Pook #5 - Lesson Two: Friendship - Abandon All Hope Ye Who Enter

The woman enters the house followed by a guy. The guy is all smiles thinking that great acts of intimacy are about to occur. But, alas, the woman launches into a rant about men.

“My ex-boyfriend was such a jerk,” she began. “Why is it that men treat me so roughly?”

The guy then transformed into Mr. Sensitive. “There, there,” he purrs. “They do not know how great you are! You are beautiful, lovely, enchanting, dazzling in every way, and they are idiots when they cannot see it.”

“You are so nice! What a friend you are!” she squeals. “Let me tell you more of my problems with men…”

And so the guy, who was excited because great acts of intimacy would occur, leaves severely disappointed with a hollow feeling echoing throughout him. “I thought that through friendship, love would eventually spring. How wrong I was! A friend she sees, a friend you be.”

When he entered the house, the guy noticed a sign above the door. At the time, he was too excited to even CONSIDER reading it. Now that he was leaving, he read it. “So true!” he cried. For the sign above the door read:

"Friendship - Abandon all hope ye who enter!"

“But why, Pook!? Why is friendship hopeless!? I fall in love with my female friends. Do they not do the same?”

Pook then called up a woman. She appeared in a blaze of fire (probably from the place which all women are from…).

“Oh woman, pray tell! Why do you not go after your male friends?”

The woman looked amazed that anyone could ask her that. “Because they are just friends.”

“But do they not fall in love with you?”

“Yes. My male friends constantly fall in love with me.”

“And, speak truly madam, what do you and your male friends do?”

“Oh! Well, we hang out. We talk a lot.”

“Talk? About what?”

“Everything. Anything.”

“And they fall in love with you.”

“Yes.”

“Ahh…” said the Pook. “Now we have the answer. Away with you!” And the woman vanished in a fireball.

“What answer?”

“Why, it is a difference between the sexes. Young man, what do you do with your friends?”

He looked thoughtful. “We play basketball. We ride around town. We play video games. We…”

“But do you and your guy friends ever sit around and talk about your feelings and things going on in your life?”

The young man looked angry. “HELL NO!”

“There is your answer. Men do not get together and just talk. We do things. When we are with our women friends, we talk much more. Since we reserve our talking, sharing emotions and experiences, to our romantic interest, we get confused with our female friends. We begin to get interested in them because of this.”

“But what about women, Pook?”

Pook pointed to the telephone lines above them. Lightning surged and glowed along the lines.

“The phone lines! They are on fire!”

“Indeed. When women get together, what do they do?”

The young man looked at the fiery lines. “They talk!”

“About what?”

He looked thoughtful as sparks rained on him. “Everything!”

“Women usually aren’t used to getting together and doing pure action. So when they do so with their guy friends, they get a bit confused as well.”

“I see…”

“So avoid the friendship route. When you see a woman you are interested in, go for her romantically. For a friend she sees, a friend you shall always be.”

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Related: Pook #48 - Why "Just Be Friends"

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Are you a slave?  If so, you cannot be a friend.  Are you a tyrant?  If so, you cannot have friends.    In woman, a slave and a tyrant have all too long been concealed.  For that reason, woman is not yet capable of friendship: she knows only love.    In a woman's love is injustice and blindness towards all that she does not love.  And in the enlightened love of a woman, too, there is still the unexpected attack and lightning and night, along with the light.    Woman is not yet capable of friendship: women are still cats and birds.  Or, at best, cows.    Woman is not yet capable of friendship.  But tell me, you men, which of you is yet capable of friendship? -- Freiderich Neitzsche