How to Be a Gentleman
I've been getting called "gentle" and "a gentleman" quite a bit recently. Me, of all people! The man who prides himself on taking women as lovers within a few hours of meeting them, and who hardly ever goes on second dates because he either sleeps with a girl on the first date, or burns the house down trying.
Yet I am, according to more and more women I meet these days, a gentleman.
I've had an interesting and at times soap opera-y progression of events over the past week in which my girlfriend has contacted an ex-girlfriend of mine, whom she'd never met or spoken to, in order to, at first, vent about me and seek her guidance, and now to be friends with her. My ex-girlfriend and I have since reconciled, and my current girlfriend and my ex-girlfriend have been comparing notes on me: the good and the bad.
I have a big belly (I'm skinny by American standards, but... I'm not in America anymore).
My face gets red very easily.
I'm troublesome and not simple. Just when they think they have me figured out... they realize they were wrong.
And, I'm a gentleman. I have gentle eyes. I'm a gentle person.
That last one is no accident, mind you. Being a gentleman is something I've long aspired to be. I'm a big believer that a man can be fast, powerful, and incredibly seductive – and yet, still manage to be dashing, enchanting, and considerate.
James Bond is a rogue and a knave, and he shoots bad guys and beds women – a LOT of women – with speed and expertise.
But he's still a gentleman. And if you aren't – well, I think you should aim to be, too.


A friend of mine shot me an email the other day, and in one part of the email he asked me this:
Social status: it's more than just something you get or don't get, have or don't have. Lots of people don't see it that way, though; they tend to think of social status as simply a dividing line between the people who are "in" and the people who are "out."
Recently while scanning the good old Internet I came across a number of posts where guys talk down on beautiful women as being "shallow" and "bitches" and wonder about how to get "real girls." This seemed a little jarring and I like to cut myself off from negative stuff whenever possible, so I navigated away from those guys' pages.
You know the feeling: you find yourself in a conversation that's stuck on the superficial. You're talking about the weather; about how you both hate getting up early in the morning; about what the local sports team did last week; about how sushi is okay but katsu sauce... man, that's where it's at.
A guy meets a girl he likes. He starts talking to her, and there's electricity in the air. Attraction. He can tell she likes him. A lot, even.
It's Friday night, and you're sitting at home by yourself. No girlfriend to spend time with, no gal you're kind of sort of seeing to call... not one girl to keep you company.