After Dinner, Sit on the Couch As Usual Pour him a cocktail, crack him open a beer, or fix him a tall frosty iced tea according to whatever you think he would like the most. Bring it over to him. If the TV is on, turn it off. Then hand him the drink with a smile. Look into his eyes. Before he can grumble about the TV, lean over him on the couch so that your boobs are at his eye level. Move closer until they’re in his face. Straddle him slowly, first one leg, than the other. Pull back and look into his eyes, running your hands through his hair. Don’t be offended if he drinks whatever it is you fixed for him; it’s about him right now.

Now That You Have His Attention Take off your shirt. Brush the side of your face against his and nuzzle his neck. Smooth your hands over his chest and make yourself comfortable in his lap. Do all of this about ten times more slowly than what feels natural; the idea is to get him mesmerized. Now rub up against him. Move like you’re making love, but do it gently, so that it’s not creating a significant amount of friction yet. The idea is to tease the living shit out of him. Don’t let him control it. Take his drink back out of his hand, put it down, and pin his arms back behind his head playfully. Take some more clothes off. Keep everything light and gentle. If he starts trying to take control, admonish him. Tell him he’s being bad. Tell him you want him to relax and enjoy you. Brush your nipples against his chest and then play with them yourself in front of him.

Take Your Time When you have him good and hot, brace yourself against his shoulders with your hands, unstraddle, and slide your body down his so that you end up kneeling between his legs. Look up at him from this position, bite your lip or smile or say something cute. Rub your breasts over his crotch; get your face close to it without touching it; breathe on it. Pause frequently to look up–men like this visual. Run your hands along his thighs. Make it seem like you’re going to touch his hard-on but pull away at the last second. Draw this out. When you and he can’t stand it anymore, stand up and turn around so that you’re facing away from him. If you’re still wearing anything on your bottom half, take it off, making sure to bend over in front of him so that he can get a good look at your ass. Lap Dances in Clubs End; This One Doesn’t Have To By now, your man should be very, very, very excited and it shouldn’t take much instruction on my part to tell you what to do next. If he is familiar with strip clubs, it will be very special for him to have this experience end in actual sexual gratification. You may find that you really enjoy being so seemingly submissive yet also dominant at the same time. Now it’s time to remind him that he’s not in a club; that you are his sex partner and that this is a situation in which he can have his cake and eat it to. Do something slutty and hot. Blow him. Say something unspeakably filthy about how much you love his cock. Take his clothes off. But control it yourself, and do it at the speed that pleases you. Revel in your power. He will too.

1. Invade His Space If you want to be taken seriously by a man for a job or a long-term, family-approved girlfriendship, by all means, respect his personal space when you speak to him and let him decide for himself. But if you want to make him yours tonight, do the opposite. Stand close. Touch his arm. Sit in his lap. Behave as though you’ve already been to bed together. Men have a very hard time ignoring or rebuffing women who appeal directly to their sexual appetites, and they find women who are bold enough to do this fascinating because most women are not. Be the super-confident exception to the rule when you’re trying to seduce him.

2. Don’t Look Away Staring is not polite, of course, but since when has politeness been a sexual stimulant? Once you make eye contact, don’t let it go. Prolonged eye contact is invasive and uncomfortable because it forces the people sharing it to really see each other. This is the exact effect you want when you’re trying to seduce a man, though. Sharing eye contact is an intense bonding experience because as long as it’s happening, his attention is directed at you. The longer you gaze at each other, the more focused and powerful this attention becomes. This has a mesmeric effect. Ask for what you want right in the middle of a staring session–but only if you want to get it.

3. Use Body Language to Draw Attention to Your Best Assets This is the oldest trick in the books because it always works. Lick or bite your lips, making it look as though you don’t know you’re doing it. Adjust the neckline of your shirt to draw his attention to your breasts. Brush your hair out of your face. Arch your back and point your feet in his direction. These behaviors are the same ones women exhibit naturally in the presence of a man they desire sexually. By playing them up purposefully, you’ll be surprised at how quickly and easily you can control him.

4. Stimulate His Sense of Smell A good perfume applied correctly can go a long way when you want to attract a man. One spray on the back of your neck and another on your wrists is plenty. The effect you’re trying to produce with perfume is one of intimacy rather than obviousness, so don’t wear so much that everyone within three yards of you can smell it. Rather, you want to wear a small amount that only someone very close to you can smell. Once he catches an unexpected whiff of something beautiful at the same time that you are invading his space, he won’t want to let you get very far away again.

5. Nod Your Head “Yes” This is a subliminal sales technique that has been helping business men and women get what they want for decades. By nodding “yes,” you suggest that “yes” is what he is thinking. Nod at everything he says and everything you say. Like a puppet, you will have him nodding “yes” back at you as well. This affirmative energy flowing back and forth between you fosters a highly suggestive atmosphere in which you will be very unlikely to hear a “no.”

6. Issue A Challenge Now that you have him reduced to a quivering pile of jelly, let him know that he needs to work a little bit if he wants to cash in on the promise of all the sensuality you’ve already seemed to lay at his feet. This takes the form of asking him to do something, specifically for you. It can be literally anything. It doesn’t matter how goofy, inane, or immature your request is; in fact, it’s better if it’s something little and dumb. You want him to get used to doing what you want and recieving your favorable smile when he does it. Some ideas: “Hey, let me try on your watch.” “Would you mind getting the bartender’s attention for me?” “Will you hand me that napkin?” “Will you tell me the truth about the color I just had put on my nails?” You get the picture. Once he has completed the task, gaze adoringly like whatever he did was far more significant and difficult than it actually was.

7. Lower The Pitch of Your Voice You know the way your voice sounds right after you’ve been laid within an inch of your life? Kind of raspy and low-pitched and slow, as though the effort of speaking is almost too much. If you’ve tried all of these tricks and still need another one, this will seduce him right up in no time.

8. Pay Attention to the Details Everyone likes to feel special, including the man you want to attract. The opposite of playing hard to get is to pay very close attention to him, letting him feel not only that you’re interested, but you’re interested for all the right reasons. Scope him out. What’s he wearing? A wild Hawaiian shirt? You don’t just like it. You like, specifically, the magenta hibiscus right over his left pectoral, and the fact that he is quirky enough to wear this shirt to a formal event (or whatever). You don’t just like his earring, you like the fact that it is a diamond earring because you think men deserve to sparkle too. You don’t just like his shoes, you like the design of his shoes, which you then go on to describe to him. It doesn’t take much work to give a compliment that is a cut above the completely transparent ass-kissing that you’ve heard all the other women spout in an attempt to get a man. Go the extra two inches with this one and give him a specific compliment and he’ll think you really understand him.

9. Enlist the Help of His Friends If you’re just getting to know a man in a public place and he is interested, expect whatever friends he’s with to come over and scope you out at some point. There is nothing men love more than to make fun of each other, and the more awkward they can make a situation, the better. Do not be alarmed if they start teasing him while you’re there, telling stories about the time he accidentally punched their second grade teacher or shit himself on a college camping trip. The thing you want to do here is to laugh at everything they say, looking back at him and saying neutral stuff like, “really?” “You did that?” “I had no idea you were the type!” This kind of teasing is his buddies’ macho way of giving him their (weird man) version of the spotlight to keep your attention focused on him. Let them do this with good nature, or better yet, as an excuse to give him a protective squeeze.

10. Don’t Take His First Offer When it comes time to seal the deal, give him a chance to do a bit of the bargaining that men seem to love so much and that women seem to so frequently and tragically misunderstand. The idea is not to refuse him, but to force him to again put a little bit of work into changing his initial impulse to suit you. If he suggests his house, you want to go to yours. If he wants to leave immediately, you want another drink. If he wants your phone number, you are only prepared to give him an e-mail address. If he wants to make a date to take you to one restaurant, you would prefer another one. This last-minute assertion from someone who has been making their motives more or less clear will be, at this point, interestingly jarring. He will think you are not to be easily had, even if you totally are and have been the whole time. It’ll provide the little moment of conflict necessary to all great adventures. My best guess is that you’ll perform maybe two or three of these tricks before seeing the results you want all over the shocked and happy face of the man you’re dying to have. It would take a very resistant man indeed to not follow a woman who did these things anywhere.

Use these tips wisely, keeping in mind at all times your own safety, and you can pretty much have whoever you want.

Working in strip clubs, my experience has shown me that utilizing a combination of both is ultimately the most effective method of getting your way. But if you aren’t confident, you will not be convinced of your own worth in getting your own way and your attempts to manipulate people will alienate them rather than draw them closer to you in a helpful way. No one is less seductive than an insecure manipulator. So we’re going about this the old fashioned way: you first; a self worth tutorial.

This won’t be corny if you spice it up with as many realistic-seeming (or actually realistic) details as possible. Tell him about how you undressed her and what her body looked like. Which parts surprised you. Which parts you couldn’t help yourself from touching. How she undressed you. Which parts of your body she couldn’t help herself from touching. How hard it is to go down on a woman, and how much credit he deserves for doing it so well to you. Draw this out for as long as you can, describing the difference between the soft body of a woman and the hard body of a man. When you’re ready for him to rip all of your clothes off, throw something in about how you loved the experience, but couldn’t possibly go without his cock for any length of time. This will drive him absolutely crazy with desire for you.

2. Inappropriate sex. Your dentist. Your cabbie. Your divorce lawyer. A policeman who almost arrested you. A stranger in the bathroom of an airport. Your father’s friend. Your brother’s friend. Your teacher. Your stockbroker. The pizza delivery boy. The thing that these men have in common is a sense of being taboo, or off-limits. Tell him what a bad girl you’ve been, or what a bad girl you’ve been thinking about being while he’s busy doing other things. Tease him with the naughty inner workings of your mind to get his going. Don’t push this one so far that it crosses the line over naughty into gross, i.e., a member of his family, the underage, clergy, anyone he knows intimately (unless you’re sure he’ll be into it). Be sure to keep it detailed; who, what, where, when, and most importantly, how it all felt. The sight and sound of you working yourself all up over a sexy story that doesn’t involve him will rouse his competitive nature. It’s also a good way to subtly bring up things he may not know that you like sexually without causing him to feel threatened by them.

3. The Threesome. Combining elements from both the girl-on-girl and inappropriate fantasy categories, the threesome is one of the most commonly held male fantasies. So it’s not only the time you and your hot girlfriend got it on after a few cocktails at a party, it’s the time you and your hot girlfriend got it on with the sexy cop who pulled the two of you over for speeding on your way home to make sweet lesbian love. Describe how you both took turns sucking his cock between sloppy kisses, how she licked your breasts from beneath you while he fucked you hard from behind, what it was like to feel both of their tongues on your clit, and how good it all felt. Tell him in a way so that he can picture the scene perfectly in his head, and if he starts asking questions, use them as your cue to tailor this story to his tastes. Alternately, if you’re brave: tell him about a threesome with two guys. What it was like to have two cocks battling for dominance over your body and ultimately filling up your every hole. Make it clear that you love cock when you tell this one. The feel, the smell, the way they’re all subtly different. Speak about it hungrily, as though even two isn’t enough. Hey, while we’re fantasizing, maybe two cocks aren’t enough and you want to stage a whole gang-bang scenario. Watch him squirm. Now he is completely under your spell, and in your control.

So he’s into big beautiful woman porn and you’re a twig. Or you’re a big beautiful woman and he’s got a whole stash of barely legal teens. You’re blonde and he’s got Goth Girls Go Doggystyle or whatever other creative title I’m sure the porn companies have come up for it. My point is, so what? Commitment to a relationship does not extend to the fantasy world, and once you develop your own and learn how to exploit his to your own benefit, you will stop feeling so threatened by it. Lighten up! It’s just dirty pictures. Find some of your own. Start a competing collection. Masturbate constantly. Do not let him have all the fun here. So I’m suggesting that you do two things, really:

1) Go through his porn. Force yourself to keep watching it past the knee-jerk this-is-disgusting point if that’s something you’re dealing with. Watch enough of it so that you know the difference between the stuff that you think is disgusting because it actually is disgusting and the stuff that could potentially turn you on as well. Human sexuality is strange terrain. Porn in this sense is just like reality: sometimes you don’t know what’s going to be sexy until you’re in the middle of it. One night you could get a tingle from blacks on blondes, another night a twitch from an oldie-but-goodie like Debbie Does Dallas. Ignore the stuff that grosses you out. Focus on the stuff that gives you a positive sexual reaction. Then watch more of it. Figure out what the genre is called. Download more of it yourself.

2) Get your own! As you explore your reactions to porn you are watching for your own sexual enlightenment rather than seeing it as some kind of adversary, I think you’ll find that you quite enjoy some of it. Again, don’t be disturbed by yourself if you’re aroused by seeing something you would never do. That is the whole point of porn. You do not have to actually do any of it. It’s just there for you to watch and rub one out to. I promise you, that’s all he’s doing, too.

The one thing men never get tired of is novelty. Sitting in the middle of a strip club, essentially a sensual candy store, male customers typically spend the first hour or so having a cocktail, relaxing, and scanning the strippers on the shift for any favorites. After another hour and another cocktail or two, the man will have forgotten his favorites in favor of whoever has approached him and made him feel the way he was hoping to feel when he walked into the club.

Again, this is the easy part. As a stripper, I can tell you that we don’t have to do much in order to make our customers spend all of their money and come back time and again for the privilege of doing it all over again. It’s the same thing you did when you first met him, I bet. You listen as he talks with wide, interested eyes. You make him laugh. You invade his space a little so there’s no doubt in his mind that you are interested in something beyond friendship. You flatter him. Then you make it easy for him to take what he wants. All of this produces in him a deep, narcotic feeling of sexual power.

Now he is prepared to spend money to keep that feeling going as long as possible. First, he buys lap dances. Then, he may upgrade to a VIP room or Champagne Court, where the high price suggests far more naughtiness than is typically ever had. Once there, if he is kept stimulated, a stripper who knows what she’s doing will be able to keep him there all night by providing the kind of stimulation he wants. I’m not talking about what’s in his pants, because by this point, that’s either already been taken care of or the man knows it’s never going to be taken care of. I’m talking about his mind.

What I’m going to tell you now is a little secret that most women would never guess about men because women are wired to want the opposite from an intimate partner. This secret is something you can use whenever you want seduce your man over and over again, regardless of how long he’s known you or how much you have been through together. This secret involves you, that time when you were sixteen, and your cheerleader friend Kimmy. Or your boyfriend and his brother. Or your father’s friend.  Or the cable guy. Whatever you want.

It doesn’t have to be in any way rooted in reality. In fact, it’s almost better if it isn’t, as you want him to retain the security of your relationship while simultaneously being titillated by your wanton creativity and the possibility that in his wildest dreams, it could be true. For the minutes you spend telling him all about it in sumptuous, sexy detail, he is watching it on a big screen in his head, complete with flattering lighting and a soundtrack of his choice. He gets to flip back and forth between watching you tell the story, and playing the story out in his head. Men don’t necessarily need complicated stimulation, but most of them do believe that more is better. By telling him sexy stories about yourself, you give him the permission and opportunity to fantasize about you even as you’re sitting right there.

Good fantasies take practice. If you want him to look at you the way he looked at you back when you first met, you need to tap into the part of his brain that appreciates novelty by putting it in his lap. Tell him your fantasies. Tell him his fantasies. It doesn’t matter what you tell him as long as it produces that exciting adrenaline rush of novelty.

This is the secret that men don’t want you to know: they’re not as stupid as they want you to think they are.

Think back to the beginning of your relationship. I guarantee you that by the time you’d been out on a few dates with him, your man knew why you had come and what you wanted from them. Your intentions were heard loudly and clearly. If you met with any resistance from him at this stage, it was due to a fear that once he committed to a relationship with you, the fun would stop. So he hedged, and he hemmed, and he hawed, pretending not to know what was going on to buy himself more time.

Even if an initial commitment was not the problem, something else was. Maybe you wanted to go back to work. Maybe you wanted to stop working. Maybe you just wanted him to hang out with you in the kitchen while you made dinner. Whatever the issue was, I promise you that your man knew what you wanted and what was expected of him from the beginning. He pretended not to because many, many women fall for this. Avoid being one of those women, and your frustration levels will automatically fall.

Be the stakes the purchase of a $20 lap dance, a lifetime commitment, or simply extra help around the house, the “I don’t know what you’re talking about” game is the same. It is a dumb game, but the genius of it is that whoever initiates it will, one way or the other, win.

Say a guy you’re seeing doesn’t call when he said he would. He knows he is supposed to do it. He just didn’t. If you believe him when he tells you that he forgot, resign yourself to a long lifetime of having to see that really irritating sneaky face that men make when they think they’re pulling one over on you. But if you make a big deal out of such a small, petty concern, the man also wins something in his mind: he wins the right to mentally reduce the intimacy between you since you were a big meanie and didn’t give him what he wanted. So therefore his depriving you of the thing he knew you wanted (intimacy) is now YOUR fault. There are men who don’t play games and there are men who call when they say they will. These are just extremely few and far between.

Here’s the way to thwart this particular man-trick: read his mind. When you see his fear looming on the horizon, don’t give resistance. State your case. Smile sweetly when he hedges. Tell him that you understand. Then give him lots of time without you in which to think about it. Don’t give the appearance of doing this out of anger, or spite. Do it because you know he fully expects you to do the opposite and sink your hooks in at this time, because that’s what every other woman he’s known has done in the past.

You’re not every woman he’s ever known, and this is your chance to prove it. Don’t let your man get away with playing mind games in your relationship.

Beat him at it.

They are assholes, and they are totally wrong about you.

As a stripper, one of the first lessons I learned was that I could not rely on other people for my confidence. Sure, there are nights at the club where men line up for lap dances, bring me flowers and gifts, and profess undying love to my every body party. But just as often, customers are rude and dismissive, jealous girls are catty, my thong feels tight, there’s a pimple on my butt, and the last thing I feel like doing is putting on a smile and acting like I’m a sex goddess. But I do it because, well, that’s what I do. The level of exposure to ignorant jerks in a strip club is unusually high. If I let everyone with a bad attitude rub off on me, I’d be broke! So I fake it until I make it. Sounds dumb, but I always end up making it, and I couldn’t do that by giving in to negativity and rolling around in it until the entire world is reduced to a pile of suck, myself included.

So what I’m saying is, don’t be an asshole to yourself. It is the only thing that will really stop you from going where you want to go and doing what you want to do. Also, people will pick up on the fact that you feel this way about yourself and follow suit, walking all over you. Your external circumstances depend entirely on your internal circumstances.

What’s the last mean thing you said to yourself? Was it that you were fat, or ugly, or didn’t have the right clothes, or that your laugh was too loud, or that there was nothing in the world that you were really good at?

Let me tell you something: tons of fat, ugly, stupid, poorly-dressed, mediocre people the wide world over are tenderly loved and enthusiastically fucked by their partners as a general state of being. You know I’m right! You can think of at least ten of these people off the top of your head, I bet. Probably many of your relatives, co-workers, and friends fall into this category. What this means is that anything done in the name of self-improvement on your part is necessarily for your own benefit because seriously, when it comes down to it, poor self esteem is far more repellent than the pimple on your ass you’ve been allowing to destroy it. But in a strange chicken-or-egg kind of paradox, one of the first things that will help to raise your self-esteem is to work on little superficial stuff that’s bugging you first before moving on to the big life’s-work Women Who Run With Wolves kinda stuff.

So before you move on to the next post, say something nice to yourself. Tell yourself how nice your legs are, or how pretty your smile is, or how you know more about Soviet-era geography than anyone else you know. Keep that thought in your head, and return to it whenever you start feeling down.

Saying something nice to yourself can also be partnered with the age old and always popular confidence tactic of buying something nice for yourself.

Strippers turn themselves on in order to turn on others for a living. Making men, possibly your husband or boyfriend included, into our slaves is what we do to keep food on the table and the kids in private school. Some of us are naturally very attractive, but imagining that this is the sole reason that so many guys are turned on by us is naive. Anyone can seduce a guy if they feel seductive. Strippers just have at their hands an arsenal of seductive tools. The most potent of these tools is the six-inch platform stiletto heel. I know you think you can’t walk in these, but with practice, you can. The beauty of a six-inch platform stiletto is that regardless of what you think is wrong with your legs, these shoes will make them beautiful. Six inches is a lot of height. Your ankles instantly appear thinner. Your back arches when you wear them, forcing you to stand with your butt and boobs pushed out and your stomach pulled in to prevent you from toppling over. You can’t move very quickly them (well, without years of practice) so you automatically assume a lazy, sexy, langorous gait as you walk slowly back and forth in them. They turn your pedicure into the finishing touch on a work of art. No woman can resist the sight of her own legs in stripper shoes, and in turn, no man can resist it either.

When I got married, I bought a pair of stripper shoes for bridesmaids’ gifts. The girls all laughed when they saw them, but individually, each bridesmaid has since called me up to thank me specifically for these shoes. I think it took some of them a few years to figure out what to do with them, but once they did, all of my friends noticed an increase in their sex lives. So what do you do with them? I should have included that on the card, I guess: wear them. With nothing else. To bed. It doesn’t matter what the rest of you looks like. Stripper shoes look amazing on everyone.

Over the course of my day, I do many unglamorous things: change the cat’s litterbox, buy toilet paper, watch Criminal Minds in a pair of men’s sweatpants that are so big on me they really need the drawstring in order to stay up, eat liverwurst sandwiches; you get the picture. By night, though, my livelihood demands that I morph from my plain old regular girl self into my fabulous seductive stripper self.

As I’m sure you can imagine, sometimes the second can seem like a pretty far stretch from the first. This is where the ritual comes in. I like to draw a hot bath with rose petals, light a few candles, and hang out that way for awhile–an hour or more. I read a book, I close my eyes, I refill the tub with more hot water whenever it starts getting cold, I pumice my feet, I slough off dead skin with a loofah, I shave my legs, armpits, and bikini line, I push back my cuticles, etc. Then I get out and cover myself in luxurious scented lotion and put on a fluffy bathrobe and socks that I wear while doing my hair and makeup. I throw on some street clothes that are sexy enough to not be incongruous with the hair and makeup in case I decide to go out later, and I stop at Starbucks on the way to the club. By the time I’m there and changed into my platforms and G-string, I feel like I’m worth every penny I will make. If I don’t complete the ritual, I feel off for the rest of the night, whether I make money or not. The money is not the point–the point is the confidence imbued by the ritual.

Treat the beginning every day as a miniature night out so that you feel prepared for anything that happens during the day–so it counts and you have no excuse not to make it the best day you can. Use nice products in the shower if you don’t have time for a bath. Keep yourself groomed. Put on makeup, even if it’s just mascara or lip gloss. Wear clothes that fit you. It’s not necessary that you be perfectly pressed and done, but try to get into the habit of looking your best, if only so that you feel confident going anywhere and doing anything you might need to do over the course of your day. Repeat these behaviors consistently so that when you do them, you know the day has begun, you are unstoppable, and ready for whatever comes next. Again: put a little work in, and you will feel like you’re worth positive attention from those around you.