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A few years ago I was sitting at an outdoor table at Peet's Cafe, and a nice-looking, well-groomed man at a nearby table was looking at me intently, and then smiled at me. He asked me if he could join me at my table.

To be honest, at first I assumed he was from some other country, because American men are usually stoney-faced, and not very friendly. I've only experienced this kind of up-front friendliness from men either IN foreign countries, or when they are FROM other countries.

I gestured towards a chair at my table.

Once he'd sat down and introduced himself, I realized to my surprise that he was indeed American. His name was Phil. Within about five minutes he'd begun explaining to me that we would be having a no-strings-attached relationship. ""No expectations!"" he repeated over and over. He said that he was into ""The Power of the Law of Attraction""(from the so-called Science of Mind church-cult), and while he was on the highway coming here from his town a few hours away, he had "envisioned" meeting an interesting woman. He said that when he saw me he knew I was the one. He had "Manifested" me, as the Science of Mind/Ernest Holmes groupies refer to their magical-thinking process. With a confident (arrogant) air he explained that he'd also "Manifested" his current 60-year old girlfriend.

He never asked me what I thought about all this, or what MY plans were, or if I was even single. He had it all figured out.

He gave me his phone number and his email address. I sent him the following email that I entitled ""Manifest this, Buddy...""

""A man approaches you at an outdoor cafe and tells you that he believes that he has 'Manifested' you, using the Power of the Law Of Attraction. Furthermore, he has Manifested you for the express purposes of sucking his dick and entertaining him on weekends when he comes through your town. Of course he doesn't say it like that, not in so many words. He dresses it up in civilized language, he is an educated man, after all. His interest in you is for the lofty and noble purposes of connecting, exploring new ways of being. You are special and unique. He hastens to add, repeatedly, that you are to have no greater expectation of him than the occasional, casual get-together, no-strings attached. You wonder if he will also Manifest the hotel room for these occasions, or if he expects you to take him back to your apartment. What you are supposed to get out of this arrangement is anybody's guess, and obviously not something that he has dwelled on, because you , the individual who reasons, who has needs of her own, doesn't seem to really figure into his scheming and calculations. You were attracted to him initially because of his warm smile and bright eyes, and because of what appeared at first to be a capacity for intelligent conversation (your biggest turn-on), but that attraction begins to rapidly dim with each new revelation, and you become so uncomfortable you want to crawl out of your own skin. Short Prom Dresses 2020 Cheap

You also learn that he has another girl in another town (in fact, another state) that he also Manifested (even she is in agreement with him on this point, he explains). You wonder how many more women he intends to manifest in how many more towns.

How could a girl not jump at such a handsome and original offer??!! Never mind that it sounds an awful lot like repeated, unoriginal offers you receive ad nauseum, from men who reside in your own town (who needs a fella from outta town for this?) , offers that reduce you to less than the sum of your parts, reduce you, in fact to the sum of just one or two of your parts and their utility, because that is as far as the imagination of most American men can go, even in the presence of an educated, humorous, beautiful, fit, accomplished woman, a mother of one, a friend of many...

He is sixty-one and it is really starting to show. He has herpes. He tells you this to prove to you or to himself just how honest and honorable and self-less he is, even as he tries to finagle his way into your pants.

He practices a self-serving form of pseudo-spirituality in which the primary focus is on oneself and getting what one wants when one wants it, "The Law of Attraction."

Is there any greater form of idolatry that a man can practice than that of making himself the God at the center of the Universe?

I imagine the statue before that temple as a large, carved, gleaming phallus, symbol of a grandeur that exists only in his own mind.""

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