That being said, however (and I do feel that I’ve been very honest with you), I will try.
AMATEURS
By “amateurs,” I don’t mean women who are less-than-adept in the ways of love: I just mean non-hookers. And many, many, many, many women who don’t get paid to have sex are nonetheless pretty great at it. And these women are simply everywhere: in bars, at the market, at your job, in a doctor’s waiting room, on the bus95, the wife of your host at a lavish dinner party… Name the location, and chances are there’s a hot woman there willing to have sex with me you.
I know, you’re thinking: “Are you serious? At my job? That seems like a terrible idea.”
Really? The place where you spend forty hours a week? Almost a third of the waking hours of your adult life? And you want to make that a sex-free zone? Are you serious?
Because there is absolutely no valid reason why you shouldn’t be systematically banging your way through the entire steno pool. If your employer has rules against this sort of thing, just lie about it. If you’re worried that a workplace sexual relationship will inevitably sour—which it will—just get her fired. This is easy to do, if you had the foresight to start stringing along your chubby, cardigan-wearing director of human resources, who will leap at the chance to eliminate her perceived competition. If you lacked this foresight, just put some drugs in her locker.96
Wherever you’re trying to bang these women (which should be everywhere), the key, as with pretty much every single other thing that you ever do in your entire life, is confidence. My confidence comes from the fact that I am not only devastatingly handsome but also the world’s greatest secret agent. I can’t help you with either of those two things, but I can give you some field-tested pickup lines (although I hate that phrase), in several of the world’s sexier languages:
And don’t bother plugging these into a translator on the internets (which is what I did), because they all mean the exact thing: I am a secret agent. Would you like to have sex with me?97
FOR THE LADIES
I realize that it’s highly improbable that any women—including, hopefully, my mother—are reading this book. But in the unlikely event that you are a woman, and in the (infinitely more likely) event that you’re a woman who’s reading this book because you hope to one day—God willing—have sex with me, I thought it might be useful to include some tips about how to make your evening of pleasure as a sexual guest in my home not only magical, but also even more magical than that.
1. Please refrain from smoking (including on the terrace).
2. While it would be wise for you to carb up in advance, please bear in mind that I’m going to be pouring gallons of alcohol down you, so don’t eat anything you won’t mind vomiting up later.
3. Please do not engage my valet in conversation beyond curt responses to his inquiries as to whether or not you would like more alcohol. (Note: Said curt response should only be yes.)
4. There is a lemur somewhere in the penthouse: if you see him, please do not give him sugar.
5. Please do not use my bath towels: if I wanted to rub my face on your ass, I would have done it while you were asleep. Which, now that I think about it, would be impossible, because:
6. You are not to sleep here.
7. If I am sleeping, please do not be afraid to leave quietly. In fact, I greatly prefer this. As you are leaving, my valet will provide you with a lemon-scented moist towelette and a bag lunch.
8. If you feel the need to pass wind—which, after an intense session of my style of lovemaking, you probably will—please do so through a dryer sheet; you will find some in the nightstand.
9. Don’t fall in love with me.
PROFESSIONALS
“I don’t pay them for sex. I pay them to leave.”
—George Bernard Shaw
Prostitution, like torture, can be an incredibly sensitive, often divisive subject. Unlike torture, however, it’s awesome. Think about it: In exchange for money, which you probably embezzled from your agency or extorted from a double agent in the first place, you can have amazing, adventurous, anonymous sex with a beautiful woman—or two or more women. Or a man. Or a combination of women and men. No one is judging you here. This is a safe place.
You’re probably asking yourself: “Wait, what am I missing? Can it be that simple?”
Yes. Don’t overthink it. Just put your money on the dresser and get banging.
I’m kidding, of course: having sex with a prostitute is actually a bit more complicated than that. For one thing, don’t ever put your money on the dresser: she will probably rob you.
Instead—if you don’t have a standing account with an escort service, and are thus forced to use cash—before your prostitute arrives, hide your wallet under the mattress. And not just near the edge: push it as far toward the center as possible. Because at some point during the evening (probably while you’re in the bathroom having your pre-coital bowel movement), she’s going to look for it. Which is why the wallet is just a decoy: Always keep your money in your sock. And your socks on your feet. If she asks why you’re keeping your socks on, just tell her you’re chilly. Or to shut up, you’re not paying her to talk.
What you are paying her for is limited only by your imagination. Or, more accurately, by whatever specific sexual acts that she is willing to perform, each of which will have a specific and non-negotiable price.98 And although these prices may be high, under no circumstances should you attempt to haggle over them: not only is this insulting to her and the world’s oldest profession, it makes you look like an enormous douchebag. It’s also not very romantic.
And so, to re-cap: you decide what you want, she decides what you’re going to get.99
What that ends up being is between you two consenting adults, in the privacy of your own home, Midtown hotel room, or possibly under a bridge. I can’t choose your sexual predilections for you: I can barely keep track of my own. But this is another reason why prostitution is so phenomenal: it affords one the opportunity to experiment sexually without having things be all weird the next morning, when she can’t even bring herself to look at you over the Eggs Woodhouse you’re just trying to enjoy without all this brunch-ruining drama.
French, Greek, GFE, ATM, domination, ass worship, watersports, queening, shrimping, figging, snowballing, role-playing, crib-wetting, double penetration, shocking penetration, reverse cowgirl, reverse cowgirl-on-girl, girl-on-Woodhouse… The list is literally endless, and my point is: Don’t be afraid to try new things. You might just surprise yourself. Although not her.
And while I could go on for literally thousands of pages, space prohibits me from delving into the customs and mores of international prostitution, which obviously differ from country to country. In Thailand for example, it is considered incredibly rude to touch a prostitute on the head. The good news is that, this being Thailand, they don’t need any help from you.
So go get ’em, tiger. And always, always remember: money in sock, socks on feet.
ARCHER FUN FACT: THAI PROSTITUTES
The chances of your Thai prostitute being transgendered are about one in three. And while that statistic is entirely made up, the point I’m trying to make is who are you to judge?
THE ARCHER SUTRA
So, I had this whole big fantastic idea for this section: me and two glamorous cover models would be photographed on my terrace by a famous photographer—over the course of weeks, shooting only at what Terrence Malick and Stanley Kubrick have called the golden hour—as we engaged in dozens of various and exotic and amazing sexual positions.
Then—via computers—our glistening, ejaculate-splattered bodies would be turned into tasteful silhouettes, accompanied by the erotic-yet-instructional instructions that I was going to write, Probably would have saved marriages all over the world.
HarperCollins, not surprisingly, balked at the idea:
“We’re not going to pay thousands of dollars to photograph you having sex with women,” said my editrix, jealously.
“You mean other women,” I said, admittedly cruelly.
“You’re an asshole.”
Well yeah, now. Because since HarperCollins wouldn’t pony up, and actual cover models A) are incredibly expensive, and B) only work for modeling agencies where they slam the phone down in your ear when you tell them their models can expect to be splattered with ejaculate, I was forced to make my own silhouettes. And even though I worked really hard on them, the end result wasn’t quite as erotic-yet-instructional as it would have been if HarperCollins had agreed to my original concept. Which, as we have learned, was to include semen-drenched cover girls.
But whatever: here’s the Archer Sutra.
POSITION ONE: THE FLOWERING LOTUS
Yeah thanks, HarperCollins.
I literally spent three hours dicking around with the stupid drawing tool on this word-processing software just to make this one silhouette. But instead of a tasteful rendering of a handsome man introducing a beautiful woman to the subtle mélange of complex emotions and intense physical pleasure which is anal sex, I get a gingerbread centaur shitting out a soccer ball.
I’m bailing.
SECTION SIX
HOW TO PAY FOR IT
I’m not going to, but I bet if I read back over this book, I would realize that a lot of the advice in it is incredibly expensive. I mean, the Triple-A Power Play alone requires a hundred thousand dollars in working capital. And although you walk away with all of it—minus cab fare and however much it costs you to take an obnoxiously drunk herd of beet-faced Asians out for short ribs—you need to possess (or at least have temporary access to) that kind of money to begin with. Which I do.
But which a lot of you probably do not. Which is not my fault: I don’t vote Democrat.100
PERSONAL
FINANCE
Okay, I’m out of my skull with boredom (though I’m sure you’re not) and the word count is looking pretty good, so I’m just going to breeze through this part. For a change.
The first thing you should do is assess your financial situation. Which I bet is shitty.
The next thing you should do is figure out a way to improve it. I would suggest, unless you are already a multi-millionaire, that you quit your job: it’s obviously not getting you where you need to be, which is multi-millionairedom. Then go find a better job. Something that you like, but that also pays you assloads of money to show up at. And you’re on your own with the job search: I’m not a guidance counselor. What I am is the world’s greatest secret agent.
Which means that, in addition to my base salary (which is decent) and my bonuses (also decent), I have access to hundreds upon hundreds of thousands upon thousands of dollars (much more than decent). Because international espionage is an expensive proposition: night-vision goggles, 81mm rocket launchers, chartered flights, boutique hotels, high-end whores, ski passes, bullets, liquor, 81mm shells for the rocket launchers, helicopter gas… All this stuff costs money.
Which I am able to expense.
And I’m just going to assume that my mother is too green with jealousy to ever read this book, so I’ll just go ahead and tell you that not only do I expense everything, I do so with about a 15 percent pad. In my experience, 15 percent is about as far as I can push it. Any more than that and my mother starts asking a lot of uncomfortable questions, like “Was it really necessary to charter a helicopter full of liquor and whores and 81mm rocket launchers to a ski resort?”101
But padding my operational expenses is only a drop in the bucket of—well, embezzling has kind of a negative connotation, so let’s call it something else. Like personal wealth-building. And the bulk of my personal wealth has been built from diverting funds that were supposed to have gone toward bribing foreign operatives and officials. I know, it’s hard to hear that: as with torture, you wince to think of your government’s relying on bribery to further its political goals. Well, grow up: protecting your freedom, not unlike grinding doe-eyed calves into those fucking sliders you can’t seem to get enough of, isn’t pretty.
What is pretty is the fact that almost any foreign-intelligence operative (who, remember, are just mustachioed versions of me) or corrupt official will settle for less than the agreed-upon bribe: If he said he’d give you the schematics of his country’s secret nuclear weapons facility for three million dollars, it’s a safe bet that he’ll give them to you for two. Especially with the barrel of a (beautifully made) Walther PPK in his mouth. The extra million goes into an untraceable bank account in the Caymans. Or the Isle of Man. I personally like to spread it around a little.
I know: you’re wondering why I agreed to write this (impossibly long) book if I have millions of dollars salted away in secret numbered accounts all over the globe. Yeah, hi: Did you read this book? Or did you just skip ahead to this page? I don’t have millions of dollars, dodo.
In fact, I hate to admit it but I pretty much live paycheck to paycheck. Mainly because I do things like rent $12,000 whores, eat a hundred bucks’ worth of eggs every single morning of my damn life, and pay my tailor to widen the lapels—on every single suit that I own—one-sixteenth of an inch every autumn. Which I then pay to have re-narrowed one-sixteenth of an inch every spring.102
But, even though I’m a bit of a spendthrift, one area where you won’t catch me wasting money is on taxes. I’m not (due to my lack of a vagina) a qualified tax advisor, so any advice which follows is merely for informational purposes. But if you pay taxes, you’re an idiot.
And not only do I not pay taxes, I’ve never even filed a return. And I can’t start now, because then they’ll know I’ve never filed before. And in researching this kickass book, I learned that while failure to pay one’s taxes is merely a misdemeanor (I think), failure to file a tax return is a felony. Which would mean I wouldn’t be allowed to vote. Which I don’t do.
Because the United States government doesn’t even know I exist.
Well, they probably know I exist (especially now that I’m a bestselling author) but they don’t know where to find me. And even if they did, good luck with that. But it’s a moot point, because Sterling Malory Archer has never received taxable income of any sort whatsoever. Because when I was born, my mother was foresightful enough to bribe the relevant authorities into declaring that she gave birth to identical twin sons, one of whom lived only a few hours. Which was just long enough for him to receive both a notarized birth certificate and a Social Security number, before being given a tasteful burial (in a heartbreakingly small white coffin).
And so 100 percent of my taxable income, as well as any and all stocks, bonds, and property that I may own—including my 4,300 square-foot penthouse apartment overlooking Central Park—is actually in the name of my fictional deceased twin sibling: Elvis Roosevelt Archer.103
ARCHER FUN FACT: RACCOONS
Raccoons are just fun in general. To me, at least. Go write your own fucking book.
APPENDIX A: MAPS
APPENDIX B: FIRST AID
Just go to a hospital.
APPENDIX C: ARCHER’S WORLD FACTBOOK
A brief compendium of useful information about several countries to which one could reasonably expect to travel in one’s role as the world’s greatest secret agent. And also, Canada.
ALBANIA
What’s not to like about a nation that’s not only covered with reinforced-concrete machine gun bunkers, but also formerly ruled by a king named Zog? Answer: everything else.
ANDORRA
This tiny principality is actually a co-principality, meaning it’s ruled by two princes. Which makes me wonder: What ever happened to the Spin Doctors? Were they all murdered?
BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA
The country so nice they named it twice. Actually they just named it once, and that name is terrible. Which is fitting, because both Bosnia and Herzegovina are pretty terrible themselves.
CANADA
I like Quebec because it’s just like being in France, only everybody drives pickup trucks. Plus, I heard all th
e Quebecoises are descended from actual French whores from a long time ago!
CÔTE D’IVOIRE
I don’t care what it wants to be called, I’m still calling it the Ivory Coast. Côte d’Ivoire sounds like some. type of cheese, The Ivory Coast sounds like something out of Middle Earth.
THE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC
No matter how poor a person in the Dominican Republic may be, they will normally laugh at their situation and say something like “Well I may live in a dirt-floored typhus incubator of a shack, but at least I’m not Haitian!” When this happens, it is appropriate to laugh along with them. (Actually you must laugh, or you will be suspected of being a Haitian sympathizer.)
ETHIOPIA
It is acceptable—even encouraged—to eat the tablecloth: don’t worry; it’s almost a food.
FRANCE
Please do not construe this as a lame attempt at humor: the fries are actually great. Thin-cut and fried in impossibly hot oil and sprinkled with sea salt, they’re just amazing with moules.
THE GAMBIA
Not Gambia, the Gambia. And just like alumni of the Ohio State University, Gambians make a gigantic deal about pointing this out. And strangely, the mascot of both is the buckeye.
HUNGARY
Its capital, Budapest, is actually two separate cities: Buda and Pest. Its main exports are mainly agricultural: wheat, corn, paprika, sugar beets, canola oil, and Gabor sisters.
ICELAND
The national dish of Iceland is hákarl, which is a dead shark chunked into a hole on the beach, urinated on by people, covered with sand, and left to ferment for five months. Hard to believe their economy collapsed. What with all that rancid piss-shark readily available for export.
JAPAN
When entering a Japanese home, custom dictates that you remove your shoes. When riding on a Japanese train, custom dictates that you chain-smoke right near me the whole time.
KAZAKHSTAN
Sounds made-up.
LATVIA
During WWII, Latvia was invaded by the Soviet Union, And then by Nazi Germany. Then by the Soviets again. After a brief reinvasion by the Nazis, they finally chose the Soviets, In my opinion—although I’m no expert, by any means—this is why the women all have bangs.
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