The Return of SuperKiril

So SuperKiril has made it over to London and it’s the least that Fargo and I can do to return the favour of showing us the cool spots in Amsterdam, by doing the same thing for him in London.

Before I head out a bunch of bad things happen and I’m in a pretty bad mood. I’m annoyed as I’m out of state and worry that the night’s going to be a let down.

But then I think about all the times that I’ve felt similar before (be it tiredness or negative state) and I realise that on all those occasions, how I felt at the start of the night bears no relation on actually how good the night is. So this sole realisation allows me to significantly get over myself and split the odd infinitive.

I talk to Fargo about this later and he says that most nights of going out he feels negative, doubting himself and so on. I think it must happen to all of us, certainly the junior members of the community. The important learning is that it doesn’t matter.

I fuel myself with Lucozade and meet up with Fargo up east. Kiril and one of his colleagues who is also over are already installed in Hoxton Square Bar and Kitchen, so we go and meet them there. We ease into the venue and start to get into the mood. But it’s a bit difficult.

The dancefloor is way too loud and full of blokes. We go back to the main bar but sit ourselves in a place where we can’t talk to anyone else. We all have a chat together though and catch up with what’s been happening since the three weeks that we last met. But there’s no action and the guests are bored so we need to mix things up a bit.

Because Kiril is Kiril (i.e. an alternative Bulgarian impish rock star) I know he’ll suit Dream Bags and Jaguar Shoes very well, so we decide to head over there. It’s a bit packed but we find ourselves a little space and join in the fun. Where we’re standing is actually quite good as we’re not getting pushed around in the main thoroughfare but there is still a bit of passing traffic and thus girls to talk to.

Of course the catch is that I’m with guests, and guests that don’t know anything about game, its processes or theories. Despite the fact that Kiril gets laid, literally, like a rock star, and the other guy, Jan-Martin, is keen to try to pick up girls (even though we later find out he has a girlfriend!).

So it’s a slightly unusual situation but we work with it as best we can. Fargo is off somewhere talking to some random people, working on his networking game that he instigated at a Stevie Wonder gig the night before. I open up a couple of girls – literally the girls that walk past – with my natural / direct opener “Hey, how’s it going?” It works two times out of three I think. We also set up a little game where we pretend Kiril is a famous Bulgarian rock star, although he doesn’t really buy into it himself! I was role-playing with one girl about how we were going to go to Mars, with EasyRocket, which provides a regular budget service. There were jokes about the atmosphere being a bit thin, the weather not that great, and the Martians always planning to invade and so on. Lots of fun was had.

It came to closing time so we went hunting for other bars. We completely failed to get into Tea by pretending to be smokers and ended up going to 54 on Commercial Street. I did some more direct / natural game on one girl there. I can’t remember what I opened with but I had a bit of a chat with her and spun and salsa’d with her. She was friends with the DJ I think but wasn’t with anyone else. Fargo then came in and completely shat all over the set by telling me to lock in and physically moving me about – which in my mind was completely irrelevant and totally unnecessary – and I lost her. I hope he never, ever does that again. However she came back again later and we continued from where we left off.

I think there was another natural break in the conversation and Fargo then told me that she wasn’t that hot. I then started to doubt whether she was and I couldn’t actually remember what she looked like (in fact after the first break I couldn’t even remember what dress she was wearing) – which to be honest probably didn’t bode well. Although I was a bit drunk by this stage.

Anyway after a while I kind of lost the momentum and didn’t take it any further. The guests were tired and wanted to go home so we quit. It was about 3.30 after all.

What went well

• Opened with ease, and felt in control of the early parts of the interaction. The little chunks of what to do are slowly falling into place.

What could have gone better

• Escalation, maybe opened more sets

What did I do well that I haven’t done before

• Did pick up in an unusual situation, i.e. with guys who don’t know about the “community”