I am the man.
No, that's not it.
I am the fucking
MAN! 
Why am I the fucking man?
Trick question: because I just am. And so are you. We all are. Even you, who are reading this and feeling like the term 'you' applies to everone here but you. No. YOU ARE THE FUCKING MAN.
Explanation time.
Went to Washington DC this past weekend for an annual conference on Israel and America. Political bullshit, but this conference attracts college students from all over the country. And really hot college girls are known to make up the bulk of the female attendance. The trip lasted 3 days. Four days after that, my student campus group threw a rager at a club where I bumped into a girl I've been crushing on all year...
Let's begin. Strap in, kiddos, it's a long one.
DAY 1: Got into Reagan National Airport around 5pm. So jet-lagged and tired that I only had the energy to get food with my friends and then crash. Nothing exciting.
DAY 2: Here it gets good... Political conference stuff all day. At night, the group of us went to a bar over by Capitol Hill. There's a guy and a group of girls at the table next to us. None of them especially attractive, but one has a nice rack, enough to pique my interest.
We each get a pitcher, we each get nice and boozy. Usually I don't let myself drink in situations where I can meet women because I want to develop naturally, but I recently realized I can meet women ANYwhere. So why prevent myself from having fun with my friends? If I meet a girl while drunk, super. If I don't, at least I had a good time.
The bar is super small, but I manage to ease into the conversation. At one point, a pair of girls approach our area and start introducing themselves to the people in the group behind us. When they come my way for an introduction, I look one of them in the eyes.
Holy. Shit.
You guys know that famous Nat Geo photo of some girl from Afghanistan? Nothing very special about it, except her eyes. Mostly green, hazel, some blue. They're bewitching. It's hard to look away from her.
This girl's eyes had the same effect. Bright teal. Gorgeous! Gorrrrgeous! She was about a 7.5 (had some acne problems, but not severe enough to turn me off), but I could tell that when she got older she would probably turn into a 9 or 10.
We talk. I make a joke. She laughs and touches my arm a second longer than she should. It's on.
Then... disaster strikes.
A girl I had been sleeping with, we'll call her HB Blondie, comes up and tries to get me to go to the bar with her while I'm in the middle of a conversation with HB Eyes. I politely decline, and go back to the conversation. Several times, this girl tries to pull me away from HB Eyes by trying to engage me in a 1 on 1 conversation, not seeming to care that I'm already talking to someone else.
It starts getting annoying. I give her curt and thin-lipped but polite responses because I don't want to blow myself out in front of HB Eyes. Finally, HB Blondie gets the hint and leaves.
Phew!
HB Eyes and I sit at a table and get into a conversation about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I usually never discuss politics with women I'm interested in, but since it was the one sure thing all the students there had in common, it happened kind of naturally.
Talking, talking. I use a lot of light kino; shoulder, arm, upper back. She responds in kind. Finally our group decides to leave, and her friend had seemed to partner up with one of my buddies.
ME: Looks like our people are going.
HER: Mine too.
ME: Alright, let's go.
I get up to head to the door with her. It's a thick crowd of people, so without a word or even looking back I hold my hand out behind me, like it was expected for her to take my hand. She does. I give a gentle squeeze to test her SPAM. She squeezes back.
I'm still pretty drunk. We walk with our people to Capitol Hill, and the whole time HB Blondie is staring daggers at me. I ignore her. Once we get to the Capitol, HB Eyes immediately pulls me off in a different direction away from the group. We stop at a railing out of sight from the group. Light chatter. Then...
ME: Hold on, I need to see something.
--Lean to kiss her. Intense 30-second make out session ensues.--
ME: (pulling away, smiling) Okay, that's all I needed to see.
HER: (smiling back, somewhat nervous/confused) That's all?
We meet up with the group again, and once more HB Eyes pulls me off in a different direction. We wind up in an alcove and we make out. She did this weird thing where she would move her body real sensually and moan whenever we made out, as if we were dry humping. Never seen a girl do it before. It was kind of weird. Anyone ever experience this before?
We wind up on the Washington Monument lawn. I lay down, thinking we're going to chill. She immediately mounts me and we go to town. I would have sold my soul for a condom at that point.
Eventually, after we stop, she says she has to leave because she has to wake up at 6:45 AM (it was already something like 2:30AM). We take a cab home, make out in front of her hotel room door, and that's that. Kind of an anti-climactic finish, and she didn't respond to my text the next day until I was already on my flight home the day after because she had left her phone in her room.
Oh well.
DAY 3:
Same business. Political conference, etc. etc. At one point, my buddy and I head to a conference for our fraternity. I see a girl there, HB Jew, I had met through one of the girls in our group. About a 7.5, maybe 8. She gives me a big, toothy smile, a wave, and we hug.
ME: So what are you doing here?
HER: I'm one of the representatives for (some youth group no one here will probably recognize).
ME: So you're something like the cheerleader for (our fraternity)?
HER: (Smiling) Yeah, like that.
ME: Well, where are your pom poms?
HER: (still smiling) They didn't give me any.
ME: You know, I've got a cheerleader costume in my closet if you need to borrow it. Skirt, pom poms, the whole deal.
HER: (cracks up)
Not the funniest joke, but it kick started some good banter between us. We talk for 10 minutes. The whole time, HB Jew gives me very positive body language. Constantly smiling (she has a gorgeous smile, hot damn) laughing heartily at most of my jokes. Not much kino from her, but she was giving me such good vibe it didn't really matter.
And at one point...
HER: (With a smile and that "I will have you if I have to fucking beat down every bitch at this conference to do it" look in her eyes) You're really funny.
Once more, it appears to be on.
She then had to take a call and said she'd be right back. Eventually I got tired of waiting for her at our table and mosied over to talk with my friends. Soon we had to leave, and I caught her in the doorway just as she was finishing her call. I handed her my phone, inviting her to go out with us later, and she plugged in her digits.
Immediately after I leave, I whip out my phone and text her.
ME: You'll get my bill in the mail (reference to a joke I made about charging people to talk with me since I'll have to take to stripping after graduation to make money as an English major).
We have a pretty colorful, flirty text conversation throughout the day. At a banquet that evening, after our conversation had presumably finished, I get a text from her.
HER: Where are you, my favorite stripper?
I have NEVER had a girl I just met not only re-start a text conversation with me but express a desire to see me again. Let alone express affection by calling me her "favorite" anything. It felt pretty awesome.
Fast forward to when I meet up with her at a lounge later that night. My phone had freaked out, probably from the very humid air in the pool room, and had seemingly become possessed by Lucifer. It was completely unusable, couldn't even read my texts. I swear to God, it was like the Adjustment Bureau decided to fuck up my night. Finally, around 1:30am, I got it working to the point where I could make a call and met up with HB Jew (also saw that I had 1 or 2 missed texts from her). I met her outside the lounge where she was waiting for her friend with one of her other friends, a smoking 9.
Had to stay on target. Not the time, not the place. There will be others.
While we were waiting, guys leaving the club kept striking up conversations with the two of them. One bold dude with glasses was playing around with her hands and flirting hardcore (she described this behavior later as "creepy"; apparently the guy didn't land any attraction or much comfort with her). Another well-dressed and pretty good-looking guy was inadvertently telling her about some organization he owns; clearly bragging.
Watching HB Jew, I noticed something about her interactions with these guys... not even with the well-dressed and probably very rich, handsome guy, did she genuinely smile or even laugh. In fact, with Richie Rich, she didn't smile at all. A huge difference between her interactions with me, where she was constantly smiling and laughing.
Even after HB Jew's friend came out (our mutual friend, actually) we stood around waiting for them to finish talking. eventually we got sick of waiting and told them we'd meet them at the hotel.
HB Jew: (turning around sharply, surprised) Oh, I'm so sorry! Ok, we'll be right there.
This could have been because she 1) didn't want me to leave, 2) didn't want to walk back without a guy for protection, 3) didn't want to leave our mutual friend, 4) or some combo of the above. I internalized it as #1 at the time.
We talk about how we want to walk around the monuments, but when we get to the hotel both her friends say good night and head to their rooms, so I assume that HB Jew would follow them.
Instead, she bids them goodnight and walks with me back into the city, where we catch a cab to the Washington Monument.
This whole having women being attracted to me thing is getting to feel pretty nice
On the way to the cab, while crossing a street, she trips over herself and stumbles. I reach out and steady her.
ME: (Holding out my hand in front of her) Looks like you need someone to help you cross the street.
HER: (Smiles, takes it... says something I don't remember)
ME: (A few seconds later) By the way, that's my smooth move of the night.
HER: (smiling) Really? That's it?
ME: (Tried to think up something witty here, and, failing, just smiled and said...) Maybe. (Held eye contact with her here just long enough past normal; once again, she gives me that "I will HAVE you" look)
We walk from the Washington Monument to the Lincoln Memorial, where we sit down and talk. Several times on the walk, I performed the squeeze test, and she responded perfectly. She tells me about the guys who creeped on her at the lounge, and we get into a discussion about this creepy "Gollum flirt" I invented with my friends as a joke if you ever wanted to blow yourself out of a whole bar. I don't know why I thought it was a good idea at the time, but I showed her in the cab; hunch over, lick lips, rub hands together, etc. It wasn't AFC of me... it was just stupid. Fortunately she really didn't seem to care, even laughed a little, and we joked about it later. If she didn't get weirded out by that, then I figure she was dead set on having me. So, when we were sitting at the Lincoln, we're holding hands...
HER: Yeah, a lot of creepy guys at Lux (the lounge she was at). Not as bad as your Gollum flirt, though.
ME: (something along the lines of...) I'm surprised it didn't send you running for the hills.
HER: (smiling) It was creepy, but not THAT creepy.
ME: Well... (drawing out the word, looping my arm over her shoulder so we're still holding hands) What if I did this?
--Lean in for kiss... make-out session ensues--
I had been drinking earlier (and so had she, she said) but my drunk had mostly worn off long ago by this point, before we even held hands crossing the street. Getting to hand-holding is the only real part of getting to know a girl that still scares me; once it does happen though, I'm comfortable enough to go in for the kiss. So since I wasn't really feeling my drunk at that point, I'm counting this one as a (mostly) sober pick-up.
Nothing much more to note after that, except some more make out sessions and really good conversation. Unfortunately, she had to wake up early the next day to drive back to Ohio.
Just my luck, right? We've been texting each other back and forth even after getting back to our respective states, though.
I was genuinely a little sad to leave her; we had a really good connection building between us. Under different circumstances I would have been happy to be a little AFC for her, like take her out to dinner... But, c'est la vie.
Man this is getting long. I'm going to make this next one short as I can.
So, as for the club party where I ran into the girl I've been crushing on...
CLUB PARTY (4 days after HB Eyes):
Read a little bit more of Stormy's "Frame Control, Defining Reality, and Being High-Value" thread (SUPER FUCKING EPIC, by the way. Every single man on this earth needs to read it). Was determined to get "in state" for the pre-party at the apartment of a guy in my frat. This is the place where all the hot sorority girls guys in my frat know go to pre-party. I'm not all that close with just about every guy in my frat, and I definitely didn't really know any of the sorority girls that would come to the pre-party. The only people I was close with were a handful of my friends who were supposed to come.
I get to the party with my buddy, full of determination to get that inner fire Stormy talks about. We start drinking. My close friends end up skipping the pre-party for various reasons. I'm not in the best of states. I know some people there, but none who were talking to women I didn't know. For some reason I just can't get myself to approach any of the smoldering hot girls packed into the room. There was a cute girl with giNORMOUS breasts I would have loved to open, easily a 9, but for the fucking life of me I just couldn't think of what to say, even when drunk.
That was my main problem that night; I couldn't think of what to say. I think it was because I didn't have any good friends around to get my fun side going and get me in the mood. I should have spoken with the few people I did know, but I was so focused on picking up one of the hot girls in the room that I mostly just stood around like a chode waiting to take a shot with someone. I opened one girl with a line so bland and lame it's not worth describing. She was clearly not attracted.
Fucking pathetic. By now I was teetering on the edge of a very poor mood.
Fast forward to the club. It is MOBBED. I'm hanging out with some girls I know in one room, dancing a little and not really feeling it. I was very determined to meet a girl at the pre party because my club/dance floor game is ze-ro. I just can't do it yet.
So we're dancing... And then, out of nowhere, a gap in the crowd opens in front of me and...
HB Director: (big, shocked smile, arms thrown out to her sides as if to say "What are YOU doing here?") Aaron?!
ME: [HB Director]!
She closes the gap between us fast and hugs me tight. Guys, if hugs were sex, she'd have been doing very dirty, very unwholesome things to me on that dance floor.
Fast background check: HB Director is a girl I dated for 2-3 weeks 3 years ago, but she ended it because she had some emotional baggage from a then-recent breakup. Didn't really think about her again until we ran into each other on campus the first day of school in the Fall. She was, and still is, dating some guy an hour or two away from our campus. Since then, we've gotten lunch maybe 2 or 3 times, and sent no more than 10 texts to each other. We've run into each other 2 or 3 times on campus as well and...
...Guys, you'd be a zombie not to be charmed by her. Whenever we run into each other, like at the club, her face lights up and she breaks into this huge, lovely smile. That genuine Duchenne smile where the emotion in the smile is in her eyes as well. And when she hugs me, it's like she's hanging on for dear life. This girl is so stunningly pretty I'm not going to do her the disservice of rating her on a scale. She's not the equivalent of a 10, but Jesus is she beautiful. That kind of unique and personable beauty that you don't see in many girls; she's hot in her own way, not the mainstream bleached hair/straightened hair/lots of eye liner way.
Since we bumped into each other that first day on campus, Baron has been smitten with her since.
Over lunch one time, I tried to slip in a boyfriend destroyer and casually remarked how she and her boyfriend must be really happy to have each other, or something like that. She starts telling me about him, and when she does, even someone in the table next to us would have noticed the change in her; her face loses that light, her body language sags, the tone in her voice grows more serious.
FACTS ABOUT HB DIRECTOR AND HER BOYFRIEND (from her mouth):
-They've been dating now for about 9, 10 months.
-He lives about two hours away from campus.
-They see each other usually twice a week... "from 9pm to 9am" (I figure this means time to hang out, have sex, and sleep. Not the best relationship)
-She doesn't feel compelled to say "I love you" to him
-She's going to be volunteering at a camp all summer and won't see him..
-She's moving to LA in the Fall (which means the commute will be even harder)
Anyways...
BACK TO THE CLUB PARTY:
She's pretty drunk, and the line to get in had been so long mine was practically gone. We dance like the white people we are for a bit, I do some playful spins with her. When we leave to find water. I pull the same move with her as I did with HB Eyes: move through the crowd, hold my hand out behind me for her. She takes it. I squeeze. She squeezes back hard enough to make my busted finger hurt pretty bad, but I'm so happy to be holding her hand I don't say anything.
(Side note for those who care: busted finger is from Cinco de Mayo, when a drunk girl fell off a wall and took me down with her. She must have landed on it because it swelled up bad afterwards.)
We get to the bar and start talking. I constantly deploy what Stormy calls the "Claw"; hand on her shoulder. It's loud, so I'm able to do this a lot. We have a great conversation about her getting into directing, post-grad plans, etc. Lots of kino between the two of us. When she got a call, and when I got a call, she rested her head against my chest.
By now I am one happy fucker, far from the bad mood I was spiraling into only ten minutes ago.
Eventually she has to go outside to meet her friends to be picked up, and I go with her, holding hands. I had gotten an AMF at the bar, which got me a little buzzed, but not drunk. While waiting in the parking lot, there was a girl bawling her eyes out on the phone.
I have this annoying inability to ignore people who are visibly in front of me. Especially when drunk/buzzed. It sounds very self-inflating, but it's not. So I go over and sit down next to this girl. We talk about her problem for maybe 20 minutes, and the whole time I'm kicking myself for missing invaluable comfort-building time with HB Director and hoping she doesn't think I'm sleazing on this crying girl. Eventually I go back to HB Director and her friends. She comments how it was nice of me to help that girl, and I try to brush it off, embarrassed. We get picked up and dropped off at her dorm.
We turn to face each other, still holding hands. We talk a little about the weird noises her dorm mates on the balcony above us were making. Then the conversation comes to a pause...
ME: (After looking away for a second) I need to see something.
--Lean in for kiss--
***PAUSE***
Up to this point, I had been worried she'd be hesitant or even reluctant to kiss me because of her boyfriend.
You: So did she hesitate, Baron?
***Unpause***
She grabs the sides of my shirt, pulls me in, and we make out good and slow for I don't know how long. All I cared about was that I was kissing this girl I hadn't been able to get out of my head all year.
At one point I pull back and, not wanting her to think I'm trying to take advantage of her drunk, say...
ME: Hold on... you're drunk, and you have a boyfriend.
HER: (small smile) I'm not that drunk anymore... and I think we should just take each day as it comes.
That was good enough for me. We go back to making out.
I don't know why I did this next idiot move... I think I was trying to do some push-pull, but I wholly regret it now...
ME: (pulling away, smiling, murmuring) I better let you go.
--We talk, etc. etc.--
HER: (small smile) I'd invite you in... but I don't think it would be a good idea. I hope you understand.
ME: (small smile) I do.
HER: (kisses me) Text me.
She goes in and I leave walking on cloud 9. The girl I've been crushing on all year, and I just made out with her! I was so happy, so proud of myself that I texted my close friends about it. I was pretty sober by the time we got picked up, so I'm counting this as an alcohol-freeish pull.
THE DAY AFTER (yesterday):
Unfortunately, this story doesn't have a happy ending (yet)... she avoids my 2 calls the next day, between which I text her. She replies to it, but doesn't respond to my response.
Shit.
It bugs me all day. At dinner with my friends, my friend suggests I just text her "when should I pick you up?" (I was having a party at my place that night and she said she might stop by). So I do.
HER: Eh, what?
ME: For the party, lol.
HER: *something about having to go to the show of a friend she forgot she told she'd make it to* But have fun tonight!
I don't buy it, and at this point I'm fed up with whatever game she's playing. So I say "Thanks," and then give it to her straight: I know she has a boyfriend, and whatever that means to her I'll respect it. If she's in a good headspace about what happened last night, I'd like to take her out. If she's not, I just want to know so I can have some peace of mind.
To summarize it, because it was one longass text conversation, she said she was still working out how she felt. She definitely didn't feel bad about what happened, she said, and she definitely believes in living in the moment, but she does have a boyfriend and she thinks that going out might not be a good idea. I came off as DGAF about the situation as I good without seeming heartless. It ended with her disagreeing with me when I said this opportunity won't come again, that she's not emotionally read or willing to leave her boyfriend or do anything behind his back, and she's just at a crazy point in her life with graduation coming up and everything. I tell her she's right, I can't expect her to do that, and that I'm still cool with hanging out as friends.
She says yeah, she is too, but she thinks we should take some time before we do, let things settle, and she's down to hang after that. (I take this to mean that she's still attracted to me, and wants that attraction to take a back seat again before she sees me.... I'm not sure).
And that's it. I'm going to give her the space she needs and in the meantime just work on my game. This pull was the one most important to me. I'm pretty bummed out about how it ended, but what can I do? Just move on.
EPILOGUE:
Jesus Christ this has taken a while to write.
This week was a huge turning point for me. In one week I hooked up with more girls than I have in the past three months. Alcohol was definitely somewhat a factor in them, but it's still a large step forward for me. I know even more now just what I'm capable of and what I can do if I push myself.
All 3 girls threw themselves at me like lions on a hunk of steak. I've never experienced this kind of attraction from girls before, and it feels really good.
Like Stormy says, this game is not logical. It is EMOTIONAL. I'm not going to deal too much with routines and methods anymore. I'm going to focus on my natural game, because being genuine is so much easier.
I am the fucking MAN, guys.
And so are all of you.
~TRB
CHAT
