The Spotted Doe

Doe 1024
Photo Courtesy Matt Reinbold (CC BY-SA 2.0)

It’s the moment before night falls. The day’s work finished, your energy a tidal wave not yet breaking upon the softened shore of an eventual, well-earned night’s rest.

Your social aptitude, lubricated via an 8-to-5’s worth of forced interaction with unimpressive persons and just the right amount of libations.

Sunlight blood orange, lined in garish pinks and soft purples candy-coats the neighborhood pub’s single-paned windows…the local grocer’s automatic sliding door glass…happy hour venues ripened with optimism and cured with accomplishment, some legitimate, some conjectural.

Just a 10 yard slant-run away, she sips a cider beer…she peruses and inspects produce…she shares a laugh with her coworker friends.

For one briefly androgynous moment, you are the night’s prey, caught off guard yet simultaneously forced upon it with intrigue, compelled by the fight-or-flight juices involuntarily distributed into your bloodstream, compliments of your hasty, stupid man-brain. You instinctually take a drink, a medicinal drink. You commit, with or without “cooler heads” and better judgment, on “fight.”

The spotted doe – the beautiful baby bunny a young Vince Vaughn references in the classic film Swingers – does not know it, but she has issued a challenge to you and every other wild buck on the premises by merely existing in the lovely, inviting manner that she does so.

Internally, you vacillate between offensive and defensive emotional responses before reminding yourself with finality the she is the doe you spotted. You are the hunter.

You are the goddamn hunter. If you take nothing away from this, remember always that you are the goddamn hunter.

It takes a degree of inspired aggression sometimes. Like it or not, we are men, and men eat to live. This is indeed some real cro-mag shit.

But just as we no longer rub rocks together to light a young cro-Magdalene’s cigarette, so, too, have our weapons in the art of seduction evolved. They must evolve. We must accept the fact that this is ongoing, or risk becoming obsolete.

For some of us, this evolution has resulted – hopefully and appropriately so – in palates more sophisticated. When one’s tastes become specific, proper weaponry becomes more crucial. For a man of your ilk has no flavor for scraggly, gamey meats or the dingy pelts they don. Correspondingly, were you to merely toss rocks at such a healthy stallion frame as this, she would undoubtedly dodge them with a graceful indifference and leap silently into the brush.

The creature you have prospected is to be respected and revered. You have but one shot and it had better prove fatal. For it is one thing to beat literary nature analogies to death (as has been done for the greater portion of this dissertation); the courting of this species is another endeavor entirely, assuming your valuation is correct.

The primary weapon of choice in this game is intellect; secondary to intellect, coordination, hand-eye and otherwise. The wrong-headed assets you, thus far, have associated your personal net worth with – your physique, your vehicle and its leather upholstery, your financial strength – are, essentially, little more than shiny-at-best trinkets. Presuming, again, you have in fact set your sights upon a worthy adversary.

Now, that other beast over there, the one with the scraggly mane, the easy pickings, if you will, that is another endeavor entirely. Sometimes a man simply has got to eat. And, after all, “mangy” is subjective and this is a judgment-free zone always. But, alas, the doe you have spotted is a dime and, remember, you have chosen to fight. You have no intention of watching her prance away with barely the mark of a confrontation. Or, worse yet, with a lesser but more courageous, ambitious buck.

Therein lies the wisdom one must employ prior to engaging upon properly vetted prey. Is she truthfully that which you seek? Do not confuse this encouragement of the exercising of scrutiny with some lesson in morality.

But also do not be surprised when, upon said scrutiny, you find yourself in a frustrating moral dilemma. Inconvenient? No doubt. But for a high quality man, this is imperative. Your time is more valuable than your ego’s insatiable desire to govern and to be validated.

The greatest hunters to have ever walked this earth have possessed both the courage and the poise to pounce on whatever, whenever they please. But their intellect, matched with gracefulness and coordination, are directed by – not traits of –a carefully groomed personal disposition.

In a single word, the adjective most likely to apply to such stately dispositions would be “patient.” An impatient man is doomed in any endeavor, but especially one’s involving the fairer sex.

Being a man who identifies with, and who is associated with “calm and collected” is about awareness and execution. Too many foolish gents are lured into certain doom by the well-meaning but oft-ignorant inner voice, supplemented with testosterone. It screams, “Man up!” No plan…lacking awareness…inevitable components and precursors of poor execution.

You have spotted your doe. Your mouth salivates at the nourishment she represents, on levels more significant and complex than sexual.

But have you examined a single word that has glided between those beautiful, glossy lips?

Are her mannerisms indicative of a confidence that transcends insecurity or has the booze simply amplified her strength-of-self?

Does her posture suggest approachability in any ways whatsoever?

Does she exude friendliness? Conceit? Pretentiousness? Egotism?

The actual relationships she is engaged in during the present moment, the ones you hope to eventually interrupt…what have you determined to be the dynamic of those? Social as she may appear and as available as she may seem from a distance, is it all a charade?

Et cetera.

And give yourself a solid onceover at this time as well. Marinara stain on your business-casual khakis from those mozzarella sticks and fingernails better suited for cocaine key bumps than the gentle grazing of a female’s forearm?

Sign yourself a rain check. You have entry-level responsibilities to meet before enrolling in the advanced courses. Lower your barrel and live to hunt another day.

Like it or not, if real successes are the game plan, these are the questions you must ask yourself. And the answers will determine your success, whether that comes in the form of courtship or the shifting of your efforts towards another aim.

Presently unable to or uninterested in residing upon the perch of heightened awareness with the vision of a Red-Tailed Hawk (buteo jamaicensis)?

Resigned to the simpler, more juvenile guidance of a younger you still crafting actions out of data collected playing Seven Minutes in Heaven in the bedroom closets of unimpressed, experimental 8th grade girls?

Sadly, you are destined to remain engaged in the kinds of short-game contests that should have lost their luster at some point after senior prom and before the mid-twenties insurance premium discounts.

For you simpletons, might we suggest that sloppy beast in the corner. The rules, so much simpler: Chug that awful light beer, belch across the bar like it’s some kind of French battle cry, and throw that Jager shot – after tipping your bartender poorly, of course – right down her loud, likely oft-penetrated gullet. 

The rest of you follow me.

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