The Logical Construction of Personality: A Long, Technical, and Marginally Humorous Study of Getting Laid

If you're like me, you want to get laid. And to do that, you'll need a modicum of looks, and (thanks to women's sliding scale of attraction) a heaping helping of personality. Nick Carroway said that personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, and he was gay, so he probably had plenty--that's how he managed to bed Jordan Baker, and she was gay. Most of us straight guys aren't so fortunate. But we do have a bit of a secret weapon in the fight against endless masturbation: science.

Let me explain what I mean. If we take Carraway at his word (and we can't, according to the same critics who have him longing for Gatsby even as he pals around with his golf-club-toting-ingenue-uberdyke beard), then it seems personality isn't some intrinsic property in a subject, but rather something extrinsic, in other words, something a subject does, a series of gestures, patterns of speech and behavior--a construct made of a particular sequence of ostensions and utterances. In still other words: Bullshit.

The good news about this account of personality is that you needn't waste any time attending wine tastings, Kabalah classes, foreign films, or, worst of all, being yourself. This is because your "self" is merely the affects of this logical construction of utterances and gestures. It runs no deeper than that. So all you need do is pick a mark--that is, some woman (or man) F-- and retire to the lab to build a personality P suitable for the job of bedding F.

Elsewhere, Jones and Foster (2004) have conjectured that for every woman f, there is at least one set of propositions (in this case, speech acts and physical gestures) call it p(x), which, when performed in a particular sequence (s), will succeed in rendering (f ) vulnerable to bedding (L). Call this expression Lp(x(s))f a bedding theory of f. The logical notation here might be a bit confusing at first, but it translates simply into "p(x(s)) L's f" or "the set of gestures p(x) in sequence s will bed (or make bed-able) f."

This theory is expressed in various ways in the vernacular: seducing f, wooing f, picking-up f, slipping f a roofie, etc. But, of course, the consequences of formalizing and systematizing such a theory are profound and far-reaching. Imagine, a universe of ass at the fingertips of every nerd with a graphing calculator or a slide-rule and basic hand-eye coordination. Provided you are neither troll nor troglodyte, you, dear reader, could very well bed Natalie Portman, or that girl from Accounting, or your TA, or the Queen of England. You just have to do the math.

Now, I know what you're saying: "Dan, where's the fucking empirical data?!? Do you expect me to swallow some a priori theory based on nothing but the Romantic musings of a fictional narrator and the anecdotal conjectures of two third-rate armchair philosophers?" Well, it'd be nice if you did, but I understand your hesitation. Here, take three test cases.

1) In one possible world, that is, the fictional world of the adult film classic "Buttbanged Hitchhiking Whores", our test subject Lex, executes a short series of gestures that secures him the bedding of not one but TWO attractive blondes. This particular instantiation of the theory Lp(x(s))f contained two gestures: one physical and the other sentential or propositional. Gesture g1 is physical; it entails Lex stopping his car at the side of the road. Gesture g2 is an utterance expressing a conditional proposition, which can be paraphrased thusly: "I will transport you and your compatriate to the destination of your choosing if you agree to engage with me in various unprotected acts of lechery, including several distinct sodomous acts." We can formalize this theory for getting laid by two blondes f1 and f2, thusly:

Lp(x(s))f = []Plc, E(x) [E(y) [((x=f1) . (y=f2)) . (Ql(f1 . f2) --> Dl(f1 . f2))]].

Notice how crucial the sequencing is here. If Lex had not pulled over his car before making the conditional proposition, it is doubtful he would have bedded either, let alone both, of the attractive blondes.

2) The most rudimentary of sequences. Our test subject is John, and the mark is Debbie, the village whore. Again, the theory contains two gestures, one physical action and one utterance. John first removes a five dollar bill from wallet and holds it stiffly in front of him, next he utters the English language phrase "blowjob". Needless to say he succeeds in bedding Debbie. Here the sequencing is less important; it seems fair to infer that the sequence [g1, g2] here described could have been replaced with the sequence [g2, g1] to much the same effect.

3) This is an extraordinarily complex instance. The test subject is Agememmnon and his mark is Helen of Troy. A complete model of the theory-sequence used to bed Helen would occupy countless pages, but suffice it to say it contains thousands of physical gestures--including boat trips, gorings, beheadings, horse-constructions, and body-draggings to name a few--and as many utterances in the form of dialogue and soliloquoy.

Of course, if you don't have the logical capacity or technical know-how to construct a set of gestures sufficient to bed the woman of your choice, there are two options. You might try the trivial gesture-sequence--that is, the set of all gesture-sequences. Elsewhere, my girlfriend has referred to this is as the "Groundhog's Day Sequence". Given enough time and access to a particular mark, you just continue to say and do things until she gives in. Lastly, researchers are hard at work on coming up with universal gesture-sequences, or sequences that work on all women. Preliminary calculations show that something called the "Pitt-Clooney Set" is probably the best bet. It includes being ridiculously good-looking, moderately talented, and fantastically wealthy.