When you ain't got no man. The secrets from the Dark Side.

   When damsels start moaning about not having a bloke, I always want to ask two things. Firstly, where did the previous one go? Something makes me doubt you are all virgins around here. And secondly: that bloke you are lacking, what’s he like? It’s just that usually it’s this old feminine song and dance about having nothing to wear even though the wardrobe is full. Moan, moan. You know what, the search and capture operation is actually a piece of cake. It’s the bats in your belfry that complicate matters.

   I have a friend who keeps on going about the lack of men in her life. There’s a rifle range and a billiards club in the ground floor of her apartment block. And she’s a PR staffer at a high-end private members’ club, where well-heeled sugar daddies are smoking Cuban cigars and drinking shots of single malts. I’ve got no slightest idea on how else I could help her.

   Never mind. We’ll evict the bats later. Let’s deal with the fun part first. Here goes, the secret to the ensnaring any man out there, whatever his income, hubris, intellect, year of birth or marital status. Works for women of any age, any looks and any smarts. Seduction 101, straight from the Grand Succubus of the Dark Side. It is necessary and sufficient to find out what he is spending his energy on. What he really cares about. And to start sincerely admiring that stuff, however daft the thing may appear, and irrespectively of anything he has or hasn’t achieved doing it. That’s it. Your power over the guy would be absolute. He would leave any family — for you. To him, you would be the one, even if he’s tomcatting around like a jackhammer. Your boobs, your makeup, your steaks — that would all be secondary and optional.

   Just to give you a good example — say, here’s a bloke, running around with his eyes popping out, talking on three mobiles at the same time and dressed in a way that kinda sends a mixed message. Say, super-expensive shoes and a sweater knitted by his mom. That’s a businessman. He lives by his business, he puts his soul into it. Whether it works out or not is secondary. So there we go — we find out everything about his business that we can even in principle understand. That won’t take long. Say, he sells bottled water. We buy a bottle from his competitor, sit and wait till his mobiles shut up, take a sip, lick our lips and inquire: “Oh, I heard you know absolutely everything about bottled water… Someone recommended this here…” and then you just sit and blink, take deep breaths and occasionally wonder “Oh, my, how do you know all that?..”

    Be inventive: if he’s selling petrol instead of water, then someone’s just recommended a competing gas station to you. If he’s building houses — well, you just happened to be on the lookout for one. If he’s a financier – damn, haven’t you always been wondering about cock… oops, sorry… stock option pricing strategies in volatile markets. Et cetera.

   Then wonder timidly if you could possibly be allowed ask him a few questions every now and then, just so you are on the safe side. Don’t overdo it, either in person or over the phone. If you feel his interest is rising, disappear for a few days without explanation. Alternate strange disapproving looks with those of sheer admiration. Three or four cycles of that, and he’s yours.

   Ok, let’s make it harder. Here’s another bloke. All fit and groomed and packed into a Saville Row suit. That’s a top manager. He does his job because he’d be screwed if he didn’t, and Hell forbid you should start talking to him about that job. Unless, that is, you wish to be hated just as much or wish to be sold whatever it is that he’s peddling. Deeper reconnaissance is in order here – we need to understand what he really is passionate about. Maybe he’s refurbishing his gran’s old MG in his garage. That garage is where your romance begins. Or he’s into artistic photography, and then you know exactly the place where all the best views are, only you are afraid to climb there alone. Or he’s a train spotter for goodness’ sake — ask him to show you around. And then we follow the plan — our eyes radiate admiration and occasionally contempt, switching at random. The contempt must never be verbal, keep him wondering.

   The main thing is to not scare them off. Men are simple creatures, or rather they are not as foxy as women. But what we men do always detect is that soap opera with the wedding at the end that lights up in the eyes of any woman that’s out for a catch. That irritates us. We don’t like soap, we like porn. And porn with you starring is what we are watching when you are asking us about water, petrol or train spotting. But I am digressing.

   Summary so far: the key to any bloke’s heart and other parts of his anatomy is where his real passion is focused and where he invests energy without (!) being compelled. The bane of most women is that they are putting themselves in opposition to that energy instead of going with the flow. They keep presenting their man with a binary choice: either it’s me, or it’s your work (or your bloody friends, or your car, or your hunting trips, etc.). Heard of Elon Musk? He told his obstructive first wife she has been fired, then went and married a floozy he met at a London club and picked her up by telling her he “wanted to show her his rocket”. And no, he did not mean his dick. Make no mistake, your Elon Musk is just around the corner.

   Naturally, that does not mean joining the man and playing with his strange toys. It would suffice to just accept them and express sincere admiration. To worship those weird and incomprehensible masculine gods. They do reward worship.

   A historical example. A university dropout with a writing problem, serving as a second lieutenant in the middle of nowhere in Alabama meets a plain looking girl at a train station, and falls in love with her. The girl’s name is Zelda, she reveres him and his writings. She goes on to become a prototype for his characters; fragments of her diary are incorporated into his books. Of course he marries her — and you know what, I have read her diaries; they are nothing special. The man, whose name was F. Scott Fitzgerald, had imagined most of her virtues in much the same way as he had imagined the events of his extraordinary books. The books she had inspired. The two of them are buried under the same stone. She was just another girl in Alabama — if you are reading this, you are definitely smarter.

   So there. And now – about why none of that is going to help you. Because, as we know very well, there ain’t no men left. I mean, no decent ones. No, really — you’d have an easier job finding an unicorn or a griffin than a decent bloke as one would be defined by your average woman. That “decent man” is some serious fantasy beast — your mom’s delirium brewed with some crazy nonsense from ladies’ self-help courses and women’s fiction, plus your individual hallucinations for an added spice.

   So, first of all, he should be loving you, right? To most women that means giving you as much attention as possible. It is very interesting and telling that, as soon as some idiot starts actually doing that, the woman instantly loses any interest in him. For that is the difference between a boy and a man — the man has things much more important than women. His work. His fun. His war. If men were spending their days listening, dove-eyed, to female nonsense, the women would have died out long time ago, or been captured as concubines by the nearby tribes.

   Secondly, he ought to treat you as an equal — surely that’s not too much to ask? To see a person in you, to have an equal partnership. Since I am writing this for women, I am trying painfully, at this very moment, to translate some seriously salty expletives into something approximating family-friendly English. Erm, sorry to break it to you so abruptly, but… the idea of gender equality contradicts elementary biology. The asymmetry of the sexual act is intrinsic, so to speak. OK, sure, in modern society the woman might well end up on top, figuratively speaking, and that’s often the case – a majority of modern men do delegate the running of the family to the woman because their mum had brought them up that way. If that’s the case, go ahead and enjoy your power. In a wise and lady-like manner, as exemplified by Catherine the Great (do read her letters to her lovers instead of your silly magazines, by the way). But remember: a man like that, even if he’s a billionaire or an MI6 agent, would not make you tremble. You’d never truly respect him. But well, you’d have your freedom and equality, and you’d be the one more equal.

   The opposite — a man in the classical sense of the word — is exceedingly rare. That one ain’t no knight in shining armour, and won’t quixote around. He’d actually be more of what’s called a bastard, because you are a non-human to him. Something like a cat, which he can like and care about and let it sleep in his bed, and give an occasional smack. What he won’t do — for that would be stupid — is to care for the cat’s opinion. The true man makes his own decisions. He has many things in the world that are more important than you. That’s the authentic flame-grilled bloke. But if you’ve been brought up on soya, you might not like the taste of a rare steak. And more importantly, what’s he got to gain by adopting your bats?

   To summarise that second question: a woman in a family can either dominate or submit. There can be no equality. That would be contrary to nature. Correspondingly, there are two types of men: some are willing to obey you; others will make you obey. Decide which one you want and stop being a British summer.

    And thirdly, he must be in love with you and you alone, and that must be mutual, and the rest of the pink unicorns. Indeed, monogamous pairs do exist out there, who need nobody else in their lives. There are very few of those, what makes you think that that’s about you? Go check for starters if you might by any chance still be a virgin. If not, what kind of monogamy are we talking about? Ah, those were “the errors of your youth”? I was always wondering about the number of… erm, errors… beyond which a decent girl would finally no longer qualify as decent. Some ladies told me that the main thing is to not have two at a time. What about the transition period then? When one of these, as you are calling them, relationships, is coming to an end, and the other one is starting?

    Don’t get me wrong, we are not judging anyone here on the Dark Side. That would not befit us. We are talking about something else: perhaps those weren’t errors after all, but a logical trend? And you basically need a good, healthy variety of men? Not just for sex, but in general — for interaction. So that they swirl around you and feed you with their attention (i.e. energy). Or you could get that one proper bloke who’d send all of these “just friends” packing where the sun don’t shine? Are you sure you actually need that?

   Could it be all that decent girl stuff isn’t actually about you? Enough, is enough, you know. There are these beasts out there, called hippos; they are monogamous. Once the male makes his choice, he sticks by the same female for the rest of his life. But then there are bears, who have a female polygamy, where the objective of the female is to mate as many males as she can find. So then – is the hippo girl a decent girl and the bear girl a bad one? Well, humans are a bit more sophisticated than either hippos or bears. We have multiple mating scenarios within a single biological species. Your own scenario is hard-wired into you and you do know perfectly that it is. It might look “wrong” from the point of view of a mother or be frowned upon by some progressive version of female psyche, but it is yours. Doing what you are “supposed to be doing” is a recipe for disaster. You have no idea how funny a thrice-divorced thirty-year-old with a kid can look when she tries to play a decent girl.

    So, to top it off – if you actually managed to catch a bloke — how to keep the prize. Exclusive, from the Dark Side: the secret to retaining a man you had captured, coming straight from the forest demon of Swiss and Slavic folklore, the fearsome Baba Yaga. According to the legend, when a lost traveller had chanced upon her hut, she fed him, watered him, bathed him, and only then proceeded to her questions. Take heed — when a man turns up after a long day, do not jump on him with your cuddles or problems. Let him gobble something up. Let him rest in his man cave (if you don’t have one, build it asap!). Do not go there yourself and don’t let children go there. Don’t worry, he’ll come out like bees to honey. Then you can talk, and ask, and it shall be given you. For nothing infuriates a man like the “you don’t give me enough attention”

   text, illustration © The Dark Side of Business