YDN Magazine

yale daily news magazine Vol. xxxvii 路 Issue 4 路 February 2011 路 yaledailynews.com/mag

Just once, her eyes meet yours and linger longer than they should. You are sitting ten feet away. In three seconds, you will walk up and seduce her.

The Study of Seduction. Page 32.

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Plus, Living with Conviction: Reentry Roundtable on page 24.

Think you can draw like this?

Submit to the Ydn magazine’s first annual illustratioN contest. illustrations should interpret the theme of fate.

DUE: February 28

send submissions and questions to: mag@yaledailynews.com

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JUst business

by Jacob Albert GN 17 GN Art DiAdamo, Bail Bondsman

conviction

by Nicole Levy o 24 o Life as an Ex-Offender

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Q’s Michael Cunningham 8

small talk

Singular Twins x Religion & Ecology x Pasta Amore 9

crit Jer-ry!

Molly Hensley-Clancy 12

PHOTO ESSAY Blood, Sweat, and Tears: The Life of an Athlete Ariana Papier 14

poetry

Christmas Visit x Detail November First 46

Personal Essay

the study of seduction

by Peter Lu s 32 s How to Play the Game

red delicious

by Ethan Kuperberg O 41 O A Short Story

Yale Daily News Magazine yaledailynews.com/mag

On Being Cold Edmund Downie 49

dEAR DANA 51

Magazine Editors Zara Kessler u Naina Saligram

Associate Editors Sijia Cai x Eliana Dockterman Jacque Feldman x Molly HensleyClancy x Nicole Levy x Lauren Oyler Cooper Wilhelm

Designers Raisa Bruner u Eli Markham Lindsay Paterson Christian Vazquez

Photography Editors Christopher Peak Sarah Sullivan Yale Daily News Editor in Chief Publisher Vivian Yee Kyle Miller

shorts

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Editors’ Note

‘T

hrow out everything you know about dating.”

So begins the seduction manual Rules of the Game by Neil Strauss.

It’s a new year and Valentine’s Day is just around the corner — now’s the perfect time to clear off your romantic palette.

Take a break from practicing your Toad’s dance moves and delve into the scientific and psychological underpinnings of attraction in Peter Lu’s cover story, “The Study of Seduction.”

February at Yale is full of opportunities to connect with someone special.

Seniors have 28 nights of Feb Club parties; freshmen have their infamous Screw. You never know who might help you up after you slip on one of the copious icy patches sprawled across the city.

Getting back on one’s feet is always a difficult process. Nicole Levy explores how New Haven’s Reentry Roundtable helps ex-offenders attempt to transform their lives after conviction. Underlying their new paths is the harrowing question of whether one’s past can ever truly be forgotten. For another angle on the justice system, dive into Jacob Albert’s intimate profile of New Haven bail bondsman Art DiAdamo.

As always, we’d like to thank our writers, editors, and designers for continuing to trek through the various flavors of wintry mix to 202 York Street.

“You win when, at any point between Day 1 and Day 30, you get a date,” writes Strauss. Sorry folks, February only has 28 days. You’d better start studying right away.

— Zara Kessler & Naina Saligram

The Secret Lives of Professors

What do you do outside of the classroom?

Tamar Gendler: Creative crafts Professor Gendler’s “secret life” outside of Yale is a family affair. With her husband and sons as collaborators, she creates “elaborate constructions” from Popsicle sticks, yarn and acrylic paint, or Playmobil figures. Other family pastimes include racing with geography puzzles on the living room floor (“one team does Africa and Europe, and the other does Asia and U.S.”), cooking creative vegetarian food (“Harry Potter chocolate-peanut butter bon bons”), and acting out charades about politics (“my favorite was Darth Vader versus Ralph Nader”).

The family also boasts a Harry Potter Popsicle stick collection — 100 figures of characters such as Hermione, Ron, Hagrid (“two sticks glued together!”), Dumbledore, Anthony Goldstein, Professor Sinistra, and even Binky, Lavender Brown’s rabbit. “Jonah [my son] draws the faces and then paints the sticks with acrylic paint, and then I help him glue on the hair,” Gendler says. “Two of our best ones are Dolores Umbridge (her hair is made of spirals) and Tonks (her hair uses rainbow yarn).”

Gendler is a Professor of Philosophy.

Wendell Bell: Futurism What would happen if a sudden warm front struck New Haven? Futurists like Bell ponder such questions.

“Futurists,” explains Bell, “want to know what futures are really possible, what futures are most probable, what alternative futures are most desirable, and what people can do to create the most desirable future.” They are more concerned with the “what if ” question than with predicting the future: “The notion that futurists use ‘a crystal ball’ drives us up a wall,” he says, “because our primary purpose is not predicting the future.” Rather, they work to assess what futures would be most likely under different conditions, trying to provide knowledge that can help people improve their futures as well as the futures of “all living beings, plants, and the life-sustaining capacities of the Earth itself.”

Bell is a Professor Emeritus of Sociology.

Vol. XXXVIII, No. 4 February 2011

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Barbara Sattler: Photography Professor Sattler’s secret pastime corresponds with her interest in Presocratics, not a surprising fascination given that she teaches philosophy courses on campus. Pre-socratics poses questions that wrestle with how phenomena are created.

What is surprising, however, is the way in which her art intersects with her philosophical studies: through photography, she captures the four elements — fire, air, water, and earth — “in such ways that show how unexpectedly they can indeed be transformed.” Such elements, Sattler explains, fuel the “transformation of which for a good group of them the whole material world was built.”

Sattler’s other photographic project twists our conception of reality.

She takes photos of “different layers of reflections” in ordinary situations — “like in shop windows” — in a way that makes it challenging to “distinguish the different layers of ‘reality’ they derive from,” she says. The visual impact of the layers plays on our perception of reality, as we can easily identify each layer when faced with such reflections in everyday conditions.

Sattler is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Classics.

Demetra Kasimis: All Things Mid-Late 60s Dr. Kasimis claims that many of her non-academic interests have taken “the back seat,” but her “deep interest for all things mid-late 60s” proves otherwise. What does this fascination entail? The politics of the period, the “mod fashion,” the music — the world as it was nearly half a century ago.

“Although I’m not a collector (yet), I am an avid listener of a lot of the music from that era — rare soul, organ jazz, and boogaloo — especially Latin or Puerto Rican boogaloo that came out of NYC,” Kasimis says. “I make clothes, too, but the fact that I’m self-taught limits me sometimes.”

Kasimis is a Postdoctoral Associate in the Whitney Humanities Center.

Dean Karlan: Nonprofit work Evidenced by his use of real-world examples such as Microcredit and Homebase to illustrate economic principles in his introductory microeconomics course, nonprofit work enters Professor Karlan’s life, both on campus and off. Karlan started a website called “stickK. com,” which provides an outlet for people to make their “vices more expensive, or their virtues cheaper” so that they can more successfully face their individual aspirations. The site is “great for losing weight, stopping smoking, or doing one’s Real Life Write-up for ECON 115 before the very end of the semester,” Karlan explains.

Karlan also travels every summer, visiting his team at Innovations for Poverty Action, and has written a book, More Than Good Intentions: How a New Economics Is Helping to Solve Global Poverty, which, as the title suggests, discusses what methods do and do not work in the fight against poverty.

Karlan is a Professor of Economics.

Yale Daily News Magazine yaledailynews.com/mag

book review tweet Rules of the Game: Master the Art of Attraction in 30 Days

by Neil Strauss ydnmag lure in women essential how-to: predesigned and tested missions & routines, with difficulty level, success rate, and saturation stats included.

VOCab•yale•ary Screw\skroo\ n. A twisty nail. v. 1. When succeeded by “over,” to be treated unjustly, often by exams.

2. When succeeded by “around,” refers to engaging in vague and unproductive activities.

3. When succeeded by direct object, to copulate.

4. To awkwardly set up suitemates with unattractive dates for the Willy Wonka-themed freshman dance.

Ydn mag, old school: On February 9, New York Times writer and former Yale Daily News Magazine editor John Tierney ’76 will be speaking at a Calhoun Master’s Tea. Tierney began editing the Magazine with Christopher Buckley ’75 and Eric Goodman ’75 in 1973, the year after its founding. Buckley and Tierney later collaborated on a satirical self-help novel.

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Top 10

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things to do in the s

Maple syrup candy: Throw out that Aunt Jemima’s you degrade your pancakes with and go buy some real, locally-made maple syrup. Heat it up to a boil in a saucepan, and after a slow-ticking minute of cooling, run outside and pour it onto a patch of (preferably not yellow) snow. It hardens into a taffy-like instant candy — eat it before it melts for a mouthful of wintry deliciousness. Or just eat plain snow. That’s good too.

Extreme sledding:

Equipment required: helmets, body pads, warm gloves, questionable decision-making skills, and various potential sledding implements. These may or may not include: dining hall trays, large textbooks, Saran Wrap, cardboard boxes, snowboards, skateboards, suitcases, chairs, and actual sleds. Not for young children.

Make a freezer for your cold beverages and frozen goods: Take advantage of Mother Nature and save some electricity by designing a personal snow-fridge. Located just outside your dorm, it will hold all the contents of your current conventional fridge. Designs can vary, depending on desired capacity and aesthetic preference.

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Pond skating and pond wandering:

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Take pictures of snowflakes:

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You haven’t ever truly experienced a New England winter if you haven’t a) gone pond skating and consequently, at some point b) fallen through the ice.

Speaking from my experience as an 8-year-old, I now know to avoid beaver dams, large masses of debris, and tree trunks protruding from spots in the ice. Beyond just skating, I also highly recommend pond hockey — an absurd amount of fun, trust me.

If you can get a black background and a high-quality camera, you’ll be fascinated by the images you can capture, just like Snowflake Bentley. This will actually require significantly more than your handheld digital camera’s 10 times optimal zoom; you’ll need to assemble an entire apparatus involving lenses and microscopes and mounting post clamps.

So maybe not. But be sure to check out close-ups of these distinct crystalline structures.

Interpretive snow sculptures: As we’ve seen displayed across campus, snow can serve as a unique medium and public forum for expressing ideas.

An initial sculpture not only undergoes the alterations brought on by changing weather conditions but also continual modifications of other artists in the community. What begins as a shapeless mound morphs into a totem pole, and then an abstract statue with a disembodied leg topped by a Super Bowl trophy, and a few days later, emerges as an enormous winged dragon.

Vol. XXXVIII, No. 4 February 2011

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e snow!

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Barefoot races: Whip off

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Ski or snowshoe to class: Spice up your route to

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your shoes, tug off your socks, and race a friend through the freshly fallen snow. It would be worthwhile to confirm in advance the availability of a shower into which you can jump upon returning inside.

lecture with a pair of freshlywaxed cross-country skis or superlight all-terrain maximum traction snowshoes. You might shave off a few minutes with the smooth glide of the skis and avoid the sidewalk swarms by trekking in snowshoes across the areas where no one else dares venture, Legolas style.

Make a snow cave and sleep in it overnight: Make a snow pile, allow it to harden, and hollow it out.

Pack more snow into sleeping platforms inside so that cold air will sink below you and add some insulating pads for good measure. A small hole in the roof is a key precaution to provide sufficient ventilation.

A bit of company is also a welcome addition.

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Hide & Seek Need a break from Yale (and the snow)? Looking for a reminder of the tropics? Come find this green haven and bask in its warmth ... if you can find it.

Release pent-up anger and tension: Nothing helps de-stress like hitting people you don’t like with snowballs, or better yet, ramming them with a good tackle into a pile of snow ...

— TaoTao Holmes

Yale Daily News Magazine yaledailynews.com/mag

Brianne bowen / staff photographer

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A protein shake. The next thing I’m going to eat is a cheeseburger. Balance is important. The yin and the yang.

What’s the most difficult piece you’ve ever had to write?

The novel I’m working on now. This is always the case. Ask me the same question in 10 years, and I’ll have the same answer, though it’ll be a different novel.

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for Michael Cunningham Michael Cunningham is the author of the novels A Home at the End of the World, Flesh and Blood, Specimen Days, By Nightfall, and The Hours, a winner of the Pen/Faulkner Award and Pulitzer Prize. Cunningham began teaching fiction workshops at Yale last spring. He lives in New York and stays at the Study when in New Haven.

What is your favorite thing to do at the Study?

Meeting students for conferences in the lobby. It has better light than my office, more comfortable chairs, and beverage service.

You can’t live without …

Okay, I admit it. My iPhone. Which is funny, because up until a little over a year ago, I was managing just fine without any such contraption.

If you could meet one character from a novel, who would it be?

Mr. Darcy, from Pride and Prejudice. I’ve had a crush on him since high school. I know I’m not his type, but still …

If you could ask President Obama one question, what would it be?

Will you please do something about Guantanamo, because I’ve still got my Obama underwear from Election Day, and I’d like to start wearing it again.

What is your favorite word and why?

“Cleave,” because it has two opposite meanings. And it’s a

The most embarrassing moment of your career was ...

Hm, there are any number of contenders … Okay. Not long ago, I went to a reading

by Rick Moody, having just gotten off a plane from Europe. I sat in the front row, and fell asleep. Did I snore? Surely. Did I drool? Probably. I suspect Rick will never forgive me, nor should he. Look for an annihilating review by Rick of some future novel of mine.

What is your favorite New Haven institution?

The Owl Shop.

Most importantly, why is Yale better than Harvard and Stanford?

I love Yale ... I wish I’d gone to Yale. I have Yale envy.

I don’t know enough about Harvard to say. Stanford, though — don’t get me started. Stanford is a neo-con institution (yes, Condoleezza Rice is the Provost) that pays almost no attention to its students once they’ve arrived. A chilly atmosphere of practicality pervades — one is clearly expected to be preparing for law, medicine, or business. The art building stands behind the gilded palaces devoted to the sciences, and it looks like the public bathroom at a beach. People talk about how beautiful the campus is, but when I was there, all I could think was: the biggest Taco Bell in the world.

Whew. Thanks for letting me get that off my chest.

Vol. XXXVIII, No. 4 February 2011

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Small Talk singular twins W religion & ecology W pasta amore X­­­­­

When Elena Light

’13 first visited Yale, she ran into a different kind of competition than the typical applicant. “I came to Yale and my twin sister said, ‘I’m applying here. Sorry.’ I told her, ‘No you’re not! It’s my favorite school.’”

Elena’s decision to separate from her twin is not an uncommon one. For many Yalies who are one of a pair, coming to college offers a chance to become their own person. Katie White ’13, whose twin brother chose to attend Claremont McKenna College, found the experience liberating. “Throughout your whole life, part of your identity was being part of a twin. You’re a unit,” Katie says.

“In high school my name wasn’t just Katie, it was Katie and Sam, the White twins.”

Elena agrees that being viewed as a dual-unit could be frustrating. “[My sister and I] were very different people and everyone knew that, but we were still grouped together,” she says. Now that she’s in college, “It’s nice to know that people still remember my name, even if there’s not the novelty of being a twin attached,” she says.

Still, most twins find it just as challenging to adapt to college life without their “other-half.” While most of her friends complained of a lack of “alone time,” Sarah DeLappe ’12 was dealing with the opposite problem.

After years spent doing everything in sync with her twin, whether that be co-editing the school newspaper or eating breakfast, her sister’s absence from her life in campus multiplied feelings of homesickness. Olivia Rogan ’12, a triplet whose brother attends Harvard and whose sister attends the University of Pennsylvania, found that the separation from her siblings was a relief when she first came to school but wonders if she would prefer their company at school now that she’s adjusted to life here.

Some Yalies find that their twins’ alternate trajectories go beyond choosing different schools. Both Katie and Olivia dealt with an additional separation when their brothers took gap years. For Katie, who had originally planned on taking a year off with her brother, this change raised new questions. “It’s tricky when you have separate lives but are still basically on the same track. We no longer have the bond of being sophomores in college,” she says.

“I’m happy for him, but I still wonder if taking a gap year is Yale Daily News Magazine yaledailynews.com/mag

brianne bowen / staff photographer

Sarah DeLappe

something that I should have done.”

‘12, Katie White Despite some speculation about what life ‘13, and Elena would be like had they chosen to stay together Light ‘13 are all for college, none of the students interviewed one of a pair. questions that Yale is the right fit for them. It can be easy to think that just because two people are twins, they must be attracted to the same activities and majors. But for many at Yale, this is not the case.

Autumn Von Plinsky ’13 always knew that she and her twin brother would split up for college because of their divergent interests. She concentrates on the sciences and arts, while he explores music production at Georgia Southern University. “I’ve had a very positive experience [at Yale], and I wonder if he were to come here, would he have the same resources at the tips of his fingers?”

Elena and her twin have also found that the decision to separate suits their different academic focuses. Elena’s time here has allowed her to pursue art history while her twin has engaged in public policy at Georgetown.

“We both went places where we’ve been given the best opportunities for our individual pathways. What really validated that Yale was the right fit for me was when [my sister] visited and said, ‘This is perfect for you!’”

Indeed, this extra assurance, as well as the chance to reconnect over a weekend, is a welcome occurrence. Most twins try to visit each other at least two or three times a semester, and upon such visits, Sarah has discovered that other Yalies are often unable to contain their excitement about this “double vision.” “It’s a little bit like you’re a circus freak,” she says. “It’s kind of this weird sitcom

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Elena, who occasionally forgets to tell her friends that she’s a twin, also encounters screams across Cross Campus when her sister visits. “Being a twin you automatically get all this attention — ‘You’re a twin? Let’s talk!’ I’m always like, ‘I’m Elena. I’m not your random fantasy of a beer commercial twin,’” she says.

As far as their relationships with other students are concerned, being a twin only helps to strengthen these bonds. For Elena, who was accustomed to having her sister as a moral study buddy, some friends have morphed into “replacement twins.” For Sarah, the attachment to her twin has led her to form similar ties. “I tend to expect a lot out of friendships and to surround myself with really close friends because that’s what I’m used to,” Sarah says.

But whether or not we know that fellow Yalies are one of a pair doesn’t really matter. As Katie White says, at the end of the day, the fact becomes just another interesting bit of trivia, one more thing that rounds out who she is.

“Now, even if people know that I have a twin,” she says, “being a twin becomes like playing squash — it’s just one of a set of things that makes you unique.”

— Madeline Buxton

I eye the calamari

that I’ve dumped on my plate, but when I point my fork toward my lunch, I can’t bring myself to actually eat it. The fried rings seem to spiral and squirm as though frozen in time — or batter, to be more precise. “It looks like it’s been alive…” I blurt out.

“That’s because it was,” Ben, one of my lunchtime companions, points out. The calamari still plaguing me, I can’t help but ask Ben, a vegetarian, why four years ago he decided to stop eating the chicken, pork, and beef that are staples of my diet.

“I realized I couldn’t kill an animal, you know?” Ben says. “So why should I eat it? I can pick an apple from a tree or dig a potato out from the earth…but I couldn’t kill a cow.”

Moral principles, like those guiding Ben’s vegetarianism, serve as the backbone that unifies the study of religion and ecology for Mary Evelyn Tucker.

Tucker is the co-director of the Forum on Religion and Ecology at Yale, along with her husband, and fellow professor, John Grim. With appointments at the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, the Divinity School, and the Department of Religious Studies, she explains that for her, “coming to Yale is part of a larger journey into the conjunction of religion and ecology.”

This journey began some 35 years ago, when Tucker taught at a university in Japan. “There I fell in love with Asia’s varied cultural traditions and art — Zen gardens and flower arrangements — along with the spectacular beauty of the countryside and the mountains,” she says.

“I sank into another kind of appreciation for nature, wild and cultivated.” Inspired by the ancient city of Kyoto and the agricultural cycles of rice growing, Tucker came to the realization that “religion and nature interconnect. I mean why else are Thanksgiving ceremonies in the fall, when a harvest is ready? Why is Christmas at the time of the solstice or why is Easter at the time of the equinox?” Her travels throughout Asia over the last three decades have led her to concerns about how pollution and environmental degradation have grown rapidly with industrialization and urbanization.

35 years later, the Forum that Tucker and Grim have assembled is working to explore the historical relationship between ecology and religion through research, teaching, lectures, and multimedia. The largest multi-religious project of its kind, the Forum at Yale was founded through a series of 10 conferences at Harvard’s Center for the Study of World Religions from 1996 to 1998.

Historians of religion, theologians, and environmentalists in attendance were trying to say that — in addition to scientific, policy, and economic concerns — we need to uphold cultural values sensitive to diversity and the long history of how religions have shaped our use of nature.

Tucker and Grim also edited the 10 volumes published by Harvard University Press that summarize the conference’s principal tenets.

The Forum’s mission has several outlets: conferences, publications, and a new film titled “Journey of the Universe,” which, from a narrative perspective, explores the potential of scientific discoveries to reveal the complexity of nature and human existence. An article titled “The New Story” by historian of religion Thomas Berry inspired the film. Berry observed how humans try to reconcile the difference between the creation stories of the world’s religions and the scientific story of the origins of the universe. For the last seven years, Tucker and evolutionary philosopher Brian Swimme — who wrote a book with Berry called The Universe Story — set out to produce the film, exploring the confluence and tension between scientific discoveries and humanistic insights about the nature of the universe. The film, accompanied by a book published by Yale Press and a DVD educational course, will be released to the general public in June 2011.

The premiere of the film will take place here at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies on March 25 and 26. (For more information and the trailer see www. journeyoftheunivere.org.)

I will need those few months to grapple with the idea of vegetarianism as it relates to basic rights and ethics, which lie at the heart of Tucker’s Forum. At the very least I’ll be keeping her goals in mind the next time I scoop food onto my plate in a dining hall.

— Valcy Etienne Vol. XXXVIII, No. 4 February 2011

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The first thing that greets

me upon entering Mama Del’s of East Haven is a group of several large refrigerators that hold nothing but pasta. Classic lasagna, plump gnocchi, and flavorful broccoli rabe line the shelves, which are peppered with dozens of white cardboard signs labeling the various homemade delicacies. My next greeting comes from the smiling owner, Chris Accabo, who, with a “Hi, how can I help you?” steers me toward the other pockets of pasta throughout the store.

Chris’s shop is about as homemade as his pasta. A stranger to the food industry, Chris previously worked in construction for thirty years. When business began to slow last year, he decided to invest his savings in the then-dilapidated Mama Del’s Pasta Mfg Co. The store, founded in 1965, once supplied pasta to many of Yale’s dining facilities but lost its status as it fell into disrepair. When Chris bought Mama Del’s, he turned it into a family affair, bringing in his nephew Brandon, an aspiring chef, to help run the place. They renovated the entire store, importing industrial-sized Italian pasta-making machinery and transforming a run-down building into a gleaming pasta emporium. “I used to make pasta for my family every Sunday, so I figured, why not make a business of it? I just never thought it would get so big!” Chris says, laughing.

In a way, running Mama Del’s isn’t that different from cooking those Sunday family dinners. Today, Chris’s wife, sister, son, and daughter all work in the shop. Picking up a piece of cavatelli, Chris turns the pasta in his floured fingers, explaining, “You see, we use eggs instead of water, which gives it this nice yellow color.” A glance confirms that the pasta is a wholesome pale yellow, unlike the usual bland noodles found in a box. “And we don’t skimp,” Chris continues. “Good pasta was never made by skimping on the good stuff.”

Since the store reopened last February, its familial, home-cooked appeal has helped business take off.

After Chris switched to the quaint packaging now used — “My daughter’s idea, of course. We used to just toss the pasta in plastic bags” — customers from the East Haven area and beyond have come to seek the pasta as a novelty gift, attracted to both its charming appearance and delicious taste. The store sold out of pasta repeatedly over the past holiday season: over 250 pounds were sold in a few short weeks, and business shows no sign of dwindling. Chris plans to expand to another shop he owns down the street, which will double his kitchen size and enable him to keep up with the ever-increasing demand.

The expansion could also help with Chris’s current goal: to return Mama Del’s to its former status as a Yale-

Yale Daily News Magazine yaledailynews.com/mag

syndicated pasta supplier. But so far, little progress has been made. “I called some guy in the Dining Services, but they never got back to me,” Chris laments.

What will it take for Mama Del’s pasta to reach Yalies? Currently, Barilla supplies all of the dry pasta for Yale’s dining halls, except for a few frozen products purchased from Carla’s Pasta, a company located in South Windsor that distributes nationally. “We are always open to exploring local options,” says Gerry Remer, a representative for Yale Dining, but the process is far from simple. “We take many things into consideration,” Remer says, including “product quality, company capabilities, location, food safety, capacity, national contract, ease of doing business, sustainability, cost, product applicability, nutritionals.”

In order for a local business like Mama Del’s to become a Yale supplier, a simple phone call is not enough to establish a relationship. “Distribution relationships and large commodities require a complete sourcing project including a request for proposals (RFP) process and thorough vetting,” explains Remer.

“Individual products to be delivered directly can be chosen through interviews and product testing or in a variety of ways.” Also, the issue of capacity is important when considering small businesses. As Remer clarifies, “In general we do not want to be in the position of being such a large customer that the supplier’s survival becomes dependent solely on our business.”

Whether or not Chris gets a Yale contract, there will be one Yalie enjoying his homemade pasta. He sends me away laden with two bags of cavatelli and tortellini and precise instructions on how to cook them. Boil for just a minute or two, until the little cylindrical noodles hit the surface of the water. Then drain.

— Sarah Atkins

sarah atkins / contributing photographer

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Crit jer-ry!

B

‘S

by MOLLY HENSLEY-CLANCY

top hiding your face. You’re already here, you might as well enjoy it.”

I open my fingers slightly and peer between them to see a scruffy-haired man with a heavyduty camera hoisted onto his shoulder. “Sorry,” I mutter. I let my hands fall.

“Well, look happy,” he snaps.

A few chairs away, a middle-aged woman vaults to her feet and screams, “I want my Jerry beads!” The cameraman thrusts the lens into my face, and only after I have forced a smile does he turn his focus to the woman, who has pulled up her T-shirt to reveal a pair of enormous, fishbelly-white breasts. Shrieking, she spins all the way around, just as she has been instructed — “You gotta do a full 360,” the producer warns. Her nipples are saucer-sized, and her breasts slap, deflated, against her chest as she moves. The people around me break into frantic applause.

They chant: ‘‘JER-RY! JER-RY!’’ My stomach churning, I look away from the woman, and for a moment I think I catch the eye of another person who is not watching the spectacle: Jerry Springer. Up close, he seems frailer than I had expected, his forehead deeply creased, his suit hanging slightly too large and off-center on his narrowing frame. I may be imagining it, but as another woman rises to her feet, already thumbing the hem of her sweatshirt, his shoulders seem to slump forward.

Three hours ago, the Springer Break Bus dropped me off with 34 other Yale students in Stamford, Connecticut, where five episodes of the Jerry Springer Show are filmed each week. I was ready to be horrified. I had spent the night before preparing myself with Jerry Springer Show highlights: “I’m Happy I Cut Off My Legs!” in which a miserable transsexual named Sandra confesses to injecting her legs with liquid feces before eventually chopping them both off with a chainsaw, and “I’m a Breeder for the Ku Klux Klan,” where a woman in robe and pointed hat confesses to fathering children with white supremacists “for the good of the race.”

Had I been at home, watching on the CW, I would have been little more than slightly scandalized by the theme of today’s episode, something along the lines of “Betraying Your Blood.”

A woman is pregnant with her cousin’s baby; a lesbian has cheated on her girlfriend. Only once in the ninety-minute-long taping session does a guest swear.

In real life, the show’s set is a strikingly small square of

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pockmarked beige carpet surrounded on three sides by imitation brick. There is no pretense of realism here; the brick has the same plastic sheen as the faux-steel pillars, and industrial-sized windows are set into the false walls like dull, frosted eyes. Beneath a plastic-molded sidewalk curb, a worn section of carpet reveals the set’s thin seam, blue where the lights from backstage have leaked through.

On the stage itself, the “stories” play out like bad junior high school productions. There are long, labored breaths between robotically delivered lines. At first, confessed affairs and betrayals do not even provoke guests to stand; minutes later, after a signal bell has rung and shoes and shirts have been dutifully removed, the participants attack one another, throwing punches and pulling hair. Even as they fight, smiles emerge on their faces. The audience’s reaction is just as manufactured as the rest of the show. We laugh, cheer, and hiss on cue, at one point chanting “Whore!” at the pregnant woman onstage.

The Jerry Springer Show and its producers have made us acutely aware that as Yale students, we are something of an anomaly in the audience: we were ushered in ahead of throngs of people waiting outside in the cold and were given seats in the front three rows. For the first time in the show’s history, the producers ask our entire group to read the cue for the final commercial break rather than choosing a single audience member.

As conscious as I am that I, a student, a feminist, do not fit in here, I am also aware that Jerry, too, is a kind of outsider.

With nowhere to hide my face as the show’s rituals play out around me, I find myself identifying with Jerry. It’s not just that he seems truly uninterested in the vulgar spectacle of his own show. Unlike the predominantly working-class studio audience he entertains five times a week, Jerry is an intellectual: a graduate of Northwestern Law School and the former mayor of Cincinnati. In several interviews, he’s admitted that he’s “ashamed” of the show and that “it has no redeeming social value.”

The minute he stepped onstage, Jerry was met by shrieks of “I love you!” and even a string of reverent bows. For a man at the center of what is essentially a cult-following, Jerry Springer seems somewhat detached. He reads directly from the teleprompter and delivers his jokes with a flat, dispassionate voice. While the audience is asked to cheer and scream at

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every push and shove, I never see Jerry egg on a fight, or even react to one. As I watch him now, flanked on both sides by women doing their topless 360-degree turns, Jerry looks like a politician, carefully — and wisely — monitoring his reactions.

The Springer Show was, in its heyday, as popular as Oprah for one important reason: it enables us, the audience, to feel superior. As guests demean themselves on the stage, whether by stripping, fighting, or simply admitting their mistakes, the audience is unquestionably elevated above them. And Jerry only enhances this sense of superiority. He is a surrogate for the audience, watching the pathetic puppet show created by his guests’ stories play out from a distant, removed perspective.

While two men fight, shirtless, Jerry Springer stands behind them in a suit; while a woman’s weave is ripped from her head, Jerry, his hair neatly combed, is the picture of dignity.

When they have finished taping the day’s three “stories,” the guests are brought back onstage for a question-and-answer session with the audience. “Make sure we know which whore you’re talking to,” the producer instructs us. “Say, ‘This comment is for the whore in the black shirt. This is for the whore in the green.’” It is at this moment that my classmates and I are introduced to the rest of the audience. As we stand and cheer for ourselves, Jerry walks down the aisle, surveying us with a bemused look on his face. Then, almost to himself, he says, “This is gonna ruin you guys.”

I think immediately of job interviews, and even future political campaigns: he’s right that a tape of us at his show will hardly work to our advantage in the future. But Jerry says it so quietly, almost wistfully, that it makes me wonder what he might be saying about himself. Because I cannot help but think Yale Daily News Magazine yaledailynews.com/mag

that Jerry Springer is in no way blameless in what is unfolding before me. Simply because he is intelligent, simply because he is embarrassed by what he participates in, does not mean that he does not fully condone it. After all, it is Jerry’s name that is stamped in foot-high letters against the back wall, Jerry’s cardboard cutout against which audience members pose for raunchy photos. Something — a combination of money, ego, a perverted desire for fame — has kept Jerry Springer coming back to the show every week for twenty years.

As the stagehands set up for the Q & A, turning the big, black camera noses towards the audience, the producers roam the aisles and feed us insults to shout at the guests. Several eager Yale students ask for things to say; I don’t hear what they’re told, but I can see them squirming in anticipation a few chairs away. When Jerry offers one of them the microphone, she can barely make out her comment through her giggles.

“Um, to the fat lesbian in the black shirt: the Jets really could have used you in their offensive line yesterday.”

She spits out the word “lesbian” as if it is a curse. The audience breaks into loud laughter and applause, and her friend stands and offers another gem: “Don’t be too upset your girlfriend left you. At least now you can have another piece of cake.”

Jerry’s mouth turns up in a thin, artificial smile.

As the people around me cheer, I happen to look down at my hands, which, just moments before, were hiding my face in shame. I see that I, too, am clapping.

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Just Business

By Jacob Albert

Photos by Florian Koenigsberger

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In 2007, Alberto Morrero was charged with sexually assaulting a woman in Fair Haven, Connecticut. Three years later, after the crime had been squeezed through the pasta strainer of the U.S. justice system, Art DiAdamo, bail bondsman, turned the crime into a $17,000 profit for himself by signing Alberto a bail bond, allowing him to get out of jail until his trial, months or potentially even years away — provided that he pay Art his commission.

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rt DiAdamo has never met Alberto, but he has seen his picture and read his file. The bond, like many others bearing the imprint of the Arthur DiAdamo and Steve Tracey Bail Bonds Agency, was signed on the second floor of the New Haven courthouse, in a clerk’s office whose walls are incongruously adorned with prints of tranquil fishing villages. Business was transacted rapidly and impersonally between a short, red man named Wayne Lewis, who works for Art; Alberto’s diabetic fiancée, who is on social security; and Alberto’s brother, who looks just like Alberto, down to identical prison tattoos on his left hand, but who, unlike his brother, the sexual assaulter, holds down a night job in a warehouse.

Art was not there when Wayne asked the brother and the fiancée about Alberto’s brief employment history, about his education, about the scar on his back and the tattoo on his leg. Art was not there as Wayne filled out the paperwork, holding his fist balled around the pen, concentrating on the letters and sticking out his tongue. Art was not there when Wayne counted the Morrero family’s down payment, snapping the bills as Alberto’s brother and fiancée watched, silently, while the money formed in little piles. Art did not hear Alberto’s brother say, “You’re taking a chance

on us. I want you to know we’re never gonna let you down.” Art did not see Alberto when he was finally brought up to the office by four bailiffs, when he play-punched his brother in the stomach with handcuffed hands, when he made a face at the bailiffs that was all eyes and twisted mouth, and when he bent down rapidly, still in handcuffs, to kiss his fiancée. Art was not there

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efore going home, where lunch and Lorraine usually await, Art spends his mornings within the edges of a small triangle of city blocks whose three points are formed by a darkly lit luncheonette called Alpine, where Art’s nephew and business partner, Steve Tracey, eats breakfast every morning; a Wachovia Bank, where Art cashes checks and veri-

On the surface, the bondsman, and his hard work, and his lidless hours, and the great gamble he undertakes with each new bond, all seem to have something of the Real Right American Thing: a dose of chance, a bit of roughing, but mostly a lot of toiling by the midnight phone. when the two Morrero men and the soon-to-be Morrero woman all walked out of the office, out of the courthouse, $8000 lighter and having pledged to wire DiAdamo and Tracey $100 per week, until the bond was paid in full — a process that will, according to Wayne, take “pretty much the rest of their lives.”

Instead, Art was on the shore of the New Haven harbor, at home in Morris Cove after a busy morning spent sitting on a bench of the lobby of the New Haven courthouse.

He was getting ready to settle down into some paperwork, sipping coffee and finishing a nice lunch with Lorraine, his wife of forty-five years.

fies that his accounts are in order; and the Superior Court of New Haven on Elm Street. Art has spent each morning for the past several decades within these borders, even though he deals with plaintiffs and criminals, defendants and families, the guilty and the accused, from all over southern Connecticut.

Small and brown and bald, with a deeply cut face and wild eyebrows, Art is almost a foot shorter than Steve, a fat and quiet man who has heavy lips and hooded eyes and slicked back hair that appears to be frozen still in time. Steve’s heft, which clocks in at just over 300 pounds on a good day, has earned him the moniker “Big Steve,” but occasionally, the rare few who re-

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member Steve’s days in the WWF will call him by his half-forgotten wrestling name, “Dave Paradise.” When uncle and nephew walk to or from Steve’s black Hummer in the parking lot across the street from Alpine, Art buries his nose in his red scarf and looks down at his hasty, creaking feet to see where he is going. Steve towers by his side, waddling like a duck from his massive weight. His gold watch and chain knock slowly against his big wrists as he explains a thought or two to his uncle, who absorbs and weighs.

The lobby of the New Haven courthouse — but never the clerk’s office, one floor above — is where Art DiAdamo comes to work every day. His office, as he calls it, is a bustling but well-functioning place where people congregate in corners, where the lawyers explain, where the public defender rushes, where the cousins of the accused wait, where small children slide shrieking across the polished floor, and where Art, sitting on his bench, measures the scene.

that guarantees to courts that the accused will show up for sentencing. If the accused neglect their duty and no response is heard in the heavy-breathing courtroom when the defendant is called forward, the bondsman must pay the court full bail. At this ruinous yet quite electric moment, which requires the bondsman to pay 10 times as much as he received for writing the bond, he is given full legal license, and a fuming personal prerogative, to hunt down his debtor.

Though bail bonds are signed and reneged on every day throughout the U.S., they are illegal in the rest of the world, save for the Philippines. The two countries use the system because it saves their governments the hassle and cost of having to track down no-shows themselves. But expediency does not always serve the oblique interests of justice, and within the U.S., the states of Illinois, Oregon, Wisconsin, and Kentucky have made bail bonds illegal, claiming that bail bonds discriminate against poorer defendants and usurp

“We’re gamblers,” Steve says of the family business, of the prolific disgorging of freedom in the form of paper squares. “We take a chance each time, on every bond we write. It’s like rolling the dice on whether they’ll make it to court.”

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hen someone is arrested and charged with a crime, a judge sets bail as an incentive for the accused to appear for court sentencing. Although bail money is ultimately returned to defendants, most of the accused can’t afford to post bail — which can run from $10,000 for less serious forms of domestic abuse, to $200,000 for crimes involving weapons, to millions of dollars for homicides — but would rather not spend in jail the uncertain weeks or years it takes for a conviction to mature into sentencing. This is why the accused turn to bail bondsmen, who, in exchange for a nonrefundable percentage of the total bail (usually 10%), will write a bond

a responsibility that should be carried out by the justice system rather than by businessmen.

Bail bonds originated in the U.S., as a legal innovation in the late 1800s, when private businesses and commercially-minded individuals were first allowed to post bail in exchange for payments from defendants and the concurrent promise to hunt them down if they never made it to court.

The legalization of bail bonds codified a practice that was already widespread across the American frontier, but the hunting of citizens by strangers unaffiliated with the law is a custom almost universally viewed as a devious ethical practice and actually loathed by most bondsmen today, who prefer business

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to the chase, prefer money to risk, and will draw from their deep toolbox of resources — menace, intimidation, cajolery, property seizures, phone calls in the middle of the night to the mothers or sisters of those on the lam — to avoid having to run a client-turneddebtor down a stinking hallway, across an icy backyard, through a jagged street at night.

For every bad bond written, it takes 10 or 20 to recover the loss incurred.

Steve and Art have 5 million dollars out in bonds at any given moment. If their debtors suddenly vanished, uncle and nephew would owe courts around Connecticut close to half a billion dollars. “We’re gamblers,” Steve says of the family business, of the prolific disgorging of freedom in the form of paper squares. “We take a chance each time, on every bond we write. It’s like rolling the dice on whether they’ll make it to court.”

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ondsmen are commanders of paperwork battles (Wayne, with accompanying fist-thrusting motion: “If you don’t keep track of the docket number on every sheet in that packet, you’re prffffflrpp”), turbocharged secretaries (Freddie: “Where’s that number, Wayne? I got you four pieces of photo ID and you still got no number?”), veterans of phone call strategies (Steve: “Call every five minutes until she fucking picks up!”), unsleeping maniacs of order and industry (Wayne: “I always sleep by the phone.

Like it says, when it rings, I spring!”), heavy-handed thugs (Steve: “You break the camera in the entrance of the building and you wait for him to come out and then you get him good!”), and arbiters of good and evil (Art: “You know, it wasn’t really rape, what he did”). They spend most of their time filling out reams of paperwork, troves of paperwork, pocketfuls of paperwork.

But Art does little paperwork these days. A few months ago, he got an iPad, which has since become his navigator’s compass. He uses it to check case in-

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formation from his bench, to write down bond amounts and dates of birth, to keep track of his millions of tiny streams of payments. And at times, he uses the device the way most people would: to check email and to watch videos, which he does by flicking the screen with a loose finger that swishes, free, unrushed by the urgency of his job.

This is the rich privilege of Art’s old age. Art no longer personally writes bonds. He lets Steve and Wayne and a bondsman named Freddie do the ink work and signing. Art no longer bounty hunts either, and has not done so in a decade. Instead, his nephew takes calls concerning the day’s pickups, while he eats breakfast in the semi-dark of Alpine’s grey basement light.

One morning, Wayne calls: he has picked up a skip in East Haven, an illegal Mexican immigrant charged with drug dealing who had forgotten to go to court. Wayne

found him in his backyard, and, though he carries a gun whenever he makes a pickup, there was no need to use it. Wayne just shouted a little, and the Mexican’s eyes got big, and he stood still. Wayne has never used the gun and hopes to God almighty he never will. For his pickup in East Haven, Wayne will get 10% of the bond, and Art and Steve will split the remaining 90%.

In the courthouse that morning, Wayne will go see Steve to collect, and Steve will send Wayne over to Art, and Art will send Wayne back over to Steve. The two bosses have done this to Wayne many times before. They haggle, even when there is no need, for the joy of business.

“Give the kid his check!” says Art. Wayne, with long, red eyelashes, blushes.

“I told him you would give him the check!” Steve replies.

“C’mon!” says Art, but Steve doesn’t budge. His mouth curling

into a thin smile, Art writes Wayne his check.

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he first bail bondsman was an Irish-American named Pete McDonough. He wrote the first bond in San Francisco in 1898.

By the time McDonough died, he was one of the richest men in the city and had been accused of numerous crimes: bribery, perjury, bootlegging, corrupting officials, and paying off the police.

Given how well the bondsman knows the failings of the legal system from having spent his working life cataloguing them alongside the milestones of his own career, he cannot help being the victim of a recurring tendency to oil the corroded ducts of the malfunctioning legal machine. Art’s position as the reigning bondsman of the Elm Street courthouse is the recent outcome of another bondsman’s surrender to exactly such temptations.

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In 2007, a bondsman named Bobby Jacobs, whose face is fleshier than Art’s but of the same knotty mold, was brought down, along with his three sons and hundred-man bail bonds operation, on charges of corruption. When Jacobs was caught by the FBI for paying on-duty New Haven policemen to pick up skippers for him, the 81-year-old man pleaded with the judge to spare his two sons.

The bail bonds industry favors clan-like formations. Loyalty and trust are paramount, given the amounts of cash and discretion constantly entrusted to each bondsman in the business. The defense tried to turn the bondsman’s paternal instincts toward his sons and business to his advantage by pleading for the judge to punish with leniency because the old man had already been burdened with the guilt of having misguided his two sons. But in the end, Bobby Jacobs and his boys were sentenced to a $750,000 forfeiture and a jail sentence of three years.

Since 2007, the DiAdamo firm has replaced the Jacobs agency as the dominant family of the New Haven bail bonds industry. Although the current bondsman king of the New Haven Superior Court views bail bonds as a decent trade that provides little incentive to cheat or deceive, Art is wary of Jacobs’ fall from grace. He takes precautions, which his demeanor records: his continually raised bush of an eyebrow is the inadvertent relic of years of suspicion and cynicism.

Yet some of Art’s carefulness is quite deliberate.

Steve and Art call each other uncle and nephew and live around the corner from each other in Morris Cove, where they eat dinner at each other’s houses several times a week.

The two men are business partners and best friends, and though few of the men who work for them doubt

the authenticity of their bond of bickering love, Steve Tracey and Art DiAdamo, uncle and nephew, are not related by blood. Years ago, Art conferred on himself the avuncular title and stretched his informal but involved mentorship into a biological fact.

Art and Steve began to call each other family around the same time they went into the bail bonds business together, after dissolving their nascent towing business when one of the men who worked for them went on a beer bender and smashed a police car he had been tasked to repair into the foot of the East Rock cliffs. The closeness of Art’s ties to Steve has to do in part with Art’s

nity for action in the lobby of the New Haven courthouse, and Fitch, a very large man who in his prime weighed 700 pounds — twice as much as Big Steve — was getting sick.

After his second or third heart bypass, Fitch would whine to Freddie that his heart was giving and his stomach was collapsing. Like his body, Fitch’s business deteriorated.

“If people don’t pay a bond,” says Art, “your life is done, people prey on you.” In those years, Wayne hated Big Steve because of a bond they both claim to have written, yet for which Steve alone reaped the profits. But Wayne could no longer make ends meet, and he left Fitch

There are rare days when Art lets himself feel compassion, and on those occasions he is choked by futility. But he always returns himself to healthy cynicism with a good shot of common sense. fear of being crossed, of getting screwed. Steve, on the other hand, looks up to the diminutive Art as he would to a father. His own father beat him until he left home in the 9th grade to join the WWF. Until meeting Art, Steve had never had an older mentor to give him firm but respectful advice.

Family ties are imperative in a business that sees constant betrayal. Art and Steve have been crossed several times by cold-shouldered relations, but they themselves can be loathsome partners and have hung their own friends out to dry. 12 years ago, Freddie, Wayne, Steve, and Art all worked together, as partners, along with a fifth man named Fitch. The team lasted for five years. When Bobby Jacobs was arrested and a vacancy opened up at the top of the New Haven bondsman chain, Art and Steve split off to resume business as family. “Fitch was the greatest partner,” says Art. “A better partner than I.” But with Jacobs gone, there was an opportu-

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to join the competition. Fitch died shortly after, and Art expanded. “In this business, ya can’t ever get sick,” Art says as he massages his throat.

“Ya can’t ever stop going to work.”

Freddie also put aside his resentment toward Art, and reluctantly asked him for a job: “You make amends,” he says. “All bondsmen are the same. The business is the same everywhere. Gimme the money. That’s it. That’s all it’s about, all the work is about. Gimme the damn money.”

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o guilt of any sort can make Art forget that he is running a business. “It’s like cleaning a fish,” he says. “You know the joke, right? The guy goes, how do you do that? Well, you just clean the fish.”

Art can’t stand those who criticize bail bonds without admitting that there is no alternative, that bail bonds and U.S. justice will grow old together: “People profit from it. I profit from it. But I didn’t create it!

Yeah, it bothers me. Sure it bothers

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On the surface, the bondsman, and his hard work, and his lidless hours, and the great gamble he undertakes with each new bond, all seem to have something of the Real Right American Thing: a dose of chance, a bit of roughing, but mostly a lot of toiling by the midnight phone. Yet Art’s profession takes him to the heart of life on the receiving end of inequality in America, without which the bail bond industry could not exist.

One Monday, Art is sitting next to the family of a 16-year-old AfricanAmerican girl named Jamece Hudson, who was shot in the stomach and killed, the day before, by an 18-yearold friend. Hovering over his uncle, who watches sports news on his iPad, Big Steve examines the crime section of the New Haven Register. The woman sitting next to Art says something about the murder, and Steve lifts his head from his reading. The woman is the victim’s cousin. Art is engrossed in CNBC. Steve says: “Art, you didn’t hear about this?

The shooting accident with the 16-year-old girl?”

The woman sitting next to Art says to Steve, “No, it wasn’t no accident. It wasn’t no friend neither. The papers put that in there. That girl ran away after she shot my cousin.”

The woman tells Steve that she and her family all took a day off from work to come down to the courthouse. She bounces her little boy up and down her thigh.

Art glances over for a second and mutters, “They all took a day off from work, yeah right. What work … Friggin’ highlight of their day is what it is …” and returns to CNBC.

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ithin their country, Americans move around more than any other people on the planet. But the map of U.S. crime is fixed and suffocating. Criminals and their victims are frozen by their demographics. The overwhelming ma-

jority of rape victims are women. African Americans are 27% more likely to be victimized by violent crime than whites and over six times more likely to be murdered. The poor are more likely to be violently victimized than the rich, and the young more likely than the old. Poor blacks are more likely to be caught on both ends of violent crime than any other segment of the population. They are more likely as well to do drugs, to smoke too much, to beat their spouses, to get sold bad mortgage loans, and to buy bail bonds.

Art knows that the rules governing his courthouse are founded on these abstract determinants. He sits like the still eye of a hurricane amid

Art reserves a spot in his rough old heart for battered girls, and admits to getting upset when he sees “a pretty little girl, strung out, whoring herself out.” However, Art has never felt compelled to show special treatment to a woman who works in the bonds industry out of concern for the intrinsic vulnerability of her gender.

When Bobby Jacobs’ daughters, who were not implicated in their father’s scandal, tried to revive the family business, Art pushed them out of his courthouse. The Jacobs daughters sometimes still pass through the Superior Court, but without much success. Art disdains the sisters for trying to unseat him, and for failing.

“They’re just filthy,” Art says of the

“All bondsmen are the same. The business is the same everywhere.

Gimme the money. That’s it. That’s all it’s about, all the work is about. Gimme the damn money.” victims who move helplessly through the storm, returning to him with each new generation. “I got a kid come up to me, maybe fourteen, fifteen,” says Art, “and he says, ‘Mr. Di, you remember me? You wrote a bond for me, my ma, and my grandma!’” Art once ran the idea by Steve of embossing business cards with Disney characters before handing them out to kids in the courthouse lobby, so they might know whom to call when they came of age.

There are rare days when Art lets himself feel compassion, and on those occasions he is choked by futility. But he always returns himself to healthy cynicism with a good shot of common sense: “The government is inefficient.

It’s too big a country to be efficient.

The police couldn’t catch everyone who skipped court. It would take forever and cost a whole lot of money.

We’re actually saving everybody money. You know how much it costs to keep someone in jail?” asks the hardnosed bondsman, an incredulous note creeping into his voice.

sisters. “They’re just disgusting.”

Nevertheless, says Art, “For me there’s still a girl-boy thing. I put girls on a pedestal.” Art’s wife falls under this doctrine. Lorraine, whom Art alternately describes as “the smartest person in the world” and as “a very well-kept woman,” is a tad younger than Art. He says, “People ask me sometimes if I’m her father.” The truth is that Art is 67, and his wife is 66. But Lorraine is a part of Art’s home life, and Art needs to keep home life separate from his life at work — mornings in the courthouse, and afternoons at home — though so much of his life consists of work. Art does not want the disgust he sometimes feels, as a bail bondsman, to infect those things that still deserve, after all these years, his tenderness and respect, such as Lorraine, whom he shamelessly adores.

When they were still in high school and first dating, Art would take Lorraine for damp-palmed walks through Wooster Square. Art especially enjoyed taking his beloved through the

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square when the trees began to turn, and the freshening air sharpened desire, and Art’s favorite local holiday rolled around, the Italian Feast on Wooster Square, because it was, Art says softly, “quite the place” in those days, with rows and rows of families and folding chairs, and mounds of food and drink spread out on checkered tablecloths.

But Italians no longer live in Wooster Square, and Art’s nearby childhood home, which once stood, solitaire, on the corner of Chestnut and Water Streets, has been razed, along with the whole block on which it stood, to make room for a column that supports the I-95 highway now bisecting the entire city.

Many of Art’s habits began in his childhood, and if he drives himself to Mass before going to work every morning, it is only because he started to do so when he was sixteen, at his mother’s request. In his spare time, Art likes to attend benefit dinners for local Catholic schools, one of which he attended, long ago. But Catholic schools, says Art, “are just like me: a dinosaur; in twenty years there’ll be nothing like ’em left.”

Houses are razed, married couples grow old, Catholic schools disappear, but money remains a human need. This is a fact around which Steve and Art construct their lives. Art will go on with business to his very last breath.

The money from bail bonds is a gain achieved at the expense of the U.S. justice system, by raiding the pockets of the poor, but the job is hard work and the money it brings feels heavy and right. A year ago, Art and his wife sold their condo in St. Thomas. These days, in March, they prefer Aruba. “Art does very well,” says Steve; says Freddie; says Wayne.

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hen his office becomes overcrowded and Art sees other bondsmen tempting their fortunes in his lobby, he gets angry. As Freddie says, “Anybody else who comes here, they taking food away from you.” It is not by any means a steady or secure job; bail bonds are a volatile trade with quick turnarounds, dry seasons, and thousands of uncertainties. Some mornings, Art will come out of arraignments without many hopes for a bond, and Steve, Freddie, and Wayne will have turned up nothing from their morning hustle on the lobby floor.

Freddie will blow a raspberry as

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he removes his Kangol cap. Steve will slowly rub his hands together.

Wayne will sigh, “Nothin’.” Art will agree: “Slim pickins.” All four men will leave the courthouse, side by side, to buy half a dozen hotdogs from the man on the corner of Elm and Whitney and will walk back to their cars, munching. There are no hard feelings, though, because such is the nature of the job, the way of the world. There are no feelings at all, as a matter of fact: it’s just business.

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nicole levy / CONTRIBUTING photographer

conviction

By N icol e L e vy

At the New Haven Reentry Roundtable, activists and ex-offenders work together to ease the transition into life after prison. But can — or should — a conviction ever be erased?

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s you plan for your release from prison, make sure you have some form of identification: a voter registration card, a birth certificate or social security card, and — the following is implied — a standard salutation by which you’ll present yourself.

This is what I learn when I first open the “Pre-Release Guide to New Haven Community Resources,” an unassumingly slim pamphlet for soonto-be ex-offenders. Beyond ways to self-identify, the booklet addresses the ex-offender’s concerns of education, family and child support, health care, mental health, substance abuse, legal assistance, housing, and employment.

It’s printed biannually by the New Haven Reentry Roundtable, a city-orchestrated collaborative through which community activists, social service providers, and exoffenders work to ease the trauma that prisoners experience upon re-entering society. At the non-denominational Christian Church on the Rock, a conventional building that doesn’t aspire to transcendence, Roundtable members assemble monthly to discuss the implications of a conviction record on life after prison.

This Tuesday morning in October, “we’re going to start by doing some introductions. I’m Amy Meek. I’m the reentry coordinator for the city of New Haven, and I’m one of the co-chairs of the New Haven Reentry Roundtable,”

Meek says at what becomes the head of the granite-countered table. Offering an example of the preface she expects to hear from everyone else in the room, Meek distinguishes herself from those dressed in muted business casual with her orange J. Crew-esque ensemble. In her brief address to the congregation, her wide-set eyebrows raised, she has omitted the following: I’m a 2009 graduate of Yale Law School. When McDonalds denies your application in light of your conviction, I’m there for you.

As is Tirzah Kemp, a poised and impeccably groomed woman sitting to Meek’s left. She introduces herself as “the community grant organizer. I work with Amy and the reentry initiative for the city of New Haven.” Hours later, Vol. XXXVIII, No. 4 February 2011

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Further along the table, from a round, mousy woman, comes another introduction: “Beatrice Codianni, managing editor of Reentry Central and formerly incarcerated person,” which I prefer to the term ex-offender.

I suffered discrimination by the press for my involvement with the Connecticut chapter of the Latin Kings, and I struggled to find a job when my time in prison was done. Now that I’m settled, I’d like to advocate especially on behalf of incarcerated mothers.

From a bald man with an elite bearing, seated several

Of t he 16,241 s e nt e nce d o ffe nd e rs w h o were fo l l owe d fo r t h r e e ye a r s aft e r re l e a s e fr o m a st at e co r r e ct io na l fa cil ity i n 2 0 0 5 , m o re t han ha l f we r e co nv ict e d fo r a n ew of fen se. heads down the table, there emerges yet another voice: “Good morning, I’m Dwight Dickerson. I’m with TriCord,” a nonprofit organization my wife Loretta and I founded to mentor the ex-offender community and their families. They won’t let me volunteer with the pre-orientation program 'cuz of my criminal record, but that was 16 years ago, and, after that, I worked as a machinist and went to Yale, where I got a B.A. in Sociology.

And from beside the table — around which some seats are still unoccupied, because the prospect of sitting in the middle of the room seems to intimidate Roundtable members less forthcoming than Kemp, Dickerson, or Codianni — I state my name and affiliation: “Nicole Levy, Yale undergraduate.” I’m a reporter. A few months ago at Yale, I met the charismatic Timothy Rinaldi, a spirited Roundtable member who has introduced himself today as “New Haven citizen and ex-offender.” When I saw the community activist feeding his pet squirrel, Wigwam, from a jar of Skippy peanut butter, I asked him for his story. I never expected the rapport we’ve enjoyed to spread as smoothly over my life as it has, or that Rinaldi would invite me here, to Amy Meek’s Roundtable. And I, for one, am willing to give everything and everyone a chance.

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embers of the Roundtable agree that easing the reentry process for the ex-offender would benefit him and his community. These days, in

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Roundtable member and ex-offender Virginia Downing’s words, “When you get out of jail, you are going in the wilderness. You’re lost. You don’t know where you’re going, you don’t know where to start. You’re just dropped in the middle of the floor … and you’re told okay, you’re a wild stallion now, go run.” The ex-offender can run to, if he knows his options, an emergency shelter, sober house, or transitional housing facility. The stain on his record rules out longer-term public housing. If the ex-offender has no training, education, employment history, or skills, his job prospects are dismal; if he is qualified for the job, he may be overlooked for an interview because the prospective employer assumes that derogatory stereotypes of a formerly criminal applicant are true. Without means of accruing a respectable income, the ex-offender will likely resort to crime. According to a 2010 study conducted by the Connecticut Office of Policy and Management, of the 16,241 sentenced offenders who were followed for three years after release from a state correctional facility in 2005, more than half were convicted for a new offense. With an estimated 7,000 ex-offenders reentering their communities from Connecticut prisons this year, and with as many as 52,000 ex-offenders on parole, recidivism has been and will continue to be no small problem. It is a matter of community safety and expense: for one prisoner’s board, citizens pay $30,000 per year, money that otherwise could be spent to train and place ex-offenders in employment.

The ex-offender — and, by extension, his community — need plans drafted before his release, a support structure upon his discharge, and an array of reentry programs from which to choose. The New Haven Reentry Roundtable has printed those resources in a catalogue biannually since July 2009; Amy Meek herself regularly updates the guide’s content on the website of the city of New Haven. The Roundtable first convened in 2008 under the supervision of Meek’s predecessor and fellow law school alumna, Deborah Marcuse, and former state representative William Dyson. Sponsored by the city of New Haven’s Prison Reentry Initiative, the Roundtable is one among similar collaborative groups in Hartford, Bridgeport, Waterbury, Willimantic, and New London to publish such pamphlets.

At the meeting I attend on October 19, members of the New Haven Roundtable take a survey that orders, in terms of significance, the issues covered in the “Pre-Release Guide”; it’s a dry way of parceling what is inherently a dramatic subject. “We know a fair amount about reentry in general,” says James Kwak, one among five Yale Law students organizing a Community Reentry Clinic under the direction of Professor Jeff Selbin. “We know a little bit about what’s going on in Connecticut,” he continues at an earnest, academic pitch. “Today, we wanted to get input from all of you ….”

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irzah Kemp, community grant organizer for New Haven’s Reentry Initiative and former battered girlfriend, is the first among the ex-offenders in attendance to chime in: “How do we educate employers?” she says. “And rather than make them feel as though we’re working against them and making them hire ex-offenders ... how do we educate them to look beyond the record?”

Kemp, whose closely cropped hair complements her freckle-dusted face, has a complex relationship to her conviction record. It recalls a time in her life when she finally resisted her boyfriend’s violence, only to endure more beatings and find herself in want of the courage to leave. But it’s also the reason she attended nicole levy / CONTRIBUTING photographer the court-mandated counseling sessions I'm Tirzah Kemp, community grant organizer for New Haven’s Reentry Initiative that inspired her to dump her abuser, and former battered girlfriend. and the grounds on which she was hired for her current job as organizer. As an seven of the 200-plus agencies that are in New Haven and ideological if not active feminist, I take vicarious pride in get them to play nice and work together … that would her independence. speak volumes,” she says of her ongoing ambitions.

Kemp’s résumé will tell you that, as a single mother Kemp’s job with the city, which she began in August, is of two boys — one seven years old, the other only six a special funds position, and there is no guarantee that she months — she was briefly employed as a caterer, and can continue when those funds are depleted. Clutching a later graduated from the program at STRIVE New Haven, BlackBerry and sporting a designer necklace, she can now a nonprofit agency that conducts job skills training provide more than what her children need, but she fears workshops. “My parents” — her father, the abusive hotel that “in two years, I’m back to square one again.” developer, and her mother, the real estate agent, raised At the mayor’s office, where she works in a small, their three children as Jehovah’s Witnesses in a beachwhite, but vibrantly decorated cubicle, Kemp says her side house in Milford — “always taught me work ethic, co-workers respect her opinion, and her felony goes so I really believed in what they were teaching,” Kemp unmentioned. She insists that it’s but one of the many tells me at Mayor John DeStefano’s office, one week after the Roundtable meeting. After volunteering at STRIVE, she began to work for the organization full-time and climbed Why do s o me c h o o s e t o b ea r t h e s tigm a her way up the ranks to a managerial position. o f t h e “ex- o f fe n de r ” des i g n at i o n for life, Kemp explains that her career in coordinating social activist nonprofits “kind of found me, I think because w h i l e mo s t h o p e i t f a de s f ro m e ver yon e’s of my felony. Being compassionate and wanting to me mo ry? help people,” and possessing a countenance that I find positively regal “made for other employers to start kind of facets of her identity, like her mixed heritage, Caucasian noticing the work I do … And that’s how I met Amy.” The and black. Yet her conviction has, nonetheless, come to Mayor’s staff trusted Meek’s judgment, and she knew she define her: “Without my experience, I don’t know what I wanted to hire someone who would be empathetic to her would have to offer my community,” she admits, stroking clients. After Kemp’s six years at STRIVE, Meek managed the rim of the Diet Pepsi can in her hand, conflicted as to lure her away from that institution. to how I — the presumably innocent and upright Yalie Just before leaving, Kemp helped the city’s Prison — will construe her statement. It seems “inevitable that Reentry Initiative select, in consultation with Roundtable life is going to change once you’re convicted,” she reflects; members, seven proposals from the 12 New Haven-based you’re never allowed to forget your mistakes, whether or community organizations that applied to win reentry not a reporter can see them in the constellation of freckles grants, six worth $5,000, and one $8,650. “If I can just take Vol. XXXVIII, No. 4 February 2011

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on your face. ike Kemp, Beatrice Nonetheless, Kemp is Codianni, managing living proof of New Haven’s editor of online efforts to ease the burden resource Reentry Central of memory. In February and former Latin Queen, is a 2009, the city’s Board of regular at the Roundtable. At Aldermen approved a “ban the October meeting, she is the box” ordinance, striking the next to speak and declares the criminal history question that she would like to see the from city job applications Roundtable “reach out to the and stipulating that city federal system, too.” There contractors and vendors are “people who have been follow suit. With criminal out there for maybe a year background checks relegated or so and still need help … to the end of the hiring because you get out of prison process, candidates ideally and it takes a while for you can compete for jobs based to acclimate yourself,” she on their qualifications and says. “So I’d like to see more experience. When Kemp community outreach to beatrice codianni give formerly incarcerated reveals her identity as an exoffender to her clients, their I'm Beatrice Codianni, managing editor of online resource people a voice.” Codianni stunned response is “Wow! Reentry Central and former Latin Queen. insists on the term “formerly You’re working for the city?” incarcerated person,” rather she says. “And ‘ban the box’ — then ex-offender, because, as well, evidently it works!” Kemp says, laughing triumphantly at she explains, some people who are innocent plead guilty and what has proven to be her own good fortune. go to prison without having committed any offense.

Codianni found her seat and her voice at the Roundtable emp stands apart from the majority of ex-offenders after 15 years at the Federal Correctional Institution in Danbury, who participate in the Roundtable coalition. Most, where she served a sentence for racketeering. At the time of Amy Meek explains, attend a couple of times as a stage her conviction, when she was affiliated with the Connecticut of the reentry process. “People come out and they want to tell Chapter of the street gang the Latin Kings, she says she was their story, and they want to kind of be around people who infamously “crucified by the press.” One article posited her are thinking about these issues,” Meek says. When they gain persona as either “Mother Teresa or Dragon Lady?” employment, invest their time in education, and settle into When we meet, Codianni is wearing a tan cable-knit sweater the community, they collect commitments that override the and a festive turtleneck decorated with fall leaves and pumpkins priority of the Roundtable’s monthly meetings.

— an inappropriate outfit for the saint or the fiend. She tells me, As an example of someone who’s used the coalition as a in reference to the charges for which she was incarcerated, that stepping stone back into the community, Meek cites Joseph she had simply “wanted to help the kids.” It was in the spring Savenelli; Savenelli spent 25 years of his life incarcerated for of 1992: after seeing how the gang had helped her eldest son murdering his wife with a butcher knife (in what he says was give up the heroin habit she herself had struggled with years self-defense) and later joined the Army under an assumed alias, before, Codianni wrote Pedro Millan, the co-founder of the but today, he sits for classes at Gateway Community College Latin Kings chapter in Connecticut, proposing to help create and is working to regain his real estate broker’s license. constructive alternatives for young gang members. She was I understand why the Roundtable would be attractive to soon after absorbed into the Latino association as the “Director those like Savenelli: for ex-offenders with records as potentially of Charter Programs,” organizing canned food drives, high damning as his, Roundtable meetings may be the only place to school equivalency diploma classes, neighborhood clean-ups, leverage the resources needed to move on. What perplexes me, workshops on drug abuse and AIDS, and a youth counseling though, is the nature and motive of those ex-offenders who stay. program. Though she tried to reform the organization, the Why do some choose to bear the stigma of the “ex-offender” press and the courts condemned her for committing some designation for life, while most hope it fades from everyone’s unjustifiable mistakes: she was charged with taking drug money memory? “I think some of it is wanting to be a leader in some and conspiring to kill another King. At her trial, Codianni pled way,” Amy Meek muses, “having that kind of natural ability as out to reduce her sentence. She claims she was innocent, but well as an interest in being someone who gets up at a meeting having read about the evidence against her, I find truth elusive. and says I’m an ex-offender,” without shame.

What’s clear is that “once you plead out, you have that record.

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Upon her release, Codianni lived with one of her three sons and her daughter-in-law, and she applied for a slew of jobs. Nobody called back; she became depressed, until she started attending the Roundtable. Nervous about approaching Meek and the Mayor’s office, she was

“ No matt er h ow s u c ce s s fu l yo u c a n b e, i f t h ey want t o u s e [yo u r co nv ict ion a g a i n s t you], t hey wil l ,” D icke r s o n s ays . “ It ’s am az in g t hat e ve n w it h a Yal e de g ree, t h at yo u still h ave p e o p l e w h o w a nt t o j udge yo u.” surprised to discover she was accepted. “This is why we’re here,” she says of the Roundtable. “We’re here to help people be reaccepted.” Whereas some ex-offenders still feel as if their inmate numbers identify them, Meek’s recognition made Codianni feel human again.

Besides attending the Roundtable, Codianni now works as the managing editor of Reentry Central, a national news website for professionals in the field of ex-offender reentry — “the only national resource center that’s not run by the government,” she informs me.

Subscription fees generate her salary.

Through her work, Codianni champions lessening the severity of sentences for non-violent offenders, many of whom are women. When I ask her whether she maintains contact with her fellow inmates at the women’s prison, she tells me that’s illegal and winks conspicuously. “I’m fortunate that I didn’t have younger children,” she reflects on her own experience. During her days in prison, Codianni was a first-hand witness to heart-breaking visitation days, to infants parted from their mothers’ arms and put up for foster care. Tears pool in the corners of her eyes as she relives the memory.

Over the last few months, Codianni has done a lot of outreach work for the Roundtable, distributing fliers in Fair Haven and actively recruiting new members for the coalition. “She puts her money where her mouth is in terms of volunteering,” Meek says. While the mentoring program Codianni envisions is still taking definitive form, she counsels formerly incarcerated women like herself informally.

The issue of mentoring strikes a dissonance among exoffenders at the Roundtable, especially between Codianni and Dwight Dickerson. “I think some people look at me and say, ‘Old, white lady, what do you know?’” Codianni conjectures contentiously, insisting she doesn’t want to

offend Dickerson but nonetheless expressing frustration that he’s refused her offer to assist with his new mentoring program. “Age, race, gender should not be an issue,” Codianni preaches. Notably, she omits the factor of gang allegiances. Meek rationally justifies Dickerson’s hesitance in recruiting Codianni: “If you have a particular kind of vision of what you’re working on and you really want to own it,” she says, “it can be hard to compromise.”

The friction between Codianni and Dickerson suggests to me that while society may judge ex-offenders, they invariably judge one another — if not based on their “age, race, gender,” or the nature of their convictions, then the lives they led before incarceration.

ext to speak at the October Roundtable meeting, Dwight Dickerson — founder of the nonprofit mentoring organization TriCord and former something-he-will-not-reveal — has plenty else to share: “In my case, I’m an ex-offender, been out for 14 years, went to Yale, and went to apply for a part-time job. More than 13 years as a machinist, didn’t get the job because of my offense,” he says. He believes employers and the Department of Corrections should be “educated.” “We need not just to change the mindset of the employers, but we need to change the mindset of the institution,” he insists. When I telephone him later to arrange for an interview in person, Dickerson says his wife, Loretta, will have to attend too. This condition sets off a few alarms in my head, but I disregard the suspicion that he may be a sex offender.

I meet the Dickersons on Yale’s campus that Saturday to discuss the stigma he’s felt as a black ex-offender since his release in 1996. On the subject of his conviction and incarceration, Dickerson says, “I can be angry about what happened and be one of those victims. Or I can be angry and use it in a positive way.” He credits his wife, his pastor, Church on the Rock, and his family for the immense progress he has made.

Dickerson has come a long way from his childhood in the South Bronx, where he grew up playing the trumpet in the drum corps, and where, after dropping out of college when his mother passed away, he started using drugs. He is today — with his sleekly shaved head, gold chain, and intellectual metal frames, and Loretta styling a head wrap with an ethnic print and a Coach bag in her hand — “a posterboy for success.” “I don’t mind that because my wife and I have worked hard,” he says.

When Dickerson was first released from jail, he spent a couple of months in a reentry program called Project M.O.R.E. and then learned to fix copier machines at a program called C-Tech. The industry was not hiring minorities, Dickerson claims, so he got a job at the Moroso factory in Guilford, where he started training to be a machinist. He was later hired by GKN Aerospace and

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then Sikorsky Aircraft.

Like Kemp, It has only been in the Dickerson has last year that his record has framed his returned to hover ominously conviction as above him. He asks how I a catalyst for knew it was exactly 21 years positive change in after dropping the music the lives of those major at Howard University he counsels and his that he enrolled in Yale’s Eli own: “Accepting Whitney scholars program. responsibility When I assure him that I’ve for issues was a simply read an article on the motivation for Yale website, and I’m not a me to change; stalker — at which comment [change] was dwight dickerson the Dickersons both smile — not just a word he relaxes. He tells me that I’m Dwight Dickerson, founder of the nonprofit mentoring but an action,” after he pursued a bachelor’s organization TriCord and former something-I-will-not-reveal. he admits. Like degree in Sociology at Yale, Codianni, he still due to his interest in urban studies and his mother’s seems insecure, as if he still has something to prove and example as a family health worker, he sought another job something he’d like to say but can’t. to pay off his son’s college student loans and interviewed Dickerson’s silence about his conviction somehow for a temporary job as a machinist. When he was asked disturbs me. He insists that his past is irrelevant, and whether he had ever been charged with a felony, he said though I want to agree, though I want so much to give yes, it happened over 15 years ago, but he refused — he him the benefit of a slate wiped blank, I cannot stop righteously insists that it was a matter of principle — to myself from looking up the Connecticut State Sex reveal what that crime was. “Why is that so important? Offender Registry, which is accessible to any citizen with Why are you so worried about what happened 16 years an Internet connection. The answer — yes or no — is ago? I didn’t get the job,” he says. there. Does it matter?

It disturbs Dickerson that his application to volunteer with the Roundtable’s new pre-release orientation here are, as former state representative William program at the Whalley Avenue facility has been denied, Dyson points out at the October meeting, a lot due to the nature of his conviction. He blames what he of topics that even members of the Roundtable terms the “archaic” mindset of officials at the Department refrain from putting on the table. This would seem to defeat of Corrections. “What’s sad about it — it goes to show the purpose of what is primarily a sounding board for you, no matter how successful you can be, if they want to different, sometimes irreconcilable, agendas in the effort use that, they will,” he says. “It’s amazing that even with a to ease inmate reentry. Among the issues that members Yale degree, that you still have people who want to judge evade is the nature of sex crimes, which Dyson believes you not for your achievements.” He remains suspicious vary from the minor and consensual to the unacceptable. of service providers at the Roundtable who have no “When you’re talking about criminal offenses, there are experience in the criminal justice system themselves. some that are terrible and inexcusable, but I think there Despite the discrimination he feels is aimed against him, are lot of grey issues people need to be educated about,” he vows he will “continue to do what my heart tells me he says. There is a tension in Dyson’s statement that defies resolution: is the ex-offender with any conviction equal to to do.”

That would be TriCord, a program for ex-offenders all other members of the Roundtable, such that frank and that began as a series of stress management and parenting direct dialogue can prosper at the forum, or is he classified workshops Loretta instructed and that emphasizes the by his crime on a shadow gradient from bad to worse, so importance of the three elements of education, support, that civilian society is inclined to receive at least those exand mentorship. The couple has recruited successful ex- offenders with the slightest records?

At the meeting, Timothy Rinaldi, mentor to ex-offenders offenders and other volunteers as new mentors, with whom they can closely match their clients. Their first who once attended a substance abuse treatment program 10-week mentoring program starts in February, at the called Grant Street Partnership and former drug addict, Emergency Shelter in New Haven. “We’re looking to asks, “Will an ex-offender like me be able to volunteer for become a vital entity for social change in New Haven,” he the information session at Whalley Avenue?” This is the same program from which Dickerson’s application was says. “We’re very excited.”

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nicole levy / CONTRIBUTING photographer

I'm Timothy Rinaldi, mentor to ex-offenders who once attended a substance abuse treatment program called Grant Street Partnership and former drug addict. on the street, ill to the point of incoherence but walking myself to Yale Health Services anyway; he courteously escorted me there — to ensure I didn’t collapse before I arrived.

Tim and I connect through our vaguely Beat hypotheses about life: we are mystics, consumed by the notion that people enter our lives for a reason. Partake of their presence and their knowledge while you can.

With his shoulder-length hair in a ponytail, his piercing blue eyes, and arrow nose, Tim is a man of diverse passions, which include “ I t hin k even r e fe r r ing t o t h is g ro u p i n t h e c o mmu n i ty philosophy, meditation, the art of wing chun, and as e x- o ffen der s is k ind o f a d e feat i n g t i t l e,” Ti m s ays . “ I martial slam poetry. These days, he t h i nk human b e ing is m o r e a cc u rat e — w i t h a mu lt i - h e a de d works shifts at New Haven’s “Edge of the Woods” health d r ago n ’s wo r t h o f is s u e s .” food emporium, hires himself out for home improvement not more,” he says. jobs, and hustles live music at Connecticut entertainment In the past few months, I have thought of Timothy venues. In his spare time, he mentors ex-offenders Rinaldi as just Tim, because we schedule regular coffee formerly enrolled in the same Grant Street Partnership dates like the friends that we’ve become. When we program he attended for three months as a condition meet over tea and mocha to discuss the Roundtable in of his release. “I give them my attention by explaining particular, Tim and I reminisce about the time he saw me denied.

Although Rinaldi has experienced discrimination on the basis of his imprisonment for drug abuse and possession — most memorably when he applied to be an assessor of winterization projects at the Waterbury community resource center Now Incorporated — he disagrees with Dickerson: “The nature of the crime should always be taken into consideration when the employer is considering taking a risk in hiring an ex-offender, as much as somebody’s work experience and skill level, if

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im and I meet at a Chinese restaurant the night before I go home for winter break. We discuss his ambitious plans for the future, which include building a school for the children of Haiti. He knows a native who lives in New Haven and sells trinkets carved on the island.

“I have a present for you,” Tim says, grinning. He reveals a wooden figurine of the Hindu god Ganesha, revered as the Remover of Obstacles.

“For all those hard times,” he explains. For all those dragons I might face. Given to sweeping statements and idealism, Tim tells me that by joining him at the table, I’ve reaffirmed his faith in humanity.

The New Haven Reentry Roundtable coalition, to which all those who sit around the table swear allegiance in spite of their different histories and missions, is in some ways as idealistic a concept as the notion that broad institutional support for ex-offender rehabilitation can someday dispel interest, as a matter of curiosity and necessity, in the nature of individuals’ crimes. I know Tim’s crime. But I will forever think of him as a dragon slayer.

York Street

what resources are available, sharing my experience, strength, and hope with them, maybe sharing a meal,” he says. “Some people ask for meditation instruction,” he explains, carefully weighing every one of his words. He’s grateful that the New Haven Reentry Roundtable exists as a forum where he may speak on behalf of the ex-offender and where the “goal is to help in lowering the recidivism rate and empowering ex-offenders,” he says. Tim has suggested the Roundtable invest its funds in a model similar to sober housing, or a staffing agency that would screen ex-offenders on behalf of potential employers.

Overall, he sees the time he spent in prison as having had a positive effect on his life. “I’ve gotten the most selfdiscovery having been removed from society to take a look at myself,” Tim says, and he is committed to helping others like him far into the future. He believes it’s his responsibility to help ex-offenders see the way out of their destructive pattern. “If you look at an inmate [who suffers from] trauma, lack of education, poverty, criminal behavior, unsupportive family dynamics, then you have a multi-headed dragon,” he says. We pause to admire his evocative image. “Incarceration is not the solution to a lot of those issues. I think even referring to this group in the community as ex-offenders is kind of a defeating title,” Tim says. “I think human being is more accurate — with a multi-headed dragon’s worth of issues.”

Though I’ve ignored Codianni’s comment on the offensiveness of the term “ex-offender,” Tim’s words strike me deeply because I hadn’t intended to alienate my friend. I feel myself blushing in shame at the thought that, although I’ve considered myself relatively unbiased, my language has betrayed my unconscious prejudice. Does Tim think less of me for it? I stop asking questions. But Tim goes on: “I believe that if somebody breaks the law, they should be treated punitively, but I think that they will continue to repeat those mistakes if there isn’t an approach that involves diverse treatment,” he says. “It would be awesome if there were some group of people who would finally be able to catch ex-offenders’ attentions in those first three days” after their release. “Don’t give them just a pamphlet, or a calendar … many people can read English, but it doesn’t help them,” he explains. They need guidance. They need men and women to meet with them again and again, and they need to meet with one another at forums like the Roundtable, whether or not they begin on an equal footing in respect to their pasts.

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By Peter Lu

Photos by emilie foyer

victor kang / staff photographer

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A

t a swanky downtown lounge, a sultry brunette sits with her back to the bar. She plays with her drink, plays with her hair, plays coy with the rest of the room. Just once, her eyes meet yours and linger for a little longer than they should. You are sitting 10 feet away. In three seconds, you will walk up and seduce her.

Right now, you’re a little nervous, trying to figure out how to do it.

After all, you can approach her directly (gutsy), from her two o’clock (disarming), or from behind (not recommended). Your advance can be fast — or slow — as long as you control for the speed of gait (unhurried), degree of neck contortion (look the opposite direction), and level of feigned disinterest (high). Your facial expression can be calm, lively, arrogant, or critical. And then there are the first words that come out of your mouth: the low-risk, lowreward, “Hi!” or “Do you know what time it is?”; the extreme, “I love you.

Do you want to marry me?” (sprinkle liberally with faux-seriousness); or the middle-of-the-road, “Who do you think lies more, men or women?” in the hope that she bites onto the question. Once this verbal foxtrot begins, remain conscious of where you place your eyes: looking inside the triangle created by her eyes and nose engenders friendship, concentrating on the triangle between her eyes and chest signals romantic intentions. Remember

to hold your palms slightly open, facing her, as a subtle indicator of receptivity. Maintain an energy level slightly higher than hers.

Finally, segregate her movements and respond accordingly, whether it’s her hands,1 smile,2 body angle, pelvic tilt, or environmental cues.3 Don’t forget: this is just the first five seconds. Rinse, repeat, and please, try to act like you’re having fun.

T

he idea of seduction4 as a methodological process began in 1970 with the release of Eric Weber’s How to Pick Up Girls — a compendium of rag-tag ideas predicated on intuition and common sense. In 1992, Ross Jeffries, an advocate for the now-obsolete psychotherapy neuro-linguistic programming, released How to Get the Women You Desire into Bed; the book catalyzed the formation of the Internet newsgroup alt.seduction.fast, where pickup artists exchanged and debated insights. The sub-culture lay dormant for the next 10 years. In 2005, Neil Strauss’s Bildungsroman, The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists — made to look like a Bible, gold trim and all — tipped the seduction community into the culture’s mainstream. The book appeared as Amazon.com’s #1 seller and spent two months on the New York Times bestseller list. Soon after, TV shows like VH1’s “The Pickup Artist” and Comedy Network’s “Keys

to the VIP” appeared. Hundreds of companies: Real Social Dynamics, Same Night Seduction, Date Hotter Girls, Charisma Arts Products, 60 Years of Challenge, DiCarlo DiClassified, and StyleLife Academy produced e-books, DVDs, online workshops, podcasts, and home study CDs. Today, you can enroll in a seduction boot camp, which consists of a two to three day “field trip” to clubs with a seasoned pick-up artist.5 But why the need for the seduction community in the first place? It was created to mitigate another equalizing movement: the original sexual revolution. In Make Love, Not War: The Sexual Revolution: An Unfettered History, Princeton’s David Allyn notes that the institution of marriage started to erode in the 1960s. Improved economic independence for women, the introduction of birth control — boosted by Lyndon Johnson’s endorsement of The Pill — and an overarching liberal attitude helped reshape society. In the 2000s, even dating was usurped by the hook-up.

As Benoit Denizet-Lewis of the New York Times Magazine notes, “Under the old model, you dated a few times and, if you really liked the person, you might consider having sex.

Under the new model, you hook up a few times and, if you really like the person, you might consider going on a date.”6 Popular culture now encourages sexual self-expression, evinced by shows like “Sex and the

1. If her hands are on her face, she is either lying or bored.

2. French neuroanatomist Duchenne de Bologne wrote in 1862 that the difference between real and fake smiles is the contraction of the orbicularis

oculi muscle, which controls the eyelids. This muscle is “only put in play by the sweet emotions of the soul; the…fake joy, the deceitful laugh, cannot provoke the contraction of this latter muscle.” How to detect a real smile? The skin around the eye will tighten, pulling the cheeks upward and the forehead downward.

3. While environmental cues are not directly related to female physiology, awareness of your surroundings is crucial to detect and sidestep potential competitors, create inside jokes, and transition to different locations.

4. “Seduction” and “pick-up” have different nuances (pick-up artists dislike the term “seduction” because of its negative connotation), but here we will take them equally.

5. LoveSystems, one of the leaders in the industry (it has around 130,000 forum participants), charges $2999 for a three day boot camp — with a $999 deposit — in locations from London to Calgary to Philadelphia to San Francisco to Sydney.

6. A personal observation: the hook-up culture is largely absent in first-generation households, though rebellious and curious teenagers will probably all converge to reflect these 2001 Bowling Green State University study results: of the 55% of 11th-graders who engaged in intercourse, 60% said they’d had sex with somebody who was no more than a friend.

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women than ever, implying, presumably, that there is more nostrings-attached sex up for grabs.9 But the truth is more nuanced.

The 2009 Census showed that 31% of the U.S. male population has had fewer than three sexual

for first marriages. Today, the rate is around 33%. While the 1950s male is confined to one sexual partner (and discreet trysts), the 2000s male can take home a different woman every night, a benefit of expanded sexual freedom.8 There are more available

partners in their lifetimes, while 23% of U.S. males have had over 15 sexual partners in their lifetimes.

As Charlotte Allen of the Weekly Standard writes, while “the main beneficiaries of the sexual revolution are men, it is only some men,”

namely, the alphas,10 who have “good looks, self-confidence, and swagger.”

All other males can be shuttered into two categories: beta males,11 who are equipped with economic resources but “just want to get by,” and omega males,12 who have no agency to pursue anything romantic owing from traumatic experience and learned helplessness. This dichotomy is what Allen calls a “New Paleolithic.” Humans are sexually dimorphic, meaning our mating system inherently trends toward mild polygyny.13 When marriage dominated society, our evolutionary leanings were largely suppressed.

In the current sexual climate, where females have prolonged, uninhibited access to a pool of alpha males, the betas and omegas can no longer brandish the veneer of marriage to secure a mate. Sex is apportioned disproportionately by a mating hierarchy. There is a fierce dichotomy: the alpha male and the AFC — average frustrated chump.14 While is it tempting to think that sexual liberation increased access for all males, D.C. blogger Roissy15 sums it up differently: “It is actually beta men who are the greatest victims of the current mating chaos: the ones who

7. TIME Magazine calls “Sex and the City” one of the best TV shows ever. During its six-year run, Samantha, who is almost 50, has sex with 41 men

and one woman. Jane Gerhard, writing in Feminist Media Studies, notes that Samantha’s copious number of partners is actually tangential to the main theme, which is the show’s examination of the history of the sexual revolution through Carrie’s narrative. Gerhard explains that Carrie “must reconcile the contrary pulls of wanting true love and wanting a good lover, wanting independence and wanting a husband.”

8. Taking home a different woman every night is thrilling, not just psychologically but physiologically. An old joke about President Calvin Coolidge, involving eggs, roosters, and witty retorts, the text of which is too banal to be reproduced here, gave birth to the term “Coolidge Effect,” which describes a phenomenon where males, when given a new copulation partner, drastically decrease their post-ejaculatory “re-awakening” time. This arousal has been documented in many mammalian species. The female’s attractiveness does not matter, nor does time between ejaculations — just having a variety in copulation partners is physiologically pleasing.

9. This author is not trying to imply anything causal with these statistics; he is just pointing out a correlation that implies the sexual revolution might have caused the destruction of the family unit. That, and pornography.

10. The term “alpha male” has many definitions, but you only need one: George Clooney.

11. In all likelihood, you are a beta male.

12. While it is hard to pin down exactly what percentage of the male population falls into each category, let’s sub-divide the current distinctions to make this framework sound more scientific. Jessica Grose of Slate Magazine derives a taxonomy of omegas: The Liberal Arts Layabout, The Mimbo, Beer Guy, and The Game Boy. 13. The truth is a bit more complicated. While humans are sexually dimorphic — males are bigger than females, and have more upper body strength (by 50%), body hair, weight and height; they also have deeper voices, riskier life histories, and more prominent chins — males also have heavier testes, more sperm, and the largest and widest penis of any primate (chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans included). In the animal kingdom, having such large reproductive organs is not correlated to sexual dimorphism — it is an anti-cuckoldry tactic (anti-cheating). This evidence points towards a human mating system of polyandry: if females have multiple sugar daddies, males fight back by, well, evolving massive penises that can produce as much sperm as possible. Countervailing evidence in anthropology, though, notes that 83% of traditional human cultures practice polygyny (one male mates with multiple females), putting us right in line with the rest of the mammals (98% practice polygyny). Finally, looking at child rearing confuses things further: human males are parentally invested in their children, which indicates a system of monogamy. Given this conflicting evidence, psychologists

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work hard, act nice, and find themselves searching in vain for potential wives and girlfriends among the hordes of young women besotted by alphas.”

Awash in pain and envy, these average frustrated chumps formulated

the “science” of seduction. Their goal was simple: make social interactions quantifiable,16 elucidate optimal strategies,17 and illuminate the female psyche.18 Determine the five types of attraction,19 define approach on a six-

stage risk-reward continuum,20 and find the 44 indicators of interest.21 Crunch numbers.

Create commandments.

Connect connoisseurs. The beta and omega males who started the community were simply looking for a

have come to a multifaceted conclusion: we are a mildly polygynous species that practices occasional polyandry. Which is to say that males cheat on females, and females cheat on males.

14. A standard reference for anyone who knows anything about pick-up.

15. Roissy is a blogger from our nation’s capital, whose commentary, as the Allen of the Weekly Standard puts it, “combines Darwinian analysis, harshly hilarious commentary about the current erotic landscape, graphically raw accounts of…pickup adventures, and a sense of impending social meltdown.”

16. That social interactions have to be quantifiable to be understood is quite old hat for males. In 1789, Giacomo Casanova† (yes, that one) wrote that “without speech, the pleasure of love is diminished by at least two-thirds.” The way he conveys his point — by singling out “two-thirds” as the proper proportion of diminishment — symbolizes an intrinsic male predilection towards using numbers to construct an intelligible, universal language. † To augment the above-mentioned quote, here’s another about how Casanova liked women for more than their looks: “After all, a beautiful woman without a mind of her own leaves her lover with no resource after he had physically enjoyed her charms.”

17. One optimal strategy is the 3:2 rule. For every three texts, send her two.

18. The female psyche responds to sensory-laced speech. Women, when agreeing with you, will evoke sight, sound, or touch in their responses: “I feel you.” “I hear that.” “I see that.” Depending on which system she taps into, tailor your speech to match the receptivity channel.

19. Pick-up artist Mr. M has written about the five different ways to build attraction. It might not be MECE (mutually exclusive, collectively exhaustive), but it’s a start. You can be: fun-loving, intriguing, a leader, the “guy next door,” or a soul mate (make her feel as if your encounters are kismet). Or, you can just be really, really hot.

20. A particularly adept reader might note that these risk-reward openers were mentioned in the first paragraph of this essay. An even more engaged reader will ask about the three openers that were not mentioned. The first is the situational opener, which uses the environment: “I love this music.”

It is banal and oft-repeated, so please do not use one unless it is actually interesting — but at the same time, don’t use one that seems too try-hard (see how hard Game is?). The second opener is…no opener: walk up and start talking as if you were in a conversation already. This works surprisingly well in frenetic, open environments, where people are already mingling. Finally, the screening opener: signal your intentions implicitly by asking her why you should be interested: “I saw you from over there and wanted to see what you were like.”

21. My favorite indicators of interest: “She plays with her hair while talking to you.” “She calls you a player or a heartbreaker.” “She returns your calls.”

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Vol. XXXVIII, No. 4 February 2011

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S

eduction is a science. Its study is grounded by an esoteric syntax,22 universal principles and evolving hypotheses. Influenced by books like Buss’s The Evolution of Desire, Wright’s The Moral Animal, and Ridley’s The Red Queen, the seduction community has come to believe that females are looking for a specific set of traits: health, social intuition, status, and pre-selection — whether other females demonstrate a desire for said male.23 In our dynamic social environment, though, females have a hard time picking out this type of man — especially under the glare of a club’s strobe light. This is where seduction comes in. Mystery, author of How to Get Beautiful Women into Bed,24 posits that these traits can be represented by a proxy. One example is “peacocking” — dressing garishly, say, in lime-green Chuck Taylors — because, done correctly, it exudes confidence, status, and wealth. This idea is supported by evolutionary psychology:25 Zahavi’s handicap principle states that males with exaggerated traits (think peacocks and butterflies) are desirable because these “handicaps” can only be handled by a male who is innately very fit.26 Seduction methodology can

be bifurcated into “outer game” and “inner game.” Outer game is the pick-up artist’s techniques; it is rooted in social psychology.

Margaret Wilson of the University

Similar experiments have proved that pulling creates more attraction than pushing; standing up straight increases confidence; mirroring someone’s actions, whether she tilts

of Santa Cruz notes that the mind and body have a bi-directional relationship: our thoughts influence our actions, but subtle changes in our environment — temperature, smell, and orientation — unconsciously influence our thought processes as well. In 2008, Yale professor John Bargh discovered that people who held warm coffee in their hands were more generous and caring than those who held iced tea; physical warmth creates interpersonal warmth.

her head or drums her fingertips on the table, will make you seem more relatable.27 Eli Finkel and Paul Eastwick of Northwestern University found that in speed dating, the gender rotating the tables was less selective about future partners. This means that instead of approaching a woman, flip the script and make her come to you.28 At your next coffee date, then: order something warm, pull her hand, sit up straight, mimic her gestures, and sit down first.

22. They might not have done such a good job with this one. Here’s a snippet of seduction terminology: “Maintained strong frame control @ ~98%.

This percentage never dropped throughout all of the sub-Phases & even post-S3. Anything I threw @ him — he had the right response: used IOIs/ IODs/SOIs/NEGs/BHRR. [He did this also post-S3, which activated ASDefense Mechanism & kicked up its Resistance Factor to ~40%, then ~70%].”

Still, understanding this is probably easier than figuring out why your girlfriend is mad at you right now.

23. Of course, a standard psychology textbook says differently: attraction is the product of waist-to-hip ratio, propinquity, similarity, physical attractiveness, and reward and social exchange theory.

24. Not to be confused with Jeffries’ How to Get the Women You Desire into Bed. 25. Here’s a general primer: reproductive fitness is the capacity to pass one’s genes onto subsequent generations. According to Laurie Santos of Yale University, females do this by seeking males who can provide emotional and economic fidelity. Males do this by having more sexual partners — unless they enter into a life-long monogamous relationship, in which case, the actual male strategy is to be choosy: find a fertile mate with good genes, and ensure paternal certainty (e.g. no cheating).

26. Why females have certain preferences to begin with is a harder question to answer, but for humans, symmetry is part of the equation. In 1994, researchers Thornhill and Gangestad measured 100 different body parts for symmetry on undergraduate students and discovered that men with more symmetry had sex three to four years earlier than their counterparts.

27. Baaren, Holland, Kawakami, and Knippenberg, in the oft-cited psychology study “Mimicry and Prosocial Behavior,” discovered that people who had been mimicked were subsequently more generous and helpful. This is quite a finding, and applicable in a bevy of situations. Here’s an experiment you can try at home: next time you are talking tête-à-tête, try positioning your hands like her hands. Nod your head when she nods. Squirm uncomfortably when she does. Then drop six pens on the ground accidentally. According to the study, she should pick them up at a higher rate than if you hadn’t mimicked her at all.

28. There are various ways to maintain a position of power, but the easiest and least often done is to start off with your back to the bar. Power dynamics

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valuable human being. Inner game helps to take the woman “off the pedestal.” This confidence is the crux of seduction. Memorizing lines is useless if the words don’t echo with blunt swagger.

To develop inner game requires inculcation akin to progressing through cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). According to Treating Complex Traumatic Stress Disorders: an Evidencebased Guide, CBT emphasizes time-

intransigent belief that you — excuse the language — are “the shit.” That you are the prize. That you are an intrinsically attractive,

specific analysis and exploration to transform the “beliefs, feelings, and behaviors associated with psychological disturbance.” Inner

game manuals model a similar plan to activate the ego ideal. Neil Strauss’s Rules of the Game asks novice pick-up artists to, before entering any social environment, visualize limiting beliefs — then rationally overlook them. The philosophy is, “Think and you will be.”31 Pithy one-liners, like “Nothing is ever such a big deal”; “If you’re not having fun, you’re doing something wrong”; and “Maintain irrational confidence at all times” are repeated and doused with meaning, example and consequence. Inner game’s goal is to truly, in your heart of hearts, believe that seduction is nothing more than a game where you, the player, have been granted infinite lives and boundless powerups, and that any challenge, however difficult, can be met. Outer game informs the abilities of the player, but inner game allows entrance into the game — it endows the belief that the pick-up artist can actually win.32 The tactics and thought processes listed above — which barely graze seduction’s opus — are overwrought and overly complex, to be sure. But to wannabe pick-up artists, the obstacles warrant the effort. Outside of being a superstar celebrity33 or a death row inmate,34 physical attractiveness, and, to a lesser extent, personality, have been the unchallenged glass ceiling on

are trickier when you have to approach — she will invariably be leaning against something solid while you are approaching from the open. If she is seated and you are standing, that’s even harder. The solution? A typical move is to hold her hand and ask her to stand up so you can “show her something.” When she does, give her a little twirl, and sit in her seat. Then grin and tell her that you’ve taken her seat. Now she’s on the outside, and will evaluate you less harshly — and unconsciously feel as if she approached you.

29. Whispering into her right ear means you’re talking directly to her left brain. Her left brain is the intuitive-reasoning half, better known as the neural substrate you have a better chance with tonight.

30. The neg is the most mainstream (and thus most contentious) term in all of pick-up, and deserves special mention here. Neg theory evolved from 9/10 game — strategies for wooing stunningly beautiful women — as its nuclear weapon. Gorgeous women, as the story goes, are great at brushing off men. They will snub compliments and insults with equal ease. But what if you compliment her — and then target her insecurity? This is the neg, an action that Mystery says is “made to briefly and without insult disqualify oneself from being perceived as a potential suitor.” The neg cuts to the philosophical core of wooing a beautiful woman: the only way to her heart is to be invulnerable to her looks. As a disqualification tool, the neg “inadvertently” betrays you noticing her imperfections. For example, take the neg, “I really like your skirt. I saw someone else just wearing it.” It is a compliment, because you have noticed what she is wearing; it is a reframing device, because it makes her self-conscious; it also a disqualifier, because suitors usually praise, not offer dispassionate observation.

There are three types of negs. The shotgun neg is a quick statement that conveys romantic disinterest. It works in group settings and its power lies in the signaler’s sincerity: “Where’s her off button?” The sniper neg is a brief statement about her physical qualities. It lowers her relative status in the conversation: “Eww, you just spit on me!” The tease neg, which can be thought of as deliberate flirting, is used most. It conveys a cocky, fun attitude and pushes back on the seesaw of control. For example: if she trips, say “Careful, there’s a lot of gravity over there.” With all three types of negs, the key is to “throw and go,” making sure after the neg is executed you return to the original conversation without waiting for a response.

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opposite-sex success.35 Now that comprehensive field reports, social circle mastery, pyramid theory, and investment equilibrium are de rigueur for the field, the beta male — trumpets blazing and timpani pounding — is back.

This is why the air of misogyny surrounding seduction is misplaced: Allen of the Weekly Standard notes that the current dating environment is polygamy for alpha

males, hypergamy for females, and masturbation and virtual reality (along with the occasional girlfriend) for beta and omega males. The roots of the seduction community come not from objectifying women; they stem from its vision to equalize male sexual opportunity.36 There are men born without the “pretty” gene.

Men without a clue about female psychology. Men too scared to stick a foot into the courtship dance.

These men stand to benefit most.37 Seduction provides hope: that the woman “out of your league” is in fact possible to attract.

It is true that a better looking man does better than an averagelooking man. That the rich do better than the poor. The famous, over the plebian. But Game can turn everything around. It sounds like egalitarian wishfulness, but the seduction community has one basic

31. The site PUALingo.com states, “Our thoughts become actions, our actions become behavior, our behavior becomes character, and our character

becomes our destiny.”

32. Of course, the real question is if the male who spits Game can actually win: even if he creates an initial attraction, won’t the façade wear away in

a relationship? (Assuming, of course, there will be a relationship.) Probably not. There are two reasons. The first is that inner game, when executed properly, changes a personality permanently, because a “legitimate” lifestyle is established to bolsters the new self. The second is that attraction itself will cause the woman to love the pick-up artist for who he is, regardless of his personality foibles. For those in need of extra advice, a new field — relationship game — has burgeoned, and could easily be the topic of another 5,000 word article.

33. As of this article’s publication, Tiger Woods has had 14 alleged mistresses.

34. Scott Peterson, the Modesto resident convicted of murdering his wife and unborn son, has received letters, calls, and two marriage proposals while on death row, presumably because some find perverse fame amorous, unthinkable violence masculine, and inevitable parting romantic. Roissy generalizes this infatuation: “For every woman who writes love poems to cold-blooded killers, there are one hundred women whose hearts beat fast for an asshole who cheats, a jerk who lies, or an alpha who dominates.”

35. For women evaluating men, a nostalgic high school rule of thumb is that looks hold 30% and personality holds 70% importance. For males the percentages are swapped.

36. While there are arguments against the manipulation and objectification of women, the majority of men (seriously) who engage in the community have far less ambitious motivations: they simply do not want to end up alone.

37. This is the crux of seduction: beta and omega males gain the most. An alpha male is already at potential output: he has a girlfriend or can attain one easily. Game will help him attract better looking women, but the gains at each increasing level of beauty diminish. For non-alpha males, seduction not only helps him snag a decent looking girlfriend, but it also prevents prolonged dry spells. And once he has Game, the non-alpha has two options: continue to move up the ladder, or use the freed-up psychic energy to pursue other fruitful ventures.

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premise, one ringing promise that, while cliché, exudes extraordinary warmth at its core: the aim of the Game is to allow every man to attract the woman of his dreams.

‘O

h my god, my nose is so off-center!”

You are sitting across from an HB8,38 who is wearing a V-neck, paisley indigo sweater and low-cut, slim-fit distressed jeans.

You’ve memorized the seminal tomes — Greene’s Seduction, DeAngelo’s Cocky Comedy, Savoy’s Magic Bullets — and now you’ve managed to Meet, Transition, Attract, and Qualify your

way to this first date. According to pick-up artist Mystery, the next step is to build Comfort: tone down dismissive and cocky overtones from the initial encounter, solidify and sustain attraction, establish an emotional connection, increase physical touching — with appropriate pacing and pinging,39 of course — and manage the situation smoothly, naturally, effortlessly, so that she (before being conscious of it) feels completely comfortable around you.

The Comfort phase, it is universally agreed, requires at least a couple of hours. But now! She’s just thrown a shit test at you!40 Thankfully, you’ve planned for this exigency: 10 minutes ago, you excused yourself to use the bathroom, during which time you took out your iPhone to read what our friend Roissy had to say about a woman making a self-deprecating remark about her own looks.

There are five responses to what Roissy terms a ‘self-depreciation shit test’ (SDST): 1. Validate her. “What are you talking about? I think you’re beautiful.”

2. Playfully invalidate her.

“Does that mean you can smell around corners?”

3. Tangentially agree. “At least your personality’s not.”

4. Ignore the comment. “Hey, did you like the wine? 1787 Chateau Lafite41 is my favorite!”

5. Reframe. “Do you always talk about yourself like this?”

You systematically deconstruct the options.42 The first response, validation, is crucial in a long-term relationship — but on a first date, too sappy, meek, and unoriginal.43 The third option, tangential agreement, goes too far the opposite direction: it’s glancing but abrasive; the remark might linger far longer than you want it to. The fourth option, feigning ignorance, is neutral — neither compromising your position nor advancing comfort — but is always a last resort. The second option, playful invalidation, is non-standard and confidence-inducing: teasing almost always shakes out a few laughs. Most socially calibrated males invalidate.

You go for the jugular: re-framing. It diffuses a potentially explosive topic, and redirects the conversation’s consciousness towards a metaanalysis of her own character that, if done tactfully, engenders introspection (taking the pressure off your response).

A mote of time has passed. You slowly crease your lips, pierce into your date’s marble-green eyes, then gently — with a tiny upwards lilt — say the line you have stored away for the last 10 minutes. “…”44 }s}

38. Hot Blonde—or in this case, Hot Brunette; she’s an 8/10.

39. “Kino” is the erudite term for flirtatious touching. Your job is to kino a woman until both of you “ping,” which is when touching is reciprocated at

increasingly shorter intervals.

40. “Shit Test”: a divisive statement that a female — consciously or not — will throw out to test a man’s social status. Examples include: “I have a boyfriend.” “Why are you looking at my shoes?” “I think I’ll be the one giving out the gold stars, not you.”

41. According to Forbes.com, this bottle of wine was owned by Thomas Jefferson, who in addition to being the third President of the U.S., a philosopher, and a scientist, was an oenophile. He acquired it at the Bordeaux vineyard while serving as ambassador to France; the bottle, now worth $160,000, is undrinkable due to old age. One method commonly used in seduction is to sneak prepared non-sequiturs into conversation. This way dialogue traverses a well-beaten path, allowing for control and anticipation of future discussion threads.

42. As in any field of study, the genius — the innovation — lies not in memorizing facts, but being flexible enough to apply them to novel and ambiguous situations.

43. The topic of validation is where pick-up sophistry most diverges from lay reasoning. Complimenting women, according to Mystery, only boosts their egos, and should never be used alone; the push-pull dynamic is what really builds emotional momentum. Examples of push-pull game: “I feel so good around you…too bad you’re not my type.” “Oh my God! You’re an English major? I can’t talk to you anymore.”

44. Surprised? Don’t be. There are many lines available to the pick-up artist, but the optimal response depends on who you are — and can be chosen only after you assess your environment, gauge the current emotional momentum, identify tipping points in her personality, and determine potential veins of conversation. Seduction is a science, silly.

Vol. XXXVIII, No. 4 February 2011

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red delicious a short story by Ethan Kuperberg illustrations by Kat Oshman

'Hey, beautiful.

Still looking at those retirement plans?”

Patty looked up from her computer screen.

There was no one else in her office. Probably just an ad, one of those viral things that pop up on your screen when you work. Still, she had been working on finalizing her retirement agreement for a little over a half hour. She was probably just imagining things.

“Hey, I’m talking to you. What, you’re too big for me?”

Patty stopped breathing for three seconds. She looked around. There was definitely no one in her office.

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Maybe it was Katz. Katz was always pulling shit like this, installing baby monitors in people’s cubicles, ordering Burger King for all the executive board members. Patty rolled her eyes. She hated Katz. The office is no place for pranks. Running McDonalds was serious business.

“You could use a laugh or two. It’d do you good,” said the voice.

“Who are you?” Patty managed to mutter. Katz had gone far before, but there was no way that he would be able to know what she was thinking.

“Not who. What.”

“What?”

“Look down.”

Patty looked down and shrieked.

42 <O> <O> <O> <O> <O> <O> <O> <O> <O> <O> <O> <O> <O> <O> <O> <O> <O> <O> <O> <O> O

Ethan took another swig off beer. This story was going nowhere. Senior year of college and he was writing a story about a talking apple? He got up from the table and helped himself to a bit more of the Chicken Gorgonzola he had ordered from Campusfood. Why hadn’t he started this story earlier? It was already an hour late, and he was only at the half-page mark. He reread the previous paragraph he wrote.

“Swig off beer?” Ethan thought to himself. “I should change that. At the same time, it might be clever writing. After all, if he’s drinking beer, he’s probably getting drunk. And if he’s getting drunk, he might make typos.” Ethan decided to keep the misspelling in the story.

He took another bite of chicken. This was the dumbest idea for a story ever. This is what he would get for trying to be profound. A story about the CEO of McDonalds receiving a cathartic life lesson from an apple sitting on her desk? No one would get it.

He thought about his class on Monday, and what his classmates would say. They’d certainly criticize it. Ethan burped. He didn’t blame them. It simply wasn’t a good idea for a story. He imagined people’s responses and agreed with most of them. The metaphor was overdone, the allegory was forced.

Ethan always got so nervous when his stories were critiqued. Of course, he could probably count on his friend Mark to offer a supportive word, but that was just Mark, and Mark was a nice guy. Even Mark would probably hate it, secretly.

Ethan scrapped a little bit of gorgonzola from the bottom of the bowl. He sighed. He saw two options at this point: completely abandoning the idea, or pursuing it at full, relentless force. Perhaps there was still time. Time to turn this story around.

'Patty, you look like you’ve never seen a talking apple before.”

Patty swallowed the spittle that had accumulated in the back of her throat.

“I’m tired and stressed and you’re not real,” Patty said. “You’re — you’re my imagination.”

The apple hadn’t moved since she had taken it out of her brown paper lunch bag. There was nothing ostensibly different about it. The hole on its side was small and could very well have been a bruise, or a small worm tunnel. But it spoke. And it had little teeth.

“Honey, I’m real. You better believe it. Now, you can continue acting like a lil’ old vegetable, or you can listen to what I need to say.”

She wheeled her swivel chair back a foot and turned around. The view was enormous. You could see all of Madison Avenue from her 59th story W’s Office. She had worked hard for this view. It hadn’t been easy working her way up from head fry cook at her local McDonalds in Shelby County, Tennessee to becoming the head CEO of McDonalds. It had taken years. 32 years, in fact. And she wasn’t about to let it slip away because of some damn apple.

“Fine, you’re real. What do you want from me?

And make it quick, I have important things to do regarding my retirement plans.”

The apple laughed a little. At least, it seemed like a laugh to Patty.

“Patricia, you have things to do, and they’re even important, but they don’t have a diggledamn thing to do with your retirement plans.”

The apple paused.

“They have to do with yourself.”

Patty scoffed.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said. “I’m very happy.”

“Sure you are,” the apple said. “Sure you are.

I guess you can just go ahead and eat me, then.”

“Maybe I will,” Patty said. It was an empty threat. She was planning to throw it away.

“Go ahead and throw me away. Push me off this desk. Right into the garbage,” the apple paused dramatically. “It’d be just like La Guardia Airport all over again.”

Patty felt like she had been punched in the stomach. Hard. La Guardia Airport? She had spent the last 32 years of her life trying to block that memory out. Trying to run away from it.

“You can’t run away from it,” the apple said.

Ethan finished his second can of beer. He grabbed a glass from the kitchen area of his apartment and filled it with water. “Gotta sober up,” he thought. Ethan was a lightweight.

Will, Ethan’s roommate, walked into the living room.

“Hey, man,” Will said. “How’s the story?”

Ethan finished his water.

“It’s not going well,” he said. “I wrote myself into the story.”

Will read what Ethan had so far. He laughed Vol. XXXVIII, No. 4 February 2011

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“I mean, it’s not good,” Will said. “But it is funny.”

“Thanks,” Ethan said. “But still. You know, I thought by the time I was a senior in college, I’d be writing real stuff. Worthwhile stuff.”

“We’re graduating in four months,” Will said.

“Who cares?”

“Four months,” Ethan repeated to himself.

Ethan had been pushing graduation out of his mind all year. He didn’t want to accept it, he refused

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to accept it. After all, graduation meant growing up.

Will walked back into his room, presumably to order something from Est Est Est on his laptop.

Ethan was alone again. He walked over to his fridge. He was feeling a little nauseous from eating such a heavy pasta dish so late at night. He opened the refrigerator door. He was kneeling over, taking some lettuce out from the bottom shelf to make a little salad, when he looked up. And he saw it.

44 <O> <O> <O> <O> <O> <O> <O> <O> <O> <O> <O> <O> <O> <O> <O> <O> <O> <O> <O> <O> O A bright red, shiny apple was sitting on the top shelf.

Ethan stared at the apple.

The apple sat on the shelf.

Ethan slowly stood up.

The apple stayed sitting.

Ethan took a step backward.

“You’ve been drinking,” the apple said.

Ethan shrieked.

Patty was pacing.

Back and forth.

Back and forth. “La Guardia Airport?” she said.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

The apple sighed.

“It’s okay to be afraid, Patty. You’re at a big turning point in your life.”

Patty turned to her desk and laughed her trademark, high-pitched laugh.

“I’m not afraid! Do I look afraid? I make eight figures a year. I run McDonalds, god damn it.”

She stared the apple down.

“Okay, Patty,” it said. “I just want you to know that it’s not going to be like the airport. Your father didn’t forget you.”

Patty stopped pacing.

“What?” she said.

“Your father didn’t forget you,” the apple said.

“Your father loves you, and it was a mistake.”

Patty didn’t realize she was crying until she felt the tears dripping from her cheek onto her silk blouse.

“This is a joke,” Ethan said. “Will! Get out here! I know it’s you.”

“It’s no joke,” said the apple. “No joke at all. You created me.”

Ethan sat down on the floor of the kitchen. He rubbed the inner crevices of his eyes with the index finger and thumb of his right hand.

“You think your story will be good if you use extreme detail?” the apple sputtered. “You think your story will be good if it’s metafictional? You’re a gimmicky hack. You can’t write anything well.

You’re never going to be a writer.”

“I’m tired and stressed and you’re not real,” Ethan said.

“Sounds familiar,” laughed the apple. “Was I real

to Patty?”

“That’s just a story,” Ethan said. “That’s a story.”

“Answer the fucking question, Kuperberg. Was. I. Real. To. Patty?”

Ethan quickly shifted his eyes over to Will’s door.

Maybe Will would come out of his room soon.

Or Matthew. Matthew, Ethan’s other roommate, was probably fast asleep, but still. If Matthew saw this situation, Matthew would know what to do.

Matthew was a smart guy.

“No one’s coming,” cackled the apple. “You put too much faith in your friends. It’s just you and me, big boy.”

“Fuck you,” Ethan gasped.

“Just make this easy for both of us and answer the question,” said the apple. “Was I real to Patty?”

Ethan hesitated. He knew the answer was ‘yes.’

At least, he thought he did. But he hadn’t finished the story yet.

“Then finish it,” the apple said.

Ethan took a deep breath.

“If I finish it — will you go away?”

A few seconds passed.

The apple smiled.

“If you finish it, I’ll tell you the answer.”

Patty was lying in the fetal position on the floor of her office. There was a small puddle on her expensive Malaysian rug — from her tears.

“Talk to me,” said the apple.

“I never forgave him,” said Patty. “We were only visiting family for the summer, the summer after my senior year of high school. I didn’t want to go. I had to miss our graduation party. And then he left me at the airport. I was so afraid, Apple. I was so afraid.”

“I know,” the apple said quietly.

Patty breathed deeply, trying not to cry again, not succeeding.

“Be brave, Patty. Be brave.”

“There were so many people,” Patty whispered.

“So many people, and no one stopped to ask. No one knew who I was, no one cared. I felt so, so small. Here I was, beginning this new point in my life, and it was so meaningless. I was just another person at the airport. I could have died there, and it didn’t even matter.”

The apple hopped up and down on the desk.

“Patty, were you listening to me? It’s okay to be afraid! Retirement is a big step.”

Vol. XXXVIII, No. 4 February 2011

O <O> <O> <O> <O> <O> <O> <O> <O> <O> <O> <O> <O> <O> <O> <O> <O> <O> <O> <O> <O> 45 “I was talking about feeling scared at the airport,” Patty said quietly.

“Patty,” the apple said.

“Retirement IS the airport.”

Patty looked up. She thought about the last 32 years of her life.

She thought about the money she had made, the men she had slept with, the people she had stepped on to get where she was.

But mostly, she thought about leaving work in four months, and not knowing where she would be next.

She dried her tears on the side of her sleeve and stood up. For a moment, she felt weightless. She felt like the simplest autumn breeze could pick her up and whisk her away. She was a feather, a piece of fluff, a fake spiderweb Halloween decoration. She was memory.

“I just have one more question, apple,” said Patty. “Are you real?”

The apple smiled.

“I’m as real as you are, Patty.”

Patty hiccupped. Then she nodded.

“Now you just gotta eat me,” said the apple.

They both laughed and laughed.

“How’s that?” Ethan asked.

“Not bad,” said the apple. “‘She was memory,’ though? Really?”

Ethan looked at the digital clock on the top right of his computer screen. It was 5:24:43 a.m. He had started the story at about 10. He felt faint and a bit delerious.

“Delirious,” corrected the apple.

“Too late now,” Ethan said.

He picked up the apple and walked over to his bed, sitting down. He looked at it, hard. He was afraid to ask his next question, but he thought that he might not get another chance.

“Did you mean what you said?”

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Ethan asked.

“Huh?” The apple had been thinking about other things. Appler things.

“What you said,” Ethan continued hesitantly. “About how I was never gonna be a writer.”

The apple paused. It knew that what it would say next was crucial.

“Ethan — you’re not just gonna be a writer. You’re gonna be a great writer. But you can’t trust what I say about this.”

“Who am I supposed to trust?”

The apple paused dramatically.

“You gotta trust yourself.”

Ethan sat silently for two full minutes. For some reason, he knew the apple was right. He couldn’t quite articulate why, but the apple seemed wise beyond measure.

He put the piece of fruit on his nightstand and set his alarm clock for 10:30 a.m. He’d spend another hour or two looking over his story tomorrow. Or today, he corrected himself. Ethan took off both of his socks and crawled into bed. It had been a pretty weird night, all things considered.

When he woke up the apple was gone. Ethan stared at the empty space on his nightstand for a little over a minute before he turned and looked out his window. Graduating wouldn’t be so bad. He didn’t have many job prospects, but he had friends. And even if he never made it as a writer, he trusted himself to try. He turned on his laptop and thought about edits he should make to his story.

“I should name the type of apple,” he thought hesitantly.

Then confidently.

<O>

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Poetry christmas visit ™ detail © november first r

christmas visit i visited uncle Carlos and them and other cousins never before met children too, small ones, boys and girls one in particular name with s — Susan? (mom’s voice saying she would be pretty one day). anyway, susan (or whatever) and I don’t know how in a room her small toes, a mess of christmas meat ‘round mouth, my fingers removing the key.

— Julian de Freitas

rebecca zhu / contributing illustrator

Vol. xxxviii No. 4 February 2011

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rebecca zhu / contributing illustrator

detail How about the lighbulb? Ninety-watt, but what exactly was its neck like in the first place & did it burn an even yellow in all parts & most importantly how hot —

Know that there was a boom box, a gift, how its black towers blushed sound, and how over and over I fell asleep in the brightness. These things I retrieve tremulously —

We had a path! With limp forsythia and octagonal stones and once a dead rabbit which I never saw. In the back, half an arsenal of tennis balls, which we forgot to count. Could I estimate?

No question of essences or their dull glows: rather this is a great stockpiling of component parts, so smooth sometimes, & so sure of their colors.

— Hannah Loeb

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november first Take the camera and hurry the shutter such that what points of light there are are there. Stark against the dark of haste will then be fixed an emergent reference. The tops of leaves will take the eyes to their precise intention and catch the reel of breathing in

rebecca zhu / contributing illustrator

an instant of the throat (which will expand as if the lungs were stretched thin into stillness).

— Ilan Ben-Meir

Vol. xxxviii, No. 4 February 2011

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Personal Essay on being cold D

by edmund downie

‘

We were well clothed, and, though sitting close to the fire, were far from too warm; yet these naked savages, though further off, were observed, to our great surprise, to be streaming with perspiration at undergoing such a roasting.” — Charles Darwin, The Voyage of the Beagle, entry dated December 22, 1834

T

he rain is coming down, not with any particular vehemence, but in a lazy way, as if it knows that the cold is enough to unsettle me and the other American college kids on this foggy April morning in the mountains of southwestern China. We’re here for a service project.

Our job is to repair the drainage ditch for the village of Beigao, a rice-farming community of about a hundred families.

None of us packed for this weather: high 30s, with persistent precipitation. We hide beneath thin raincoats like hermit crabs and eye the ground in dull astonishment.

An elderly villager approaches on our left. Her back supports a makeshift yoke, a pole with notches on either end, from which swing baskets loaded with rocks for the drainage ditch. She stops at the rock pile in front of us, stooping to set the yoke on the ground and dump her haul. Her weight relieved, she stands up tall — five feet, at most. What she’s doing is more or less our job for the day, although language difficulties have kept us blissfully unsure of our duties. I join a few of my friends to follow her back for another load. The rest of the group looks sideways and stays put.

We probably have enough rocks anyway.

But I’m not sure if I’m returning to the quarry just to get more rocks, for the scene

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D

before me calls up an idea that I’ve been considering now for some time. I imagine this idea in terms of a passage from the journals of Charles Darwin, about a cold December night he and his crewmates spent at Tierra del Fuego in 1834. What he wrote about that evening seems somewhat exaggerated: one hardly believes that the Native Americans (well, “naked savages,” as he put it) were actually sweating from the fire as winter gales blasted the cape. Nonetheless, when I first read his words, I

maria haras / staff Illustrator

50 vuvuvuvuvuvuvuvuvuvuvuvuvuvuvuvuvuvuvuvuvuvuvuvuvuvuvuvuvuvuv z had one question: on that night, was it cold? The Englishmen thought it was. The Fuegians found it otherwise.

Here I am in Beigao, in the spring of my gap year between high school and college, facing the same question: is it cold? To be sure, Darwin’s comments have more than a whiff of colonialism about them. Beneath these overtones, however, lies the suggestion that what we call cold is merely a reflection of subjective experience. The Chinese villagers have dealt with this weather before. I haven’t, but, if I just suck it up, maybe next time won’t be so bad. The cold is a battleground for self-mastery: what fusty parents like Calvin’s dad in Calvin and Hobbes call “building character.” You need not suffer it as a passive object; you can take charge, seize it, tame it.

In previous winters, I had made sporadic attempts to wrestle the cold under my control. On runs, I wore shorts and a long-sleeve T-shirt. Some nights, I brought a booklight outside to read. I juggled soccer balls in the snow. Still, I could never make these tests into a routine, and winter winds remained brisk as ever.

Of course, during those years, it never occurred to me that what I was doing might be somewhat

went barefoot on frosty mornings. I read outside whenever I could. I didn’t turn on the heater in my cabin during the day, so that my room would be chilly when I came back. Meanwhile, inside the farmhouse, my boss’s back issues of National Geographic showed pictures of Inuits in fur-lined parkas, their smiles reminding me that, relatively speaking, I lived in the tropics. If other humans could survive the Arctic, then, for God’s sake, I should be able to deal with Pennsylvania fall.

One October morning, picking tomatillos in a frigid and relentless rainstorm, my hands seized up. I stuffed them inside my jacket and shivered as water dripped down my back. As they began to unclench, I brought them out again and tried to continue my work. Within a minute, the rain had beaten them back into submission. By the early afternoon, I had retreated to the farmhouse.

In the rainstorm, I discovered the folly of my project. I was a fool to think I could change my experience of the cold in just a few weeks on the farm. To think I could do so in a decade, or even a lifespan — that, too, was a mistake. The cold has destroyed nations, wiped out species, subdued entire continents; it would never bend to my will.

Yet I refused to abandon my project. I knew I would

Reading Darwin’s words, I had one question: on that night, was it cold? odd. I didn’t need to subject myself to the cold.

There are plenty of other ways to chase selfimprovement, many of which probably have some sort of vague practical applications beyond surviving a Jack London short story. What’s more, how aimless subjection to the cold would translate into “self-improvement” had remained unclear. But I never asked those questions. I’ve always liked unpleasant weather, or at least whatever counted for unpleasant in my hometown of Washington, D.C. More importantly, in my world, there could not be any questioning of self-improvement.

“Always do your best,” my parents said, and, while they usually were talking about work and sports, I thought of that axiom as encompassing even the most irrelevant of tasks.

At the start of my gap year, while I was working on a farm in southern Pennsylvania, my skirmishes against the cold became a full-fledged campaign. I

face many more days like that October morning, each one promising me a chance to rewrite what happened in the rainstorm, a chance to be a little more like the Fuegians and a little less like Darwin.

For the next few months, I waited for such a day.

When I came to China, I was still waiting.

Trudging back from the rock quarry, I see my friends conferring with our group leader. He turns my way. “That’s enough rocks for the day. Go inside,” he says. We file into the shaman’s house and light a fire on the coals, leaning forward as the warmth brushes across our fingertips. Outside, some of the villagers are still finishing their chores for the day. I don’t want to retire early, like I did that October morning in Pennsylvania. I want to be out working, even if my shoes are soaked, even if I don’t have a sweatshirt, even if there’s no work left to be done. So I go back outside and sit to watch the twilight descend.

Vol. xxxviii, No. 4 February 2011

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Dear Dana Dear Dana,

I

’m a freshman in an upper-level seminar that is taught by a preeminent professor and full of confident upperclassmen. I do all the work and am very interested in the material, but I’m often too intimidated by my classmates and my professor to participate. Four classes have already passed, and I still haven’t said a word! How can I stop feeling threatened by my peers and get my opinion out there?

Sincerely, Frightened Frosh

mate you particularly dislike makes an inane rebuttal, interrupt her by picking Your problem is one that plagues Yale up your phone and announcing that the students of every age. Fortunately, there author (dead or alive) is on the line and are several easy fixes. If you want your completely disagrees with what she just point of view to be respected in a class said. If she seems dubious, offer to hand that contains a lot of seasoned, self-as- her the phone but then explain that the sured seminar-takers, it’s important to author has hung up because he can’t bear make your presence known. With your to come in contact with her idiocy.

Finally, if these strategies don’t seem classmates cowed into silence, you will gain the confidence necessary to make to be working, bring in as many obscure translations of the book as possible. Tear your voice heard.

To this end, I recommend some tips out enough pages from each version so it for intimidating your peers so that you will be clear they are missing. When peohave room to air your beliefs. First, de- ple point out their absence, tell them that cide beforehand what you are going to you ate the missing pages so you could say in class the next day. Practice your better absorb the material.

These fast tricks should quickly earn beloved comment whenever you get a chance — in line at the dining hall, in the you the awed silence you deserve, Frightbathroom in LC, even during the awk- ened. Be careful not to throw up all that ward silences in Physics section. By the paper — but get ready to spew brilliance! time you arrive at the seminar, you will astound your classmates when you utter You’re welcome, with aplomb, “I thought the part about Dana his past was really interesting.”

Second, after you’ve dropped your perfectly rehearsed comment, you have to make sure no one disagrees. If a classDear Frightened,

GKKKKKN

Dana Zhu has all the answers.

Got a problem?

E-mail mag@ yaledailynews. com.

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Christopher Buckley ’75.

Fareed Zakaria ’86.

Samantha Power ’92.

YOU? join US: MAG@YALEDAILYNEWS.com visit US: yaledailynews.com/mag