Confuse Desire and Reality—The Perfect Illusion

To compensate for the difficulties in their lives, people spend a lot of their time daydreaming, imagining a future full of adventure, success, and romance. If you can create the illusion that through you they can live out their dreams, you will have them at your mercy. It

is important to start slowly, gaining their trust, and gradually constructing the fantasy that matches their desires. Aim at secret wishes that have been thwarted or repressed, stirring up

uncontrollable emotions, clouding their powers of reason. The perfect illusion is one that does not depart too much from reality, but has a touch of the unreal to it, like a waking dream. Lead the seduced to a point of confusion in which they can no longer tell the difference between illusion and reality.

Fantasy in the Flesh

Lovers and madmen have such seething brains, \ Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend \ More than cool reason ever comprehends.

—WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM

He was not a sex person. He was like. . . somebody who had come down from the clouds. He was not human. You could not say he was a man friend or a woman friend; he was somebody different

anyway You feel he was only a friend who was

coming from another planet and so nice also, so overwhelming, and separated from the life of the ground.

—BERNARD BOURISCOUT, IN JOYCE WADLER, LIAISON

Romance had again come her way personified by a handsome young German officer, Lieutenant Konrad Friedrich, who called upon her at Neuilly to ask her help. He wanted Pauline [Bonaparte] to use her influence with Napoleon in connection with providing for the needs of the French troops in the Papal States. He made an instantaneous

impression on the princess, who escorted him around her garden until they arrived at the

rockery. There she stopped and, looking into the young man’s eyes mysteriously, commanded him to return to this same spot at the same hour next day when she might have some good news for him. The young officer bowed and took his leave. In his

memoirs he revealed in detail what took place

after the first meeting with Pauline: • “At the hour agreed on I again proceeded to Neuilly, made my way to the appointed spot in the garden and stood waiting at the rockery. I had not been there very long when a lady made her appearance, greeted me pleasantly and led me through a side door into

the interior of the rockery where there were several rooms and galleries and in one splendid salon a luxurious-looking bath. The adventure was beginning to strike me as very romantic, almost

like a fairy tale, and just as I was wondering what the outcome might be a woman in a robe of the

sheerest cambric entered by a side door, came up to me, and smilingly asked how I liked being there. I at once recognized Napoleon’s beautiful sister,

whose perfect figure was clearly outlined by every movement of her robe. She held out her hand for me to kiss and told me to sit down on the couch

beside her. On this occasion I certainly was not the seducer After an interval Pauline pulled a bell

rope and ordered the woman who answered to prepare a bath which she asked me to share.

Wearing bathgowns of the finest linen we remained for nearly an hour in the crystal-clear bluish

water. Then we had a grand dinner served in

another room and lingered on together until dusk. When I left I had to promise to return again soon and I spent many afternoons with the princess in

the same way, ”

—HARRISON BRENT, PAULINE BONAPARTE: A WOMAN OF AFFAIRS

In 1964, a twenty-year-old Frenchman named Bernard Bouriscout arrived in Beijing, China, to work as an accountant in the French embassy. His first weeks there were not what he had expected. Bouriscout had grown up in the French provinces, dreaming of travel and adventure. When he had been assigned to come to China, images of the Forbidden City, and of the gambling dens of Macao, had danced in his mind. But this was Communist China, and contact between Westerners and Chinese was almost impossible at the time. Bouriscout had to socialize with the other Europeans stationed in the city, and what a boring and cliquish lot they were. He grew lonely, regretted taking the assignment, and began making plans to leave.

Then, at a Christmas party that year, Bouriscout’s eyes were drawn to a young Chinese man in a corner of the room. He had never seen anyone

Chinese at any of these affairs. The man was intriguing: he was slender and short, a bit reserved, but he had an attractive presence. Bouriscout went up and introduced himself. The man, Shi Pei Pu, proved to be a writer of

Chinese-opera librettos who also taught Chinese to members of the French embassy. Aged twenty-six, he spoke perfect French. Everything about him fascinated Bouriscout; his voice was like music, soft and whispery, and he left you wanting to know more about him. Bouriscout, although usually shy, insisted on exchanging telephone numbers. Perhaps Pei Pu could be his

Chinese tutor.

They met a few days later in a restaurant. Bouriscout was the only Westerner there—at last a taste of something real and exotic. Pei Pu, it turned out, had been a well-known actor in Chinese operas and came from a family with connections to the former ruling dynasty. Now he wrote operas about the workers, but he said this with a look of irony. They began to meet regularly, Pei Pu showing Bouriscout the sights of Beijing. Bouriscout loved his stories—Pei Pu talked slowly, and every historical detail seemed to come alive as he spoke, his hands moving to embellish his words. This,

he might say, is where the last Ming emperor hung himself, pointing to the spot and telling the story at the same time. Or, the cook in the restaurant we just ate in once served in the palace of the last emperor, and then another magnificent tale would follow. Pei Pu also talked of life in the Beijing Opera, where men often played women’s parts, and sometimes became

famous for it.

The two men became friends. Chinese contact with foreigners was restricted, but they managed to find ways to meet. One evening Bouriscout tagged along when Pei Pu visited the home of a French official to tutor the children. He listened as Pei Pu told them “The Story of the Butterfly,” a tale from the Chinese opera: a young girl yearns to attend an imperial school, but girls are not accepted there. She disguises herself as a boy, passes the exams, and enters the school. A fellow student falls in love with her, and

she is attracted to him, so she tells him that she is actually a girl. Like most of these tales, the story ends tragically. Pei Pu told it with unusual emotion; in fact he had played the role of the girl in the opera.

A few nights later, as they were walking before the gates of the Forbidden City, Pei Pu returned to “The Story of the Butterfly.” “Look at my hands,” he said, “Look at my face. That story of the butterfly, it is my story too.” In his slow, dramatic delivery he explained that his mother’s first two children had been girls. Sons were far more important in China; if the third child was a girl, the father would have to take a second wife. The third

child came: another girl. But the mother was too frightened to reveal the truth, and made an agreement with the midwife: they would say that the child was a boy, and it would be raised as such. This third child was Pei Pu.

Over the years, Pei Pu had had to go to extreme lengths to disguise her sex. She never used public bathrooms, plucked her hairline to look as if she were balding, on and on. Bouriscout was enthralled by the story, and also relieved, for like the boy in the butterfly tale, deep down he felt attracted to Pei Pu. Now everything made sense—the small hands, the high-pitched voice, the delicate neck. He had fallen in love with her, and, it seemed, the feelings were reciprocated.

Pei Pu started visiting Bouriscout’s apartment, and soon they were sleeping together. She continued to dress as a man, even in his apartment, but women in China wore men’s clothes anyway, and Pei Pu acted more

like a woman than any of the Chinese women he had seen. In bed, she had a shyness and a way of directing his hands that was both exciting and feminine. She made everything romantic and heightened. When he was away from her, her every word and gesture resonated in his mind. What

made the affair all the more exciting was the fact that they had to keep it secret.

In December of 1965, Bouriscout left Beijing and returned to Paris. He traveled, had other affairs, but his thoughts kept returning to Pei Pu. The Cultural Revolution broke out in China, and he lost contact with her. Before he had left, she had told him she was pregnant with their child. He had no

idea whether the baby had been born. His obsession with her grew too strong, and in 1969 he finagled another government job in Beijing.

Contact with foreigners was now even more discouraged than on his first visit, but he managed to track Pei Pu down. She told him she had borne a son, in 1966, but he had looked like Bouriscout, and given the growing hatred of foreigners in China, and the need to keep the secret of her sex, she had him sent him away to an isolated region near Russia. It was so cold

there—perhaps he was dead. She showed Bouriscout photographs of the boy, and he did see some resemblance. Over the next few weeks they managed to meet here and there, and then Bouriscout had an idea: he sympathized with the Cultural Revolution, and he wanted to get around the prohibitions that were preventing him from seeing Pei Pu, so he offered to do some spying. The offer was passed along to the right people, and soon

Bouriscout was stealing documents for the Communists. The son, named Bertrand, was recalled to Beijing, and Bouriscout finally met him. Now a threefold adventure filled Bouriscout’s life: the alluring Pei Pu, the thrill of being a spy, and the illicit child, whom he wanted to bring back to France.

The courtesan is meant to be a half-defined, floating figure never fixing herself surely in the imagination. She is the memory of an experience, the point at which a dream is transformed into

reality or reality into a dream. The bright colors fade, her name becomes a mere echo—echo of an echo, since she has probably adopted it from some ancient predecessor. The idea of the courtesan is a garden of delights in which the lover walks, smelling first this flower and then that but never understanding whence comes the fragrance that

intoxicates him. Why should the courtesan not

elude analysis? She does not want to be recognized for what she is, but rather to be allowed to be potent and effective. She offers the truth of herself

—or, rather, of the passions that become directed toward her. And what she gives back is one’s self

and an hour of grace in her presence. Love revives when you look at her: is that not enough? She is

the generative force of an illusion, the birth point of desire, the threshold of contemplation of bodily beauty.

—LYNNE LAWNER, LIVES OF THE COURTESANS: PORTRAITS OF THE RENAISSANCE

In 1972, Bouriscout left Beijing. Over the next few years he tried repeatedly to get Pei Pu and his son to France, and a decade later he finally succeeded; the three became a family. In 1983, though, the French

authorities grew suspicious of this relationship between a Foreign Office official and a Chinese man, and with a little investigating they uncovered

Bouriscout’s spying. He was arrested, and soon made a startling confession: the man he was living with was really a woman. Confused, the French ordered an examination of Pei Pu; as they had thought, he was very much a man. Bouriscout went to prison.

Even after Bouriscout had heard his former lover’s own confession, he was still convinced that Pei Pu was a woman. Her soft body, their intimate relationship—how could he be wrong? Only when Pei Pu, imprisoned in

the same jail, showed him the incontrovertible proof of his sex did Bouriscout finally accept it.

Interpretation. The moment Pei Pu met Bouriscout, he realized he had found the perfect victim. Bouriscout was lonely, bored, desperate. The way he responded to Pei Pu suggested that he was probably also homosexual, or perhaps bisexual—at least confused. (Bouriscout in fact had had homosexual encounters as a boy; guilty about them, he had tried to repress

this side of himself.) Pei Pu had played women’s parts before, and was quite good at it; he was slight and effeminate; physically it was not a stretch. But who would believe such a story, or at least not be skeptical of it?

The critical component of Pei Pu’s seduction, in which he brought the Frenchman’s fantasy of adventure to life, was to start slowly and set up an

idea in his victim’s mind. In his perfect French (which, however, was full of interesting Chinese expressions), he got Bouriscout used to hearing stories and tales, some true, some not, but all delivered in that dramatic yet

believable tone. Then he planted the idea of gender impersonation with his “Story of the Butterfly.” By the time he confessed the “truth” of his gender, Bouriscout was already completely enchanted with him.

Bouriscout warded off all suspicious thoughts because he wanted to

believe Pei Pu’s story. From there it was easy. Pei Pu faked his periods; it didn’t take much money to get hold of a child he could reasonably pass off as their son. More important, he played the fantasy role to the hilt, remaining elusive and mysterious (which was what a Westerner would expect from an Asian woman) while enveloping his past and indeed their

whole experience in titillating bits of history. As Bouriscout later explained,

”Pei Pu screwed me in the head. I was having relations and in my

thoughts, my dreams, I was light-years away from what was true.”

It was on March 16, the same day the Duke of Gloucester wrote to Sir William, that Goethe

recorded the first known performance of what were destined to be called Emma’s Attitudes. Just what

these were, we shall learn shortly. First, it must be emphasized that the Attitudes were a show for

favored eyes only. • Goethe, disciple of

Winckelmann, was at this date thrilled by the human form, as a contemporary writes. Here was the ideal spectator for the classical drama Emma and Sir William had wrought in the long winter evenings. Let us take our seats beside Goethe and settle to watch the show as he describes it. • “Sir

William Hamilton has now, after many years of

devotion to the arts and the study of nature, found the acme of these delights in the person of an English girl of twenty with a beautiful face and a perfect figure. He has had a Greek costume made for her which becomes her extremely. Dressed in

this, she lets down her hair and, with a few shawls, gives so much variety to her poses, gestures,

expressions, etc. that the spectator can hardly

believe his eyes. He sees what thousands of artists would have liked to express realized before him in movements and surprising transformations— standing, kneeling, sitting, reclining, serious, sad, playful, ecstatic, contrite, alluring, threatening, anxious, one pose follows another without a break. She knows how to arrange the folds of her veil to match each mood, and has a hundred ways of turning it into a headdress. The old knight idolizes her and is quite enthusiastic about everything she

does. In her he has found all the antiquities, all the profiles of Sicilian coins, even the Apollo

Belvedere. This much is certain: as a performance it’s like nothing you ever saw before in your life.

We have already enjoyed it on two evenings. ”

—FLORA FRASER, EMMA, LADY HAMILTON

Bouriscout thought he was having an exotic adventure, an enduring fantasy of his. Less consciously, he had an outlet for his repressed homosexuality. Pei Pu embodied his fantasy, giving it flesh, by working first on his mind. The mind has two currents: it wants to believe in things that are pleasant to believe in, yet it has a self-protective need to be

suspicious of people. If you start off too theatrical, trying too hard to create a fantasy, you will feed that suspicious side of the mind, and once fed, the

doubts will not go away. Instead, you must start slowly, building trust, while perhaps letting people see a little touch of something strange or exciting about you to tease their interest. Then you build up your story, like any

piece of fiction. You have established a foundation of trust—now the fantasies and dreams you envelop them in are suddenly believable.

Remember: people want to believe in the extraordinary; with a little groundwork, a little mental foreplay, they will fall for your illusion. If anything, err on the side of reality: use real props (like the child Pei Pu showed Bouriscout) and add the fantastical touches in your words, or an occasional gesture that gives you a slight unreality Once you sense that they are hooked, you can deepen the spell, go further and further into the fantasy. At that point they will have gone so far into their own minds that you will no longer have to bother with verisimilitude.

Wish Fulfillment

In 1762, Catherine, wife of Czar Peter III, staged a coup against her ineffectual husband and proclaimed herself empress of Russia. Over the next few years Catherine ruled alone, but kept a series of lovers. The

Russians called these men the vremienchiki, “the men of the moment,” and in 1774 the man of the moment was Gregory Potemkin, a thirty-five-year- old lieutenant, ten years younger than Catherine, and a most unlikely

candidate for the role. Potemkin was coarse and not at all handsome (he had lost an eye in an accident). But he knew how to make Catherine laugh, and he worshiped her so intensely that she eventually succumbed. He quickly

became the love of her life.

Catherine promoted Potemkin higher and higher in the hierarchy, eventually making him the governor of White Russia, a large southwestern area including the Ukraine. As governor, Potemkin had to leave St.

Petersburg and go to live in the south. He knew that Catherine could not do without male companionship, so he took it upon himself to name Catherine’s subsequent vremienchiki. She not only approved of this arrangement, she made it clear that Potemkin would always remain her favorite.

Catherine’s dream was to start a war with Turkey, recapture

Constantinople for the Orthodox Church, and drive the Turks out of Europe. She offered to share this crusade with the young Hapsburg emperor, Joseph II, but Joseph never quite brought himself to sign the treaty that would unite them in war. Growing impatient, in 1783 Catherine annexed the Crimea, a southern peninsula that was mostly populated by Muslim Tartars. She asked Potemkin to do there what he had already managed to do in the Ukraine— rid the area of bandits, build roads, modernize the ports, bring prosperity to the poor. Once he had cleaned it up, the Crimea would make the perfect launching post for the war against Turkey.

For this uncanny is in reality nothing new or alien, but something which is familiar and old— established in the mind and which has become alienated from it only through the process of

repression. This reference to the factor of

repression enables us, furthermore, to understand Schelling’s definition of the uncanny as something which ought to have remained hidden but has

come to light. . . . •. . . There is one more point of

general application which I should like to add. . . .

This is that an uncanny effect is often and easily produced when the distinction between imagination and reality is effaced, as when something that we have hitherto regarded as

imaginary appears before us in reality, or when a symbol takes over the full functions of the thing it symbolizes, and so on. It is this factor which

contributes not a little to the uncanny effect attaching to magical practices. The infantile element in this, which also dominates the minds of neurotics, is the over accentuation of psychical

reality in comparison with material reality—a feature closely allied to the belief in the

omnipotence of thoughts.

—SIGMUND FREUD, “THE UNCANNY,” IN PSYCHOLOGICAL WRITINGS AND LETTERS

The Crimea was a backward wasteland, but Potemkin loved the challenge. Getting to work on a hundred different projects, he grew intoxicated with visions of the miracles he would perform there. He would establish a capital on the Dnieper River, Ekaterinoslav (“To the glory of Catherine”), that would rival St. Petersburg and would house a university outshining anything in Europe. The countryside would hold endless fields of corn, orchards with rare fruits from the Orient, silkworm farms, new

towns with bustling marketplaces. On a visit to the empress in 1785, Potemkin talked of these things as if they already existed, so vivid were his descriptions. The empress was delighted, but her ministers were skeptical— Potemkin loved to talk. Ignoring their warnings, in 1787 Catherine arranged for a tour of the area. She asked Joseph II to join her—he would be so impressed with the modernization of the Crimea that he would immediately sign on for the war against Turkey. Potemkin, naturally, was to organize the whole affair.

And so, in May of that year, after the Dnieper had thawed, Catherine prepared for a journey from Kiev, in the Ukraine, to Sebastopol, in the

Crimea. Potemkin arranged for seven floating palaces to carry Catherine and her retinue down the river. The journey began, and as Catherine, Joseph, and the courtiers looked at the shores to either side, they saw triumphal arches in front of clean-looking towns, their walls freshly painted; healthy-looking cattle grazing in the pastures; streams of marching troops on the roads; buildings going up everywhere. At dusk they were entertained by bright-costumed peasants, and smiling girls with flowers in their hair, dancing on the shore. Catherine had traveled through this area many years before, and the poverty of the peasantry there had saddened her

—she had determined then that she would somehow change their lot. To see before her eyes the signs of such a transformation overwhelmed her, and

she berated Potemkin’s critics: Look at what my favorite has accomplished, look at these miracles!

They anchored at three towns along the way, staying in each place in a magnificent, newly built palace with artificial waterfalls in the English-style gardens. On land they moved through villages with vibrant marketplaces;

the peasants were happily at work, building and repairing. Everywhere they spent the night, some spectacle filled their eyes—dances, parades, mythological tableaux vivants, artificial volcanoes illuminating Moorish gardens. Finally, at the end of the trip, in the palace at Sebastopol, Catherine and Joseph discussed the war with Turkey. Joseph reiterated his concerns.

Suddenly Potemkin interrupted: “I have 100,000 troops waiting for me to say ‘Go!’ ” At that moment the windows of the palace were flung open, and to the sounds of booming cannons they saw lines of troops as far as the eye could see, and a fleet of ships filling the harbor. Awed by the sight, images of Eastern European cities retaken from the Turks dancing in his mind, Joseph II finally signed the treaty. Catherine was ecstatic, and her love for Potemkin reached new heights. He had made her dreams come true.

Catherine never suspected that almost everything she had seen was pure fakery, perhaps the most elaborate illusion ever conjured up by one man.

Interpretation. In the four years that he had been governor of the Crimea, Potemkin had accomplished little, for this backwater would take decades to improve. But in the few months before Catherine’s visit he had done the

following: every building that faced the road or the shore was given a fresh coat of paint; artificial trees were set up to hide unseemly spots in the view; broken roofs were repaired with flimsy boards painted to look like tile;

everyone the party would see was instructed to wear their best clothes and look happy; everyone old and infirm was to stay indoors. Floating in their palaces down the Dnieper, the imperial entourage saw brand-new villages, but most of the buildings were only facades. The herds of cattle were shipped from great distances, and were moved at night to fresh fields along the route. The dancing peasants were trained for the entertainments; after each one they were loaded into carts and hurriedly transported to a new downriver location, as were the marching soldiers who seemed to be everywhere. The gardens of the new palaces were filled with transplanted

trees that died a few days later. The palaces themselves were quickly and badly built, but were so magnificently furnished that no one noticed. One fortress along the way had been built of sand, and was destroyed a little later by a thunderstorm.

The cost of this vast illusion had been enormous, and the war with Turkey would fail, but Potemkin had accomplished his goal. To the observant, of course, there were signs along the way that all was not as it seemed, but when the empress herself insisted that everything was real and glorious, the courtiers could only agree. This was the essence of the seduction: Catherine had wanted so desperately to be seen as a loving and progressive ruler, one who would defeat the Turks and liberate Europe, that when she saw signs of change in the Crimea, her mind filled in the picture.

When our emotions are engaged, we often have trouble seeing things as they are. Feelings of love cloud our vision, making us color events to

coincide with our desires. To make people believe in the illusions you create, you need to feed the emotions over which they have least control. Often the best way to do this is to ascertain their unsatisfied desires, their wishes crying out for fulfillment. Perhaps they want to see themselves as noble or romantic, but life has thwarted them. Perhaps they want an

adventure. If something seems to validate this wish, they become emotional and irrational, almost to the point of hallucination.

Remember to envelop them in your illusion slowly. Potemkin did not start with grand spectacles, but with simple sights along the way, such as grazing cattle. Then he brought them on land, heightening the drama, until

the calculated climax when the windows were flung open to reveal a mighty war machine—actually a few thousand men and boats lined up in such a way as to suggest many more. Like Potemkin, involve the target in some kind of journey, physical or otherwise. The feeling of a shared adventure is rife with fantasy associations. Make people feel that they are getting to see and live out something that relates to their deepest yearnings and they will

see happy, prosperous villages where there are only facades.

Here the real journey through Potemkin’s fairyland began. It was like a dream—the waking dream of

some magician who had discovered the secret of materializing his visions. [Catherine] and her

companions had left the world of reality behind…. Their talk was of Iphigenia and the ancient gods, and Catherine felt that she was both Alexander and Cleopatra.

—GINA KAUS

Keys to Seduction

The real world can be unforgiving: events occur over which we have little control, other people ignore our feelings in their quests to get what they need, time runs out before we accomplish what we had wanted. If we ever stopped to look at the present and future in a completely objective way, we would despair. Fortunately we develop the habit of dreaming early on. In

this other, mental world that we inhabit, the future is full of rosy possibilities. Perhaps tomorrow we will sell that brilliant idea, or meet the person who will change our lives. Our culture stimulates these fantasies with constant images and stories of marvelous occurrences and happy romances.

The problem is, these images and fantasies exist only in our minds, or on- screen. They really aren’t enough—we crave the real thing, not this endless daydreaming and titillation. Your task as a seducer is to bring some flesh and blood into someone’s fantasy life by embodying a fantasy figure, or

creating a scenario resembling that person’s dreams. No one can resist the pull of a secret desire that has come to life before their eyes. You must first choose targets who have some repression or dream unrealized—always the most likely victims of a seduction. Slowly and gradually, you will build up the illusion that they are getting to see and feel and live those dreams of theirs. Once they have this sensation they will lose contact with reality, and begin to see your fantasy as more real than anything else. And once they

lose touch with reality, they are (to quote Stendhal on Lord Byron’s female victims) like roasted larks that fall into your mouth.

Most people have a misconception about illusion. As any magician knows, it need not be built out of anything grand or theatrical; the grand and theatrical can in fact be destructive, calling too much attention to you and your schemes. Instead create the appearance of normality. Once your targets feel secure—nothing is out of the ordinary—you have room to deceive them. Pei Pu did not spin the lie about his gender immediately; he took his time, made Bouriscout come to him. Once Bouriscout had fallen for it, Pei Pu continued to wear men’s clothes. In animating a fantasy, the great

mistake is imagining it must be larger than life. That would border on camp, which is entertaining but rarely seductive. Instead, what you aim for is what Freud called the “uncanny,” something strange and familiar at the same time, like a déjà vu, or a childhood memory—anything slightly irrational and dreamlike. The uncanny, the mix of the real and the unreal, has

immense power over our imaginations. The fantasies you bring to life for your targets should not be bizarre or exceptional; they should be rooted in reality, with a hint of the strange, the theatrical, the occult (in talk of destiny, for example). You vaguely remind people of something in their childhood, or a character in a film or book. Even before Bouriscout heard Pei Pu’s story, he had the uncanny feeling of something remarkable and fantastical in this normal-looking man. The secret to creating an uncanny effect is to keep it subtle and suggestive.

Emma Hart came from a prosaic background, her father a country blacksmith in eighteenth-century England. Emma was beautiful, but had no other talents to her credit. Yet she rose to become one of the greatest

seductresses in history, seducing first Sir William Hamilton, the English ambassador to the court of Naples, and then (as Lady Hamilton, Sir William’s wife) Vice-Admiral Lord Nelson. What was strangest when you

met her was an uncanny sense that she was a figure from the past, a woman out of Greek myth or ancient history. Sir William was a collector of Greek and Roman antiquities; to seduce him, Emma cleverly made herself

resemble a Greek statue, and mythical figures in paintings of the time. It was not just the way she wore her hair, or dressed, but her poses, the way she carried herself. It was as if one of the paintings he collected had come to life. Soon Sir William began to host parties in his home in Naples at which Emma would wear costumes and pose, re-creating images from mythology and history. Dozens of men fell in love with her, for she embodied an image from their childhood, an image of beauty and perfection. The key to this fantasy creation was some shared cultural association—mythology, historical seductresses like Cleopatra. Every

culture has a pool of such figures from the distant and not-so-distant past. You hint at a similarity, in spirit and in appearance—but you are flesh and blood. What could be more thrilling than the sense of being in the presence of some fantasy figure going back to your earliest memories?

One night Pauline Bonaparte, the sister of Napoleon, held a gala affair in her house. Afterward, a handsome German officer approached her in the garden and asked for her help in passing along a request to the emperor.

Pauline said she would do her best, and then, with a rather mysterious look in her eye, asked him to come back to the same spot the next night. The officer returned, and was greeted by a young woman who led him to some rooms near the garden and then to a magnificent salon, complete with an extravagant bath. Moments later, another young woman entered through a

side door, dressed in the sheerest garments. It was Pauline. Bells were rung, ropes were pulled, and maids appeared, preparing the bath, giving the officer a dressing gown, then disappearing. The officer later described the evening as something out of a fairy tale, and he had the feeling that Pauline was deliberately acting the part of some mythical seductress. Pauline was beautiful and powerful enough to get almost any man she wanted, and she wasn’t interested simply in luring a man into bed; she wanted to envelop him in romantic adventure, seduce his mind. Part of the adventure was the feeling that she was playing a role, and was inviting her target along into

this shared fantasy.

Role playing is immensely pleasurable. Its appeal goes back to childhood, where we first learn the thrill of trying on different parts,

imitating adults or figures out of fiction. As we get older and society fixes a role on us, a part of us yearns for the playful approach we once had, the

masks we were able to wear. We still want to play that game, to act a different role in life. Indulge your targets in this wish by first making it clear that you are playing a role, then inviting them to join you in a shared fantasy. The more you set things up like a play or a piece of fiction, the better. Notice how Pauline began the seduction with a mysterious request that the officer reappear the next night; then a second woman led him into a magical series of rooms. Pauline herself delayed her entrance, and when she appeared, she did not mention his business with Napoleon, or anything remotely banal. She had an ethereal air about her; he was being invited to enter a fairy tale. The evening was real, but had an uncanny resemblance to an erotic dream.

Casanova took role playing still further. He traveled with an enormous

wardrobe and a trunk full of props, many of them gifts for his targets—fans, jewels, other accouterments. And some of the things he said and did were borrowed from novels he had read and stories he had heard. He enveloped women in a romantic atmosphere that was heightened yet quite real to their senses. Like Casanova, you must see the world as a kind of theater. Inject a certain lightness into the roles you are playing; try to create a sense of

drama and illusion; confuse people with the slight unreality of words and gestures inspired by fiction; in daily life, be the consummate actor. Our

culture reveres actors because of their freedom to play roles. It is something that all of us envy.

For years, the Cardinal de Rohan had been afraid that he had somehow offended his queen, Marie Antoinette. She would not so much as look at him. Then, in 1784, the Comtesse de Lamotte-Valois suggested to him that the queen was prepared not only to change this situation but actually to befriend him. The queen, said Lamotte-Valois, would indicate this in her next formal reception—she would nod to him in a particular way.

During the reception, Rohan indeed noticed a slight change in the queen’s behavior toward him, and a barely perceptible glance at him. He was overjoyed. Now the countess suggested they exchange letters, and Rohan spent days writing and rewriting his first letter to the queen. To his delight he received one back. Next the queen requested a private interview with him in the gardens of Versailles. Rohan was beside himself with

happiness and anxiety. At nightfall he met the queen in the gardens, fell to the ground, and kissed the hem of her dress. “You may hope that the past will be forgotten,” she said. At this moment they heard voices approaching, and the queen, frightened that someone would see them together, quickly fled with her servants. But Rohan soon received a request from her, again through the countess: she desperately wanted to acquire the most beautiful diamond necklace ever created. She needed a go-between to purchase it for her, since the king thought it too expensive. She had chosen Rohan for the task. The cardinal was only too willing; in performing this task he would

prove his loyalty, and the queen would be indebted to him forever. Rohan acquired the necklace. The countess was to deliver it to the queen. Now Rohan waited for the queen both to thank him and slowly to pay him back.

Yet this never happened. The countess was in fact a grand swindler; the queen had never nodded to him, he had only imagined it. The letters he had received from her were forgeries, and not even very good ones. The woman he had met in the park had been a prostitute paid to dress and act the part.

The necklace was of course real, but once Rohan had paid for it, and handed it over to the countess, it disappeared. It was broken into parts, which were hawked all over Europe for enormous amounts. And when Rohan finally complained to the queen, news of the extravagant purchase spread rapidly. The public believed Rohan’s story—that the queen had indeed bought the necklace, and was pretending otherwise. This fiction was the first step in the ruin of her reputation.

Everyone has lost something in life, has felt the pangs of disappointment.

The idea that we can get something back, that a mistake can be righted, is immensely seductive. Under the impression that the queen was prepared to forgive some mistake he had made, Rohan hallucinated all kinds of things

—nods that did not exist, letters that were the flimsiest of forgeries, a

prostitute who became Marie Antoinette. The mind is infinitely vulnerable to suggestion, and even more so when strong desires are involved. And nothing is stronger than the desire to change the past, right a wrong, satisfy a disappointment. Find these desires in your victims and creating a

believable fantasy will be simple for you: few have the power to see through an illusion they desperately want to believe in.

Symbol: Shangri-La. Everyone has a vision in their mind of a perfect place where people are kind and noble, where their dreams can be realized and their wishes fulfilled, where life is full of

adventure and romance. Lead the target on a journey there, give them a glimpse of Shangri- La through the mists on the mountain,

and they will fall in love.

Reversal

There is no reversal to this chapter. No seduction can proceed without creating illusion, the sense of a world that is real but separate from reality.