mature into the kind of older man women find irresistible and get by on looks and charm

but this good-looking business business escapes him….

I’ve gone looking for the tell-all, self help books and internet advice on the subject. You know: Seven Habits of Highly Attractive People, How to be Hot, Seven Days To A New Handsomer You, How To Make Women Fall-all Over Themselves Lusting After you…

I can only conclude there is some ‘inner quality’ that makes a person attractive – likely combined with the correct amount of blindness on the part of the opposite sex.

How does a guy ‘turn on the charm’ with out becoming a smarmy prick? – I’ve never liked charming guys, just seem likely creepy weaklings to me…allways trying to put one over on you…

...maybe this goal isn’t for me?

there are two-parts of this “using my attractiveness business”

1 the passive, others are attracted to me and seek my attention.

2 the active, using that attraction to influence others.

One would think the ability to use beauty would come with beauty but it seems not to have been the case. JacK thinks he must have missed something…

OR, he’s overestimating either his beauty or the influance of beauty. (Jacks’ vanity is sometimes a little trying)

Or perhaps beauty really is in the eye of the beholder…(perhaps mine own in this case.) It may be that commercial glamour-culture aside beauty does not come from the arrangement of physical attributes in a prescribed order but instead from some inner quality that eludes me.

Wouldn’t that be a cool thing to discover?

Jack has gone to Montreal for a long weekend, right now he is typing this from a very nice internet cafe in old Montreal, picture attached

Montreal is a nice city. Exotic, laid back and sexy. The people there are not like english people. I was standing in the rain waiting to cross a city street when a beautiful woman stepped up beside me and shifted her umbrella so it sheltered us both.

Her skin pressed against my wet arm, her small body was so close to my side I could inhale her warmth. ‘Merci’ I said and she smiled at me. Together we crossed the street and on the other side she said in accented english – ‘I am going this way’ – which was the same way I was going so we walked together she very close, me making no sudden move for fear I would startle her the way a bird might be startled.

We walked a couple of blocks like this, before our ways parted. I remember that J’vous remerci is thank you very much.

I look now is good as I am going to look, I am now as fit as I am going to be now. For going on twenty years I have gone to the gym, worked out, struggled to be fitter, slimmer, in better shape

Allways working toward some future state of physical achievement, never satisfied with my present condition.

The odd thing is – when I look at old photos I can see that while I was working for something just out of reach the reality wasn’t what I had thought. I have actually been fit all along, I have not gained (or lost) any significant amount of weight since I was twenty. I will be forty in two years and though I have lost some hair and have wrinkles at the corner of my eyes I am as strong as I have ever been, my back is pain-free, I can run, touch my toes and do a few dozen push-ups without stopping – I am as fit as I was at twenty-five, perhaps more so.

What has kept me from being satisfied with myself has not been the condition of my body but my comfort in it. I do not know how to be at ease, to smile, to hold my hands open at my side. I have lacked confidence in my form, ease in my flesh.

he knows it, but all his life has failed to take advantage of it because of a crippling sense of modesty and because he found vanity to be embarrasing

Now though I am determined to figure out how I can make the most of it. I am at a loss to understand how this is done – part of the trouble is while I’m fairly good looking I have no ability to charm and can’t flirt at all – plus I have no ability to read people.