The phenomenon of the wingman—you know, the buddy who will distract the fat friend of the girl into whose pants you are attempting to effect entry—made its appearance in the local papers this weekend, with a piece about Art Malov, a 28-year-old dating coach who teaches sad, lonely men the secrets of conning women into your bed. There's a lot of poignance in the article; you will not be surprised to learn that one of Malov's advisees is a computer technician who is reduced to bragging about how many phone numbers he now gets. The deepest moment of pathos comes when the aforementioned computer guy points out a fellow who seems to embody the apex of skirt-chasing.

"See that guy with the striped shirt? He has it together—you can tell just looking at him." The guy, it turns out, is a 33-year-old hedge fund manager who dropped $3000 for a full course from Malov.

We cannot believe that we are still living in the age of "the stripey," but this whole article has made us immeasurably more sympathetic to the plight of our single female friends. If we were subjected to a constant barrage of overconfident schmucks in striped shirts whose friends "want to buy a wallaby" we'd probably bag it all and get a couple of cats ourselves.

Wingmen in the Wings [NYT]