Many a Hand Has Scaled the Grand Old Face of the Plateau

So I was hired for a new job today which is cool. It obviously put me in a good mood, and I had a huge desire to celebrate by going on the piss big time, but I’d sworn not to drink in January, so the first of Feb’s going to be a big night…

Anyway I meet up with Grieg, Jon and Liam in Brick Lane. Grieg gays out big time as he needs to find a job or something. Priorities, priorities…! Anyway, it’s me, Jon and Liam.

So we go to Big Chill to start with. One thing I’ve noticed about myself recently is that when I go into a venue nowadays, I do it with my head held high, with a smile on my face and with a relaxed air about me. It’s projecting a calm confidence from within. I can remember years ago when I first went out to clubs and the whole experience would be a stimulus overload and not really very enjoyable. I’d just be wallowing around in my own insecurities and limiting beliefs.

It’s like even recently I didn’t like going to bars where the music was really loud. But so what? There’s not much I could do about it so I have to accept it. There’s a phrase I find I’m using a lot which is “I’ve got to make it work for me.” Every time there’s a problem or something I don’t like that I can’t change, I ask myself how can I make this work for me? (i.e. Acceptance)

In loud clubs it’s simple, you’ve got to talk louder and I have to lean in more as I can’t hear what people are saying. Some people see leaning in as a bad thing, but I don’t have a choice so I’m not going to worry about that. I’ll just have to use other areas of game to make up for it (if it is a problem, which I’m not convinced it is anyway).

Another thing is that if you look at people’s faces in clubs, a lot of them (though not all) are looking annoyed, angry, frustrated, aggressive, generally negative. And before, when I saw them, I would for some reason take it personally. Similarly if someone was having fun or a guy was really good looking, I’d feel insecure that I was having as much fun or wasn’t as good looking and take it personally again. It seems ridiculous in retrospect but there you are. Now if I see someone looking angry or hot (or both), I feel the force of their emotion directed towards me, or the response that almost automatically appears, and then feel how it has absolutely no effect on my core inner self. This isn’t a confidence thing (though that is a by-product). In a way, however much you destroy the ego there’s always “you” underneath, and that can never be affected.

So I walk in happy, at peace, excited, feeling good, and with some energy. I’m sure the coke (a-cola) helps too. Just after we walk in Liam suggests pushing me into set. Without really thinking about it I go for a wander to look for someone to open through my own volition. A few paces away there’s a group of girls dancing in an unusual way to the dub music that’s playing – it looks like they’re dancing in slow motion.

“Is this the slow motion dancing area?” I ask. I can’t really remember what they say in response but we start talking. The girl is very warm and friendly, and she’s actually “initiated kino” or rather, is standing so close to me that our arms are touching. I maintain the contact as I find out that she and her friends are from Colombia and that she’s a fashion student. We chat for a bit and then I eject. Oh yeah, she was really hot, a comfortable 8 and would be a 9 if she lost a few pounds. One of her friends was a 9…

I meet up again with Liam and Jon and we chat for a bit. As I leave the set I notice one other hot girl in a different group blatantly check me out – social proof. We move around and where we end up there’s a group of girls standing nearby us and I’m sort of waiting for either of the other guys to open them. This is a bit silly as once again I’m kind of more concerned about other people that myself. Too much of a nice guy I guess.

Anyway they don’t open so I decide to. I see that one of the girls has something written on her hand so I go up to her and say “Hey, I wanted to know what’s written on your hand.” It’s probably one of the lamest openers ever but as anyone who knows anything about this game will tell you, it’s not the content but the delivery that matters.

Anyway it says “I pay for sex” on her hand, which is interesting. I respond with “That’s cool, as I’m quite strapped for cash myself.” She laughs a bit and we start to have a chat. I stay in there for a bit and then eject again (I know…).

I rejoin the others and walk through the bar again. As I walk past the Colombians I high five the one I was talking to. We go outside and Jon opens someone briefly. I chat to Liam and Jon about my current thoughts on approaching and limiting beliefs, hopefully to encourage them. Main point: it doesn’t matter if you get blown out, and in fact that’s a good thing (Investment in Loss etc.).

We head to the Commercial Tavern which is a nice cool venue with great décor and crockery on the wall, as you do. As I walk past two girls one comments on the other’s dress. “Not bad” I say as I walk past. We exchange a few words but I don’t stay there for long. We go up stairs and again I try to encourage the others to open but nothing happens.

We go to Home and Industry but they’re both pretty empty. We go to Light which is quite busy. Liam opens someone with the fancy dress opener. I do the same though the girls are Essex slappers and a bit stupid so it doesn’t go anywhere.

I open someone at the bar while ordering drinks with “Are you drinking Sambuca?” This is the amount of thought that goes into my openers these days. After a while there aren’t really any more sets to open so we decide to return to Big Chill.

We grab some seats and Jon gets me to open a girl next to me about another girl in the bar who is bravely wearing some bright leopard skin print leggings. They have been looking at the same girl and we have a joke about that. Somehow we get into a chat about India and I tell her about where I’ve been, and even show her a video of the Thar Desert that I have on my phone. The girl is from South Africa and has a very pretty face. I could have number closed her but I didn’t. She was with her aunt, though that’s just a detail and has no impact on the game situation.

That was pretty much it for the night.

Thoughts

I felt great and confident and I felt that I had opened more sets than I actually did. I’m opening like a breeze and I’m still quite surprised with how easy I’m finding it. I open with the simplest things, usually the first thing that comes into my head, and the rest is taken care of by the delivery and body language.

The bad points are that I’m still ejecting far too early and usually still sticking to normal conversational topics. I need to get blown out after the opener as it were.

I need to not care about whether the other guys are opening, they are old enough to look after themselves. They did open eventually after all. They also need to be a bit more high energy and enjoying themselves. Hey, everyone’s a critic.

I really wanted to fuck the Colombian girl in white, and probably the one in blue as well. I could have tried.