Balls Deep From Jilted Lover to Lady Killer Nick Krauser Volume One First Editionwinner, Yes, that's right. Every single man reading this book is the latest in a long line of winners, Of course, so are each of the other 2.99 billion men on the planet, so let's not think of ourselves as special snowflakes just yet! At each generation we are embroiled in a Darwinist fight for survival and replication and, it's a dirty low-down fight. While Disney tries its best to put a clean romantic gloss onto the fight, the reality is often squalid, dishonest, and shocking. Just pick up a women's gossip magazine and read the relationship pages. Like most men, I preferred to believe the Disney version, While I was no hopeless romantic I truly believed in the white-picket-fence respectability of the suburban family. I's how I grew up—my parents still married as I write these words, an older brother, a steady job. It was what was expected of me, and I was happy to fulfil the role. So I worked hard at school, even harder at work, and by age thirty-one I was happily married to a sweet Japanese girl one year younger than me. That was how I planned to acquit myself of my DNA’s burden of responsibility. And then things went wrong, ‘The marriage turned sour, my wife left me, and I lost all interest in my job. It was a bad time. Not just the shock and heartbreak but also the shame of it-I was the only person in the history of my family to have gotten divorced. It stung. For three months I moped around. I couldn't sleep, couldn't eat, and had no joy for life. At work I was li imposter in my own body. Approaching my thirty-fourth birthday I was single and-worse yet—completely lost. I had no idea how to find a new girlfriend. The rest of my life stretched out ahead of me like a sexually-barren landscape. ‘On my birthday I decided to treat myself and fucked an escort, She was twenty-four years old, from Hungary, and pretty damn hot. I calculated how many times a month I could afford the £150 in-call cost of an escort and checked the websites to see if they were hot enough for me. I seriously budgeted it. It was the only way I knew to get sex with women I found sexually attractive. shiver at the thought now, It was at this low ebb that I heard about the Seduction Community, a world-wide group of men (connected through Internet forums) who claimed to have learned the secret code to picking up women and having sex with them, I believed their bullshit and gave it a go. Incredibly, it worked, Most men fail, but I actually succeeded. I'd found a new path. By the end of it I'd learned far more about women and about myself than I ever dreamed possible, All of my preconceptions would be smashed and my entire world-view rebuilt from the ground up. As you sit reading these words it probably sounds far-fetched, so let me ease you into the journey. Right now almost everything you think you know is wrong. One reason I wrote this book is to show, through examples, how I stumbled upon my version of the truth, This book is mostly about the women in my life. I find writing it that way takes the edge off my narcissism. As the story progresses you'll see me develop from a sexless hopeless fool who couldn't even get a kiss for six months into a man who was having sex with nineteen-year-old students in pub restrooms in the middle of the day an hour after meeting them. As I sit writing this introduction, just two hours ago, I "notched" (had sex for the first time with) a nineteen-year-old fashion model from Serbia on our second date. And it was fucking awesome. So, inevitably I'll come across as an insufferable braggart. I apologise for that. There's no other way to write about fucking a hundred hot young women. But I've also tried to share the darker sides of the story. This journey has been an emotional rollercoaster where I was probably unhappy far more than I was happy. I'l relate to you the anxiety, selfdoubt, and sense of isolation I felt for months on end as I knuckled down and tried to get good at seducing women. I'll write about my failures—there were a lot of them.Ea Seelam nee‘peer reenter pertof the book's working.” -ontent, I did come away with an overall favourable impression. I'd thought, "I can see that But, of course, I was in love with my soon-to-be wife at the time, My job was already done. I didn’t need that stuff. Until now. So as I laid back on the sofa with my eyes shut I started idle speculation. Could I become a pick up artist? Could I walk into a bar and leave with a fistful of hot girls’ phone numbers then get them out on dates the next week. It didn't seem very likely for an average-looking thirty-five year old man. How was I going to compete with all the good-looking guys, the rich guys, the young guys? Last time I'd been to a nightclub I felt completely out of place. I felt old, and it seemed everyone else was having more fun than me. Nah, No chance. But perhaps I could use it to get a nice girlfriend. A pretty late-twenties girl would be fine, Maybe she would fill the void in my life and I could go back to what I'd been doing, It should be quite obvious that my mind-set was all wrong. I wanted an easy solution without having to change anything significant in my life. I was refusing to lear the main lesson of my wife leaving me—that somet was a bit wrong with me, We'll get to that as the book progresses. I avoided leaming that lesson for a long time. Four days later the brown cardboard Amazon package thumped onto my doormat, and I had a fresh copy of The Lay Guide. I read it on the toilet at work, devouring every page. I was determined to give it a try. I'm pretty earnest when I commit myself to a new hobby (and this was basically to become a hobby). For the previous two years my hobby had been global economies (I shit you not!), and I'd been obsessional in reading blogs and dozens of dry academic books until I'd cracked the code and figured out how the economy works. As with Game, I accepted I was a clueless beginner and was willing to humble myself and start from the bottom floor. ‘The Lay Guide explained to me there are three types of game: + Bar Game: Talking to girls in pubs and bars. This is mostly a verbal game in which you impress her with your witty repartee and use knowledge of group dynamics to manipulate yourself into a strong position and collect phone numbers. + Club Game: This is mostly about getting physical with girls on or near the dance floor and then sexually escalating them until they are horny and ready to leave with you, Fuck! Hadn't done that since I was eighteen, and I'd only pulled it off a couple of times back then. + Day Game: Meeting girls during the daytime in coffee shops and on the street, striking up conversation, and then taking a number.sghtertmatemeaenmeetre etEven now, years later, I cringe as I write that but I think it conveys just how low my social intelligence was in 2009. At heart, daygame is a test of how socially normal you are. No matter how slick your lines they must be overlaid onto a sound foundation of social skills. Girls sniff out weirdoes in a heartbeat, which has proved the undoing of many a hapless new day gamer. At this point, I was that hapless daygamer. Fortunately my social intelligence was so low I didn't realise how low it was. I was filled with a beginner's overestimation of how quickly he can "get it". That delusional overconfidence would serve me well in powering through the daily grind and endless rejections. If Id been more socially savvy I'd have probably abandoned the project as an impossible dream. By late afternoon on the 20th of May 2009 I'd approached four girls. No numbers, no success, but I'd controlled the one thing that can be controlled—my own behaviour. I'd started. At that point it was still not in my reality to stop random girls in the street, interest them, and then get a phone number, Another week of work passed. While my body was physically present in team meetings and PowerPoint presentations my brain was elsewhere, turning over the latest information to be gleaned from my instructional books and the PUA blogs I'd been finding on the Internet. It was like a whole new world had opened up in front of me—there were actually men on the Internet who wrote journals detailing their attempts to seduce women! It was like discovering the Necronomicon. Perhaps I, too, could learn these mystical incantations that will make ‘women feel uncontrollable attraction towards me "Nick!" barked my manager and my mind snapped back to the job. "Nick, have you cleared review points six and nine from the work papers?" I muttered an unfocused reply and began plotting my next toilet break, to sneak away with The Mystery Method for a furtive read. Eventually it was the weekend again, Ist June 2009, and I was now loitering in St James Park. I was wandering around the park looking for any girls sitting alone. I floundered for a while, nerves shaking my limbs, so I sat in a deck chair reading a book. It was pretty tempting to stay there, but I forced myself to approach. There was a cute brunette sitting with her little lapdog. I walked over and stroked him, going to my haunches so I wasn't towering over her. I said I liked her dog, what breed is she, etc. She responded, but she was just being socially polite. There was no interest. Really, I was trying too hard to find any kind of flicker of interest from her, but I was nervous and subconsciously looking for an excuse to eject before my ego got battered by rejection. The conversation stuttered and died after two minutes. She didn't dismiss me, I just bailed. My legs were still shaking. I saw a colourfully-dressed girl sitting on the grass reading the Economist. I opened with, "Hi, What's that you're reading?" She responded pleasantly in a French accent, and we chatted. I was so nervous I was just wittering on about the magazine, France, and doing the twenty questions routine, trying too hard to fill the space. I sat down and she didn’t flinch, but I had no idea what I was doing. Even though she was continuing the conversation I felt out of my depth and contrived to eject at the earliest opportunity. That was it. Two conversations and I was spent. The anxiety had drained me, and my legs felt weaker than they used to after a two hour kickboxing session, The next day I wanted to try walking around Soho. This is the entertainment district in Central London, packed with trendy cafes, bars, pubs, and all manner of media offices. Pretty reliable for there to be some pretty women walking around. I was off work, and I started strong. Boarding the train at Kennington there was a hot Asian seated listening to her iPod and doing Sudoku. | bottled it initially because there was a random guy next to her, and I didn’t want to risk being rejected in front of him (I still haven't intermalised the, "I don't care what anyone thinks of me" mantra, so I was fecling what we call the Spotlight Effect which is the erroneous belief that youare centre of attention). Luckily she changed train at the same station as me, I planned my exit to end up slightly ahead of her on the escalator so I could turn over my shoulder: "Hey, I've always wanted to know, is Sudoku really Japanese?" She replied, "Um, I'm Korean." "Pangapsumnida.” She smiled at that so, emboldened, I continued, "Yeah, it's just I used to live in Japan, and I never saw them play Sudoku. I think it's probably one of those things they say is "big in Japan" because they know nobody is gonna prove them wrong.” We chatted, she got the same train connection as me and, as she sat down, indicated for me to sit with her. Famed PUA Mystery seemed to be speaking in my mind that I should affect disinterest so I stayed standing but next to her, not giving her my full body language. I struggled a bit for conversation, and I knew I had to get off in two stops. "Hey. I'm getting off in a minute. If T wanna see you again what do T do?” She didn't seem too convinced. "Um, take my number." I took the number and we ended up swapping about thirty texts, but I couldn't get her out on a date. Re-reading the texts now with the benefit of hindsight I realise my text game was awful but for now it was a victory story— my first ever day game "number close". This was an early little reference experience for changing my reality towards that of the kind of man who picks up girls in the street. Flush with the rush of success, in true noob fashion, I proceeded to kill the opener (stick to the same opening line too long) by doing it on another four Japanese girls that afternoon, One pair of tourists hooked really well and chatted, but I was lacking direction and ran out of steam. Twas pleased with myself for hitting the streets and making things happen, no matter how incompetently. There was a pleasure from taking action and bringing my sex life under my control (or at least the illusion of control). It would've been easy to just stay home and play the latest Call of Duty, yet, here I was stalking the streets in a constant battle against my own anxiety and negative self-talk, and eventually getting some work done. That said, I knew I was clueless. It was time to find someone better than me to give me direct training, So I opened my laptop and searched the Intemet for a PUA boot camp. Way back in 2001, Mystery had moved out to Los Angeles to hit on the local women. To cover his rent and feed his ego he'd begun teaching other men his system. Back then, instructional events were always seminars held in hotel conference rooms. The "guru" would stand in front of twenty or more eager students and just... talk. Perhaps write on a flipchart. And that was all! No evidence. No demonstrations. No interactivity. The students were supposed to just accept the instructors at face value without the slightest shred of proof that they were any good with women. It was a time of outrageous charlatanry. Mystery's great innovation was to conduct his instructional events "in field” by going to real bars and hitting on real women, providing a live demonstration both of his method and also his skills. For the time, it was revolutionary. He called ita "boot camp" and typically they were held over a weekend with seminars in the early evening and then the in-field session immediately afterwards. T wanted to take a boot camp. In my naivete I projected mythical levels of "mad skills” onto professional instructors and desperately wanted just a little of their awesomeness to rub off on me. An hour searching google for the main PUA companies brought me crashing back to earth, Jesus Christ, £2,000 for a weekend with Real Social Dynamics.I mean, I want to get better with women. But... £2,000? It wasn't cheapness on my behalf, If] was guaranteed success with beautiful young women I'd have handed over my credit card, date of birth, and mother’s maiden name. Empty my bank account all you want, Master PUA, so long as I get to tap top-class ass! There was no lack of desire in me. Rather, I doubted my ability to survive the weekend without a mental breakdown. They'd push me hard, and would I stand up to it So I wanted to dip my toc in the shallowest end of the kiddie pool. I looked for the cheapest boot camp I could find, telling myself I'd just see what happened and, if it was okay, Id spend the big money on the premium guys. This was stupid. Now that I'm an experienced teacher I see this half-assed attitude all the time. People are always half-assing the important decisions, and so was I Twas stupid, but I was lucky. ‘There were only a handful of companies offering live events in 2009. The big names would fly in a couple of name instructors every month or so (LoveSystems, Venusian Arts, Real Social Dynamics and so on) but charged well north of £1,000 for the privilege. There was the local big fish PUA Training that seemed to have the slickest package but wanted £800. Towards the bottom of the food chain was PUA Method, charging £300, but even to my novice eye I could see they were clowns. And then Sarge School was charging £99. A couple of London forum guys gave positive reviews and when checking out their crappy website, I thought they looked cool on the photos. Okay, that's the kiddie pool for me. It was poor decision-making exemplified but little did I know how much it would affect my life I filled in the online application form for the next "beginners" boot camp in July. The following day I got an email for someone calling himself Jimmy Jambone (everyone in the community has a pseudonym, partly due to ego and partly because there are many, many haters who try to destroy you if they think you're getting laid). He ‘was to become one of my best friends over the next three years and my first Game mentor, but at this moment he was just a guy whose reputation intimidated me. “Hey Nick. Thanks for your inquiry and booking, It's great that you're taking positive action on this path. We'll send out a detailed email in the week before the boot camp giving you all the necessary information, But for now, feel free to ask any questions. JJ." Iwas too scared to ask anything. I felt like a man caught in a river flood looking up at the rescue helicopter, stretching out a hand to my rescuer. I was determined not to let myself down on the weekend and studied my books extra hard and read the Sarge School site from top to bottom. Two days before the fateful day an email arrived couched in secretive tones. We were to meet outside Borough underground station whereupon an instructor would collect us and take us to the seminar venue, So at 7pm on Friday evening I made the short walk up from my house. Four nervous men stood in a huddle, furtive-eyed near the Underground exit. That would be the other students. I introduced myself. There was a Polish guy, an Italian, a Scot, and a white-Zimbabwean called Steve. The latter would be my first wing over the next couple of months until he ended up with a serious three-year relationship. We chattered excitedly, and then the instructor arrived. He was a young guy called Johnny. Nicely dressed, confident manner, and a deep cool voice. He led us away to a nearby pub/Thai restaurant for a couple of houts' classroom teaching. There was a sense of adventure in the air, like anything could have happened and probably would. Johnny put us at ease with a mix of aimless chit- chat and probing a few personal questions with genuine warmth and interest. Another preconception about Game was being dispelled. Td assumed the men who are good with women were all aloof arrogant swine. I assumed they'd lord it over me and seem impossibly far away from my position, unable to relate. Johnny was the opposite. When he spoke to me he tuned his body fully towards me, looked into my eyes, and oozed understanding and rapport. This is howgood seducers are. They make you feel good about yourself in a very authentic way. They aren't "playing" you. This is crucially important when talking to girls because not only do they usually need to feel comfortable around you before they can surrender to sex, but they are also extremely good at sniffing out inauthentic and fake behaviour. Arriving at the dilapidated old pub it was empty but for the Sarge School guys playing pool and chilling at the bar. Seven guys in all and every single one exuded cool. I was encountering a real live "rat pack", a group of men who had actively worked upon their value and knew how to support and reinforce one another. This was not the clueless ill-coordinated rabble that I called my own friends. It was a class apart, and I was already sold. First up, a charismatic black Londoner called Diamond gave a talk on the basics of Game, including how to open" in a bar by asking an "opinion opener." That's as simple as it sounds—you ask girls for their opinion on an interesting question. At this time Sarge School was using this one: "My friend is going to take his git! on a trip to propose. He's wondering where to go. Which is more romantic, Paris or New York?" It sounded a bit lame, but it was just an ice-breaker. If the girls want to chat they'll run with it. And if not, no big deal. They can give a curt answer, and you can eject without feeling bad. Remember, I was in a bad way at this time, just five months after the love of my life had walked out on me. I was still broken inside, lacking any kind of self-confidence. Diamond went around the students in turn asking them what they wanted from Game and women. I was almost choking up when I replied: "T think if a woman gets to know me, she'll love me. I just don't know how to get her that far.” ‘Yeah, I was pretty low back then. I think Diamond swallowed down some of his own vomit hearing such woe= is-me-ism. The night went as good as I could've hoped. We decamped en-masse to Piccadilly Circus doing warm-up sets on girls in the passing throng outside the bars before heading inside. Diamond was my assigned instructor that night and kept an eye on me, encouraging me, giving feedback, and demonstrating on girls. He seemed so cool and friendly. I felt a warm glow of gratitude that he so expertly guided me through such a stressful evening. I ended the evening with the number of a Moroccan-English girl from Jewel Bar. We swapped texts but she never came out ona date, Around midnight our energy was flagging so the instructors let us go home with an admonition to sleep well and meet up at Borough Station at noon the next day for the day game session.Johnny would later confide that he was shitting himself. Jimmy was there to check out his game and report back to the team if he was good enough. He pulled us to one side down a quiet street and taught us the basic approach, which goes thus: 1, Let hot girl walk past you, letting her put a few metres in front of you; 2. Chase her with a playful jog until you are alongside her and slightly ahead, so she catches you in her peripheral vision; 3. Circle in and jump right into her path, smiling; 4. As she stops say, "Hi. I just saw you walk by, and I knew I'd be kicking myself if I didn't come over and talk to you. You're gorgeous"; 5. Lean back, look a little inscrutable, and say, "So... Who are you?" If [hadn't just seen it work, I wouldn't have believed it, There seemed so much wrong with it when compared to what I thought I knew about women: You can just interrupt women who are going about their day? You can just tell a girl, right off the bat, that you think she's attracti Girls will just give up their phone number after a few minutes? And this is done... sober? With people walking past all the time? 1, and the other poor students, couldn't process it. We felt like having watched a magic show and then the magician comes over and explains the trick. There were so many mental barriers that I couldn't take it in, even though I'd already tried a few days talking to girls in parks and shops. I said to Johnny, "I find it difficult to open a moving target, It feels like they have their stuff to do and I'm just interrupting, getting in their way". His response really stuck with me: "That's tough to answer because it’s not even in my reality. I'm offering them the value, the opportunity to know me." This was a major shift in thinking. In the community we call it a "reframe", a way of replacing a given interpretation of a situation with a new interpretation that is more favourable for you. From an early age boys are constantly drilled with variations of the same message—"You must eam the right to a girl's intimacy." In contrast, girls are taught to feel entitled to men pandering to them. ‘It's the knight who risks life and limb to rescue the damsel in distress; + It's the prince who must win over the princess; + It's the man who must put the roof over the family's head; ‘+ It's the men who fight and die in wars to protect the women. When a little boy cries because he can't handle the pressure he's told to "man up" and "pull his weight” whereas the crying girl is sympathised with and given "understanding," This is just biology. Men give, women receive. It's the extravagant privilege of being born with a vagina, Back in 2009 this seemed desperately unfair to me, whereas in 2014 I understand being born with a penis is an even more extravagant privilege... if you know Game. Most men's frame when hitting on girls is: She has the value, how can I convince her I'm good enough to put my penis into her magical vagina? Johnny believed the opposite—when he meets a girl he's giving them an opportunity. Woah! I wished I could internalise that belief. Johnny went on to say that much of day game is about just creating the opportunity for the interaction. Some girls are going to like you, but if you don't open then you don't find out. You have to be in it to win it, These days we call this "flipping stones", finding out which girls like you immediately based on a quick onee-over. I's an order of magnitude more difficult to turn around a girl who is initially uninterested, which is what I'd later get good at.Johnny and Jimmy pushed me into six "sets" (new interactions with girls) over the next hour. I didn't get any numbers but only one interaction was a crash'n'burn where a girl gave me an "eye roll" blowout, Lack of confidence and clumsiness of the execution hamstrung me, but I didn't care. I found myself overly interrogating the poor girls with rapid-fire questions so much that one git! actually asked if it was an interview. The last two girls showed me engagement rings but smiled at my approach. And then it was 2pm and all over. We all sat in a pub for a celebratory pint, telling our little war stories before the next night game session began. We had that manic glow of excitement, like having been shot at and missed. ‘The main takeaway was that by the end of the session I felt as if I could do this. I could jump in front of moving girls and open. That was a massive improvement, the magic bullet I was looking for. My next seventy day game approaches were built upon this base. I'd continue to practice night game, but the seeds were sown for my day game career.CHAPTER TWO: SOMALI PIRATES The player's journey is a lonely one. Since we first sit on our mother’s lap giggling and cooing, we are lulled into the comforting fantasy that people care about us. I used to think a mother’s love is the only genuinely selfless unconditional love in the world but even that is a fantasy. The reality is we are truly alone in this world. The only person who will put your own interests front and centre is yourself ‘That's a harsh realisation, and most of us spend a lifetime avoiding it, protecting all of those pretty lies. I was never lacking a loving family, so forming secure attachments didn't scare me, However, from around twelve years of age my best friend (and most popular kid in school) was uprooted as his parents took a job one hundred miles away. Suddenly I had no social coattails to hang on to and my slight weirdness was no longer shielded by a protective association with him. I gradually drifted out of the "cool gang" and into the "outsiders" group. And there I'd stay—first as a metaller, then a punk, then an anarchist, and finally an ex-pat. So I'd always felt somewhat alone. I'd always had my little social group, but we were all outsiders. My extreme introversion compounded this fact, so I'd enjoy holing up in my bedroom watching zombie movies or reading voraciously. Then, at university, I started boxing. You're never more alone than when you step through the ropes, for a fight and the bell rings. Neither your coach nor your sparring partners can help you—It's just you against the other guy. Ironically, learning to seduce women is equally lonely, and we try equally hard to persuade ourselves it isn't. In the beginning you believe you're the only person trying this "game thing” and that you must be weird. You can't tell your friends or they'll laugh at you or pull you down like crabs in a barrel. God forbid you tell your workmates! There are online meet-up groups of like-minded men learning game but even then it's more like a collision of independent particles than a bonded molecule. Even now, in a situation where some of my best friends are the world's most prominent professional seducers, arranging holidays together is like herding cats. So I just accepted that most of the time I'll be alone in this joumey. Even when with a succession of beautiful young women, I'm alone, I never quite give myself over to the pair-bonding, In August 2009, not long after my first boot camp, I was yet to come to this realisation. I'd been watching instructional videos and reading textbooks on game, thoroughly immersed in my new hobby. I was already zoning out at work, physically present but mentally absent. My work became that thing to be finished as soon as possible in order to make time to browse the latest Game blog posts, and then I'd rush home on the Underground ‘mentally scheduling the evening's DVD fare: ‘7pm: Food, eaten on my sofa while watching Mind of Mystery. 8pm: RSD's Flawless Natural. 9pm: Interlude to play video games. 10pm: Something from David De Angelo until his droning voice made me sleepy. There was just so much material to consume, I felt I'd never get it. Imagine going to juggling school and the first class is how to keep six balls in the air. It was overwhelming but also exciting. For the first time in my life I felt like I had a real shot at dating hot girls, Once I've taken a bite out of something I'm as relentless as a lock-jawed terrier. Thadn't really gotten to know any of the guys from Sarge School (they'd later re-brand as Rock Solid Game, or "RSG"), the ones who I'd later become good friends with. I didn't want to go out on my own without a wing man, and I was also searching for "kindred" spirits, I guess, guys who wanted to leam this stuff as badly as I did,Rie eknhemyaaeneneersA great bar-game venue I put this little episode down to bad luck, like an aberration. A week later I met a Belfast native from the LSS called Paddy. He was a good guy, and I liked him, He was just a normal guy, not a weirdo like Diego, thank God, He always looked intense, I'm not sure why, but he tuned out to be fun to hang out with. Paddy and I decided to go out one night to a Shoreditch bar called Cargo. It's an Indie bar, a really "hip" place with a noisy dance floor, beer garden, and bar area. The beer garden was great on a warm summer night. The club was crowded with university students and hipster chicks. By the time my friends Steve and Devak showed we were a pint to the good. Steve was the first guy who I had met on the boot camp recently, a nice guy from white Zimbabwe who had recently come out of a bad break-up. We remain friends to this day. ‘We were all making the rounds, and as I was coming out into the beer garden I spotted two young black girls. It tumed out they were Somali sisters, maybe eighteen and nineteen. The younger one was built really nice with a big ass and big tits, Her hair was long and she was just really pretty, Her sister was just okay, nothing special. Paddy had gone on ahead and was walking around the bar, so I start talking to the girls solo. I find out the hot one's name is Hibag. Her sister was Haweeyo. I doubted I'd manage to say that while drunk. Steve joined me. I could tell that the hot one liked me. She was making eye contact and giggling at everything I said, so I suggested we go down the street to another bar called the Elbow Room to play pool. This is a technique called "the bounce." It's both an early test of the git!’s compliance to your leadership and also a demonstration of that ability to lead. If the girl is willing to follow you, she's interested. These girls agreed. The Elbow Room is another pretentious status-whoring indie bar but I like the 70s retro vibe and pool tables. A game of pool gave us plenty of excuses for casual touch, We would help the girls adjust their pool cue, line up shots and so on, allowing a touch of hands or soft, brief pressing together of bodies. Not much more advanced than the seduction techniques seen in a high schoo! disco, really. Hibaq was letting me kiss her but, because of my hesitation and lack of self-confidence, she got away that night. I did get her number, and we'd texted for a while, but I could never get her to commit to a date, After a few weeks it just kind of died off. About a month later, Paddy and I were out in Cargo again, We'd finally found a gameable weekend bar with that correct combination of pretty girls, open-plan seating, and music that doesn't reduce you to shouting at each other in monosyllables.We were in a crowded bar area, just behind the four-deep crush of revellers ordering drinks. A drunken girl walked towards Paddy and smiled. He instinctively put his hand out; I think originally to shake hers. She took his hand, and he pulled her in and just started making out with her. At this point I'd only kissed one girl in nine months, the Somali from a previous week. And here was Paddy making out bar centre with this girl that he hadn't even met. They broke free, and she went to the toilets. He never saw her again, but I just thought it was so amazing. I asked him, "How did you do that?” He grinned and said, "I don't know, | just pulled her in for a kiss and it worked." He was pretty proud of himself, and I was pretty impressed as well. It seems like a small thing now but this was the stage of wideeyed wonder newbie players go through. Remember the context—I was thirty-four years old, had never been good with ‘women, and I still barely believed it was still possible for me to pick up a hot young girl. Even in my university years that would've been a memorable event, ‘As we were headed into the beer garden, I saw the Somali girls sitting at a table near the back. Hibaq gave me a guilty look, thinking I'd be mad at her for not replying to my texts. I played along, giving her a parody evil look and wagging my finger at her. She giggled. Game on, Paddy and I went over to their table and chatted for a while before beginning to initiate what we call "mini- isolation” This is when you get the girls to tur away so they're not directly looking at each other. I's a relief of the psychological pressure that often keeps a girl from otherwise doing things she might want to do if she weren't being watched. Paddy got the sister facing him, and they were talking. I grabbed Hibaq and pulled her up onto my lap. She was giggly and a little bit drunk. Her thighs were over mine with her lower legs dangling between. The left side of her ass was hanging off the side of my left thigh. I could have literally reached up and grabbed a handful of ass with my left hand. I put my face close to her ear and started dirty talking. She was regaled in seductive tones about how great her tits looked and the risk they might be taken out right there and mauled. I told her I wanted to lick and roll her nipples between my teeth and nibble them sofily. This might seem like a strange time to bring this up, but when I was about two years old I had an ear condition that made me semi-deaf. By the time surgery corrected it I'd developed a stutter so I was sent to a voice therapist. It was a roaring success. Now I have no trace of a stutter and great vocal projection. That's great for picking up girls. Loud and clear says confident and sure of yourself. That night, however, I happened to look up at Paddy as I dirty-talked and he was laughing. Pretty much half the bar was in on my conversation. The sister was sitting there with her back to us, acting as if she hadn't heard a word, but squirming uncomfortably at occasional verbal embellishments of mine. Hibag was also squirming and giggling by this time and getting really horny. I slipped my hand up where her ass was hanging off and slid it under her skirt. I started fingering her through her panties and along the side where it was skin-to-skin, She loved it, and by then my hard-on was pressing against her ass. Isaid, "Let's get out of here." "Lcan't," she said, "I have to go home with my sister. We live with my parents, I can't stay out." Thad already checked out the bar. There was no feasible place to have sex without getting busted and thrown out. It seemed that first Game lay would elude me again. “How about you suck my cock," and she said, "Okay," readily. I took her hand, and we went up to the front door. At this time of night they were charging a cover of about ten pounds to get in. I asked the bouncer if we could get a hand stamp, go out, and come back in, The miserableCHAPTER THREE: THE DAYGAME GRIND It's natural when recounting stories to focus on the success and compress all the boring bits so you can get to the highlights, That's what good story-telling is and when out in the pub with your friends it's a sure way to a fun night. When you're telling pick-up stories this compression has a few side-effects: 1. It sounds like you're having nothing but success; 2. The listener gets insanely jealous at the thought everyone is getting laid more than him. People hate the idea that they're missing a trick. Pretty much every spam email offer that lands in your inbox is based on this psychological quirk, and thus they promise you the ONE EASY STEP to lose weight/get a bigger dick/make your first million/bang hot chicks. Usually it's some kind of new underground sceret that "they" (the powers-that-be) don't want you to know but, for a limited time period, you have a chance to discover the secret. Funnily enough, they aren't far from wrong, They are almost right, but for the wrong reasons. Most men really are missing a trick with women, there really is a "secret system" (or more correctly, some simple principles), and the powers-that-be really don't want you to know it. The part where the Internet marketers tell a rather fat lie is about it being one easy step. It's more accurate to call it four years of pain and struggle. But let's consider the Availability Fallacy, which states that information which is readily available to you will be given a higher priority and loom larger in your mind than information that is less readily available. Philosophy departments have been teaching this one in Informal Logic classes for decades. As it relates to pick-up, you'll tend to over-estimate the victory stories people parade in online forums and marketing letters and under-estimate the failure stories that you may have to dig about for to find. T'l tell you right now that in the time period covered by this volume of my story, I failed with over two thousand women. vai daagieal thet really work! "I proven techniques sen ican omakeyou vey soucestde | SS eolecting socks off the liooe Derm | hebest bending mehods. tage and thu’ pinching sraage Handing up-egein tectegas sod mech ne! eee + a PO BEE. Lest meyoenee the secres of ses oe One easy stepBut unless I hammer the point home, you'll forget that by the end of this chapter. You'll focus on the lays and get the impression I was slaying right-and-left with wild abandon, Don't say I never tried to convey the failure rate! So let me really drive home the point that game, for an average-looking man, is a grind. Failure is the base state and successes are rare blips that get creamed off to form the War Stories anthology. Iwas hitting the streets every weekend throughout the summer and autumn of 2009 practicing the same direct opener time after time. On any given day I'd talk to between five and twenty girls, taking a couple of numbers and perhaps having an instant date (taking the girl onto a date immediately from the street interaction, without a break in between). Sometimes I'd get them out on dates later, but they'd go nowhere. It was frustrating By September I hadn't been laid for eight consecutive months, and I'd only kissed one girl. I'd probably spoken to about four hundred of them and had a dozen or so dates at least. It was always the same pattern—she'd turn up to the date quite keen and then gradually lose interest in direct proportion to how well she got to know me. They'd never seem to be in the correct position for me to go for a kiss and, if I ever tried to bridge the gap, Td get artfully rebuffed. I pored over forums, books, and instructional videos but couldn't get anything to work. To be fair, there was no good instructional material out there for dates. The PUA literature that gave direct practical advice was focused entirely on the initial meeting in the bar or club. Once you had the phone number you were left to flounder with just a few simple high-level principles. That's all changed now, and there's some excellent "date game" material that breaks it down to micro-level actionable advice. But in 2009 it was all shit. The biggest problem, though, was my ineptitude. I didn't have any confidence that I knew how to move a girl towards sex ("escalation") and I didn't feel attractive. I'd go on dates thinking I still needed to convince girls to like me and my lack of self-belief would seep out. I still had all the broken pieces jangling around inside, the after-effects of divorce. But I was impatient to get laid, so I kept reading, and eventually I stumbled upon a blog post describing the Apocalypse Opener. ‘The writer swore that this was a fool proof way to get laid, Just do it right with enough girls and one of them will bite, Okay, I'll try it, I wasn't lacking dedication, It goes like this: ‘Me: Hi, I'm Nick. Her: Hi, I'm Girl A. ‘Me: What are you up to now? Her: Blah blah, whatever. Me: Would you like to come home with me? The key (apparently) is to look her dead in the eye and hold your fucking ground. She'll be taken aback and then scrutinise you briefly for any wavering. And then, sometimes, she'll just agree. Like most pick-up advice it's really a part-completed sentence. The instructor says something like, "This really works" when the full sentence is "This really works... if you're already the sort of guy who gets laid quite easily.” I tried it about twenty times and got nothing. Really, what did I expect? The most memorable of them was with a sexy Greek ballerina I had met walking outside the National Portrait Gallery in Charing Cross. It was September Sth, 2009, Saturday afternoon and my mother was visiting London so I did the honourable thing and met her for lunch and coffee. I was totally open with her about my new hobby which she wasShe was called Eugenia, We swapped numbers and after she walked off she called me two minutes later to check that she had the right number stored. She'd briefly mentioned a boyfriend in passing, and that she lived in Covent Garden. She suggested I join her in a bar after I was done in Tiger Tiger nightclub later that evening. We swapped texts the rest of the day: Me: You're still thinking about it;) Her: A little! Doesn't happen often in London! ‘Me: But all the time in Greece? I'm atTiger Tiger. Her: Yea, Greece is a little bit different. I've just hopped into the bath.. ‘Me: Bath texting? You're weird Her: Thanks... multi-tasking? lol. ur in a bar with ur mate and urtexting... that's equally weird, lol Me: Make sure you soap yourself properly. Her: Thanks for the tip, couldn't have done it without u, lol ‘Me: I'm helpful like that. Tlater realised what was really going on in the subtext of this interaction. Girls have a dual mating strategy that is commonly summarised as "Alpha Fucks Beta Bucks". This means they pursue both high quality male DNA. and also long-term protection and provision. This gives the player his hack, his way in. Girls are hard-coded with the potential to step out on their long-term partners in order to access better DNA. They'll call it an "indiscretion", a "mistake" or an "adventure" but the important point is that it happens. ‘The London Daygame Model is designed entirely around exploiting this quirk of female nature. However, in September 2009 the LDM didn't yet exist, and I didn’t know about Alpha Fucks Beta Bucks. My proposition to Eugenia had identified me as the consequence-free adventure sex guy and she was showing herself amenable to a secret liaison, with the usual trepidation and cautiousness before proceeding. I just lacked the wherewithal to pull it off. These days I'm all over it, but back then she was one who got away. left it for the week and then on Thursday a hot Colombian girl blew me out on an early evening date. I called Eugenia, She picked up right away and after a five minute chat she invited me to Bar Salsa saying her male friend was teaching there but she wasn't dancing, so why didn't I join her. I should've agreed, but I didn't have the confidence to enter her territory and hold my frame. I envisioned myself being tooled by more charismatic men who know everyone in the class, being excluded from conversations she had with her friends and other silly social nightmares. It was a mistake. I should've just thrown myself into the mix to see what happened. Next, while out the following day, I restarted, late on while I was in Cargo. The whole time I was trying to follow PUA text game advice, particularly the maxim from Roissy's blog—send only those texts which you'd be comfortable having appear on a jumbotron in front of the whole world. Meaning, if you aren't comfortable with your text game being public, it must be weak, Me: Old Street tonight. Her: I'm off to the cinema tonight but could meet up later if ur around.Me: Yeah, that's a plan. Text me when you're done. Her: OK. Her: *later* Would you like to meet in Covent Garden or is it too late for you? Itwas 11pm. I called, I said I'd be finished with my friends at midnight and then I'd call to arrange to go over to her place (she was home). Midnight came, I called and no answer. Twice. I texted, "hey" to no response. Fuck Next morning at about I 1am I got this Her: Hey Nick - I'm so sorry about last night! I fell asleep in front of the ty, didn't realise how tired I was, Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, in a speech by Brutus in Act IV, gives a beautiful conception of Alpha Fucks: "There is a tide in the affairs of men, which taken at the flood leads on to fortune..." Whereas the Beta Bucks guy is omnipresent with his provision of attention and resources (she was living with her boyfriend) the girl's Alpha Fucks needs rise and fall like the tide—and specifically with her monthly ovulation window. She'll only have a tiny window within which motive, method, and opportunity are aligned to sneak out for adventure sex. Asa player you need to be alert for that and take her at the flood. I'd missed my chance We arranged a date for later in the afternoon. I was already in town, sitting in Caffe Nero off Covent Garden reading Ayn Rand's Fountainhead. 1 wanted to be in a state where I was self-amused and not anxious for her to come. Every date felt like entering a math exam and I needed to micro-manage my mood. She arrived and we sat outside in the sun. I was leaning back, trying to show "alpha" body language, and we connected instantly. I really liked this girl, She was smart, selfassured, and much prettier than I had first realised. It turned out she was a model and had recently has been posing naked for artists. She was also a dancer. We chatted a lot, and I kept with the authentic honesty. This was still during the period of my voracious reading of all things seduction and psychological, so I'd also gotten a book on speed-reading people. We discussed that, and Eugenia really lit up when I outlined her character according to the book's model. She suggested moving on to St James’ Park so off we went. I initiated touch with upper arm touching, pulling her in with my arm around shoulders, and later around her waist. She pleasantly stayed comfortably close but didn't respond by putting her arms around me. Again this was something of a calibration error, It's generally a bad idea for the "secret sex" guy to be touching his girl in public—that's exposing her to the risk of being caught, and undermining the whole secret society vibe. Except for fleeting moments to spike her energy levels, touching should be restricted to private environments. 1 ended up talking about my interest in social dynamics and about the alpha/beta/omega male hierarchy, and sexual chemistry. She was going along with it all. I teased a bit, we joked. It was just very, very pleasant. I felt totally relaxed as if there was no judging between us, and I wasn't trying to impress. This experience would be the beginnings of a flavour I'd later successfully add to my pick-ups. I was trying to be as authentic and radically honest as possible, even overtly discussing the nature of male-female interactions. This is now integrated into my instructional guides as "breaking the fourth wall” in which you discuss the meta- level nature of your own discussion. It's highly effective in getting girls to quickly agree to sex, but in 2009 I was just fumbling in the dark with little idea it was to become a sophisticated tool. I'd recommend beginners avoid that stuff entirely.Three hours in and we were sitting outside another cafe when I tried to escalate a bit more and fumbled a key test. While I tried to pull her in, she resisted, put down her sandwich and said, "You know I have a boyfriend?" Ah, I thought. I've read a good answer to this on the Internet! I looked her dead in the eyes and with a low even voice replied, "I don't care.” The effect wasn't what I'd hoped. She took a few bites of her sandwich then told me, "Well I do. It's his flat I live in, I just don’t want to mislead you." | tried to keep a brave face, but I was crushed. I'd drought 1 was in, This was a beautiful, smart girl, a dancer, and the very first thing I'd said to her was a proposition for sex. And now I was in the friendzone! LIBF'd from the Apocalypse Opener... just let that sink in for a moment, ‘The reality was I'd had my chance and blown it. She'd asked me to walk with her a minute after my opening, proposition, she'd invited me out to a bar, she'd invited me to her home late at night while her boyfriend was out (but fell asleep, at least that wasn't so much my fault), and then accepted another date, Wannabe-seducers would likely interpret this story as her just being a games-playing cocktease who wanted to tool me for attention and, unfortunately, that’s the conclusion I came to. But it was wrong. She wanted Alpha Fucks, and I'd come up short. Even at this last test about having a boyfriend, I'd misread it. She didn’t want to mislead me into thinking there'd be a relationship, but I'd misinterpreted her to be refusing sex and putting me in the friendzone. Even at that late point in the interaction if I'd had a stronger sense of entitlement and stronger escalation I could've taken control and got her into the bedroom. The grind continued all through September, I took a week off work to spend ten straight days day gaming, ten sets a day minimum, There'd been too much half-assing it, so I wanted massive action. Mental pressure was willing me out because deep in my gut was a sickening dread at being blown out by a procession of girls and perhaps peering into the abyss—that I'd never get good at this. Eugenia had inadvertently knocked my confidence. So every day that week I followed the same ritual, trying to impose the illusion of control onto the scenario. I'd go to a Caffe Nero and sit on the big brown leather sofa watching the Blueprint Decoded instructional videos on my laptop until my sexual desire/desperation overcame my anxiety/avoidance, For example, the first day. Monday 14th September. My mind was full of big plans and motivational self-talk. No excuses, I was going to turbocharge my stats on approaches. It didn't matter how I felt, or if my wings were busy, I'd go solo and just plow through. Received wisdom in the community is you are a noob until you've completed one thousand sets. I was at about four hundred and very impatient to improve. Having a full-time job restricted my daygame to weekends so the solution seemed obvious—take time off work. 'd spend the first hour in Caffe Nero reading. It was still not quite lunch time and Covent Garden was deserted so I didn't feel like I was descending into avoidance. Finally, I stepped outside and straight into a hot Belgian dancer. | opened weakly, but she stopped and chatted, She was in a hurry to get to the Pineapple Studio for a dance class. I knew something about that stuff so I rambled on about dance, contemporary dance, how my dancer-ex had a careless grace in her movements from all the dancing. Blah, blah, blah. She was not interested, and my attempt to take her number led to an awkward refusal. It only took a few minutes to shrug that off, and I saw a dusky Mediterranean girl walking through the market. She stopped briefly but either didn't speak English or was seriously unimpressed. She smiled, waved her hand dismissively, and disappeared without a word. Next was an English gir! carrying shopping boxes. She didn’t stop, but smiled, thanked me, and said she was late getting back to work. One more open got me a stop but nothing doingDamn. My forehead actually felt tight, such was my poor state, It was like the skin was too tight for the size of my skull, 've since leamed that is how to recognise when I'm pulling the "creepy face" caused by poor state. persevered. On Shaftesbury Avenue just past Forbidden Planet an Asian girl came towards me, She was young, and had just started her first day as an intern in a fashion magazine. We chatted a bit. I was too talky and too outcome dependent, but she didn't seem to care. She checked the text she was writing as I approached, so I told her off for not paying attention. She giggled and twirled her hair. I made a mental note to self-set arbitrary boundaries and playfully tell a git! off for breaching them. She gave me her number but never replied to my texts. Another instant date to nowhere 1 got myself blown out a few more times on Oxford Street before a hot English girl gave me her Facebook. It was weird because the whole time I was thinking she was wanting to get away, and I was struggling and just talking into the space, yet it was five minutes or more in conversation and after getting her Facebook I kept her another few minutes talking about her Geography Uni course she was about to start her second year in. It didn't go anywhere. It's common for beginners to think the length of the interaction is directly related to how strong the resulting contact details will be. This isn't correct. Ultimately, you're trying to create a particular emotional impression upon the girl while also ticking off checkboxes marking particular signals she needs to give you to show she is available and into you. If you accomplish that in two minutes the number will be stronger than if you dither around chatting for twenty minutes but fail to accomplish it. So while advanced day gamers can {quickly take solid numbers (or eject when it's not forthcoming) it's common to see beginners getting dragged into over-long conversations that go nowhere, The last approach of the day was a pleasant failure. I opened a hot Lithuanian in Camaby Street. She was ambling around aimlessly, which I took as a generalised approach invitation. My forehead was really tight, and I was having a tough time. My vibe was horrible, but I was determined to just press on and grind out the sets. She stopped, smiled, hair twirled, and indulged me for ten minutes. I could aimost visualise a hologram of a graph between us showing a downward stant as I continued to lose my confidence throughout the whole thing. I tried to take her number and she was very explicit: "I don't want to exchange details’, Fair enough, on that performance she really shouldn't have,Iwas getting some good reactions but no success The first day of my day game "vacation" resulted in talking to ten girls, taking one number, and one Facebook. Neither of those two girls replied to me. At the end of each day I'd analyse the work and write a blogpost of my learning points. Self-diagnosis is a crucial skill for seducers because no-one else is going to help you. Quoting my blog, this is what I felt I'd learned: + L felt crap but took right action anyway. Good work. + Even with shit state still had good enough fundamentals to get one decent number. + I didn't worry too much opening sets, The poor state was once in-set Only a few months ago I wouldn't even open five sets when in good state, ‘+ While in set I knew consciously all the mistakes I was making, even as I couldn't stop making them. The biggest one was outcome dependence. I really wanted to get numbers and was worried the girls would ‘walk away and leave me feeling shit. Lesson learned. Back out tomorrow. It was also this week that I went to an LSS talk at London Bridge on "game for men over 35” organised by a guy called Curran. It seemed perfectly pitched to me, but I was so lacking in entitlement that I worried I'd be refused entry because at the time I was thirty-four. I actually emailed Curran a few days before to ask if it was okay. As if they'd check my passport and throw me out! The event was unremarkable, held in an upstairs function room of a pub by Tower Bridge. About thirty older gentleman packed the pews while a short ginger guy called London Playboy gave a talk, then Curran and then a lanky Scotsman with the online pseudonym of Skeletor. His real name is Colin and, though neither of us knew it then, he'd become a major figure in my journey. At the time I was very impressed with his presentation about identity and how to change it.I tried to get pally with him afterwards on his smoke-break but there was a ring of eager older gents two-deep around him that I couldn't penetrate.CHAPTER FOUR: NOT ALL NIGERIANS SCAM. My feet ached. The inner lining of my brown biker boots had ripped so a little fold of material was pressing against my ankle and the left heel was asymmetrically worn away from many weeks pounding the streets. The toes of my sock were wet from stepping on a loose paving slab that splashed water as it wobbled underfoot. These are the trivial annoyances of winter day game—the hobby of prowling busy shopping streets to pick up beautiful women gets tougher when the weather turns. I'd been out four days straight through wind, rain, and snow. It was beginning to ‘wear on me. Covent Garden was wet and dreary that day. I had an enthusiastic young student in tow. He was a young, nerdy, socially awkward kind of guy with an unkempt shock of black hair combed unconvineingly over a thinning crown. The kind of guy you'd expect gets laid about once a year maximum. He was upbeat and anxious to learn, so I was taking him around for free. I wasn't really qualified to teach but I'd opened about one thousand girls and was at least getting some dates, so LSS guys even less successful than me wanted to hang out. I pulled up the collar of my fur-lined flight jacket and pulled my woolly hat down to my eyebrows, then jammed my numbing hands deep into my pockets. It was December 30, 2009. A cold, damp typical wintery London day, New Year just around the comer. Christmas decorations cluttered store windows, long streams of golden tinsel framing displays of snowmen and reindeer. As dusk approached, the fairy lights adorning lampposts and street signs began twinkling in the reddening sky. Everywhere I turned people were milling, jostling, and scurrying for that last sale item. Some rushed purposefully to and from their destinations as others strolled along dreamily, shopping the stores with their eyes, or watching as the street performers put on a show for their pleasure and their tips. Lovers strolled hand-in-hand and looked at the sights. Japanese tourists with comically oversized cameras took pictures of everything. This seasonal fauna of street life was a blur to me. My attention was on the fold of cotton pressing awkwardly against my ankle, and whether I should find a seat to take my boots off and fix it. Little things loom large when daygaming due to the high pressure of the activity. Covent Garden in winterI was sold on daygame now. I loved that there was an art to meeting @ git! in a public place and getting her number, perhaps taking her for a coffee there and then. It's the first step in getting laid, For most men it's a strange, intimidating but fantastically liberating experience—just imagine walking around the streets scanning for pretty girls and then, when you see one, you just walk up and make a conversation from nothing. Make her laugh, make her curious, and hopefully fuck her a few days or weeks later. For a guy conditioned that bars, nightclubs, and Internet dating sites are the only places to meet women this is an eye-opening thought. Any girl. Anywhere. Any time, 1 was still somewhat new to the game, having stumbled and mumbled through what was now six months of approaches. I had yet to get laid, but [ had gotten some basic competence at drawing girls into conversation and getting numbers, Sometimes the girls would even come on a date. That's what my student was looking for that day. I was still hurting from my devastating divorce from a woman with whom I'd shared the past nine years. We had dated for six and were married for three before she walked out on me that January. By the time I ws trawling these Covent Garden streets at the end of the year she had already remarried. It was almost a year since the separation, and over six months of Game. I was reflecting on the year, as we are wont to do when New Year approaches. Was I headed in the right direction? I'd initially promised myself a six- ‘month commitment to Game to see if it worked and if I could lear it, So how was it working out? In the early months of 2009, I allowed myself to wallow in the unfaimess of it all. The self-pity that comes from being dumped enveloped me, Outwardly, [ was the same guy I had always been, but inside I had been smashed into a million pieces, like a jigsaw box emptied onto the floor. I was glad I'd tried something, lest I allow myself to sink deeper into the pits of despair. I thought back to the Tony Clink book I'd picked up and then reordered earlier this year. A gaudy red book with cover art of a slick lounge-lizard guy surrounded by beautiful women. It promised the secret system to meet and attract women, sleeping with different girls every week. So, although married and in love at the time, I read it from idle curiosity, and it had stung. It's like the author knew my whole life. I replayed memories of all the girls I'd dated, laid, or failed with and every single time I could relate it to his system. I believed him. Then I loaned the book to a friend and forgot about it. In business I was successful, having always been at the top of my class from the time I was four years old right through my Master's program. Every single year I came top at everything. Soon London beckoned and a career in investment banking. I was so focused on professional advancement that I never noticed the lack of women around me. I'd just stumble into a relationship and gave it little more thought. Wolf of Wall Street it wasn't. I wasn't one of those rare guys who had girls throwing themselves at him an university and thus graduated with a First Class degree in Entitlement. ‘As my student and I strolled along through the busy streets, talking to a girl here and there, I suddenly heard someone singing flutter in the wind behind me. A sweet, feminine, melodic voice seemed to tinkle like water in a mountain stream. It was so sweet and uplifting, I turned to look and behind me walked a pretty young black girl. She was wearing a set of headphones, singing along with the music. I smiled and turned back to my student, and almost at once wondered what I was doing. I couldn't ignore this opportunity. Today I was the teacher, but I was still in the game myself, and she looked like someone that I'd really like to get acquainted with on a horizontal and naked basis. ‘Turning back towards the gir! I motioned her to take off the headphones. She gave me a wide-eyed inquisitive look, but obediently took the buds out her ears and returned my smile, "Did you really just start singing in the street?" I said. She smiled again and giggled a bit.eee SRR ssacmemseoee Semis Ee eee Rented hac meraepemirc onc SSGTd think, "Is that all there is?" I'd worked hard at school, graduated University top of my faculty, gone straight into a high-pressure high-achievement professional apprenticeship and then risen up the corporate ladder through dedication, talent, and a little good luck. Yet here I was, almost thirty-five years old, single, and living next door to a workshy immigrant family who had exactly the same apartment as me but paid for it with welfare funded by taxes stolen from me while I paid the full market rate. Just a week earlier the council had replaced the windows of every apartment except those of the people who actually paid their own rents. So the immigrants had new double-glazing and I had draughty single-glazing. I'd done everything society asked of me and done it well. Yet here I was, living in squalor, alone, with no idea where it had all gone wrong, Dark thoughts filled my mind back then. The only faint light of hope in my life was this secret system of Game. Looking back it sounds silly to be so pessimistic but having your heart broken and then enduring a twelve-month dry spell will do that to a man, That's where my obsession would come from, the driving energy that would eventually turn my life around. Itwas decadent but perhaps not how they meant it to be New Year's celebrations bore me. Being somewhat introverted, the idea of being at a party or a club where it was, standing room only was not enchanting to me in the least. Neither were the obnoxious mark-ups on the cover fees and drinks in London bars. But, like I said earlier, 1 was new to this journey. I had become friends with some of the RSG guys and keen to cement it. They were the "cool guys" and I wanted to continue to broaden my social circle and be a part of their group. The longer I hung out with them, the more I could lear. In those dark days it was a lifeline, what felt like my one shot at happiness. My new friend (and leader of RSG) Jimmy had invited me out for New Year's Eve with a group of the guys. So I went. The plan was to meet up at a Shoreditch bar-club called "The Last Days of Decadence.” Shoreditch is renowned for its party scene, frequented by a diverse demographic, mostly hipster twats. Last Days is a throwback to the Roaring 20s prohibition era from the stained glass windows to the cherry wood bars i's an exercise in old school indulgence, like a bar from Boardwalk Empire. It encourages retro evening formal dress. After a few stiff whiskeys I'd feel transported back in time, the perfect atmosphere for ringing in the New Year. Isent Rakiya a feeler text to see where I was at with her. Men who are new to Game are usually shocked at the flake rate—the amount of girls who will give a phone number then never reply. Even now when I'm pretty good and know how to solidify a number I still expect at least half of the girls to flake. Back then it was closer to ninety percent so even though the energy and sparkle had been good on the street I wasn't expecting much. I sent this: "Hey Jimmy. I just met this Nigerian girl, She's cute and sexy but looks like one of those sex perverts you wamed me about. Should I date her?" She understood the joke and responded almost immediately,"Hahaha, you should be careful! I recommend you run away from her." ‘We pinged a few messages quickly and my spirits rose. So many recent interactions had been a waste of time but this one stuck. She had high interest. I also found out that she lived quite close to me. A few hours passed, and as I was showering, my phone vibrated. Wiping my hands dry on the towel, I reached out from the shower cubicle and checked my messages. "What are you doing tonight?" Fucking score! Not only was she fishing for a date invitation (an extremely strong sign of interest for a girl, due to them usually taking a passive role) but she was trying to spend New Year's Eve with me—one of the few get- drunk-and-damn-the-consequences nights of the year. I was almost shaking in anticipation replied something or other and she called. After some quick chit-chat I told her about the evening plans. "That sounds like a lot of fun," she told me. "T think it will be, Why don't you join us?” "Td love that," she said. I could tell by the sound of her voice that she was excited "Great!" [ told her. We arranged to meet up near the Imperial War Museum an hour later, then I scrambled to get ready. Jimmy lived just a couple of minutes’ walk away from me, also in a squalid little two room flat with his mate ‘Tomasz, also an RSG guy. It was funny to be on the inside and see how these guys really lived. Jimmy and Tomasz spent most of their time sitting around in their boxer shorts and watching DVDs on their laptops. It was as if they tured on a different persona when they walked out the door. We had a can of beer each, then I popped out to collect Rakiya. She was all smiles and warm energy, so I took her to Jimmy's then we got a cab into town, Last Days was predictably jam-packed, It was like stepping into the 1920s—if that era had also been popular for trashy tattoos, binge drinking, and obesity. I's jarring to see a chubby foul-mouthed English woman willing cocktails while dressed like Marlene Dietrich. That's how my vibe was in 2009—whereas now I find beauty in everything back then it seemed like British culture was a festering sore rotting through a once-great nation. At least the music was good. Abenya was dolled up in a yellow dress and with her dark hair and skin she looked very cute in it. Like a big sexy banana, Ld noticed she was a bit chubby, but her smile and her youthfulness were nice and it was so long since I'd gotten laid I wasn't being too selective. In addition, I'd never shagged a black girl, unless you count a quickie with a prostitute in Prague five years earlier. Game is great for satisfying sexual curiosity. ‘We shuffled through the crowds until finding the rest of the team. Jimmy brought along an older woman he'd been banging because she was a famous songwriter and producer in the US. Betty was blonde and slim but pushing forty and pretty haggard from all the booze and cigarettes. Not really a catch, you might say. Jimmy wanted to get his band signed while I got the impression that Betty was using him for the bad boy sex. Jimmy was a decent looking thirty-one year old guy. Imagine Liam Gallagher, the wild and moronic frontman of Oasis, and then turn the volume down a little. Jimmy was astute, talented, but also slothfully lazy and not willing to put out the effort to reach his full potential. Also with RSG that night was Mick, an Australian raconteur gifted with the ability and wit to tell a story that would have the entire room spell-bound. Mick was always the life of the party. He had held down a wide variety of jobs in his twenty-eight years of life ranging from a croupier on a cruise ship, a ski instructor to faking his resume to land an accounting contract. That gave him fodder for quite a few of his tales. He was definitely an extrovert and very good with the ladies.Tony was the other guy there. He was the grand old man of RSG despite being my age. We all looked up to him because of his experience and deep knowledge of the crimson arts. He'd been a Salsa performer and railed over three hundred women. Even then he was in great shape and projected a solid masculine presence. ‘An hour passed and whiskey flowed. A burlesque dancer was cavorting across the small raised stage wiggling her hips and showing skin. By my third whiskey her breasts had been freed from their velvet prison and she was, dancing the Charlestone. I was walking Rakiya to the basement bar when Mick came over and grabbed me. "Nick, do me a favour. I want you to use your pre-selection to help me pick up one of these girls." When women see a man out with a pretty girl, they look at him differently than if he was alone or with male friends. Deep in their hindbrain women have short-cuts to assess a man’s sexual market value and one is "since he was able to score this pretty young thing there must be something about him, something that I'm missing out on.” Thus, one great way to make women interested in you is to be seen with a pretty girl on your arm. We call this "pre-selection," Mick continued, "I'm going over to talk to those girls". He nodded his head towards a group of three young girls standing against the bar. "Wait for me to open, then walk past with Rakiya and say to the girls, 'Be careful of this guy here, he gets laid like a rock star.” agreed, thinking of it as helping out a friend while continuing my learning process. Each time I saw Mick with a girl | went over and gave him this verbal pat on the back. More whiskey blurred my mind. Things were going great—we were swapping stories with the RSG guys, drinking, lots of ribaldry. Mick was coping off with some girl in a dark comer while Rakiya was pressed up against me all night, coming on to me, I'd already kissed her. ‘There's a nightclub area in the basement that serves drinks and also has a stage where they do a bigger cabaret, show. The toilets are just to the side of the stairs and, as we were coming down, I saw Mick. He was coming out of the women's bathroom with a giggling girl close behind. She scurried off with a guilty expression, and he stopped when he saw me. "L can't believe it! I just got a blowjob in the toilets," then he grinned broadly and said, "Cheers for the help! I was feeling at that point that things were somewhat surreal. This was an entirely new experience to me, I had been going along for most of my adult life living from one day at the office to the next and going home to my ‘monogamous relationship. Here I was tonight at one of the hottest parties in the city with the coolest group of guys and hanging out with a relatively hot young twenty-six year old. As I watched Mick make the rounds, making out with first one girl and then the next I was filled with a renewed desire to make this work. This is what I wanted and where I wanted to be right now. No more boring office life for me. As the night laboured into early morning, Betty suggested that we go to another party at CentrePoint, the 27th tallest building in London that was built on the former site of a gallows. Companies such as the William Morris Talent Agency out of the States, Arabian and Chinese oil companies and EA games used some of the offices. Up on the 33rd floor a 360 degree viewing gallery offered spectacular views on London but, more importantly, to us there was a bar in the middle of it. It was a private member’s club at that time, although I believe that has changed in years since. Betty was able to get our names on the guest list that night and the rumour was that Bey ‘once, who was on tour in London at the time was going to be hosting an after party. Feeling star-struck, I was having a hard time believing that this was my life. Or, more correctly, it was like peeling back the curtain on what may become my life. The prior New Year I'd gone up to the roof of my apartment building with a cup of coffe and watched the fireworks with my wife. Then we'd gone back and watched TV. I hadn't even changed out of my slippers. This was a different life, As it tuned out Jimmy and Betty were so lazy and disorganized that by the time we got to CentrePoint it was 3am, And if Beyonce ever had been there she certainly wasn't then. I looked under the tables just in case she washiding. The party was wrapping up. Staff were stacking chairs and mopping the floor. We had time for one drink and that was it before they kicked us out. Rakiya was hanging tightly on my arm, giggling at any little thing and as buzzed as I was. She'd not given me any trouble all night, never called her friends, never tried to take me to different bars. The whole time she'd just been pleasant company and let the night unfold. As we made our way down a quiet corridor right outside of the boar we started making out. It got pretty passionate and seedy as I pushed her up against a wall and started grabbing at her tits. My dick was hard and pressing up against her and she reached down and grabbed me through my pants. AAs things got more heated, a bouncer came along and moved us on. " Hey kids, none of that here," the muscled up, nicely dressed doorman told us, putting the brakes on my moves. Thad to think fast, it was crunch time. No more bars, no more stalling, Time to pull the trigger. "But how? How will I get her home now?" ‘The game plan then called for "extraction." It simply means getting the girl from the spot of the entertainment to your home so that you can have sex. It was ten years since I'd last done it. I didn't know what I was doing, but I knew that it had been a year since I'd had sex and I wanted to fuck this girl that night. I looked at her big ass and imagined slapping it as 1 rammed my dick into her. I looked at her dark brown skin and wondered how she'd look with my cum splashed all over it. I was so homny I would've fucked the Queen Mother. I knew the Tube ran all night on New Year so I walked her to the station, stopping to make out and feel her up along the way. We got the Northern line south to my place. I was still thinking, "This is really going to happen. ‘Tm going to be fucking this twenty six year old girl in less than an hour." But then when the train stopped two stations before mine and she started to get off I got that sinking feeling, Isaid, "Wait, where are you going? Come back.” "L have to change trains here to get home,” she said. I was getting anxious again. "What do I do now?" I simply said, "Just come on to my place and have a drink." "No, no, I have to get home," she said. I thought back again to what I was taught at the boot camp that I had attended back in July. She was showing me ASD—an anti-slut defence. That's when the girl wants to have sex, but she feels guilty about it and wants the guy to take the responsibility for moving it forward, so she'll throw up all kinds of obstacles. The crucial point is she is hoping the man will find a way to brush aside those objections so she can get the sex and still leave when it's over feeling like things had progressed naturally. Remembering this, I quickly said, "It's okay, we'll just have a quick drink and then you can go. We're not going to have sex." That did the trick. She got back on the Tube and I high-fived myself mentally. I was shocked and impressed with myself, It seems silly and trivial in the grand scheme of things, but this was a big thrill for me, being able to see the labours of my education come to fiuition. We got off the tube at Kennington and were soon in my place. I was feeling great at that point, the voice in my head telling me that it was a done deal. I was going to get laid. Once inside the apartment I poured her a drink, as promised. We never really finished it though. We were both kind of drunk and still hot and bothered from our earlier groping session. I started kissing her and, within minutes, dragged her into my bedroom. She wasn't offering any resistance at this point. She was loving it and as ready to fuck as T was, Tt was dark, and I didn’t turn on the lights. I fumbled with my mp3 player for soft jazz and the mood tumed seductive as I slipped off her dress and tossed it to the floor and dropped my pants right next to it. She slid down my body while I reclined back on the bed and, as I watched her sucking my dick, I almost still couldn't believe it ‘was happening. I looked down and could see her dark skin and big eyes looking up at me with her decent faketitties bouncing around as she sucked on my cock and I thought, "Damn! This is really happening. I'm really going to get to fuck her!" I got to have sex, finally, and it was good, We both enjoyed it but then things got weird afterwards. At this point, Twas still messed up and broken inside from my divorce. There were still all kinds of strange personality quirks Thadn't yet straightened out so, suddenly, I felt this intense need to "qualify". Qualifying is more pick up jargon. It means trying to demonstrate to someone the reasons why they should like you. The best way to explain this would be to think about how on a first date the man typically looks at the woman as being higher value then himself, She's the "prize" so to speak, and he needs to convince her that he is deserving, So, he'll talk about how successful he is or how rich he is, anything to make her believe he is worthy. I was being overwhelmed at this point by the need to do this even though I'd already fucked her. I's not logical. So I did something so weird and now once I thought back on it, so embarrassing. Treached under the bed and I pulled out an A2 manila envelope. Within this envelope was my resume, my diplomas from my Bachelor's and my Master's programs, certificates and commendations from employers, and references. It was a package that I put together in order to obtain a job, or supply proof to Human Resources for a background check when taking a job offer. I began showing this stuff to her. She was polite and attentive, but I know that she had to be thinking, "What the hell is wrong with this guy? Why is he showing me these five minutes after we had sex? This is just weird." She would have been right. It was bizarre in fact, and I know now that it was because I was in a place where I doubted myself to the point of not seeing my own value. I've discovered since that qualifying to a woman puts her in a place where instead of looking up at you she is staring down at you from her position of power. Women don't want to be on a pedestal—they want to look up to and admire the man who is fucking them. The contrast to this is having the woman qualify to you, and that was a lesson I would learn at a later date. So poor Rakiya probably started getting an icky feeling that maybe she'd slept with a man lower value than she'd presumed. Well, it's only sex. I'd gotten my notch and finally broke the duck with Game. Rakiya spent the rest of the night and left late in the morning. I never saw her again, and I'm not sure to this day if it was due to my peculiar behaviour, or if it was that she never really saw it as being more than a one-night stand, Either way, as I stood in my kitchen and poured my coffee that morning, ? was smiling. I had a helacious hangover and my balls were aching from finally being relieved of their "blue-ball" state, but the smile on my face lingered throughout the day. I had finally gotten laid, and Thad actually completed the process of meeting a stranger and then having sex with her in one or two days, from beginning to end.CHAPTER FIVE: A ROMANIAN IMMIGRANT My day game journey continued unabated. Getting laid that one time had showed me it was possible and, just as importantly, it was possible for me. It didn’t matter that I'd needed to talk to one thousand girls before one of them finally let me put my dick in her. Just knowing it was possible at all was like a lifeline to a drowning man. I knew I was broken inside. I knew my social skills sucked. So I wasn't expecting great results. Nobody expects an average-looking thirty-four year-old man to have sex with hot young girls. There are no statistics to determine the probabilities and approach-to-lay ratios for something like that. If you see a blind bear juggling six chainsaws it would seem crazy to criticise him for dropping them most of the time. Just seeing the big furry fella keep them airborne a few seconds is a major out-of-this-world achievement. That's how I felt getting laid in my state, at my age. As the years wore on I'd come to realise, retrospectively, that this was precisely the right attitude to have. Men who enter this game expecting a quick fix, full of bluster and self-deceit about how awesome they already are, are the men who drop out quickly. Traipsing the streets in all weather, constantly psyching yourself up to approach strangers and then constantly getting blown out is hard work. I'd fought kickboxing matches in Japan, Brazilian Ju Jitsu competitions in England, won a national BMX riding championship as a child, and attained highly-prized professional qualifications. Prior to my divorce I'd achieved a lot in life. Yet daygame was many orders of magnitude harder than everything else I'd done in my life combined. Daygame forces you to evaluate every single part of your life. Your identity, your ego, your looks, your fashion, your lifestyle, your interests—everything. Every time you walk up to a hot girl and hit on her she will give you feedback about your value. Unlike friends and family, she won't sugar coat it. Even though most girls are polite and well-meaning in their overt behaviours your ego can still sense the rejection. I was being told I wasn't good enough dozens of times every single week by precisely the girls whose opinion mattered to me. That's a brutal amount of ego death and most men simply can't handle it. So, I was lucky with my attitude. I already knew I sucked. I considered myself at rock bottom and at the beginning of a journey to rebuild myself. Rejection stung but it didn’t change my worldview nor did it shake my conviction to master this art. After shooting my cum all over Rakiya's breasts on New Year's Day I didn't get laid again all that next month, ‘The weather was starting to tum miserably cold, Snow and ice on the ground wasn't at all conducive to meeting girls outside. Cars would skid across black ice as I stepped carefully between puddles and snow drifts. I wasn't looking for an ice princess here; I wanted warm, willing flesh. Time to improvise. Where in winter can I find pretty girls in a warm environment? ‘The shopping mall. Westfield is a gigantic mall at Sheperd's Bush in West London. There's a part of the mall called "The Village". It's a more expensive area where there are over forty name brand stores such as Louis Vutton and Tiffany's and a champagne bar called Searcy's. They also have a middle class section and a food court—a typical high-end English mall. I went in with a plan to day game for a couple of hours, and I even had a fixed target of how many girls I needed to approach. Ten girls and I was allowed to go home without feeling like a failure. Treally didn't care if I got any solid numbers. Rakiya had boosted my self-confidence, I felt there would be a trickle before the flood. I was still having more failures than successes but I knew it was possible now. I knew that when applied right and with confidence, it could really work and the skill set was gradually falling into place. Like artillery gradually zeroing in on a bunker, my interactions were slowly improving We have a concept in game called "the spotlight effect” when you believe everyone is watching you. This fear welled up in me as I stepped into Westfield’s. I thought everyone was looking at me and thinking, "What is thissleazy character up to?” They would point me out to one of the mall security officers and toss me out, I imagined. Now I scoff at the idea. Most people are walking around the mall thinking about their own problems, needs, and desires. Over there is a middle-aged woman worried her husband will be mad about the new dress she just spent, too much money on. She's carrying a big Debenhams bag and can't help visualising how the dress inside makes her look. That mum at the counter of Miss Sixty with her daughter is paying for a dress that she knows the girl will love to wear to the dance, but her father will hate because it's too short, and he already doesn't like her boyfriend. That normal guy in blue jeans and baseball jersey is wondering if he should duck into the toilet to seratch his itchy balls or if anyone would notice him doing it right out in the open. The bottom line is most people just don't care what everyone else is doing. Most people don't even have the time to care due to the pace of their own lives. All you really have to do to convince yourself of this and spend a few minutes looking around. Sit on a bench and people-watch. See how wrapped up people are in their own thoughts. Another thing that I have discovered is this: On the rare occasion someone does the watch me approach and figures out I'm trying to pick up a girl, the men are thinking, "I wish I had the balls to do that,” and the women are thinking, "I wish more guys would approach me like that.” That is now. Back in January 2010, I was still feeling creepy. Shuflling off home, tail between my legs, was never an option. I wanted to get good at this. Not just good, I wanted the hot girls that the pick-up books had promised me. My previous achievements had convinced me that any time I tum my mind to a problem, I would find the solution, eventually. All I needed was the foundation, which I had thanks to RSG and the friends that I had made there. The white hot fire of motivation burned inside me. So, damn the consequences (real or imagined), I approached my first girl ‘It was a quick conversation that didn't result in a number, but it broke the seal, and I was warmed up. Nine more girls to go. I had ten coins in my left trouser pocket, so with minor ceremony I moved one to the right pocket. Each approach would allow me to move a coin and an instant date would allow me to move them all. J wasn't going home until the jingle of ten coins came from my right pocket. Confidence was what I needed, not self- doubt It was good to remind myself of that. I was standing in a big open plaza near Starbucks. I cast my eyes around, picking out the shapes of pretty women and talking a closer look at anyone who caught my eye. There wasn't much to look at, Half the patrons were men and most of the girls were with partners or in small groups. Actually, finding a hot young gir! walking by herself requires sifting a lot of chaff to find the wheat. Finally, after ten minutes, I spotted a really tall girl walking along. Immediately my eyes scanned down her long legs. It seemed each of her steps covered a continent, more of a stride than a walk. She had a proud grace in her movements. Then I looked at the rest of her and, from where I was standing, she was looking super hot. Later, I would come to refer to such girls as greyhounds, a type common in Eastern Europe. They are generally tall, curvy, intelligent, and well educated. Many of them have financial independence from following a career. My feet began moving to catch up, Once I got in front of her, I was slightly deflated, As amazing as she had looked from a distance, she was probably only a 7/10 up close. Long brown hair and a sexy body, but her teeth were really small. They were clean and straight and looked well taken care of, they were just really short, giving her a slightly strange look. Her nose was slightly crooked, looking like it had been broken at some point in the past (I'd later discover she'd took a spiked ball full in the face while competing in volleyball). These were all trivialities, however. She wasn't perfect, but she was still a fine young filly. 1 stopped her with the same opening line that I'd been using lately. "Can I just tell you something?" It might seem strange, and maybe as if it would frighten most women to be approached like that. But here we were, in the middle of the day at a crowded shopping mall, She was probably thinking it’s a public place and she liked the look of me so what harm can it do?"Hi," Lwent on when I saw that I had her attention. "I was just over there and I saw you walking by. I thought to myself that if T didn’t come over and talk to you I'd be kicking myself later. I think you're absolutely gorgeous.” She smiled and said, "Thank you," and she wasn't walking away. Great. I was still quite mechanical at this point in my development, all of my attention being sucked up just in concentrating on delivering the material and fighting back the anxiety. I wasn't yet able to detect the subtle signals in her eyes, smile, and body language to know if she liked me. It was enough that she was standing still and listening Inside, 1 was chuckling. I'm sure she thought I must have balls of steel to just walk up to a woman like that, out of the blue, and hit on her, The reality is my stomach was churning and my feet were going numb, because I was so nervous. The idea of all of this was, of course, to get the women to respond in a positive way. I just wasn’t used to it actually happening yet. Like a duck gliding gracefully across the water while its feet thrash furiously under the surface, I was putting on a front. We started chatting, her in a cute dusky accent, She told me that she was from Romania, so T went with that, "That explains why you sound like Dracula. I can see your eyes drifting to my neck.” She laughed, so I kept at it. "I'd avoid that store over there, it sells garlic." She laughed again and we spoke some more. I accused her of being a gypsy then calmed it all down and talked normally. She introduced herself as Luminita, a twenty-eight year old office girl. The conversation was going well, She was smiling, contributing, and by the five-minute mark I guessed I had to push things ahead, [may as well go for an instant date here. I's worth a shot." An instant date means rather than taking the girl's number and then texting her a day or two later, you walk her off to a cafe there and then. "Hey, why don't we go right over there to Starbucks and get a coffee?" She was up for it. "Yeah sure, that would be nice." We got our coffees and sat down at a table. I was still really nervous. This was maybe my fifth instant date. 1 ‘wasn't sure what to talk about, so I started explaining the book I was reading, Man of Steel and Velvet by Aubrey Andelin, a 1970s relationship guide. Andelin had written about masculinity and how in order for a man to be the best man he can be he must combine steel (the metaphor for the masculinity the ability to lead and dominate) with velvet (emotional connection and empathy towards your family). Tony had recommended it to me and it was helping me understand my place in the world. Trealized after several minutes that I was droning on a bit, These were new ideas to me, and I really believed in them, but I didn’t want to sound evangelical, Pethaps I'd been too clumsy and ruined the momentum that she and I seemed to have had going from the start. But I told myself that she was still here, smiling, and listening attentively. Presumably, it was going well. Its easy to second-guess yourself when inexperienced. I hadn't yet developed the intuition that would tell me, "Don't worry, you're right on track.” After about fifteen minutes as she finished up her coffee she piped up, "Well, I suppose I should get back to the shopping I came here to do today. You can walk along with me if you like." We looked in a few stores. I was proud of myself for getting this far, but at the same time struggling with the next step—I needed to begin touching her. As we passed by a video game store I decided to try something new to me, I was here to practice, right? “Hey, come here I want you to see this game." I didn’t care about the game, it was just an excuse to grab her hand and lead her. She allowed it. There is a natural progression of touch, casual, appropriate, and respectful in the beginning but moving towards increasingly intimate touch.