Center of the universe

2) We used to do a lot, lot, lot worse than that in the USMC in those pre-MADD days. Different era.

Fun fact - same motorcycle, I was struck by lightning on it several months later, riding home from California (to Ga) on I-70 in Missouri. This was following my discharge (actually, end of active service) in late August.

Yes, and no. Being "too direct" can be fantastically effective if you can back it up with sufficient confidence, and can manage to make it look natural rather than creepy.

It works exactly because the confidence and making it look natural thing is rare enough to make you stand out in a way that often produces very rapid and strong attraction. E.g. in a bar, it shocked me years ago when I realised how easy it is to get random women to make out with you just by going up to them and telling them you want to, and start to lean in slowly but surely (slowly, because unless you want things to end badly you want to make sure it is easy for her to leave/tell you to fuck off or similar if she doesn't want to). And often your best bet is actually when you get rejected initially. That is when you really prove whether you're just confident and having fun vs. being a creepy: if you laugh it off and seem to not care, it amps attraction; if you act as if you were caught doing something bad, she will treat you as if you were caught doing something bad.

But the fundamental difference is end-goal: It is "easy" to create quick, strong rushes of attraction (e.g. lifting a woman up on the dance floor and swirl her around out of the blue; or help an old lady across the road in front of her or any number of simple things can amp attraction massively), but the quick rushes of attraction subside equally quickly if you can't keep up the tempo (and most of us have no hope in hell of that).

The systematic, incremental approach on the other hand is much easier to make last: You don't just amp up attraction, which can be very fleeting, but you get her (or him) used to acting a certain way around you, and you around her/him, and you get the person used to complying, and used to acting a certain way around you, and our desire for consistency is intensely strong and helps reinforce our willingness (or desire) to act the same way. People also tend to mirror the strongest "frame": If the person with the most confident demeanour acts as if someone is totally natural, people will tend to "fall in line" and accept it as natural too (and then rationalise why to themselves even if they are totally unaware of any reason). Couple that with innate desires to please and for attention etc. and it becomes scarily powerful in the wrong hands...

2-3 beers over the length of time in the story would leave you well below the legal limit and your motor skills would not be impaired unless you never have alcohol, which he clearly stated wasn't the case.

Tldr. Cut the melodrama. It's like being shocked when someone has a beer and walks down some stairs.

So having said that, it's kind of tricky to pinpoint what was creepy about this guy and what's kind of fair game.

I mean, my feeling is that it's almost anachronistic to get worked up about this in 2013. Before he killed anybody, this guy got off the hook incredibly easy for drugging/raping a minor (and getting caught red handed!), as I understand was often the exception more than the rule before the 1980's. There was a recent story about how a lot of the decrease in crime is partly due to smaller gateway crimes like car theft becoming less common - I wonder if society's more vigilant stance on rape in recent decades could have had a similar effect.

Also, as common as it is to hate social networks, how much safer would this guy be if they'd done the standard 'Hey, you're cool, let's add eachother on Facebook' or 'Can you text me your address'? A minimal digital 'paper trail' would probably give a guy like this a lot of pause, and if he'd been hesitant/weird about those interactions, it'd probably be even more of a clue for even a young guy.