| Okay guys, I realise that this is really long, but I just had the best night I've had in at least a year, and it's an awesome story. Actually, I punched it into MS Word and it's 2200 words, 5 pages, and that's me leaving stuff out. I used to write for a living. Deal with it.
However, I promise that it's worth the read: I've included some really good examples of what did and didn't work, and some great lessons learned, so if you want some examples of how things can go right, read on!
I first came across PUA type stuff in early '04 when I was in finishing highschool, and it was definitely a lifechanger. Within 12 months I had picked up a few girls, lost my virginity, and got my first LTR.
However, 3 years having a girlfriend, then straight into another year long relationship, then two years of being lazy due to work commitments have taken their toll!
I recently had a big blowout that made me realise just how far my game has regressed, so last week I decided to make a change. In the last three days I've read three books that I should have read a long time ago - The Game (awesome story, although short on techniques), Mystery Method (essential), and Natural Game by Gambler (once you've read Mystery Method, read this to learn all the things that Mystery does wrong).
So I'm stuck out here in Perth, Western Australia, for a week, and I don't know anybody. Going out solo on NYE was going to be a huge step, and I was sure I'd end up by myself in a corner, but fuck it, what did I have to lose?
I always like the first set to go well, so I pick the easiest thing I can find. In this case, I was walking down the street just south of Perth's club district (Northbridge), at 9:30pm on the 31st. I got stuck waiting at a traffic light next to a very drunk couple from New Zealand. I got talking to them, got into a drinking competition with the husband from the six pack he was carrying, all this while walking down the street! Then they asked if I knew an Irish bar. I said yes, and started walking with them towards it, got some direction from some 9s, some other crazy shit happened, then they disappeared.
Warm up complete and I was in an awesome frame, so I went to the Irish bar anyways. When I got there, it seemed a bit too quiet and full of 30-40 year olds, although it was crowded which was good, so I went in anyways. I needed to keep the mood going, so I scouted for a girl to line up next to, and found a 30-something chick who was about a 5.
I was still suffering a little bit of approach anxiety, so I just stood there playing with my phone at first. I could see in the mirror behind the bar that she was checking me out though, and soon an opener came to me - the bar staff was taking a long time, so I turned to her and said:
"Hey (pause, while she turned her head)... do the bar staff eventually come around, or is this one of those self-serve bars?"
She laughed at that, and then I launched into a story (true, I might add) of a girl I used to work with who would serve herself drinks at the bar. I added that she looked like she was a bad girl underneath her nice girl exterior, and maybe she should try it. After this I pretty much had her hooked, and we talked for about 10 minutes.
At the end of the day, she was just another warm-up set, so once I was sure that I could have converted I excused myself and walked towards the dancefloor. I was feeling pretty awkward now, it would have looked weird to be dancing on my own, but it was too loud to easily engage any of the sets. I pulled out my phone, and played with that for a bit, while doing a bit of people watching.
Next thing I know, some Irish guy starts talking to me. It was the funniest shit ever, I literally couldn't understand a word he said. He was asking me where the bar lineup was, and it took me six tries to figure that out. Anyways, he's pretty friendly, so I figure I could use a wingman for a bit.
However, next thing you know, the guy is trying to buy me a drink. Now, I'm not homophobic, but when a drunk guy puts his arm around you, gets his face right into yours and asks if he can buy you a drink multiple times, there's only one thing to do. Get. The. Fuck. Out.
It didn't help that I was dressed in a way that, although stylish, could possibly be construed as gay - grey jeans, black leather shoes, Paul Frank striped black shirt and thin tie.
Even so, this was perfect. I found the most closed off, hottest set of cougars that I could find (they were still 5s to 8s at best, but I'm doing my best), and walked straight up to them and opened with:
"Hey (wait for head turn)... quick question. Do you think, like, is there any way, that what I'm wearing now could be seen as, well, gay??"
They sort of looked at me funny but I plowed through, and told them what had just happened, and it was perfect. I mean, I had read about using it as a pickup, but to actually have it happen to me made it such an authentic opener. I was still in A1-2 at this point, so I spent the next 5 minutes plowing through a few more stories, but I had their attention and I kept it well.
The only problem I was having was that my target, the 8, was giving me lots of attention, but her friend, a 5, was starting to sulk a bit. So I turned fully onto the 5 and started getting a good conversation going with her.
This is where things started to fall apart. I was now getting more attention from the 8, the other two friends were content, and the 5 was getting into it again. But I was really struggling to keep the balance. At some point one of the content ones left to talk to someone else there were there with, which was fine, but after a while the 8 and the remaining friend got bored and went for a smoke to leave me with the 5. Not a total disaster or anything, but not my intent either.
I stayed with the 5 for a while, and we had a great chat, but I was getting bored. Eventually the others came back, but they were talking to the guys they were with, who were huge AMOG looking dudes in their 30s. It looked like one of them was the 8s boyfriend. I was doing well, but I didn't feel ready to compete with muscle-bound AMOGs quite yet. Time for greener pastures!
I walked up the street towards Paramount, a massive club that's always filled with 18-25 year olds. It was a huge lineup, so I employed a trick that I stumbled upon last week. I did a quick scan of the line, and found a 2-set with an 8 and a 4. Following the 3-second rule, I walked up to them and opened with:
"Hey - how long have you guys been waiting in line to get this far?"
They told me about 20 minutes, and then I plowed on with stories of what I'd been doing so far, until admitting that I was only talking to them to skip the first 20 minutes of the line!
Once I'd hooked them (plus I had a built in time constraint of being in a line to see my friends inside), I started including them into the conversation. Gambler's conversation tactics of using statements and cold reading instead of constant questions really helped me here.
For example, instead of asking "how do you two know each other", I guessed that they were from the suburbs (correct), that they had just finished high school (correct), asked what they were doing (HB4 said nursing, HB8 said unemployed) and then guessed that they had met in highschool, because (good neg here) "HB8, you're unemployed and live in a cave, so I can't imagine you met your friend anywhere else". Great results.
Admittedly, I was probably still DLVing a little bit at this point, my calibration was still a little off, so I left them as soon as I got in to avoid digging myself any further. Still, I was getting warmer!
Once inside, I ordered a drink, got picked up by a 2 and chatted to her for a bit before she excused herself, hung out some more, and eventually ended up on the upstairs smoking balcony. Awesome pickup location!
I saw a 3-set leaning over the balcony. It was a HB8/bf pair plus a HB7 single friend who was on her phone, looking bored. They were facing away from me, so I walked up to the balcony, leaned against it facing in the opposite direction with my foot pointed away from the single girl, then opened by looking at her over my shoulder.
I can't actually remember what I opened with. Probably just "Hey, how are you?", and then I think I plowed through some stories, a bit a questioning, a bit of guessing more based on her answers, and a few other bits and pieces.
It took about a minute or two to hook her, and once I thought I had reached the hook I shifted my body language by leaning back into a corner between the balcony and a support beam behind me. She responded well, and leaned in to get closer to me, giving me really good lock-in.
At this point I hadn't even acknowledged her friend, but nobody seemed to care, and soon we were alone. It's a bit hazy what happened after this. I remember making her guess my job (it's one of those jobs that if you just come out and say it you sound like you're talking yourself up, so the guessing game works well on that). When she asked me why I was alone, I lied and said that my friend had hooked up with a girl, so I was giving him some space. That worked really well too.
I also used some of Gambler's tactics like "I really like you, I think we should go travelling together, like, to the bar or something." Soon enough, I was really stepping up the joking "We should hang out sometime, or like, get married" type stuff to the point that I was introducing her to randoms as "My wife, Courtney," and she was loving it.
Only one thing was a bit weird. We had tons of kino, and we kissed at midnight and all that (although her friend seemed strangely annoyed by us kissing), but she wouldn't make out with me or dance with me otherwise. I could grab her ass, kiss her on the cheek, smell her hair, anything, and she was all over me, she just wouldn't dance or make out.
I did the finger test on her, and her ring finger was the same length as her index finger, which indicated that she's probably high testosterone for a girl. Therefore (on average) high sex drive, so that didn't match her behaviour, although it's not a very accurate test. (The longer the ring finger relative to the index finger, the higher a person's testosterone levels, true story)
I was also getting this vibe that she just wanted me to go caveman and skulldrag her home right then. She asked me a few times "so what are we doing tonight / where is this night leading / etc." But I thought I had better spend more time on the comfort stage rather than escalating in case I got last minute resistance when I got her home. Big mistake!
Escalate, escalate, escalate should be your plan in a situation like this. Why was she acting so oddly? Because she had a boyfriend, who she was obviously willing to cheat on, but her friends weren't going to let her and she knew it. Next thing I know, her friend rolls up, and being the hotter, dominant friend, my hook-up just rolled over and went home with her, ditching me. Fuuuuuuck!
In case you're wondering, I'm leaving in only a few days, so I didn't number close or any of that. Maybe I should have, maybe the boyfriend thing was a lie, but I didn't really care that much. If it wasn't on that night, I wasn't too interested in follow-up.
Anyways, that was 1am, and I still had another awesome 3 hours after that, so no major problem. Picked up some more ugly chicks, talked up some hot ones, had a 50-year-old get mad at me for chatting up his wife, chatted him up and smoothed things over, had a guy try to sell me pills, tried to get an ugly chick to play the sexless inn-keeper, got a discount on my cab ride home. Great night!
If you've read this far, well, I'm impressed. I mostly wrote that so I wouldn't forget all the great stuff that happened on my first night of following proper PUA procedure, but hey, if you enjoyed it, good for you.
If you've got any questions, comments or criticisms, fire away.
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CHAT
