Mardy Grothe - Neverisms

After graduating from a private high school in the Chicago suburbs in the late 1980s, Strauss headed east with dreams of becoming a writer. While a student at Vassar College and Columbia University, he honed his skills by writing scores of articles for newspapers and magazines. After college, he landed a job at the Village Voice , where he performed whatever menial tasks needed doing—fact-checking, proofreading, writing ad copy—in order to occasionally write a piece that carried his byline.

Though months would go by without one of his stories being published, Strauss didn’t get discouraged. His persistence paid off when several of his pieces were noticed by honchos at the New York Times. Strauss soon began writing pieces on music and pop culture for the Times, and shortly after that for Rolling Stone. It was a heady time for the aspiring writer. Still in his twenties, he was developing a national reputation—and garnering a few industry awards along the way—for his profiles of such cultural icons as Madonna, Tom Cruise, Kurt Cobain, and Marilyn Manson.

Shortly after the Marilyn Manson profile appeared in Rolling Stone , Strauss received a call from Manson’s agent, asking him if he would consider ghostwriting a book for the rock star. Strauss eagerly accepted, and over the next several months developed a whole new approach to writing celebrity autobiographies. Instead of spending hundreds of hours poring over tape-recorded interviews, Strauss immersed himself in Manson’s life: living in his L.A. mansion, traveling with him on tour, partying with the musicians and their groupies, and in general becoming a fly on the wall of the performer’s life. He said of his method: I need more than just a voice on tape. I really need to be around that person all the time so I can see what their life is like. And if I’m ghostwriting, I need to be able to write how they would write if they could write.

Strauss’s around-the-clock presence in Marilyn Manson’s life, combined with his ability to gain the rock star’s trust, resulted in The Long Road Out of Hell , a 1998 celebrity autobiography that directly paralleled another famous journey through hell: Dante’s Inferno . The book, which revealed dark and disturbing elements of Manson’s past as well as softer and more vulnerable sides of his personality, was critically acclaimed, and Strauss was soon being hailed for breaking new ground in the genre (a Rolling Stone review said, “There has never been anything like it”). The Manson book marked Strauss’s first appearance on the New York Times bestseller list, and was soon followed by three more bestselling celebrity ghostwriting projects: The Dirt: Confessions of the World’s Most Notorious Rock Band , by Tommy Lee and other members of Mötley Crüe (2001), Don’t Try This at Home: A Year in the Life of Dave Navarro (2004), and also in 2004 Jenna Jameson’s How to Make Love Like a Porn Star.

As Strauss was putting the finishing touches on the Jameson book, he was approached by his editor about looking into an online community of pickup artists who claimed they could turn an “average frustrated chump” into a “chick magnet.” The idea appealed to Strauss both professionally and personally. As a short, balding, bespectacled, shy, workaholic writer, he saw the assignment as a way to fix a longstanding problem in his life. He later said: I went into that community of pickup artists . . . not as a writer but as a guy who (like millions of others) had problems with women in his life and was too scared to approach women or was always the guy caught in friend-zone.

After laying out $500 to attend a weekend workshop for aspiring pickup artists (PUAs), Strauss came face-to-face with the workshop leader, a Toronto magician who went by the name of Mystery. Mystery was anything but handsome. According to Strauss, he looked like a combination of a vampire and a computer geek. But his incredible success with women had made him a kind of deity in the PUA community. Intrigued by Mystery’s tales of seduction, Strauss decided to study at the feet of the master. Within a few months, he moved into a Sunset Strip mansion with Mystery and a number of other master PUAs, adopted the nickname Style, and began to apply his workaholic research skills to his new assignment.

Strauss quickly learned such tricks of the trade as “the three-second rule,” which says a man must approach a woman within three seconds of seeing her (wait any longer, the rule goes, and you may chicken out). Early in his research, Strauss also learned another important principle:

Never approach a woman from behind.

The rule was explained: “Always come in from the front, but at a slight angle so it’s not too direct and confrontational. You should speak to her over your shoulder, so it looks like you may walk away at any minute.” As Strauss’s learning progressed, he was provided with additional rules:

Never give a woman a straight answer to a question.

Never hit on a woman right away.

Start with a disarming, innocent remark.

Never begin by asking a question that requires a yes or no response.

At the end of a year, Strauss learned his lessons so well that he became one of the most successful PUAs in his strange little fraternity. He ultimately told his “Ugly Duckling to Prince Charming” tale in The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists , a 2005 memoir that became another New York Times bestseller.

Guidelines about sex, love, and romance—expressed neveristically—have also been authored by women. Some of the best have come from Cynthia Heimel, a columnist for many years at Playboy and the Village Voice . In Sex Tips for Girls (1983), her first book, Heimel provided this rule:

Never, under any circumstances, ever go to bed

with a man you’ve just met in a bar.

Or any man you hardly know. No matter what.

There is no equivocation in this advice. Earlier in the book, though, Heimel had a little fun answering the question “Should you sleep with a man on the first date?” She immediately answered, “No, you should not, no matter what.” But then, after proclaiming, “This is a hard-and-fast rule. There are no exceptions,” she concludes unexpectedly: “Unless you really want to.” Her book also contained other admonitions, some expressed in unforgettable ways:

Never ask if it’s in yet.

Never, ever talk about how good you are in bed.

Never try to establish a successful flirtation when your hair is a mess.

Never spend more than an hour and a half cleaning your apartment for a fellow.

You must never fake an orgasm.

Faking an orgasm is an act of self-degradation.

No area of life is filled with more mistakes and missteps than the world of sex, love, and romance. As a result, there are few arenas filled with more cautionary warnings, dissuasive advice, or proclamations about what one should never do. Let’s continue our look at them in the rest of the chapter.

Never confuse “I love you” with “I want to marry you.”CLEVELAND AMORY, quoting an anonymous

father’s advice to his sons

Never be rude in a bar, because the guy you snub tonight

could be your job interviewer tomorrow.DAN ANDERSON & MAGGIE BERMAN, in the 1997 book

Sex Tips for Straight Women from a Gay Man

Never date a man prettier than yourself.ELIZABETH ANDERSON