Gentle, but firm

By | January 29, 2023

I spent nearly 3 months in Spain at the end of 2022, completing roughly 100 sets with 2 dates. Seville was a bust as volume was vanishingly small, but Madrid had plenty to shoot at. Unfortunately the flag escaped me, though I landed in Buenos Aires with hopes that the girls would be as attractive as Madrileñas and receptive as Colombianas. Though the jury is still out on that one as I run more sets, I did manage the 🇪🇸 in 🇦🇷.

I was out in Palermo getting a lay of the land, with its gridded streets that house restaurants, bars and clothing shops on a Monday evening after work. As dusk approached after I finished up a couple of sets, I was on my way back to my apartment when I spotted a girl across the street in purple. I paced my walk according to hers, planning to cross the street at the next light while thinking of a fun tease: purple shirt so she reminds me Barney the dinosaur? No, too old or American. Purple like play dough? No, too obscure. Purple like a grape? Ok, but maybe something more original…The crosswalk is coming up soon so I guess I’m sticking with that last tease. As I’m about to cross the street, I lock eyes with a short, slim girl with a backpack so I desert the purple grape to turn around and open on the IOI. I have no tease in mind, it was all too quick, so I compliment her not sure what to go with next. She responds positively right away and tells me she’s just got into town from Chile and will go back home to Spain in a few days. Early on in the set she asked if I wanted to have a drink with her: this is screaming SDL so I accept and start walking her without any destination in mind as she tells me about her work as an artist and current traveling lifestyle.

As we’re wandering, I’m looking for a bar that’s somewhat occupied but not too busy or too loud. I see an Irish bar that hits the vibe I’m looking for, but she politely vetos. I see no reason to be overly dominant here: “pick your battles”, “lose the battle to win the war”, etc, etc. Fortunately, she didn’t derail things by suggesting any of the crowded bars with loud music that we saw along the way.

Once we found a bar and sat down, I was able to go deeper into conversation and hold better eye contact. Lately, I’ve done away with verbal escalation in favor of compliance testing to help me calibrate my escalation. I generally don’t feel natural when I use verbal spikes; something about explicitly stating my intent too often feels like I’m handing over the reigns of seduction to her. Even topics such as sex or old relationships throw me off. I tend to fumble through these topics, and would rather discuss matters of comfort such as her history, dreams, interests, hobbies, family/friends and physically spike as best I can. Sure, I can try to improve my game here, and I try to as the opportunities come up, but I direct my dates towards the experience I enjoy most: comfort and the actual sex. It’s less about “what’s technically correct?”, and more about “let me enjoy this as much as I can while getting her into my bed in an efficient manner”.

Although I’ve become much more comfortable imitating and progressing through the seduction, my actions are greatly informed by signals given off by my date. I gauge her reactions to my eye contact, incidental touches, smirking and teasing to calibrate the pacing of my moves and how big of a step I can take between each one. For example, after the first drink the Spaniard had said things like I’m different than most gringos she’s met, I have a fun sense of humor, and that she likes that I’ve traveled a lot. And while I was asking and lightly touching her calf tattoo, I was gauging how she felt about my finger there. She seemed fine with it, so I grab her calf to raise it for a better look–still seemed fine. So I raise her leg on my leg and she didn’t flinch. During the second drink, I hold strong eye contact with her as she’s talking whatever then lean in and we have a deep make out.

At this point, I’m thinking all the signals are green and she’s leaving in a few days so the SDL is on. I pitch the bounce back with a similar line Thomas Crown uses: “hey listen, let’s have another drink. We can go to mine and listen to some music, or go to another bar.” It seemed like a good way to hedge the bet. She said we should listen to music another time, but grab that drink for now and off we went to search for venue two. Here I got the first red signal against the SDL; she said we should go to a bar near her hotel since she’s tired and wanted to head home. At that moment, I also recalled another red signal from earlier: she said she feels tired and gross from traveling all day. So now I’m thinking that the SDL is not on because she wants to clean up, but she’s definitely interested in future sex. My plan was then to enjoy the next drink with her while bouncing between comfort and spikes–nice and simple.

The Spaniard took out her phone to navigate us between venue 1 and her hotel, where we would find a venue 2 along the way. Shortly after we were walking through a small alleyway with graffiti. As we got nearer to the end, I pulled her in to me by her hand and made out with her. She reciprocated quite nicely so I grabbed her ass, lifted her small and lithe body with one arm, while caressing her hair with the other, and drove her back against the wall. I had one hand firmly against her hips pinning her to the wall, and the other gently on her head. It’s how I manifest soft dominance–she simultaneously feels powerless by my strength (pinned hips) but comfortable with my tender touch (gentle caressing).

Whence we finally came upon the second venue, I toned things down and just chilled over a carafe of wine. We agreed to meet the next evening. I walked her to her hotel with one last make out and sent her text when I got back, which we picked up nicely the next day over a few rounds of pleasant texting that confirmed our date for the evening.

Then, she stopped responding!

The last text was at 4p. By 7p she still hadn’t responded to a message I sent. If I weren’t on a time crunch and we hadn’t made plans to meet, I would have stayed silent. In this case, I felt time was against me and it was best to pursue so I re-initiated the texting out of turn. Here’s the timestamp of events:

7:15p – Ping her after 3 hours of silence to say I’m finishing up work, so let’s have that drink soon.
7:25p – She quickly responds(!), saying she’ll take an Uber to wherever I am.
7:30p – I send her a convenient address. Which just so happens to be my airbnb.
8:40p – One hour of silence, then she asks “are you already there?”
8:45p – I tell her yes, come over.
9:45p – Another hour of silence, then she calls to tell me she had a long day so she wants to shower then head over.
10:45p – She arrives.

Those 3 hours of infrequent messages were agonizing. I calmed myself by staying fully ready, making myself a quick dinner around 8p, then reading a book. The Game, at this point was just to stay available. Nothing more, nothing less. Trying to move it forward with any additional texts would have demonstrate my discomfort with her chaos, and possibly given away vibes of neediness. I bid my time, and it was the right probabilistic play.

Her coming by that late at night, straight to mine, is a hell of a green light, though she was a bit cold and detached upon arrival. All the macro signals indicated it’s on, but I had to patiently wind down the clock to seal the deal. It turns out she had an emotionally draining day. She interviewed some magician for a radio show years ago, who then died shortly after, and for some reason had his old gf on her instagram. She messaged her to hang out, and that crazy bitch brought tarot cards telling my date some wild stories and wrung her all up (she said this all in Spanish, so the true story is likely to be even more preposterous). Here’s my favorite part, she said “I feel like this was such a life-changing encounter, but here’s the thing, I don’t even believe in tarot cards or those sort of things!”–to which I’m thinking “you are definitely a crackpot artist, and I accept this”. I dutifully listened, asked questions, provided insightful commentary, made positive judgements on her being, and teased a bit. I did not, however, escalate or move towards seduction despite the macro signals. I sensed she needed some time to talk the crazy out of herself before she’d get back in the mood.

We share a similar taste in music, from old school rock and roll to modern day blues. After giving her room to tire herself out of her silliness, I went for my go-to seduction move: pop on the music. We sat down at 90 degree angles around the dining table then went back and forth sharing songs on my computer, making a little game of it. The artists we put on had to still be alive and we looked for ones that the other hadn’t heard of. It was nice.

But I kept my eyes on the prize. I was intent on having me some Spanish paella that night; while listening to the music, having tacos delivered as a late night dinner, and drinking some cans of beer, it finally seemed she was opening back up to seduction. My first move was something I read in Krauser’s Infinite1 (it’s always Krauser, I know), where I pulled her chair closer to mine while she was sitting on it. It’s a nice display of strength and intent. She didn’t seem very “floppy” to this, but accepted, so I turned my attention back to the music.

After a couple of more mini-escalations, I went for a kiss, which turned into a deep make out, which turned into me undoing her bra and that was her stopping point, “this is going too fast, no”? I said nothing, but smirked and turned back the music with my hand on her thighs for a few minutes. Another 15-20 minutes later, and I stood her up to join me on the couch and sat her on my lap. A short while later and she mounted me. The rest was smooth sailing.

After all was said and done, I asked if I was her first gringo. She responded “yes, but I don’t think I’m your first Spanish”…if only she read this blog she’d be proud to know her new-flag status, forever imprinted on my heart and mind. I consoled her by letting her know that she is, if anything, my first madrileña.

She then offered some feedback on the sex, saying that she really liked the way I chocked her and wished other guys would do the same, and that I controlled every minute of it by not letting her move the way she wanted to. I agreed to both, and consider them both compliments.

First, the choke. Starting from doggy, I push her hips and belly against the bed laying her flat out. Then I reach around her neck, either with my palm or arm. The critical point is this: I do not apply pressure to her trachea, but instead to her carotid arteries. Pressing on the trachea causes a sharp pain that distracts from the sex, whereas pressing against the arteries restricts blood flow without having much of an effect on breathing. This results in the physiological effect of making her slightly light-headed and the psychological effect being dominated in a controlled manner. It’s a gentle, but firm, grip calibrated towards the girl in question. Some like it soft, some like it rough, and some freak the fuck out when your hand goes anywhere near their neck. I respect these boundaries; it would take a few more rounds to build the trust to change her preferences.

Second, the control. She said that I prioritized my pleasure over hers, to which I proudly agreed and told her it’s the animal in me. I lead her through a series of positions I like, pressing against her hips so she had limited mobility but I was attentive in case I had to ease up, or if she got bored with a position I was ready to move on. My priority was mine own, but that doesn’t mean I won’t do what I can to optimize our experience together. It reminds of something Magnum had said before: our role as a man is to lead, while giving a girl the option to veto.

I told her the first round was for me, and in 20 minutes the second round will be for her, by which I meant I would let her choose some of the positions and concede back her hip control. Of course I explained all this much more simply and casually: “What can I say, I’m a man. I see sexy flesh and I attack. But in the next round, we’ll do some things you wanted to”. She laughed and said it’s expected of men like me. Which I take as a massive compliment; it’s a big change from where I was when I started all this.

Unfortunately we never did get that second round; she wasn’t the type of girl that sticks around. After some pleasantries, with minimal cuddling, she called herself an Uber and rushed out. I think I love her.

I’m joking, of course. I’m in my mid-late thirties, and can’t help but hope that I every girl I meet has long-term potential with me.

Either I find this unicorn, or I become a broken man trying!

  1. It’s easiest to buy it from Amazon (in hardback and smaller paperback).

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