FR: Shoe Sizes — The Art Of Pissing Off Women

**Reposted from the first Lair, original date: 1/21/04
**Image removed

I end up going to work on Friday after my outing at the Stuff Afterparty (see my Field Report “Back in the Saddle” for details), albeit late.  But my boss is out that day, so it’s all good.  I end up leaving early too, which means I get in a good 5 hour work day.  Ahhh, America!

I meet up with Swinggcat again for dinner at Toi, which is a rock and roll Thai food place.  We’re eventually joined by Roadking and we discuss some of the new tactics and theories Swinggcat is developing (he’s been field testing them a lot lately and plans to share some of his developments in his newsletters.  If you haven’t bought his book, at least sign up for his mailing list, which is free.  You can do so here.).  After diner, Raodking goes back to his place to shower and dress up for clubbing, and Swingg and I head towards the Well, a really great little bar hidden away in Hollywood.

We get there only to discover that the bar is closed due to a plumbing problem.  Someone must have had the mother of all shits to close down a major bar like the Well due to plumbing.  Anyway, I call Roadking to try and coordinate a new place to meet.  As I’m on the phone, three girls in their sexiest, trendiest clubbing clothes walk up.  They look at the sign on the door explaining the plumbing problem like they are trying to remember how to read, then they look around like lost lambs trying to figure out what to do next.  I laugh and yell at them:

“Yeah, that’s right!  You got dressed up for NOTHING!”

Swinggcat laughs at this and the girls walk away indignantly.  I hear Roadking cackling on the phone as well.  We decide to meet at Star Shoes up on Hollywood Boulevard.  Star Shoes is a pretty cool bar that draws a fairly artsy crowd.  It’s an actual shoe store that becomes a club at night, it’s also right next to a stand-up comedy club.  So  Swingg and I walk in there and I go to the bar to get a drink (Red Bull, baby).  While there, a skinny blonde chick opens me up, commenting on my badass sunglasses.

A good tactic when someone opens you is to act aloof.  This puts the responsibility of creating rapport on them.  However, you have to be careful that you have enough value to warrant them to do so.  If you aren’t valuable enough, the person opening you will just move on.  I learned this when I met Rudolph Schenker, guitarist for the rock band The Scorpions, at the Stuff Magazine afterparty.  I tried talking to the guy, but he was pretty much silent the whole time, causing me to keep talking in a desperate attempt to get rapport with the dude.  I eventually realized his game, and it’s very powerful.  The more someone tries to get rapport with you, the more you pull away.  It’s a great tactic to get people to chase you, so I tried it out with this girl.  It worked well enough, but I knew I couldn’t push it too far, so I did a bit of cocky/funny with her.

I then went Primoman style and hit on some fat UGs, who were into me.  I left them wanting more and went around working the room.  Eventually I get back to where the band is setting up and I see a girl trying to go back behind the set-up area.  I jokingly tell her she’s not important enough to go back there.  She desperately asks me where the bathroom is.  I laugh and point her in the right direction.  She leaves her friend alone as she hurries to the ladies room, so I say to her friend “It looks like you could use some company.”  Her friend brightens up and gladly accepts the offer.

She’s a really cute blonde, who turns out to be a tourist (you find a lot of these on Hollywood Blvd.).  She’s visiting from Chicago.  This is good because girls who are on vacation are usually more open to being sexually adventurous because they are outside the normal social restrictions of their daily life, so I start working the adventure of Los Angeles and act like a real Hollywood player while still talking about my humble origins from the east coast.

I make it a point not to ask the girl too many questions and instead try and control the frame by talking ABOUT subjects as opposed to letting her talk or answer me.  This is important because in a bar/club atmosphere with lots of stimulus, if you tax a person too much they will get bored and move on (especially attractive girls).  One major rule of pick-up is “You always give before you take.”  Asking too many questions takes too much from the other person, it’s better to give them a story or an experience before asking a question or two.

The girl is a stand-up comedian, so I bust on her for being an attention whore.  Things go good for a while until her friend comes back, but Swinggcat sweeps in and runs interference for me like a good wing should.  I’m doing a VERY good job of undermining my target’s self esteem, so she starts getting very agitated about the lack of validation.  This causes her to start hitting on Swingg, who whips out the digital camera for a picture routine.  My target starts hanging off Swingg, so I encourage him to take her in order to undermine her jealousy trap (God, did I just write that?  This is starting to sound like The Art of War.  Oh well.).  Anyway, I can tell I’m pushing it with my target so I take it further and pay her friend some attention.  They end up deciding to leave, but they invite us to come along with them.  We’re still supposed to meet up with Roadking, so we tell them we’ll meet up with them later (we never did).

Our next set starts when this girl tries to push by me to get to the bathroom.  It’s pretty crowded and she asks if she can get past.  I tell her it’ll cost her, so she tries to go around me.  I move and block her.  This goes on two or three more times, and her friends are cracking up.  The girl eventually pushes past me, but the damage is done.  Her friends applaud and talk about how hilarious that was.  Swingg and I go into set.  Roadking shows up and joins in.  One of the girls, Roadking, and I all eventually go outside for a smoke break just as the band is gearing up to play.  We banter with the girl for a bit doing a lot of cocky/funny while outside.  We can hear the music thumping, so when she goes back in to join he friends, Roadking and I stay on the sidewalk in front of the club.  I hate live bands in bars because they are too fuckin’ loud to PU effectively.

Outside we start approaching lots of girls.  Roadking is a bit rusty due to the fact he was spoiled by having a hot lesbian stripper roommate who used to pull girls for him, but since she moved away he’s been trying to get back up to speed.  Eventually Swinggcat joins us outside and we have a few good sets.

One is with an older girl who’s dressed like a 20 year old.  My guess is she was at least in her mid 30s.  Roadking opens her about her hat.  She comes over and we start talking to us.  This poor girl is massively insecure and is desperately looking for validation from men that she’s still attractive (she was decent looking, but not all that hot).  She starts dropping hints, like she hasn’t made out with a guy in two years and shit.  She also mentioned she’s in therapy.  She’s looking for sympathy, but we just ridicule her for being so pathetic.  This makes her qualify herself more.  We probably should have validated her a bit, because doing so would have made her an easy pull, but we were too caught up in the cocky/funny frame to do so and eventually blow her self esteem out, which causes her to leave and find her friends.

The skinny blonde who commented about my sunglasses earlier shows back up with her warpig friend, who we of course shower with more attention to make the blonde jealous.  The tactic works and she starts competing for attention.  I mess up her hair and she starts poking my belly, almost attacking me in a playful way.  She’s pretty into me, giving off some big IOIs, but upon closer inspection I noticed a few small cold sores around the mouth, so I decide to pass.

Star Shoes gets a bit too crowded, so the three of us walk down to Daddy’s Lounge, which is the sister bar to the Well.  It’s a pretty hip lounge which a lot of celebrities have been known to attend (it was the place of Ben Affleck’s last alcohol binge before going to AA).  We get there and run into Alleycat, who’s sporting a blonde on his shoulder.  I give her a big hug right away, acting like I know her.  It goes over well.  We talk to Alleycat briefly before he leaves with his girl.  Because the Well is closed down, all the spill-over has migrated to Daddy’s, so the place is PACKED.  We decide to call it a night and get some food, so Roadking drives us down to Swinger’s cafГ©.

Once there, we instantly start abusing the waitress in a playful way.  She likes it and is laughing, which is cool.  Then, Roadking’s stripper friend shows up after she’s off work, and I start verbally abusing the SHIT out of her.  I don’t remember a lot of what I said, but Swinggcat told me it was pretty evil.  I was getting to her because she commented on how hard I was busting her balls, but she probably gave me more IOIs than she ever had before because of it.  Next time I might be nice and give her some validation before being so hard on her, because I felt like I might have taken it too far.

I got back home around 4 am and crashed.  Over-all, it was a fun night.  I feel like I’m back in the game and both Swingg and Roadking commented that my game has drastically improved since before my Christmas break, so that made me feel good.  I know it may sound like I’m just being a complete ass hole and driving a lot of these girls away, but for some reason that’s almost what works the best.  It’s hard to realistically write about their reactions, because words can’t convey the energy of a set, just the result. 

Regardless, I think a lot of the art is to get them to the point of being driven away, and then bringing them back.  It goes with that whole notion of commitment and consistency, where once someone gives into the validity of your actions, you can push them even further.  Little kids are great at this, where they do something bad, get their parent’s to forgive them, then turn right around and doing something worse.  Since the parent has already ratified that it was okay to misbehave, it’s harder for them to backtrack and easier to give in.  The same is true when it comes to girls.

I’m feeling pretty good that I’m making some progress, and I look forward to getting out more and improving.  I still have a long way to go, but the more I do it, the better I get and the better I feel.

Hopefully I’ll be feeling some boobies soon.  =)

Thundercat