By A. J. Daulerio

THE CLASS FILLED up slowly. There were women in their 20s in pantsuits and clumsy high-heels, 40ish women with shrieking dyed-blond hair and short skirts showing off their yoga bodies, and women in their 60s draped in fake fur and costume jewelry equipped with notebooks and dour expressions. There were five men in the class, but they were inconsequential. The women were in charge.

I was attending a Learning Annex seminar (cost: 50 bucks) that promised to teach attendees "how to attract that special someone who also happens to be loaded!" I expected a collection of hungry women primed and pumped on Sex and the City mythology and saddled with overconfidence issues. I would witness 30 years of feminism shamelessly tossed aside, I thought, by a roomful of the most horrible women on the planet—money-grubbing twatzillas, so delusional, sad and demented that they were throwing in the towel on building healthy relationships on love, trust and all the other shit.

It didn't take very long to realize that the more than 50 women attending the seminar were not desperate; they were determined. There were no wallflowers in this crowd. Their small talk was fierce and demonstrative about everything, from the crappy elevators to the lack of snacks at the event. I suddenly felt small, knowing I could have a face like George Clooney and a Dick Cheney bulge and these women would never look at me.

Stephanie Adams strolled in. According to the course literature, our seminar leader "specializes in love compatibility and teaches the art of making relationships work." She is a former Playboy model, has published several books and has bedded "some of the wealthiest and most famous men in the world" including a "well-known Italian investment banker." She has made money, hung with money and married money. To make this happen, she knew the clubs the rich frequented, knew what they wanted and knew how to act in front of them. She held the keys to the Castle of Rich Pricks everywhere.

As stunning as Adams may be to look at, it was apparent that her public-speaking skills were gleaned from middle school. She spoke softly and read from a script that was surely in outline form, most likely with big Roman numerals and possibly written in crayon. She made minimal eye contact and had all the charm and charisma of an extremely attractive woman with absolutely nothing to say. Although she was a former pinup model, she had the sex appeal of a colostomy bag.

Her first scintillating piece of advice for "how to marry rich" was to look inward: "How do you feel about yourself?"

She extended this by adding earth-shattering suggestions such as "spend a weekend alone," "find a hobby" and "find someone who complements you." It takes confidence to land a rich man, she said, so one must "Act like a $1 million and start feeling like $1 million."

The women were noticeably befuddled, but still hopeful that there was more to come. But as Adams read from her outline, dictating subsection after subsection of excruciatingly mundane details, the women began to stir.

"Where did you meet your husband?" one finally chimed in, trying to derail Adams toward some semblance of a point. Miss November 1992 briefly outlined the details of how she met her former husband, to whom she was happily married (but now happily divorced!) for 18 months. She was at an "event" with her model friends, sitting at a table when an attractive man with a lot of money came over. He offered a bottle of champagne to her table (which she declined), then asked her out. Surprisingly, this happened all the time.

"But did you say anything to him… Was there anything you did?" another frumpy woman with enormous glasses probed.

Lesson one was painfully obvious. Stephanie Adams claimed it was coy confidence that drew her bling-a-ding-a future husband, but the audience knew it would take some serious plastic surgery and a battalion of gorgeous and balloon-chested friends for something like that to ever happen to them.

Adams then suggested stores for classy yet inexpensive clothing (consignment shops) and offered ideas for tracking down the rich men (charity events and art galleries). Nightclubs, she opined, were not the places to go a'hunting. Most people at clubs are looking for one-night stands, not long-term, wallet-padding relationships from which one can eventually drain their bank accounts.

"Okay, but vair do we find zee rich man?" another woman with an indistinguishable foreign accent shouted, eschewing the hand-raising politeness that had so far been established. Adams sputtered. She said she would get to it later, but offered up a few of Manhattan's hotels and restaurants as potential marks. One of the older 60ish women, with a jacket lined with purple fur, raised her hand.

"Is there a place where we can find out where some of these spots are?" she asked.

Adams said yes, and then offered up this startling response: the internet. "Like you could type in 'where to meet rich guys' and something will come up," she said, completely oblivious that most of these women, as greedy and money-hungry as they may be, have most likely not spent the last five years in an underwater prison camp.

The older woman just shook her head after the response and wrote "internet" in her notebook with a little star next to it underneath her first entry ("be yourself").

The seminar quickly deteriorated, as Adams read through her vague outline for the next 45 minutes with poignant suggestions such as "Don't be a floozy," "Do not lie about yourself—enhance yourself," "See where the man lives before he sees your place" buttressed with various Jackie Kennedy anecdotes.

About halfway through, the former Playboy model-cum-astrology-author slowed down, perhaps realizing that her audience was less than pleased with her world-weary advice. She asked the group if they wanted to take a break. The women, perched on their chairs, pens in hand, were adamant. "Keep going!" one shouted to the approval of everyone else in the class. They wanted more. They wanted something.

Twenty minutes later, Adams insisted on a break. Some attendees left; the rest were invited to sign up for her mailing list, hire her for a personal consultation about our love lives and purchase her book, Goddessy. After the break, she solicited questions from what remained of her exasperated audience. There were questions, obvious ones, about Adams' failed marriage, about how she feels about accepting gifts from rich men, about where she goes clubbing, all of which she half-answered and half-ignored until it was time to wrap up. Forty minutes early, no less.

"Do zee rich men like the Victoria's Secret?" the woman with the accent chimed in again, just before the closing bell. Adams said that she's pretty sure they like the Victoria's Secret models, to which there was no laughter, but rather cold, clinical silence. They just stared. Angrily.

The take-away from the event was essentially this: Meeting rich men in Manhattan is easy if you're confident, you frequent the right restaurants and charity events, be yourself, don't sleep with men on the first date and are internet-savvy. Above all, you must be true to yourself.

Stephanie Adams, by the way, learned to be true to herself years ago. Not only is she known as Miss November 1992, she was also the first Playmate to come out as a lesbian.

A few days after the seminar, the Learning Annex basically admitted the class sucked and
credited me $25.