How to Pick Up Girls and Get Stung by Reality

The 70s were a carnival of ostentation and fakery. You strutted through junior high dances in Angels Flight bell-bottoms, paisley Dacron shirts, platform shoes, and pukka shell necklaces. In summer, you bared your tanned chest in fishnet tank tops and more gold chains than a Vegas lounge singer. Instead of building character, you sculpted a persona: muscular, flamboyant, visually arresting.

Even your face had to match your aesthetic. Inspired by the Cosmopolitan magazine’s “Bachelor of the Month,” you fixated on cheekbones and jawlines. Compared to Robert Conrad or Jan-Michael Vincent, you came up short. So you sucked in your cheeks—first occasionally, then obsessively—until you learned to speak while biting the inside of your face. You’d come home with raw, bleeding cheeks. You’d walk through school with puffed lats and exaggerated posture, only to be mocked by your classmates.

You were the punchline of a sitcom, a caricature of yourself.

This was the decade of the Mock Apple Pie—Ritz Crackers masquerading as apples. Authenticity took a back seat. Fakery got shotgun.

Perhaps the high priest of this philosophy was a man you called Frank Reeves.

It was the summer of 1977. You were spending every Saturday at Cull Canyon Lake, slathered in Hawaiian Tropic Dark Tanning Oil—zero SPF, all banana-scented seduction. And every weekend, there he was: Frank Reeves. Late twenties. Owner of a black 1976 Camaro with white racing stripes. Wavy brown hair, manicured mustache, deep tan, blue Speedos, white puka shells, and a gold chain glistening over his chest hair. He carried a Playboy cooler, a boombox, and a Frisbee, and he reeled in women like it was a sport.

You noticed that he always said the same things in the same order. Every Saturday, it was: “Paid my uncle five hundred for that paint job… Dad owns clothing stores… Helped him manage since high school… Waiting on a Hollywood callback… Own my own house in Parsons Estates.” He said “Parsons Estates” like it was a holy incantation.

Frank Reeves wasn’t just a cliché. He was a walking, Speedo-clad composite of How to Pick Up Girls!—Eric Weber’s infamous book of manipulation. You recognized his lines. You knew the script. He embodied the Playboy ideal: cosmopolitan, cocky, a god in his own eyes. And every Saturday, a new woman bought the lie.

You watched him work, all while reading your parents’ paperback version of The Happy Hooker on your beach towel. Then came the bee sting. A shriek. A girl gasped. “You stepped on a bee!”

Reeves tried to laugh it off, but his swollen foot looked like a smoked ham. Sweat poured down his chest. He collapsed, hyperventilating. Paramedics came. He was in anaphylactic shock.

You never found out if he survived. But the image stuck: a man all pose, no substance. A fake warrior devoted to a fake gospel. And like all fakes, he was eventually undone by something real—a bee, of all things. A tiny truth with a stinger.