My sister Neisha once said that her hobby was collecting hobbies. I know exactly what she meant, because I've always done the same thing. Except that I usually take it a step further. Or a million steps further.

My hobby is obsessions.

A month ago I wrote about an anonymous gift I got in the mail. A copy of The Game by Neil Strauss. I still don't know who sent me the damn thing, who decided for some reason to introduce me to the world of the pickup artists.

But that world, that community, it has become my newest obsession.

Learning about these people, and what they think, and how they operate. How they formulate and rehearse everything they do when it comes to meeting girls. It's a very fascinating subject for me. Like I wrote before, it's both intriguing and repulsive to me. It's a fucking auto accident with dead and mangled bodies strewn all over the road.

See a pretty girl. Walk up to her. Say some canned line. Gauge her reaction, and say another set of canned lines. Get her phone number. Meet her again in a few days. Have sex with her. Rinse and repeat.

The whole thing makes me kinda sick to my stomach. It likens women to mindless robots, and it reduces relationships to formulaic interactions with sex as the only goal being pursued.

Seriously, there are guys out there who are actually proud of the fact that they date several women at the same time. That they have can have sex with a half-dozen women in a week.

I may be generalizing a bit. The stated goal of at least some of these people is the same goal that a lot of men have: To have an awesome relationship with a wonderful girl. I know that's been my goal for as long as I can remember.

But for others, for others the goal is to make up for the lost time they spent as shy and unpopular virgins. And to do it as callously and impersonally as possible.

Disgusting.

Speaking for myself, I've never had a real problem meeting girls. Talking to girls. Setting up and going on dates. Those things have never been a problem for me, but that's not to say that I don't have any problems when it comes to girls. I have a couple that, sometimes, annoy the shit out of me.

My first problem is that, over these 1.3 billions seconds or so of my life, I've found very few girls who seemed to be worth any effort whatsoever. Not the effort required to get to know them, and not even the effort required to simply bed them. Whores and sluts. Stuck-up prima donnas. Fucking basket cases.

So, most often, I don't even bother. I go by my first impression, and I give up before I ever get started.

This really annoys me. I know that I'm missing out on some wonderful opportunities.

But that's not my biggest problem. Not even close.

My biggest problem is, I seem to always be on the fast track to the dreaded friend zone. I make friends all over the fucking place, and I daresay that most of them are girls. I try to tell myself that this isn't a bad thing at all. That a good friend is much better than a one-night stand could ever be. I tell myself that, and at least a part of me knows that I'm right, but it can still be frustrating as fuck. I'm still a man after all. Biology and instinct does play a big part in my life and my moods and my desires.

I think about some of the most wonderful and fascinating and beautiful girls I know, and almost every one of them is or was a friend of mine. So close but still so far. Like I said, frustrating as fuck.

That's why I've become fascinated with this pickup artist stuff. To try to learn how to avoid this pitfall. To try to learn how to avoid the friend zone until/unless I decide that it's where I want to be. I want to finally be able to make that choice instead of having it forced down my throat.

Because, once I'm trapped, there's no escape from the friend zone.

And, once feelings develop as they inevitably will, it's fucking torture.

I've had enough torture in my life. I have enough friends. I want something else. Something more.