Ekaterina Sedia - Running with the Pack

He’d only been wandering around for a few minutes when she found him.

“Jon? I knew you wouldn’t disappoint us.”

Us ? He turned and there she was, with her whole entire family.

Well. He only wanted to sleep with her, not the whole pack of them. Still, he had enjoyed their company and if that was how it was going to be, that was how it was going to be.

He walked over to her smiling and gave her a hug and peck on the cheek, then shook her dad’s hand and said hello to everyone else.

Sage was right. The guys did come awfully close to sporting mono-brows. If he and Anastasia had kids, he’d have to worry about that.

Prime stopped himself. Kids? Where were these thoughts coming from? He’d experienced an overwhelming physical attraction and connection with this girl, but that was not the stuff to make a pick-up artist marry. That was just an everyday occurrence in his life these days.

But he knew that the raw, instinctual feelings he’d had the night before ran deep in his hindbrain.

Normally on a day two meeting like this he’d plan to be alone with his girl and build comfort, rapport. The real thing, too. There was nothing fake about this part of pick-up. The artist just knew how to do it fast.

“Let’s go for a walk,” Anastasia said. “They can do without us for a while, don’t you think?”

“Is that all right with you guys?” Prime asked Yuri and Elena.

“Sure,” Yuri said. “You kids have fun.”

“And I’ll take that,” said Elena, reaching for the bottle of wine Prime had brought.

“Thanks,” he said, and off they went.

As soon as they were out of sight of the rest of her family, she jumped him again, and it was all he could do to make her stop.

“I don’t understand,” she said. “Don’t you feel what I feel?”

Oh Lord, how he did. There was a palpable, raw lust arcing between them every time they touched.

“Yes,” he said. The first instant they’d touched again there was no doubt that they’d sleep together the moment the logistics allowed. The thing was he wanted more, some kind of relationship.

Most master pick-up artists managed a small and revolving harem of girls in non-exclusive relationships. There was always a girl available when he wanted, or new ones to hunt. Prime had three women in multiple long-term relationships at the moment. He just couldn’t envision Anastasia as one of these, assuming he could even see her without her extended family tagging along.

He wanted more. He wanted to consume her.

This was all irrational he knew, intellectually. He didn’t know this girl at all beyond the facts that she was hot and cool and liked him. That and the fact that the pure physical lust had been overpowering.

“There are a lot of pretty girls in the world,” he said. “Other than your looks, what are three things that make you special?”

She took hold of his face between her hands and looked deep in his eyes. “You’re still thinking too much, but I will humor you my Jon.”

Prime looked right back at her, triangular gazing, moving his focus between her two eyes and mouth.

“First, I am free. I see what I want and I take it, and I am responsible for my freedom.

“Second, I understand the natural order of things and accept it.

“Third,” and she paused to smile, showing her perfect teeth, “I can recognize a strong man when I find him, a man with potential to be more.”

Wow, what an answer. Most hot girls had to stop and think hard about that question. He’d once seen a pick-up artist on a talk show leave Jessica Alba initially flummoxed, as the question alone had removed her beauty from the attraction question.

Anastasia’s response made him think of something that had happened to him. It was not a story he shared often, although it was a true story and important to him.

“I went hunting once, when I was a teenager. I wanted to know what it was like to be responsible for killing one’s own food. I’m a carnivore, as you already know, and anyone who eats meat should know first hand what that means.”

He paused, thinking about how to articulate the next part, then stopped worrying. It would come out.

“My dad had a friend who hunted, who taught me about guns, and took me. He told me about buck fever, how he’d get so excited before shooting a deer that he almost couldn’t pick up his rifle let alone aim it. It made me imagine a housewife at the grocery store pissing herself with excitement as she reached for a pound of ground beef.”

He was quiet again, remembering that daydream and the first time.

Anastasia rested her head in the nape of his neck, listening.

“When I had the deer in my sights,” he continued, “it wasn’t like I was shopping at a grocery store, but it wasn’t like I had buck fever either. I’m not religious especially, but it was a holy thing. A beautiful and natural thing that I’d been too ignorant to realize existed every day, everywhere around the world. It wasn’t just about eating, and it wasn’t just about dying. It was about being part of the world, and understanding you place.

“After I shot the deer and it went down, I cried.”

“Why?” she whispered.

Maybe she did understand. The other times he’d tried to tell girls this story they had been near crying themselves and the obvious explanation was not what had moved him. He wasn’t sorry he had taken the animal’s life or that he found Bambi’s mother delicious.

“It was the first time I ever felt truly alive, and glimpsed the responsibility.”

She said something then that surprised him with its depth of insight. “That was because you saw the world as it is, but not yet fully your own place in it.”

Or was it insightful? Maybe she was just spouting bullshit the way schools trained kids to do.

He held her tighter as he realized it wasn’t bullshit. She wasn’t a bullshitter, and he was ashamed there was as much bullshit in his life as there was.

Because of the rain they had their picnic in the family’s RVs, with Prime, Anastasia, and her parents in one and the rest in the second. The group had two and were touring the west coast on vacation.

The logistics suddenly seemed nearly impossible, but Prime was committed to making more of this strange, blossoming relationship.

“And what do you do for a living?” Yuri asked over a bite of chicken leg.

“Yes,” said Anastasia’s mother. “Last night you told us you repaired disposable lighters, and while that was a very funny answer, I don’t think it is true.”

There was a short answer to the question, and a long answer that was more obscure but no less true. Unlike some pick-up artists, he was not shy or ashamed about how he made his very good living. He told it the way he saw it.

“I take nerds,” he began, “and guys broken by divorce, and socially stunted Silicon Valley executives, and fellows whose fathers were either clueless in the first place or failed to pass on their wisdom, I take them all, and I help them make themselves better men.”

“Sounds like the army,” Yuri said.

Prime grinned. “We do call our workshops ‘boot camps,’ and some of the same principles apply. Men are resistant to change, even when the change is good for them. Even when it is about them realizing their every dream and becoming responsible for their own power.”

This was the long answer, and truer, at least to him, than any trite answer about teaching guys to get laid. The term pick-up artist conjured up negative connotations to so many who thought the trade was all a bag of tricks about how to manipulate women out of their panties. Well, he admitted, some of it was. But the core of it to Prime had always been about helping men realize themselves and their personal power. He liked the army analogy better than the self-help guru image that he knew Sage preferred.