A homeless Montreal pickup artist has become a nightlife legend by making women believe they share a unique romantic connection before immediately moving on to someone else. Twenty-eight-year-old Jonathan "J-Game" Renaud has no permanent address, stores his clothing in several promoters' apartments and sleeps on whichever couch remains available after an afterparty. Despite this, his friends claim he possesses enough "big dick energy" to compensate for his lack of housing, employment and emotional stability. "A fixed address is useful for receiving mail," says Jonathan. "It has nothing to do with being the man."
With Montreal now crowded with techno nights, psytrance gatherings, warehouse raves and afterparties, Jonathan says he will never run out of places to play. He describes every meeting as unlike anything he has ever experienced and regularly makes plans he has no intention of keeping. "I don't lie to women," he says. "I temporarily create the version of reality they want to experience. That makes me closer to an artist than a liar." Three women once believed they had arranged dates with him for the same afternoon. A fourth says he invited her to move into an apartment he did not have.
The women eventually met in a bathroom and discovered Jonathan had told each of them that they possessed mysterious eyes, misunderstood personalities and energy he could not explain. "He said he normally hates parties and only stayed because of me," says raver Sophie Beaulieu. "Then I discovered he had nowhere else to go." Sophie admits the experience left her feeling foolish and genuinely sad, although friends expect her to be all over Jonathan again next weekend once her bruised feelings fade. Jonathan believes her return will prove the game was effective. "Nobody comes back to a meaningless interaction," he says. "Heartbreak is basically a five-star review."
Jonathan's friends treat him as a hero and gather around whenever he enters a party to receive reports from the field. His reputation is partly sustained by his repeated claim that he can make a woman orgasm four or more times without difficulty, a statement he delivers whether or not anyone has requested sexual statistics. "Four is the minimum," says Jonathan. "After that, I stop counting because numbers interfere with intimacy." None of his former partners agreed to verify the total, although several confirmed that Jonathan frequently loses count while telling stories about himself.
Jonathan admits that beneath his confidence he has severe self-esteem problems, a fear of being abandoned and what he calls "a complicated relationship with reality." He believes these qualities make him more attractive. "Women can sniff out a damaged man," he says. "Fucked-up people fuck the best because we have something to prove." Relationship counsellor Julie Caron offers a different interpretation. "Emotional instability is not a sexual technique," she says. "Neither is homelessness, dishonesty or repeating the phrase 'big dick energy' until somebody lets you sleep on their couch."
Despite years of complaints, Jonathan remains active at parties across the city and has no intention of retiring. Whenever one scene becomes tired of him, another event opens, another subgenre becomes fashionable and another group of newcomers arrives without knowing his reputation. Jonathan insists his career is not ending, it is becoming more efficient. "Some people want me to be the villain, my friends think I'm the hero and women keep remembering me," he says. "I have no apartment, no savings and several unresolved personal issues, but I'm still playing the game. That makes me the man."
