Thursday, February 14, 2008

FR: Another Thursday in the Trenches

Theory sits across from me, rambling about one of our glory nights, but I’m not listening. My eyes look out of the diner’s fishbowl windows scanning 1st Avenue. Scanning for one of us. He should be easy to spot. But they’re not always. And when they’re not easy to spot, they make me nervous.

“Pick up is sort of like…” Theory surmises, his voice gaining momentum for a philosophical point. “It’s like – ”

“Dude,” I interrupt him. “Shit, I think that’s him.”

“Where?” Theory asks.

“Look slow,” I whisper with the same hushed tone and furtive eye movement I’d take if spotting a bitchy blonde 10. “Guy, three booths over…”

Theory cautiously turns his head. When his eyes open cartoon-wide, I can practically read the thought bubble floating above his head.

“If that’s the kid,” I announce, “We’re fucked. Let’s run game with him for an hour then say we have work early in the morning…”

Theory puts a palm to his forehead and sighs. Theory has a face peppered with stubble and he’s dressed like a flashy businessman; he’s not prepared to run game for an hour then trek back to Long Island. He angrily thumbs through the comically oversized laminated menu.

“This is what I get,” I say, articulating my thoughts. “This is what I get for trusting the fucking internet again. This is the last time. The last! If this fucking kid can’t even work up the balls to approach us, how is he going to run any kind of game? This is a fucking disaster. A nightmare…”

The kid and I lock eyes. I’ve trained myself to hold eye contact like a tractor beam while his eyes sink like an abused puppy dog’s. The guy has messy orange hair and a ratty orange beard. He’s dressed in flannel. He’s eating by himself and looking at our table as if waiting for our invitation, for our validation.

It’s my fault.

It began a few days before, when I’d received a private message that simply read: “Your posts are always spot on and its apparent that firld experience backs them up. I'll be in NYC from the 4th till the 26th and will be trying to go out everyday (day and night game). It would be metal to be meet up with The Judge. Um, yeah man, I'm 22 and have been doing this since June 08. Lets meet.”

I responded with a place and time. I said to look for two guys, one wearing a handful of silver rings.

“Aye,” I exhale, “Might as well beckon him. You think if I flash my rings, he’ll finally get up the balls to come over?” I start flapping my hand around like a gay diva so the guy unmistakably sees the silver rings glinting on my fingers.

He puts his head down again as the diner door flies open.

An olive skinned guy with wild black hair wearing a print shirt and black sports coat comes strutting in. He looks sort of like a bourgeoisie version of the singer from Rage Against the Machine. When he spots Theory and I, his face lights up and proclaims, “TJ!” from across the diner.

“Thank God,” I say to Theory as a wave of relief sweeps over me. I smile, throw my arms back (assuming this is how men who are naturally good with women might sit) and greet one of us; he introduces himself as Summa.

But, now, I have to prove myself. Have to prove I’m more than just some internet know-it-all.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXX

After dinner and some community bullshitting, we take a cab to a warm-up spot Theory and I have come to regard as “Home Field”. The place is way too trashy for the Upper East Side, rivaling the crassest college dive bar; yet, somehow, there’s always a high percentage of beautiful women who flock there any night of the week.

As we crash through the door, I’m shocked to see a bar full of insecure dudes and overweight women. Strike one for The Judge, I think to myself, as I wouldn’t even lower myself to run practice sets on any of the beasts perched on barstools. But before I can apologize to Summa, he’s already chatting up a 5-set of fatties by the bar. I wait a minute then come and wing him.

And it’s just too easy.

While I sometimes encounter a lot of resistance from women who are 6 or lower in the looks department, I also sometimes encounter a shocking lack of resistance. This was one of those times. Within 2 minutes, a drunk fatty is getting way too grabby with me. As I try to laugh it off like a shit-test, I really am feeling uncomfortable and conscious of how my value appears to everyone in the bar. As if fatty senses this, she steps up her aggressiveness, hoarsely proposing to buy me a shot.

“Sure,” I squeak, hoping this will peel her off me for a second so I can better assess the situation.

As I move my eyes across the bar, which is now filling up with cute sorority-looking girls, I suddenly feel two hands grab my face, pull me, and before I can process anything, I’m locked lips with fatty as she spits a shot into my mouth. Before the slight burn of whiskey stings my mouth, a mammoth tongue starts beating around my pallet, reminding me of a biology documentary I’d watched on the undulating motion of the lamprey eel.

“Woah!” I explode, trying to laugh like a high value guy but feeling my voice crack a bit. Fatty stares at me with hungriest of smiles and giggles as I take a step back. She takes a step forward. I smile, start to say something, and take another step back, falling into the cushion of two perfect tits.

I turn around, somewhat startled, and look into the face an absolutely stunning, southern-looking blonde talking on her cell phone. I quickly size her up – a 9 – and game accordingly.

To disarm fatty and pump my value, I turn back to my aggressor, pull Theory into the set and say, “Hey! Why don’t you do that momma bird to baby bird trick on my friend Theory here. He’d love to see it…” knowing Theory is a fan of free liquor and random bar make outs.

The set explodes in laughter and Theory starts running game. Perfect.

I turn back to face HB9SouthernBlonde and greet her friends.

“You guys normal?” I question suspiciously. “Because I need to meet some normal girls…”

HB9SouthernBlonde’s friends – a 4-set – erupt in laughter evincing a field theory of mine: The content of what you say isn’t what’s funny; it’s more of a combination of delivery, timing, and the conviction that you find it funny.

“Wait a minute,” I follow up, raising the ante cautiously, “You guys are like a rock band!”

Laughter.

“Look at you guys…you’re the drummer, you’re the singer…oh no, this girl is the badass bassist…and here’s the guitarist. And this girl…” points to HB9SouthernBlonde on the phone, “This one’s the groupie, huh?”

More laughter as everyone scrambles to dispute the instruments they’ve been assigned to play in my fantasy rock band. I zone out and hear HB9SouthernBlonde cup her hand over her phone to ask, “Huh? What’d you say about me?”

“Don’t worry about it,” I say, dismissing her and turning back to her friends.

For the next 10 minutes, I game up the 4-set of friends with lots of BT spikes. When HB9SouthernBlonde hangs up the phone, she just sort of sits there, clueless. Listening to enough David D., I know this is effective for a while so I continue to pump the 4-set with “inside” jokes about Saved by the Bell and the rock tour we’re all going on. Once I feel I’ve taken it far enough, I abruptly turn to HB9SouthernBlonde and ask her why she’s interesting.

Thinking back on it, we ran so many sets over those 3 days, I don’t even remember what she said or what we talked about (which will be a huge problem if she ends up not being a flake) but I can say this: of the 14 #-closes I pulled over the weekend – one being a girl who told me she was a supermodel and was hot enough that I believed her and one being a stripper – HB9SouthernBlonde was the hottest #-close I pulled.

Anyway, we bounce to the next location: The Lower East Side.

Bouncing to LES always feels like bouncing to another city, another planet. While the Upper East Side is grid-like, organized, and clean cut, the LES is shadowy, haphazard, and artsy.

We step out of the cab and pass the drunks mingling with the bums. We walk along decrepit sidewalks illuminated by the glow of 24-hour pizzerias and diners as we stalk our destination.

We walk into our first venue, which is overly packed and outrageously loud.

After a few lukewarm sets, we wound up separated from Theory so I tell Summa we’re leaving. As we’re walking out, he throws his arm around a very attractive HB8.5BlondeRocker and goes for the instant make out. She laughs but pushes him off as I remark, “Hey! Be nice! That’s my little brother” and continue for the door.

Now, a theory of Affection’s (which he teaches extensively at Project Manhattan) is attraction is created by non-reactivity. This set evinced it.

Since I legitimately was not looking for a reaction, a reaction is exactly what I got. HB8.5BlondeRocker started cracking up and grabbed my hand, pulling me back toward her.

“I like you,” she said, her eyes glinting.

“You’re short,” I laugh patting her head, and then reopen my BT-spiking thread. “And you’re sort of mean, pushing my little brother and all…”

“I am not!” she laughs and hits me.

Game, game, game, doggy dinner bowl, game, game, twirl, almost-kiss and push her off, game, game, seed future date over sushi, game, tells me she’s a singer in a band, game, n-game.

We bounce to the next location.

The rest of the night was set after set of HBs. I decided halfway through the night to try something new: See how quickly I can get numbers. And, honestly, there’s no limit to how quickly you can pull a number off a girl. Since I’ll only take numbers of girls I’m actually interested in calling, a girl has to be a HB8+. But even still, I was getting numbers in less than 2 minutes using this exact routine: “Heyyyyy…high five, are you guys cool? You are? Okay, you guys are SUCH little New York girls, aren’t you? Oh my God, listen to that accent you have…lemme guess, you’re from China? Oh no? Not China? Texas? Your accents from Texas? Stop lying to me you little China girl. Holy shit! You are sooo drunk, look at you!! You only had one drink? Oh my God, there you go with the lying again…what’s my name? Look at you, trying to stalk me already and we just met! Okay okay, you know what…my friends might pull me away at any moment because they HATE liars, so put your number in my phone. I’m gonna call you in exactly two days and you better have your story straight you lying drunk, China woman.”

Every single girl I asked for a number this weekend complied and every number was legit. Also, no matter where you are in the PU, always at least try for the number. As I’ve been hitting the numbers from this weekend, sometimes a girl I ran 2 minutes of game on is totally responsive while a girl I ran a solid hour of game on, comfort kissed, got hypothetically married to in Vegas, and venue bounced with flakes. It truly is a lottery and you NEVER know who’s going to answer their phone.

(i.e. one of my MLTRs – HBJazzSinger – who I’ve been seeing for 4 months and I have an awesome relationship with I closed when I ran game on her in a huge set with her friends with Affection as my wing. I really wasn’t even sure if I was in A2 with her, but, before we were going to leave, Affection told me to #-close her. I protested saying there’s no way she’ll give me her number and, even if she does, she’ll probably flake anyway. Affection insisted I n-close her (he said if I didn’t, he’d do it) so I did. And, sure enough, she called back (she recently told me she gave her number out to 4 other guys that night but only called me back because she thought the line about “we’d never get along…all we’d do is fight and have make up sex” was so witty haha…thanks, Mystery!))

Anyway, Summa wrote an awesome summation of our night and a final set where we totally blew some greasy Manhattan schmuck out of a quality set, which has turned out to be a solid # on VA.

Anyway, Friday and Saturday FRs are forthcoming. Today’s a field night. Happy Valentines day guys haha

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