[Update: You can follow along with the text in the following blog post.]
I make it no secret that I’m a rookie in all this dating stuff. In my lifetime I may have gone on roughly 20 first dates, and most of those were while medicating on blue pill. At the time my standard date strategy was to tell the girl how amazing of I provider I could be. I amplified my nice guys qualities. I didn’t get laid until after I read the The Game, that is after I had a general idea of how to generate attraction. Despite that, I was too scared to actually apply it unless the girl was already in to me. The only lays I had were from ‘yes’ girls who were okay showing their cards first.
Now I know better.
I’ve had 7 first dates from daygame, 6 of which came in the past year. Two of those ultimately led to a lay. My dating is much improved, but it still needs work. I’m generally much more relaxed out there, and I play the role of a “counter-attacker” rather than “aggressor”1. My last first date from daygame came from a girl I met on the first day of this new year that we’ll one day mark as The Great Fuckery of the century. I was on my way back from the airport. We chatted on the curb waiting for our Uber ride. I got her number as mine came pulling in, only to find out a few seconds later she was sharing my Uber Pool. Had she rejected my number request, no problem; I’d have a whole ‘nother 20 minutes to convince her otherwise. After the Uber encounter, we had three pleasant dates cuminating culminating in a handjob. No dice though. She sent me a “thank you, but not compatible” text the next day.
Later this year as daygame withered away due to the Corona, I set up a profile on Tinder, Bumble, Hinge and Coffee Meets Bagel (CMB). CMB by far gets me the most matches of decent quality, at roughly 1 per week. One of these matches turned into a date. The girl flaked on the first date, gave an annoying excuse at my second offer, then sent me a revival text for another date request. I obliged to the appeal from this mid-30’s Asian with a set of honkers.
I met her waiting outside a subway station one Sunday evening, wearing a long skirt with a conservative spaghetti strap. She stood 5’4ish with straight black hair, parted in the middle falling to her breast chest. Within 30 seconds of meeting, she told me she was in marketing to which I responded “I see, so you’re job is to sell people stuff they don’t need ;-)”. She seemed just a tad bit offended as she replied “well, that’s sales. I don’t do sales.”
Fuck me, this is going to be a shitty date. I knew that if this were a daygame set, it wouldn’t be worth going for the number.
During the date I find out that this girl is all about that independent-woman life. She said she prides herself on independence and self-reliance, and was surprised when I questioned her on it. “You can’t take it as a given that everyone thinks like that. Some people are driven by partnership. Independence doesn’t make everyone happy”. I avoided words like “family” considering that she was mid 30’s. I’m trying to get laid here, not play psychology to her spinsterhood.
I delved more into her past. From what I could gather, she was in a long-term, boring relationship until she hit 30 then didn’t date much afterwords. I couldn’t get her to talk about any passions or hobbies. She said she spends her evenings going to bars with friends. More likely, she watched TV in her spare time. She knew all the HBO shows and was a fiend for Netflix. She was again surprised when I responded in the negative after she asked me if I subscribe to those services. She engaged the most when she talked about programs on the technicolor.
I’ll break down other aspects of the date in terms of the model that Mystery introduced: attraction, comfort and seduction.
Attraction
Right off the bat, you can guess how this went. I did my little DHV’s a bit here and there, though my storytelling still needs work. My teasing, however, is getting better and better. I’m less forceful in my teases; I wait for the energy, the moment and the inspiration to align. There are plenty of times where I feel it’s a good time to tease, but I don’t have the inspiration. I used to force a bad tease, now I sit back and just wait for the next moment. It’s like standing in the river, waiting to catch a big fat fish that swims by. That moment comes sporadically and sometimes you just can’t figure out how to position yourself to strike it with a spear. Better to just wait for the next fish2 rather than waste your energy and disrupt the river with a strained attempt.
Throughout the conversation, I sprinkled in a couple of spikes. They weren’t met with giggles or excitement; rather blank stares. She told me she likes clean cut guys when I asked her what kind of guys she usually dates, to which I responded “oh so a businessman with a penthouse.” Crickets. In another instance, she said her older sister is already married to which I quipped “uh oh, then your clock’s ticking.” She then said “I can’t tell if you’re being condescending or having fun.” She generally deflected the two or three times I try to steer the conversation towards the topic of dating.
Comfort
Routines matter. This doesn’t necessarily mean you follow someone else’s script or material. Personally, I’ve never run The Cube or the Questions Game (haven’t had enough dates to experiment with all these things yet), but I certainly want to.
More generally though, everyone will have their own, unique routines. It’s based off your interests, passions and past experiences. I think when most people think of routines, they think attraction material, though I bet players more commonly use them in comfort. A good routine (SMV) is only as good as it’s delivery (Game), i.e. story telling. I’ll get better at this with more live practice, and let me tell you why.
In a previous blog post, I mentioned how “I like music” and that often comes up on my dates. I didn’t quite have the perfect pitch for it; it was/is under development. I ran this routine on CMB girl, and it felt great! It felt natural, with me playing with my vocals and intonations. I also figured out how to deliver the little spiel in a way that’s conducive to seduction. Rather than talking about music in the abstract, I decided to tell the story of Clapton’s cover of Have You Ever Loved a Woman. It’s a song about being in love with your best friend’s girl; Clapton was in love with Pattie Boyd, who was married to his buddy George Harrison. Boyd eventually leaves Harrison, marries Clapton, they have a shit marriage and divorce3. In this routine, I talk about how you can feel the ups and downs in the music as it was recorded before Boyd hooked up with Clapton. You can hear his aching desire, his pain. The guitar builds from a gradual tension to sharp screams of anxiety.
Here, at the end, I’m still trying to figure out how to close the story. The build up and theme are great, but the issue is that I don’t play music, which is inevitably asked of me afterwords. I don’t have a punchline to ease the tension or DHV. Maybe I’ll ease it with humor next time. “So when I have my music on and I’m working at my desk, people know not to bother me if I have a tear rolling down my cheek. I just really get into the music.” Eh, I’ll have to experiment.
As a side note, I’m a bit of an MMA geek. I follow an old fighter by the name of Chael Sonnen who’s done a ton for the sport outside of his technical success. He wrote the script on marketing, before Ronda Rousey and Conor McGregor stepped onto the scene. These days, he’s involved in the sport as an analyst and color commentator. He has this uncanny ability to take the most boring of events and retelling them in a fun, quirky way. Check out how he explains a fellow commentator’s knack for comparing a Whopper Jr. to a protein bar. This guy is the king of story telling. While I watch his videos, I try to piece together the elements of his work that make him so captivating.
Seduction/Escalation
“The cost of our attention is escalation” -Krauser in Infinite
“Attention is the only tool modern men have” -The Red Quest
It’s not a date if I’m not trying to thrust4 my sword in her sheath. So let’s talk escalation.
Regarding verbals, you may have noted some of that in the Attraction section. That was mostly it on this date; though at one point I did explicitly say she’s cute after a tease. She said “I know.” For fuck’s sake!
I have a bit of a standard escalation ladder when it comes to physical moves. I start with a light touch on the elbow or knee when I’m making a point and calibrate from there. If I get green, I accelerate up the ladder. If I get a shudder on a touch like that, it’s probably not going anywhere. If I get amber/yellow, I wait a bit and touch again. I then go further up to the shoulder, a belly poke, hair touch and whatever else makes sense.
With this girl, I made it through the knee, arm, hair, belly poke and finally her neck when I suggested she does arts & crafts as I lightly touched her necklace placed a few inches above her knockers. I got amber everywhere.
About 45 minutes into the date, she padded my shoulder to make a point in her story. It felt friendly and too buddy buddy. I took it as an IOD. There was no sex, no excitement in her touch. It was more like “oh buddy, ol’ pal.”
Around 75 minutes in, I made the “hey, I gotta go in 15 minutes. Anyways…” remark. I should have called it earlier, but I wanted to make absolutely sure I wasn’t leaving money on the table and that I had a chance to practice everything I wanted to.
And I got to be fair here. This girl was all smiles and pleasant throughout. She was just dry and boring. You’re hearing my side of the story. It’s very possible that my Game is still vastly underdeveloped and this girl would have got hot for a guy who looked just like me yet had better5 Game.
To ensure my ego wasn’t getting in the way of learning from my experience, I debriefed with Mr. V and a bit with The Red Quest. I feel I did things right, but I don’t know with certainty that everything was correct–in fact, there were a few things I walked away with for improvement in terms of body language. It’s like learning poker; this is a game of probability and incomplete information. I’m getting a feel for which cards are good, and whether I lose due the odds or poor play.
And like poker, with girls you can win bigly with bad moves in one instance yet loose in another with the best ones. Your pocket aces (she opens up with a big smile and hungry eyes) can flake or the 5-8 suited (IG close) can land you with a straight. Play the cards according to their probability and know what to expect.
- See Thomas Crown’s upcoming book.
- I’m modifying Krauser’s analogy from Infinite here.
- Ah…love 🥰
- I initially wrote “place” until Red Coco wisely, and
unknowinglyunwittinglyinadvertentlyunbeknownstly, suggested I use “thrust”. - different?