The Love Guru

On stage, he can keep a packed auditorium totally spellbound with his dilatory talks that weave together Fleetwood Mac, Fermat’s Theorem, and contemporary design. Over a health-food meal for two, it’s even more seductive. Friends have a phrase for the bachelor maestro’s pixie-dust magic: They call it having “Malcolm powder” sprinkled in your eyes.

But stimulating conversation, however silky, only gets you so far. In any seduction, there is the moment on the sofa or doorstep when subtext becomes text, when intentions have to become clear and a decision made, one way or the other—the Schtupping Point.

There is a range of opinion among Malcolm’s seraglio on how the master handled this pivotal moment.

“It was seamless. One minute you’re walking along; the next you’re arm in arm.”

“Hmmm. How long ago was that? It wasn’t some slick move, if that’s what you mean. Just very normal, very sweet. He’s a runner, you know. Trim as a bird.”

Clearly, it was time to talk directly to the great man himself. I was excited to share my discovery with Gladwell that a French psychology professor, Nicolas Gueguen, had conducted experiments in the area of seduction, specifically the art of making the first move. Gueguen found that a light touch on the arm when asking for a phone number gave men a 9 percent higher success rate than an approach with no physical contact. When asking for a dance, the success rate was 22 percent higher. Surely, I thought, this same principle could be applied even more effectively to the pivotal sofa moment.

I tracked down Gladwell on his cellphone, amid the hum of coffeehouse chatter, and outlined my thesis. He was very polite and completely mortified. “This is ridiculous. Why would I want to talk about such a thing?”

Discretion, it goes without saying, is the cornerstone of long-term success in the amatory arts. But I did think some mild theorizing on a beloved topic would prove irresistible to Americans’ alpha mind. I wove together Gueguen’s findings, the rise of the literary rock star, and the importance of iconic hair all in one sentence, and still I hit the wall.

“This is utterly ridiculous. I mean, I don’t know you. How would you know such things?”

I didn’t panic or give up. Like any good outlier, I simply switched to the full court press.

“So, Malcolm, what can you say about the importance of context for any aspiring ladies’ man? How tough is it, for example, to engineer romance wearing a knitted tie in a hard-nosed newsroom?”

As he would put it, this was my Disqualifying Statement, and not just a mild one, either.

“I write books. I’m a private person.”

I tried to say his success with women was a tribute to the fact that he embodied his own principles for late bloomers (10,000 hours of practice minimum!); that he gave hope to lovelorn dweebs everywhere. But it was too much, too late.

”No, no—I don’t think I want to participate in this at all,” said Gladwell decisively, before signing off with his trademark upbeat ending: “But good luck with it!”

I now realize that I should have trusted my initial gut instinct and invited him for help. I tried to impress him, you see, when I should have just been sincere. In effect, what I did was lunge and force the issue, thereby ruining the mood. And that, in a nutshell, is the difference between the novice and the grand master.

Sean Macaulay was the L.A. movie critic for The London Times from 1999 to 2007. He has also written for Punch, British GQ, and The Mail on Sunday. He was most recently creative consultant on the award-winning documentary Anvil! The Story of Anvil.

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