of practicing medicine. So he could work as a "medical investigator" offering a second opinion on... SEXUAL HARRASSMENT SUITS.

UPDATE: The Toronto Sun re-posted the story on its wesbite.

The Toronto Sun

The most promiscuous women, according to Dimitri's website, are saleswomen (especially real estate agents), nannies, schoolteachers (especially elementary and early childhood education), nurses and lawyers (criminal and civil litigation in particular).

Dimitri charges $40 to attend one of his weekday meetings, $269 for an annual membership to his "lair" and as much as $2,997 plus GST for a two-day workshop advertised on his website, dimitrithelover.com, where "Dimitri The Lover creates a powerful identity for you that women will find irresistible."

Also from the website:

"Learn the secret physical, verbal and psychological techniques used by Dimitri the Lover to seduce, pleasure and sexually enslave women," says one of his program outlines.

Or this: "A man's 'basic operating system' is composed of 'rapist' and 'murderer' programs which have been hard-wired into his brain.

And here's a snippet from his marketing materials:

"Dimitri The Lover is the ONLY pickup guru in the world WITH PROFESSIONAL CREDENTIALS TO BACK HIM UP who has conducted IN-FIELD MEDICAL RESEARCH ON SEDUCTION!!!" he proclaims in another.

However, his troubled past and medical credentials are hardly worth bragging about.

Dimitri the Lover's real name is James N. Sears.

…

By 1986, Sears was in the Canadian Armed Forces and while still a third-year medical student was evaluated by a military psychiatrist who suggested there was "something seriously wrong" with Sears.

He was shunned by fellow students because of his behaviour. A female officer complained he repeatedly tried to enter her room, and military police found "a can of Mace, several knives, two empty smoke grenade canisters and an electronic stun gun" in his room following an incident.

As a result of his antics, Sears had to repeat a year of medical school. Despite documented reservations, he graduated from U of T as a doctor in 1988.

During his internship at Doctors Hospital in Toronto, Sears skipped duties, drank while on call, indulged in "inappropriate self-use of prescription drugs," according to the College hearing record.

Sears was judged "immature" in a subsequent psychiatric assessment and it was noted he displayed "inappropriate behaviour towards female staff members," and was viewed by peers as "un -trustworthy, cynical and narcissistic."

He underwent psychotherapy and was admitted to Ottawa's National Defence Medical Centre in 1990 for evaluation and treatment.

There, "record was made of numerous, random and obsessive telephone calls to women during which he would sometimes masturbate," and evidence suggested "prescribable substance abuse," according to the College hearing records.

However, after a conclusion of "no clear evidence of major psychiatric illness," Sears was cleared to return to medical practice.

Disgraced Doctor is T.O.'s Seduction Guru [Toronto Sun]

Portrait Of A Pickup Artist [Eye Weekly]
Whistleblower: Unlicensed Doctor Hangs Out Shingle [CTV]

Tormented? Driven witless? 99 problems but therapy bills ain't one? Welcome to "Save Your Life, Cheap!" in which we write about the dumb things that get America's uninsured through hard times. AA meetings, James Joyce, Ani di Franco, suicide hotlines…anything nonalcoholic can apply, the more embarrassing the better. Which brings me to: self-help. In our first installment, Sephora Spy's Loren Hunt reviews the $1 book that got her through the worst breakup ever.

So, it's probably safe to make the baseline assumption that self-help books are not the kind of thing that anyone reads because they think it's cool. For some reason, self-loathing became more inherently cool than trying to fix problems, which would explain the aura of lameness surrounding self-help books: the corny covers, the corny catchphrases, the corny jacket photos, and the corny titles, which are invariably presented in a corny (and really large, readable) font. There are no cool self-help books. Cool people do not write self-help books. Happy people write them. And they could give a fuck who thinks they're cool. And you know who else doesn't give a fuck who thinks they're cool? A 23-year-old stripper who just used up every last shred of self-regard finally "breaking up" with the three-timing strip club DJ she had been fucking for the past year. And that, friends, is how I came to appreciate It's Called A Breakup Because It's Broken, the second offering from Greg Berendt of He's Just Not That Into You fame.

Have you ever played yourself so badly in a relationship that even years after the fact the salient details are still enough to embarrass you? The kind of situation so inherently unfortunate that, upon its demise, you don't even want to tell your friends it has ended because they'll just snort, "good," and assume that it is so obvious that you are better off without it that there is nothing left to say on the topic? I met him because we worked together. At the strip club. He was living with his girlfriend when we first started hooking up, while sorting out the details of a divorce to a third woman. Our "relationship" only ever seemed to happen on the weekends, after work, where sometimes we engaged in what he liked to call "non-sex." Non-sex was when we did it, but then he denied doing it. I felt sleazy and dissolute, which, at the time, was novel and exciting. He was so nice when it was just us. And passionate. And caring. And secretly really awesome! I encouraged him to get secretly awesome all over me on and off and on and off for almost a year before I was ready to cut off my drama supply at the source and move on to something possibly healthier. But by then, I'd become attenuated to the bombast and obvious chord progressions of his Bon Jovi song style of lovin' and everything else just seemed... too quiet. Or subtle. Or something. Which was finally enough to scare me... strip clubs and nocturnal relationships with strip club DJs were supposed to be more of an interesting digression for me than a permanent lifestyle plan, and I felt in danger of falling through one of my own cracks. So I cut him off and stopped going to work lest he use his DJ microphone to manipulate me back into his good graces (this is the beauty of strip club jobs. You can take a week or a month or a year off and no one even notices). It was around then that I found a typo-ridden galley copy of something called It's Called a Breakup Because it's Broken: The Smart Girl's Breakup Buddy. This would have been almost five years ago. It was only a dollar and I thought maybe it would at least entertain me while I prostrated my unwashed body in front of my window unit air conditioner and flipped wildly back and forth between hating him and hating myself, murderous rage and spontaneous crying jags, fantasies in which his head exploded a la Scanners and tender reconciliation scenes that featured me in a trashy white bridal bikini.

It's Called a Breakup Because it's Broken brings the added component of Berendt's wife, Amiira Ruotola-Behrendt, to the wisdom offered up in He's Just Not That Into You, which is the guide to figuring out what's really going on with all that non-sex. (Namely, break up. Or, more commonly, wait for him to break up with you, which leads to that kind of horrible soul-crushing life-wrecking freshly-dumped angst most of us are relatively familiar with.) (I was proud not to have figured out the He's Just Not That Into You part on my own over the course of a year.) Anyway, the basic premise of this book is that the Behrendts were able to fall in love and build a happy relationship purely because both parties lived through a lot of bullshit before they met each other, namely of the breakup variety. Their co-authorship serves as sort of a built-in source of hope to people who are presumably reading the book because they have just had their heart masticated, digested, and flushed down someone else's toilet. They are, thankfully, not particularly obnoxious about this, choosing instead to stick to practical coping methods that you can use to put your breakup in the past and get on with your life.

Part 1: The Breakup

The first thing I couldn't figure out about my breakup was why it hurt so much. I mean, it had been a bad time for which I had for whatever reason repeatedly shown up of my own volition. I should have known better than to get involved in the first place, I knew the whole time nothing good would come of it, and it seemed to me that ending it would be a relief, like walking away from a car crash with only a few scrapes. And sometimes it did feel like that. But more often, it was the usual, "Whyyyy don't youuuu LOVE meee?" shit. Which would in turn make me really angry with myself, like I was so dumb that I had deserved the whole thing. The first section of this book does a good job of talking you down from taking full responsibility for anything other than making sure the broken relationship stays over and consequently taking care of yourself. They're always asking you what you'd want with a broken relationship. Which is the kind of simple logic I needed after spending the past year twisted into a veritable pretzel of denial and convoluted thinking. Then, just to make sure, after asking, the book repeatedly tells you that you don't want a broken relationship so many times that by the second section, it starts to stick.

Part 2: The "Breakover"
Commandment 1 — Don't See Him or Talk to Him for Sixty Days: Actually, it is that simple, it's just not that easy. If you were quitting smoking, you wouldn't buy cigarettes, hang out with people who smoked cigarettes, go to places where people were smoking cigarettes, or get drunk and call cigarettes at 4 A.M. begging them to come over for one last smoke.

I was all set to argue with this like, "this is exactly what I would do if I were quitting smoking!" Then I remembered that I was still a smoker! They, um, refer to this as "he-tox." I picked up a few phone calls I shouldn't have during this period of time, but for the most part, I stayed away. The thing about my ex was that he was super-charming and looked like an underwear model. I did not stand a chance in the same room as him and I knew it; hence the entire non-relationship. I stayed away like my life depended on it, which, looking back, it kind of did. Not that he was ever abusive or dangerous. It had more to do with the kind of life I wanted to live, a life in which my boyfriend would publicly admit he was my boyfriend and hang out with me during daylight hours. Bare minimum.

Commandment 2 — Get Yourself A Breakup Buddy 'But he was my best friend.' So was that girl who smelled like egg salad in the third grade, but you don't still need her around, do you?

The breakup buddy is like the Alcoholics Anonymous sponsor of broken hearts, dedicated to raising your morale and being on call for commiseration, all the while keeping you committed to your sixty day he-tox. Personally, I was so embarrassed by the fact that I'd allowed myself to be in a relationship so royally screwed up that my non-boyfriend habitually disappeared when the sun came up that I didn't really want to talk about it anymore by the time the breakup happened. A big part of making the break, for me, was to finally admit that the relationship had even happened, since he'd been extremely adamant about keeping it hidden at work. I cried on my friend Tiffany, a fellow stripper who knew him, a few times, and that was pretty much that.

Commandment 3 — Get Rid of His Stuff and the Things That Remind You of Him Be strict about it, but reasonable as well. Let's not pack up all the glasses because he loved orange juice, but the framed pictures of the two of you, his toothbrush and toiletries, and his CDs have to go.

The Behrendts also recommend recruiting your breakup buddy to deliver your stuff back to your ex so that you don't have to break your he-tox period and risk backsliding by doing it yourself. This was probably the most effective chapter for me, because it required absolutely no hard labor: I didn't have any of his stuff. Even after a year. This spoke volumes I was finally ready to listen to.

Commandment 4 — Get Your Ass in Motion Every Day Besides, you've got to have a life, because when you do meet the next guy and he asks you what you're into, you don't want to say, 'My ex-boyfriend.'

That is some real talk. The book predictably advocates exercise as a good way to fill your newly empty days, but it takes into account the fact that when you're truly devastated, getting out of bed counts as an achievement. Then it discusses hobbies, as well as making a list of all the things you didn't do because you were with whoever and doing them all by yourself. When I was ready to get off the couch, I walked into another, better strip club and got another job. It was so easy I suddenly understood why he'd been so clingy even while totally unwilling to behave the way a real boyfriend should: he'd known that this day would come. He'd been wondering what was taking me so long. And the bonus of working at a club that he did not also work at was turned out to be that he wasn't there to distract me. I rearranged my whole work strategy and finally started making the kind of money they tell you strippers make.

Commandment 5—Don't Wear Your Breakup Out Into the World Indulging in messy public breakup behavior only makes those around you uncomfortable and makes you seem unstable. So keep it to yourself and your dearest friends after business hours, and make a pact with yourself to try to live the vision of what you want your life to look like. Every time you step outside, you should make an effort to reflect the person you are on your way to becoming, not the shell of the shattered woman he dumped. Turn that husk into a tamale!

Tamale status begins with dressing cute at all times and refraining from crying at work. Earlier in the book, they reference the Lili Taylor character from Say Anything, the one accompanying herself on guitar to a song called "Joe Lies" in the middle of a party. And here is the thing about that character: what is awesome and hilarious at a party in a a romantic comedy is pathetic and uncomfortable at an actual party, for everyone, except at the time perhaps the one too grief-stricken and wounded to care much about superficial shit like "pride" and "dignity" in the moment, but oh my god that will change. The book recommends that you abstain from this kind of behavior, and I was good at this. Few people who knew both of us even really knew we were dating, and would have been surprised at the level of involvement and how hard I was taking it if they did know. I kept doing like I'd been doing and eventually started believing that it hadn't been such a big deal. In a lot of ways, it began to seem mutually convenient that we hadn't had a "real" relationship. I realized this a few months later when I attempted to be a breakup buddy to Moe and had the distinct pleasure of watching her send a text to her ex that read "I want to shit in your eye." I laughed hysterically. I probably wasn't cut out to be a breakup buddy.

Commandment 6 — No Backsliding! Once you give in to it, you find yourself caught in the worst kind of relationship purgatory—the demotion—because you are in effect telling your ex that he can still have access to you WITHOUT the emotional responsibilities. Backsliding doesn't mean you're getting back together, it just means you've lowered your standards and accepted a demotion from ex-girlfriend with self-esteem to ex-girlfriend whom he can still get busy with if he wants to.

Ouch. The fact that my entire non-relationship was a demotion out of the gate was ample reason for me to avoid backsliding. That didn't mean I didn't want to hear his voice or turn the lights on to inspect his perfect hip ridges up close one more time. But I didn't. Okay, I did, but years later, and when I was totally over him. They really are perfect! But by then, I felt like Jennifer Connelly at the end of Labyrinth, surprising herself by realizing that it's actually true when she says to David Bowie, "you have no power over me." This day will come. You know it will come. So think of it this way; the faster you stop having unsatisfying, emotionally fraught post-breakup sex with your ex, the quicker you'll be able to have hot unattached meaningless sex with him!

Commandment 7 — It Won't Work Unless You Are Number One! You are the prize, the sun, the moon, and the stars. Not him or anyone else. You can love your friends, you can love your family, and you can love every stray dog or stray drummer that crosses your path. HOWEVER, you have to learn how to love yourself, like yourself, and put yourself first before you will ever find the healthy, loving, and lasting relationship you're looking for.

Yeah, this is the hard one. Do I love myself yet? I'm getting closer all the time! I haven't begged anyone to use me as a convenient repository for all of their bullshit quite as flagrantly as I did while dating the DJ, and my boyfriends have become increasingly realer and realer as time has passed, with none of them counting as completely brutally gnarly Bad Ideas. I'd call it progress. While I have not yet found the healthy, loving, and lasting relationship I'd like to have yet, it is also true that I've gotten infinitely better at coping with the resultant breakups and in the process, wasted a lot less of my own time. I'm still not sure that rules are necessarily as ruthlessly applicable to the human heart in the way that the Behrendts suggest they might be, but I do have faith that I will now be able to recognize which rules are made to be broken in a way that I didn't before.

It's Called A Breakup Because It's Broken [Amazon]

In Cohen's latest recital, he responds to those surly detractors (i.e., me) who have accused him of cutting out heart-shaped valentines to John McCain and pasting them in his locker. Coyly he begins:

In politics, we're having a Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr kind of year. It was Karr, a French writer, who coined the phrase plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose, which means, as Barack Obama has shown, that the more things change, the more they stay the same. N'est-ce pas?

Oui...
My own French is rusty, so I'm not sure what the proper French equivalent for "fucking embarrassing" is, so forgive me, but really—The Washington Post is not only the most powerful paper in the nation's capital but enjoys an international reputation, and here's one of their premiere columnists blithering away like Mayberry's Howard Sprague with a carnation in his lapel. It's amazing he didn't stick an "ooh la la" in there somewhere.

And if that doesn't rekindle your man crush on Wolcott you can go read the whole post and revel in anticipation of his rebuttal to Tony fucking Blair.

McCain's Core Advantage [Washington Post]
Hick Hack Ho [Vanity Fair]

I was naive and I was romantic…and I think those are good things, to be naive and romantic and still believe in…love or something.

Yeah, of course, fuck that. I can't hang out with those people. Amusingly, one apparently will only submit to an interview if he digitally alters her voice, and then it turns out he has impotence problems, etc. etc. Here is the trailer.

A Complete History Of My Sexual Failures [Official Movie Site]
Sundance Review: A Complete History Of My Sexual Failures [Variety]

Men always form crushes on other men who are like, the exact opposite of them. (If they're sufficiently alike and the feelings are mutual, they immediately enter into that sort of buddy matrimony wherein the "old married couple" quality of the union obscures the newness of the bond, since dudes sort of instinctively hate the idea of making new friends.) (Like have you ever noticed that, even if two dude friends met last year, they will talk about high school and old hardcore shows as if they attended them together?) Anyway, whereas girls — is this egotistical of us? — tend for form crushes on girls whose, you know, outfits and pop cultural touchstones and pastimes mirror our own, dudes only seem to form man crushes on the sorts of men — torture victims, ladykillers, capitalists, foreigners — who represent a mysterious Other Path, so any girls present are subjected to first watching a dude totally question every facet of his identity, then possibly undergo a mini existential crisis under the influence of infatuation, then gradually become disenchanted as breaks free of both states until he finally grasps that this whole thing has publicly sunk him to the depths of indignity because it turns out his Crush is actually, like, George W. Bush. And that any man who crushes on George W. Bush must hate himself. Yeah, so I guess it's sort of like what happens to us. Anyway.

Does The Media Have A Man Crush On John McCain [Vanity Fair]

1. Some women like bald dudes. Some women like any imperfections in the dudes they are dating, as imperfections are humanizing, and women like to relate to men as humans, even though men persist in fooling themselves into thinking women are mystical creatures that they have to "seduce" with an arsenal of rhetorical and sensual skills.

2. Bald dudes are worse about this. I don't know why. The comforting thing about a bald dude is that baldness is one of the few biological justifications we have for having to be "the pretty sex." I mean, we're the ones who bleed and bear children and get cellulite, but at least we don't go bald, so baldness at least does its part to counteract the paradoxical injustices of gender roles.

3. According to some study, women perceive balding men to be more mature. And statesmanlike, and less given to typical juvenile male behavior. This is a total load of crap.

4. I once went on a plastic surgery junket and saw video footage of numerous hair transplant surgeries. Oh my god was it gross. And seriously, you get, like, thousands of stitches. And it looks better than plugs…but. It's also thousands of dollars. I'd say it could be a good thing for the dude population to reach plastic surging expenditure parity with women, but…No. It would not.

5. Shaving the head. Worked for Harry Goldblatt, and most black men. I don't endorse, in part because I kind of think any dude who shaves that often would expect me to shave more often, but you can discuss amongst yourselves.

6. Propecia isn't covered by insurance. As Jeff notes. But Proscar is. And it's the same thing! Just manufactured in bigger doses for enlarged prostates. Which you'll have eventually anyway, right?

1. This is a rather productive way to employ one's biological date rapey tendencies. Might evolutionary biologists learn something about the intersection of masculinity and capitalism from the case of Henry T. Nicholas? Oh probably, but more importantly
2. Dude, 1999: so much money, so many drugs, such terrible dressers. Parachute pants and Prada mini backpacks actually put shoulder pads and perms to shame. Does prosperity just naturally beget awful fashion trends?
3. What is it about geeky billionaires? Why is it always the finance billionaires that turn pervs with underage sex dungeons, while the geeks start underground sales dungeons? You would think that the demographics of the tech world vs. the finance world would make the tech guys more desperate and therefore likely to date rape. But the opposite is true! Is this just another chapter in my "New York Is A Warped And Poisonous Place That Kills All Love" manifesto? Probably!

4. Oh, but he had a thing for hookers. Naturally. Well, who doesn't I guess.

New Sales Tactic: Drugging Customers? [WSJ]
Broadcom Exec Accused Of Spiking Tech CEOs' Drinks; Has More Blow Than Scarface [Gizmodo]
Former Chief Of Broadcom Is Indicte
Drugs Grab Spotlight In Broadcom Case [WSJ]
Sex, Drugs and Microchips: Highlights From Broadcom Complaint [WSJ]

But most importantly, how low do housing prices have to sink before these guys start mixing with, god forbid, female lawyers? And who will they hit up if it truly is the next Depression? Teach for America? God I love this country.

Fashion Meets Finance

Freedom makes you long for fried potatoes, some of which he'll bring you from the MP canteen if you let him win a few rhetorical rounds. "Philosophically, I suppose I am also seeking love," you allow. But that soon becomes irksome. You remind him that he would, were his society less inculcated in materialism, probably take eternal life with 69 virgins or whatever the stupid legend has it. No, he knows he knows nothing of the pain suffered by your people at the hands of his, their tragic marginalization and disenfranchisement at the hands of Dudes like himself, just as you know that, in his position, you would probably be a little rougher about flouting those Geneva Conventions. He used to dream of "cracking" a high-level suspect like yourself; but "cracking" is probably apocryphal; no one in this wing of the prison has ever seen it happen and now everyone's curiosity has receded into a quiet unacknowledged acceptance of the fact that everyone there is seeking the same thing: Death.

(With virgins.)

Alleged 9/11 Mastermind Due In Court [Washington Post]

So here is my question: I was a dork in high school. And sure, that probably helped make me a slut, but never the sort of boy crazy sociopath you'd expect, given my degree of social alienation. Why is Being A Nerd In High School so much more damaging to dudes than girls? Is it just that even nerdy girls get hollered at on the street?

Instant Message, Instant Girlfriend [NYT]

Then, they'll meet one of these thirtysomething guys at work — not one of the real good ones, just one of those single thirtysomething guys who "relates" better to younger dudes and enjoys deluding himself into thinking he's somebody's mentor. Well, that guy doesn't have any money either. But he totally has chicks! What's his secret? Chivalry. It's fun, free, it gets you laid and as a bonus, totally makes dudes feel superior to one another. Just ask Tracie! (She's dating a 22-year-old.)

Disrespect Is The New Chivalry [NPR]