Jack Lee - A Guide for the Heroic Nerd

She was smart and beautiful. With time and experience, I’m sure she became a much better vampire.

One of the greatest discoveries of modern medicine is the science of vaccinations. If a human being is exposed to a weakened or dead virus, we’re made immune to the stronger virus. I had no idea at the time, but my date with the baby vampire helped immunize me against the adult variety.

The next vampire I met was when I was in graduate school. A friend of a friend was one of her victims and was totally in love with her. If the guy had been one of my friends, I wouldn’t have made a play for her.

This vampire had skills. She had the hot librarian look down. She was intelligent, funny, and could talk gear and science like the best of guys. It was almost impossible for a nerd NOT to fall in love in her. I was totally intrigued by her because she didn’t make sense. Normal women use their body language to tell you if they want you or not. When you give a normal girl a friendly hug, you can tell by what she does with her center of balance if she views you as a potential lover or not. If she leans away, she’s repulsed by you. If her center of balance doesn’t shift, she thinks you’re just a friend. If she leans into you, she’s open to something physical.

The vampire’s body language was contradictory. It was always come hither to a certain point, and then it was go away. There were times when she leaned into me and other times when she leaned away.

I knew she gave other guys the, ‘I want to be friends’ speech all the time. I didn’t make an attempt to be her friend; by then I’d given up on fake friendships. My goal was to be a friendly acquaintance until I figured her out. After awhile, I could tell that it bothered her that I wasn’t in love with her like all her other ‘friends.’ I noticed she didn’t have a single girlfriend and that all her guy friends were worshipers. In some ways she reminded me of the baby vampire.

So I tried an experiment. One day when we were alone, I told her she was beautiful, intelligent, and funny. For almost five minutes I praised her truthfully letting her know all the great things I noticed about her, and then when it was clear to me she was convinced I was in love with her and just about to start giving me the friend speech, I started lying.

I told her I didn’t know how it was possible since she was so sexy and beautiful, but for some strange reason I wasn’t physically attracted to her as a woman. I told her that emotionally she felt just like a guy to me. In fact if I closed my eyes, I totally got the vibe she was a guy. I told her that I knew we’d be great friends because there wasn’t any sexual tension to get in the way.

Normal women react normally. Insult any normal woman—tell her she’s not sexually attractive at all— and she’ll want nothing to do with you. Abnormal women react differently. At the time, I didn’t know anything about vampires. All I knew was that normal techniques wouldn’t work on this girl, so I tried something different.

After that conversation she stopped giving me mixed messages. She tried everything in her power to seduce me. Eventually I let her. After we had sex, I recognized the look on her face. It was the same look I got when I slept with the wrong girl. If I hadn’t been so good at hiding that look myself, I probably wouldn’t have known what I was seeing.

It was a funny kind of sad to be on the opposite side of that look. I wasn’t upset. I have a lot of flaws, but hypocrisy isn’t one of them; I had no right to be upset about something I’d done so many times. I watched her get dressed and escape from the scene of the crime as fast as I’ve ever done. Even though I should have known better, I tried to make a relationship work with her. If I treated her well she lost interest, if I treated her like I didn’t want her she came back.

The vampire and I had a lot in common. We had similar interests and a similar sense of humor. In a lot of ways good and bad, we deserved each other. When we talked about gear or philosophical questions, I had as much fun with her as I did with any of my best guy friends, but I got tired of having to ill treat someone I liked in order to be with her. I had no interest in becoming one of her worshippers, so I broke up with her after a few months. As expected, when I truly wanted to leave, she really tried to keep me in the relationship.

I’m not one to ever a mistake just once so I had to date a couple more vampires before I learned it was a waste of time.

A victim is a woman who is convinced she needs to be punished. She always gravitates to men who abuse her. If you treat her well, she’ll want to be your friend. She’ll have absolutely no interest in being your lover.

Any man like me who has asshole tendencies absolutely needs to avoid victims. You are what you do. If you act like a complete asshole, you are a complete asshole.

There’s a part in every one of us that wants to please the women we’re with. In their heart of hearts, victims want to be abused. Unless you like abusing women, you should stay away from them.

Let’s go back to talking about normal women. Men have a tendency to think that everything a woman does is crazy and irrational. It’s extremely difficult for men to know when normally sane women are actually truly irrational.

I’m pretty sure you’re aware of this, but it needs to be said, ‘Women menstruate and it sometimes affects their emotions.’ Premenstrual syndrome or PMS is a real medical diagnosis. It refers to a constellation of physical and mental symptoms that affect seventy-five percent of women in their childbearing years, five to eleven days before their monthly cycle. Half of the women with PMS also have a psychiatric disorder called premenstrual dysmorphic disorder or PMDD, which is a more severe and debilitating version of PMS.

The take home point of PMS is one out of three women will go bug-shit crazy for a few days to a week before her period. If you’re in a long term relationship, you need to understand that PMS often gets a lot worse after your partner turns thirty.

I’ll admit freely that someone else had the insight that I’m discussing in this chapter. I’ll call him M. M was in college dating a wonderful girl named D. They’d get along great but periodically get into a fight about something completely irrational. One day he happened to glance at a calendar and it occurred to him that their fights might have something to do with his girlfriend’s cycles.

He got out his pen and put a little dot on the days he remembered getting into fights. It was clear that they occurred on a four week cycle. Just as he was finishing making his dots, D came up to him and asked, “What are you doing?”

He gave her a panicked stricken look and said, “Nothing!”

“YOU’RE MARKING MY PERIODS!”

He got totally reamed, but he says it was worth it to know when his girlfriend was hormonal. He now recommends programming your phone to warn you when you need to be careful.

Men have great difficulty distinguishing between real female rage and hormonally induced female rage. The only way to know with real certainty is to see if there is a consistent monthly pattern.

DO NOT let your woman know you’re doing this. Whether a woman has PMS or not, if she suspects you THINK she has PMS, she will hurt you badly. Women frequently joke and talk about PMS amongst themselves. You’re a man. Since you don’t get periods, you’re not allowed to talk about it.

Thirty to forty percent of guys who track their fights with their girlfriends/wives will see a monthly correlation to their fights. Knowledge is power. If you see a very consistent monthly correlation, you now have objective data that it’s about her hormones—it’s not really about her real self or you.