Alex Forrest

52 First Dates - Volume I

 Copyright © 2020 by Alex Forrest

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 Contents

Note on Book
1. Introduction
Background
2. Date 1: The Redhead & The Earmuffs
Topic: The Kiss
3. Date 2: “Resting on My Morals ... ”
Topic: Date Flakes
4. Date 3: Portugal Girl
Topic: Frame Tests
5. Date 4: The Smartly-Dressed Professional
Topic: Observation
6. Dates 5 and 6: Young & Gauche
Topic: Is an Awkward Date a Bad Date?
7. Date 7: “The Girl with No Name”
Topic: Owning Your Mistakes
8. Date 8: Monty the Python or “When Was the
Last Time You Had Sex?”
Topic: Is it Okay to Talk About Sex on a Date?
9. Date 9: “Old, Ugly & Disgusting ... ”
Topic: Teasing
10. Date 10: “Just ... DO IT, please!”
Topic: Intent
11. Date 11: The Tinder Experiment
12. Date 12: Miss Adventure
Topic: Boyfriends
13. Date 13: The Amazing Instant Date
14. Extra Date: Barcolina Forever
Topic: How Important is it to Escalate Quickly?
15. Date 14: The Photographer
Topic: Can You Ever Be Friends With a Girl?
16. Date 15: Lana Del Ray Girl
Topic: Older Dudes and Younger Girls
17. Date 16: The Ukrainian Student
18. Date 17: Anastasia, the Russian Business
Lady
Topic: The Language Barrier
19. Date 18: The 2nd Tinder Date
 Topic: The Elephant in the Room
20. Date 19: The French Secretary
Topic: Women are More Intelligent than Men
Note on Authenticity
 Note on Book

Alex Forrest is a writer and lawyer, whose first book,

“Too Late, Mate?” covers the 18-month period in which
he first learned a technique for approaching women in
the daytime called “Daygame.”

This is Volume I of a 2 Volume series that documents the

next phase of his adventures in which he goes on 52 first
dates in a year. Alongside the entertaining stories, it also
features topic sections describing in detail the methods
and skills used.

Unlike his first book these books are an anthology and

the best use of them is as a reference, to be dipped into as
and when needed, via the topic sections.
 1

Introduction

T his is the first in a two volume series in which I tell

the stories of my dating adventures during a one-
year period in which I decided to go on 52 first dates
with the goal of achieving some level of mastery in this
area of my life. I wanted to become good at this stuff,
and I wanted to learn to enjoy dates for their own sake. I
also wanted to find a partner but reasoned that even if I
did not find a partner, I would at least acquire dating
skills which would set me up and give me confidence in
the dating arena for the long-term. While some of the
dates blossomed into mini-relationships and there were
one or two sexual adventures, the focus is not on the
bedroom, but on the first date itself.
 I plundered what I could from the dating and
seduction gurus—from their books, their videos, and
sometimes through personal coaching—and put their
advice into action. I also met many of them and
interviewed one or two for a podcast I ran during the
course of the adventure. This book documents that
journey.
It also follows the release of my first book, Too Late,
Mate?, in which I first acquired the skills used to
approach women during the daytime (“Daygame”).
Whereas Too Late, Mate? is something of a paperback
wingman for guys on how to approach girls and get
phone numbers, the 52 First Dates series is more of a
dating handbook. As well as telling the stories of these
dates, the books also include sections in which I go into
detail of the lessons learned and lay out the skills and
techniques that I employed. (Referring to the dating
gurus when appropriate.)
In order to become accountable and because I enjoy
making videos, I created a YouTube channel to
document my journey. This also helped cement the
knowledge that I acquired and helped set milestones on
the road. For those of you who wish to take a peek, my
YouTube channel is The Art of First Dates.
In those videos you will find real-life stories of actual
dates; the successes, the failures; the adventures in
London, Russia, and Poland as well as many other
European capitals.
This book now tells the extended, in-depth, and
detailed stories of those 52 girls and the adventures I had
with them. I guess you could say this book charts the
intermediate stage of my journey into the world of
women and dating. These first dates came after a point in
which I was through the first flush of success and
excitement of approaching girls during the daytime and
getting their numbers. This book deals with a whole fresh
stage of learning and exploration that I had not really
received any instruction on during the early days and
while on the Daygame boot camp (a two-day, intense,
hands-on training camp led by trailblazers in the
Daygame world, like Andy Yosha, Tom Torero, and Jon
Matrix).
Back then I was simply delighted to have actually
gotten a girl’s phone number after having approached her
in the street and spoken to her for barely five minutes!
“What the fuck?!”
And then to get her out on a date after a bit of texting
to and fro …
“Oh my God!”
But if I had taken the time to think ahead, a very
pertinent—if not blindingly obvious—question might
have arisen, “So, I’ve got the phone number, and I’ve
even got a date … now, what am I supposed to do on the
date?”
While I had, of course, enjoyed a number of dates
during that first 18-month period, they had been random,
wild, and accidental collisions rather than carefully
planned campaigns. The one or two that had been
carefully planned invariably yielded greater success. But
the problem was the dates were sporadic, and these cases
were few and far between. The dates would often go
nowhere, and I would be left “hanging” at the end of the
date, having not realized I had failed to properly escalate
during the date and generate attraction and that there
would, therefore, be no follow-up. This hurt, of course.
All the more so because I could sense that there was
simply something I had not figured out and that more
work was required.
Well, I guess it’s actually not helpful to see the full
height of the mountain before you climb it, and so it was
probably best that I never quite asked that question. I
might have never started the journey!
Working on this area of your life can be a lonely
business, so I hope that this book helps to encourage,
inspire, and amuse you as you embark on your own
dating trajectory.
Background
I was nudged into the 52 First Dates project by Tom
Torero (a PUA you will have heard a lot about if you
have read Too Late, Mate?) while on a train ride back
from the Tatra Mountains in February 2017, a challenge
about which I had spoken on one of his podcasts.
Bizarrely, it happened to be broadcast on Valentine’s
Day:
“Yeah, do it. Why not?” Tom asked with his usual air
of nonchalance.
“Er … well, you know, it’s a bit of a cliché, isn’t it? I
mean, I just read this daft New York TV producer’s book
called 31 First Dates, and it was a bit lame,” I explained.
“So, you have been thinking about it then?”
“I guess … ”
I looked out of the window at the beautiful landscape
—it was actually a fantastic winter wonderland of sunny,
snow-capped mountain tops. We had just been skiing in a
newly-discovered location—a fabulous, fun, family-
orientated Polish resort called Bialka Tatrzanska.
 I did not want to be badgered into this challenge by
Tom. I wanted to make my own decision, and it was
actually a pretty big undertaking. Taking action in life
and especially in this area is important but reflection is
also important, and I wanted to give it proper
consideration. I threw out a few more excuses.
“Listen, I’ve got a full-time job. I mean, I’m building
a law firm and it’s only a couple of years old and it
consumes huge amounts of time and energy. I don’t even
have any time at all to actually do any work as a lawyer,
I’m so wrapped up in the business side of things, let
alone find the time to generate 52 dates in a year!”
A snowy country house flicked by in a flash.

We arrived in Kraków.
As we climbed out of the bus, I muttered, “It’s
crazy.”
“What I like about it is its accountability. Guys are
always weaseling out,” Tom said.
“What I want is a way to make sure I generate
enough dates to give me the actual opportunity to
practice this stuff.”
“How many dates did you go on last year?”
 “Twenty, maybe … ”
“So you’ve already been on more first dates than
most guys go on in a lifetime! Hey, look at this.” He
changed the subject, never one to linger on a topic too
long.
We were walking through the shopping center on the
way to the train, and now and again we would notice a
single girl.
“Great time for Daygame, Valentine’s Day in the
evening. It’s the one time when you can be sure a single
girl is likely to be responsive.”
A few minutes later we found ourselves on the train
from Kraków to Warsaw. It was around 6 p.m. The train
was mysteriously empty.
“It’s not outside the bounds of possibility,” I floated.
“Fifty-two in a year. I guess it’s doable … ”
I stared out of the window, both of us absorbed in our
own worlds for a while. Shit, I thought to myself. Do I
really want to—do I really have to—put myself through
what seems like a world of pain?
“I guess I’ll do it.” I sighed.
Tom laughed. “That’s a great spirit in which to start a
project: a state of resigned dejection!”
But then I was re-energized as Tom decided to do an
impromptu podcast on that train between Kraków and
Warsaw and the project was launched. On Valentine’s
Day, which seemed strangely inappropriate. And it was
an interesting podcast too because we both became quite
vocal. I believed in marriage and that you did not need to
sleep with lots of girls to learn this stuff and go through
the necessary rite of passage. While Tom Torero, the
lone wolf, was of a different viewpoint.1
That podcast cemented my resolve. It was clear to me
that if I was going to have any chance of improving at the
dating game and learning how to handle a girl on a date, I
was going to need practice and I was going to need a lot
of dates. The podcast now meant that I could not quietly
drop the whole project halfway through. (Which is
exactly what I want to now do, 34 dates in at the time of
writing!)
And as I have said, it was—to my mind—a very
important way of keeping an eye open for a possible
partner. While during the previous “Daygame” period, I
had one or two mini-relationships, with some really
interesting and attractive girls, I had not found “the
one.”2 Meeting another 52 might yield better results! And
abundance alone might make me more relaxed and
indifferent to the idea of a long-term partnership
altogether. No bad thing.
And so it began …

1
You might be able to find the podcast, recorded in February 2017, on
Tom’s YouTube channel. Our views contradict as I believe in marriage and
also in not transgressing in terms of trespassing into other people’s
marriages.
2
You should know by now if you have read, Too Late, Mate? (or seen my
videos) that this does not mean your Disney Girl, “the one,” but “a one”—
someone who would be a great partner in a long-term relationship. A partly
pragmatic, rather than wholly romantic, decision.
 2

Date 1: The Redhead & The

Earmuffs

I met Date 1 at a train station in Warsaw. I was

working my way through the tunnels to the main
shopping center by means of the long underground
platform from Śródmieście. And then I saw a girl, late
twenties, walking through the crowds that lined the
platform at rush hour. She was in a hurry and had red
hair. For a moment she reminded me of Dagmara,3 who
had likewise been in a hurry to catch a Metro train.
She was wearing ridiculous pink earmuffs, and I
commented on her quirkiness and how it was good to see
a girl sporting a unique look. My approach was confident
and it brought her to an abrupt stop. After the brief
compliment, we bantered back and forth for a minute or
so, and then she said, “I’m sorry, I can’t stay, I’ve got to
go and meet my friends and I’m late.”
“Are you often late?” I inquired.
“Yes,” she said, grinning. “It’s my special talent.”
“Haha! Well, look, this time you actually have a
proper excuse. You can tell your friends that you were
stopped by a handsome Brit who was entranced by you
and could not dare to let you go.”
She hesitated. That was not bad and she just …
laughed.
So I carried on, having taken the frame, as it were.
“Yes, I can’t think of a better excuse, in fact. Anyway,
look, I’ve got to go too and am also running late. So,
listen, let’s exchange numbers and we can meet up
another time.”
I got out my phone without waiting for a response
and she found herself, probably much to her surprise,
tapping her digits into my phone.

***
The circumstances in which we later met were intriguing.
I was, at that time, trying my best with a certain little
madam, a pretty Belarussian girl who I had already been
on a couple of dates with but without much success. In
fact, it was becoming very frustrating, and I was learning,
for the first time, how difficult it is with girls the further
East you go, in terms of physical escalation.4 It had been
at least three or four dates, and she had sent me at least
five or six photos of her looking gorgeous in various
poses and even one video of her blowing kisses. I was
like a little bird, following a trail of breadcrumbs to some
dangerous fate. One of her photos displayed an array of
delicious food and champagne as if she were saying,
“Alex, you need to shower me with riches in order to get
anywhere near my golden palace of pleasure.”
Anyway, this particular Belarussian Princess
happened to be studying at university in Kraków, and it
so happened that the fun Redhead likewise lived there.
She had been in Warsaw for work.
So I set up back-to-back dates barely 45 minutes
apart. It was a bit bold going down there in the first place
as the rulebook says you should never visit a city to meet
a girl you have not slept with—or at least you should
have first got the relationship on a very clear sexual
footing.5 But I thought that if the dates flaked, I could
always do some Daygame in Kraków, which is a
fabulous city where I had not spent any real time.

As it turned out, both dates happened …

The date with the Belarussian was heavy going, just as I

expected it to be, but it did not last long as I had the
second date lined up one hour in. She was a bit surprised
when I brought it to an end. I said I had another meeting,
deliberately vague about what sort of meeting. I walked
her to the door of the cafe—Cafe Bar Magia—and there
the Redhead appeared. I had already said goodbye and
they simply crossed each other in the doorway. I
shrugged—I would have liked for them to have met each
other, at least for Miss Belarussia to see me with another
girl. Up until now, I had never tried this back-to-back
date approach before.6
What it did do is give me positive energy for my date
with the Redhead as I had already “warmed up” with
Miss Belarussia. It was immediately quite fun and sexual,
and one of the first things I remember asking her, which
became something of a theme, was, “How many other
dates have you got on the go at the moment? I mean, you
obviously don’t just juggle one guy at a time. Not unless
you’re daft.” I smiled and nudged her.
She laughed.
“How many have you got?” she retorted.
“You’re number 28,” I said, without batting an eyelid
and sipping my drink. I did not reveal the faintest
glimmer of a smile as I said it.
She laughed some more and cocked her head and
said, “So, my new name is 28.”
“Yes, that’s quite good,” I said after a pause for
reflection. “Date 28. Your new name. My initial
impression is that there’s a chance of you rising up the
rankings.”7
And so it became a theme, and then—after barely 30
or 40 minutes—I told her to drink up.

I had, of course, remembered to get the “logistics” right

and had earlier checked out a few other places for a
second venue. I now took her to what was probably one
of the seediest spots in the whole of Kraków, a vodka
shot bar with football playing on a variety of screens and
drunks and other unsavories glued to their bar stools and
their glasses. I found a dirty corner with torn fabric
seating, quite gloomy, and there we carried on.
Sunk into a capacious sofa, I now started to touch her
often and squeezed myself close. It was cold in the bar.
In fact, it was February 2017 and it can get really cold in
Poland. We threw back a couple of shots and chatted.
Then we left as she had to get back, and I had also made
an excuse that I had to catch a train back to Warsaw
shortly. We walked along the beautiful, wintry streets of
Kraków Old Town. And then I just pulled up, grabbed
her, and said, “What are you like as a kisser? I mean on a
scale of 1 to 10.”
I hesitated, our noses barely touching.
“Let me show you an Eskimo kiss … ” She pulled
back a bit and I held her tight and said, “Relax. Just
noses.”
She came forward.
And I kissed her.
Hard.
On the lips.
And, of course, she kissed back—just as
passionately.
It had been a delicious night and an effortless date (that
rare thing). I learned that she frequently traveled to
Warsaw as her employer had her working for a major
client there, out of their Warsaw offices. She visited two
or three times a week and had to stay over. Perfect. There
was no need to push the date. Better to roll over and chill,
I concluded.

It was not long before she paid a visit to Warsaw.

I had lined up the second date at a bar just near to my
place. It was a perfect location, a trendy new bar on
Nowogrodska and she seemed to be quite gentle and
compliant. I realized that she was fully intending to
spend the night with me. It was obvious that she had
made a clear decision, and it was easy to take her up to
my flat.
What happened thereafter is a bit of a haze. Once
there we did not do much, as I recall, other than make our
way quite rapidly to the bedroom.
And then I slowed it right down. We sat on my bed
together and chatted and then eventually I grabbed my
laptop, made myself comfortable at the head of the bed,
padding out cushions, and said, “So, come and show me
where you live.” She joined me at the head of the bed, we
played around on my laptop computer for a while,
listening to music, and she showed me some photos of
her home town in the south of Poland, Krynice. Quite a
nice looking ski-resort, in fact.
And then our clothes came off. Quite quickly. And
then I escalated quite quickly and undressed her. She was
totally compliant, and we made sweet love.
And so it was, barely a few weeks or days after I had
stopped her on that train platform between Śródmieście
and Warsaw shopping center, that I started my 52 First
Dates project with something of a bang.
But it was a bang followed by quite a few whimpers
… and it was some time before I could again enjoy sex
with a pretty girl quite so effortlessly.
Topic: The Kiss
So, one of the things that I learned was that kissing is not
necessarily mechanical. What I mean by “mechanical” is
that it is not necessarily a trick or a pure technique that
you deploy while you are in front of a girl. Previously I
had followed the advice of the dating gurus who supplied
a variety of “tips” to take you to the kiss. For example,
creating a triangle by looking at her eyes and lips
repeatedly. Or by saying to her, “When I reach that street
sign I am going to have to kiss you,” or “I’m just going
to the toilet—be careful because when I come back I may
have to kiss you.” Or even just being very gradual in
your escalation and checking to see whether she is up for
it, such as playing with her hair or conducting a “floppy”
test by pulling her in and seeing if she is compliant. You
can also test her buying temperature by taking her hands
and reading from mutual caressing whether or not she is
ready.
But on this date, I found that it was all about having set
the frame up from the beginning that was key. If you
have not done that then all manner of tricks and tips will
not work. (But please do not take this as an invitation not
to use tricks and tips when you first start this stuff. They
are very important and certainly have their place.)

Luckily, in this case, I had—to use a surfer’s analogy—

got myself onto a wave and up on the board by stacking
two dates. The first was hard work but really important
because it had warmed me up and meant that when the
second arrived I had a great vibe. I then led like a boss
and teased and was confident in marching her to a shot
bar and escalating rapidly. By the time we were out on
the street (and the stars were also aligned as it was a
magical, snowy winter’s night in a medieval old town),
she was pretty much ready to melt. It was almost difficult
NOT to get the kiss! By this point, I was well and truly
riding the wave.

3
Dagmara was the girl at the climax of the story in Too Late, Mate? with
whom I had enjoyed an amazing summer of love over a year ago.
4
It was only much later I was to discover more about Russian culture and
Russian women and how different they are from girls in the West. Wait for
Volume II.
5
Why not? The reason is a pretty fundamental truth underlying women’s
wiring when it comes to dating. They love attention and so will happily soak
it up like a sunflower soaking up the sun. Or if you were a cynic and not so
charitable, you may compare it to a female vampire, sucking you dry. When
you finally (and feebly) challenge her, drained of all masculine energy, she
declares, sweetly, “I really like you, but only as a friend.”
6
But quite frankly, what do girls expect? Most are such notorious flakes. Do
they think we should just sit around all day and night waiting for them to
confirm that they can or cannot meet and then end up with a wasted
evening?
7
If you’re going to tease and say something challenging, you better learn to
stick with it all the way—just wear a cheeky smile at the same time. Do not
let her knock you off base. Stick with it and you generate sexual attraction.
Hesitate, apologize, or rationalize and the attraction will instantly evaporate.
(Nuts, isn’t it?)
 3

Date 2: “Resting on My
Morals ... ”

I did not see Earmuffs Girl again. She lived in a

different city and it had felt somehow like a “one-
off.” I texted her the next day but we never really aligned
our schedules and anyway, for my part, I could not see
any long-term potential with her. She was also probably
slightly on the young side, for me at least, in her late-
twenties. Still, it would have been nice to have seen her
again and I dare say we would have done so if we had
been living in the same city.
This pattern of “ships that pass in the night” was to
be repeated over the following months and it was only
when I had completed my crazy project and was writing
a first draft of the epilogue that I had certain reflections
that might have meant, with hindsight, I would have
followed through with a little more determination. But
more on that later.
Of course, the other thing was that it was the nature
of the project to meet lots of girls, and I quickly started to
put more irons in the fire. Which brings me on to Date 2
…

I met Sylwia in a shopping center while she was

swanning around like a colorful jungle bird, glinting with
jewelry and wearing a short skirt and a cute smile. I was
a victim of my biology—indeed a rather willing victim—
and leaped in, politely complimenting her on her beauty
before telling her she did, in fact, look like a colorful bird
of the jungle and somewhat out of place.
“Although … ” I continued, “strangely in your
habitat too. Because you’re clearly a shopaholic.”
She laughed. Her English was not great, as you often
find with girls over 30 in Poland (I guess she was around
32), but she understood enough for us to engage in a
decent conversation, and she seemed to enjoy the jokes
and witticisms.
She was only in town for one day and actually came
from Gdansk, on the Baltic in the North of Poland, so it
was some time before we met for the date.

In the interim, the texting was great and she was very
responsive. After teasing her about spending all her
money on shopping, it was easy to set up a long-term
tease whereby I put her on a point system for not
spending money on beauty or make-up during the
intervening period between meeting and dating:8

Me: So did you spend lots of money on shopping / the 24-

hour alcohol store or were you good?
Her: Hehe..No I didn’t. Sorry I didn’t reply, I was
very busy yesterday. [sad face] I spent money on nail
painting and hair stylist [tongue sticking-out face]
Me: Naughty Girl. Minus 8 points.
Her: But I spent only 200 zl…! Not much Don’t you
think?
Me: Mm…anyway, be a good girl in Poznan.
Her: Ok. I will be a good [saint emoticon]
A few weeks later, when I found myself in Gdansk on a
weekend break, having decided I wanted to work my way
around all the major Polish cities, I was reasonably
confident she would come out. She did indeed readily
accept, and we fixed a time and place. She was keen, as
was obvious from her response to one suggested day, the
20th:

Weekday
Her: Great :) but I prefer 16 or 18 or 19 or 20 or 22
or 23. Is it possible?

Wow! I thought. This is really cool. I can’t remember any

girl being quite so forthcoming with their diary!
But then on the day, barely hours before, I got a
message from her saying that she could not make it.9
Bugger it! I don’t believe it! And then I reflected … I
fucking knew it!
But actually, it was a genuine excuse, and I should
have just shrugged it off. Indeed, she later sent me photos
with the text of her at her sister’s birthday party and a
very long explanation.10
 ***

When we did meet it was at Hard Rock Cafe in the

Gdansk main square. It was a Sunday, as I recall. I found
a nice spot on barstools and bantered briefly with the
barman about the choice of whiskey and the fact I was
waiting for a date and I had no idea whether she would
show up. The location was perfect as I like barstools
where you can get physical with a girl quite easily, rather
than across a table.
I was surprised but delighted when she did turn up.
But straightaway she started to behave oddly. I took her
coat and invited her onto a stool at the bar next to me, but
she did not want it and suddenly wanted to go upstairs to
a restaurant area, which was not at all what I had in mind.
She was very insistent, and she glanced at the barman
and there seemed to be some sort of recognition between
them. I did not know whether I should agree to her
request or tease her and insist we stay at the bar. One of
the most important things about dating, of course, is that
you should lead. You should not let the girl take the
frame and start bossing you about. But in this situation,
this general advice seemed an overreaction, so I shrugged
it off and followed her upstairs to a new location.11
A short while later I found myself straying onto my
old favorite, the “truth game.”12 She was happy, in fact
eager, to play and I almost immediately found myself
pushing the boat out and asking, “Do you enjoy sex?”
“Yes.”
She smiled.
Right … nice, I thought. It’s on …
I had by that point touched her and taken her hands
momentarily, and it was clear she was enjoying the
flirtation. And then I found myself asking her, “Why did
you agree to see me? What do you like about me?”
“I liked your intelligence when you were talking to
me in the shopping center first.”

This remark was interesting, that girls can actually find

intelligence a physically attractive quality. As guys we
tend to project our own standards or yardstick for
physical attraction onto women as if, just as we are
attracted to a nice figure, pretty face, and a big smile,
they are also primarily drawn to our physical appearance.
This is a mistake. I have read books about how women
have a far more holistic set of attraction triggers and will
often need to get to know you better before they will
sleep with you.13 But I had not really realized it, in a
practical and visceral way, that this was indeed the case.
There is no substitute for actual experience, and it is a
higher level of knowledge altogether.
I think it was also such an important moment for me
because over the years I identified with my intelligence,
and it had initially been a massive stumbling block to
being able to learn this stuff. Especially in an older guy,
it works against him because he is too intellectually
arrogant to think anybody has anything to teach him.
But, after learning this lesson, I then sort of “threw
the baby out with the bathwater,” and once I had decided
that intelligence is just one of a variety of qualities that a
man can possess and not the be-all and end-all, I started
to (wrongly) think that it was not a quality that was
attractive at all to women. And so I avoided getting into
witty, clever conversations.
What I was now learning was that displays of
intelligence could be attractive and that the problem
arises when smart guys too closely identify with their
intelligence. Identification can then lead to attachment to
the idea that intelligent guys do not get laid.14 (Only buff,
good-looking ones.) But while identification with your
intelligence is certainly an obstacle in dating and
seduction, the quality itself can actually be extremely
attractive (and I mean sexually attractive) to many
women and is an attraction trigger for them. It conveys
status. The lesson is not to play it as your only card and
to use it sparingly.15

As I was pondering this, she suddenly leaned over, in a

conspiratorial way and said, “I have something to say in
the truth game.”
“Okay,” I said, hesitating and somewhat anxious as
she said it in such a powerful and pregnant way, leaning
back afterward and looking at me.
“What do you mean? You’re meant to ask a question,
not give an answer to a question that hasn’t been asked.”
“I want to say something truthful … ”
This was unexpected. She really was taking this truth
game seriously.
“Alright, what?” I said, nervously.
A pause.
“I’m married.”
 Another pause.
I did not know how I felt. And since we were playing
the truth game, I just found myself asking another
question.
“So, have you ever had an affair before?”
“Yes,” she said, and then with a moment’s hesitation,
she continued. “Once before. For about a year.”
There was immediately another truth game question
in my mind. Really? Just the one affair? But obviously, I
did not push this. I was not cross-examining a witness in
the witness box about marital infidelity.
Sylwia was a pretty girl—slim and “pretty-pretty,” if
you know what I mean—and was dressed in a short skirt,
just as she had been when I first met her in the shopping
center. I guess this was just biology. She had married
young and now felt like a caged bird, with so much else
out there in the jungle that she had never experienced and
she could not help herself.
She brought to mind images of those films of women
with rich husbands who lie by the pool, having bagged
themselves a guy while young and played an intelligent
mating strategy card, and now they are bored. And
actually Sylwia was also reasonably intelligent and
wanted to improve herself and study.

Perhaps this was why, as I walked her back on a foggy

Sunday night and through the old town square in Gdansk
to her car, the devil in me considered leading her to a
second venue and trying to go all the way. But she had to
get back, and it now became clear that she had to be
pretty smart about her timetable because her husband
would be suspicious if she got home too late. I tried to
kiss her at the end of the date, pretty much knowing she
would not reciprocate as I have frequently found that
girls, unless you really do have a great vibe, will not
readily kiss in public, certainly in Eastern Europe.
I disregarded the fact that she had not kissed me, of
course.16 It meant nothing and, in fact, she now declared
that she wanted to see me again. I played for time, my
moral compass spinning around like I was in an electrical
storm, giddy with indecision. She wanted to meet the
next day, in the evening. I decided to just play it with a
dead bat and told her that I had a meeting the next day
and could not guarantee I would be free but would
certainly be able to let her know in the morning. I wanted
to buy myself time for my moral dilemma. So that was
how we left it.

I got back to my hotel room—a small, boutique hotel

with a beautiful view over the main cathedral with a
sumptuous double bed and a cozy, dimly-lit restaurant
and bar below. I imagined Sylwia in my hotel room in
her short skirt, her pretty face looking up at me as I
pushed her manfully down onto the bed and ripped her
skirt off, like a magician’s trick and everything comes off
at once, revealing …
I sighed and sat down. I was struggling with this
alluring fantasy, that could have very easily become
reality.
“Fuck,” I declared to the walls of my room.
But the more I thought about it, the more I thought
that I could not go through with it. I just could not. I
knew I would only get grief from my mates back in
Warsaw for pussy-ing out on a golden opportunity. And I
heard their voices, or perhaps it was the voice of the
Devil again:
“What are morals anyway? Who cares? I mean, she
is probably in a dead-end marriage and wants a little bit
of fun and to feel like a woman again, right?”
And then the prudish Dr. Watson appeared—an
Angel Watson. And he said, “You are an upstanding
member of society. Think of your father and what he
would do. Sleeping with married women is the filthy
occupation of sketchy ruffians, not a civilized
gentleman!”
And then the Devil riposted:
“Jesus, mate—you need this! You are allowed to just
enjoy sex with a stranger, and why don’t you drop the
pious crap which society has foisted on you. The reason
you are not acting on your healthy human impulses is
that society has told you not to. It wants you to behave in
a certain way to preserve itself. It does not have your
interests at heart. Why don’t you live a little? This is your
chance to really start to experience a proper, active sex
life.”
“But he would be having an affair!” declared Angel
Watson, quite outraged at this line of thinking.
“What could be better than an affair?” upped the
Devil. “She can’t impose any conditions on you and you
can just enjoy her for what she is. She is an attractive,
beautiful young woman, like a beautiful bird in the jungle
that wants desperately what you want. She wants to be
plucked—and … ”
But it was no use. There was an impenetrable barrier
to doing it. It was simply not in my nature and also not
the way I had been brought up. It was not the way my
father had brought me up. (And so much of who we are
derives from our childhood, of course.) I respected him.
And he was not one of those religious nuts but a spiritual
man who knew how to enjoy life and had acquired the
toys and trappings of wealth. He found his male sexuality
—in the end, having misplaced it for most of his adult
life—and he did not need to interfere in someone’s
marriage in order to do it. He had managed to preserve
his self-respect and not cross his own boundaries.
Finally, I concluded, “There are plenty more fish in the
sea.”

I typed out this text the next morning:

Monday
Me: I’m going to have to go back today, Sylwia, I’m
afraid [sad face] Annoying
 Her: Oj…:( ok. I understand. So maybe next time
[winky face]

But while it was true that there were plenty more fish—
and one or two of them virtually threw themselves onto
my boat in the coming months—they were not all that
interested in being taken back to port and slung
breathless onto the quayside. Certainly, while I might get
quite a few of them, flapping, into the cockpit of my
boat, they would often flap back out into the sea again,
with a smile and a wink.

Which brings me on to Date 3 …

Topic: Date Flakes
Girls can be notorious flakes—often simply ignoring you
until the day of the date, and you find that you have to
message just because you are doubtful whether she is
going to turn up. You might find yourself texting on the
day something like this, despite her having shown
enthusiasm and confirmed the date previously:

Monday
Me: I’ve found a cute spot for bubble tea on
Chmielna that looks fun. Let’s meet either Tuesday or
Thursday. What suits?
Her: Ooh, nice! Yes, I know it! Either is fine :)
Me: Great, Thursday then, 7pm.
Her: ok, c u then :)

Thursday
Me: Hey there! The bar I mentioned closes at 6pm -
so let’s meet outside The Atlantic Cinema instead. We’ll
go on the adventure from there :)
Her: Hi Alex. I’m sorry i can’t meet today
That was it! I replied:
Thursday
Me: Minus 58 points. That’s pretty poor behavior,
Anna

She did not reply.

It is hardly a surprise then that guys start to stack dates

on top of each other. It’s incredibly frustrating to have an
evening set aside and then the floor just opens
underneath you. As well as stacking dates, I now keep
the first date short and often will go for a 5:30 p.m. or 6
p.m. date on a weekday for a maximum of 90 minutes so
that I can then go on and do something else for the rest of
the evening. I learned this from a guy called
Blackdragon, an American dude who is a busy and
successful business entrepreneur. His view is that it is
best to keep the first date short. I promise myself that I
will definitely keep the date short and will often throw in
a time constraint either when texting or at the beginning
of the date (or I just give off the vibe on the date that we
are just meeting for a drink).
 If you are a young guy with plenty of time on your
hands, you might prefer to stack dates on top of each
other, one at 5:30 p.m. and one at 7:30 p.m., for example.
(Do not forget that girls are often late too so you need a
30-minute cushion!) Then again, why not experiment
once in a while with two girls an hour apart, deliberately
so that they meet each other? Try it! They will probably
wonder what is going on and their attraction for you will
increase. Introduce them, even. I did this recently in the
case of two young—hot— women whom I suspected
were likely to flake from past experience. I deliberately
set it up this way because of their previous sketchy
behavior, and I did not want to end up “being the
gentleman,” scheduling two separate dates and having
two wasted evenings!
Re-read Date 1, in which scheduling two dates on top
of one another worked very well. In that case, it made
absolute sense, as the first date was with the pretty,
young Belarussian madam, whom I suspected was a bit
of a gold-digger and was leading me on. She was a little
surprised when I brought the date to an early close,
explaining that I was meeting someone else. I did not
even try to keep them apart; although, in the end, the
second date walked in only moments after I had just led
Miss Belarussia through the door of the same bar. I was
also properly warmed up, and so that second date went
extremely well.

This brings me on to another thing, which is to make sure

that the date is near your house or you have mentally
prepared a Plan B. It might be going out into the streets,
shops, bars, or cafes and approaching new women.
That’s a great attitude to have as a Plan B for a date. Or
just scheduling your dates near your flat or office so you
can go back and do some work.
Now, this might all sound a bit mercenary, and I am
sure that George Clooney does not have this problem and
is confident that his dates will show up or give proper
notice if they cancel. So, fine for George and some
idealized version of a successful womanizer that you
might have in your head, but you are not that guy! Not
yet. And if you are getting into this stuff and you have a
regular job and a regular life and are active in other areas,
then you really do have to be a bit practical about it all.
8
I learned this idea of a points system from a Nick Krauser book, Daygame
Mastery.
9
How many times have I had such messages?! It is beyond computation. Go
to the end of the chapter for a short note on dealing with flaky girls.
10Guys, myself included, often worry that their texting is not good enough,
but as often as not, the position is either a girl wants to see you or she does
not. The ones who play text games and string it out forever are like cats
sharpening their claws on the furniture. The more you let them do it, the
more damage is caused, and it never ends well for the guy (or the sofa).
11
Do not be stupid about this. All the rules and methods you read in this
book are general advice and you should not follow them slavishly when
your own common sense tells you not to. Eight or nine times out of ten they
will hold true—but not always.
12
The version of the truth game I play is simply to give us both three
questions that we have to answer honestly, the first thing that comes into our
minds. You can refuse to answer, but you have to drink a shot of vodka. The
questions can be fun like, “Have you ever kissed a girl?”
13
I think the famous “mystery” of The Game by Neil Strauss says that, “The
Game is played in comfort,” and it takes five or so hours before a girl is
happy to sleep with you, on average.
14
Woody Allen is a good example of this. Presumably he has had success
with women in his life because of his status whereas the character he plays
in his films usually has no status but is simply witty and intelligent and can
never understand why he does not get the girl. Watch Crimes and
Misdemeanours and pay attention to his relationship with Mia Farrow. Annie
Hall is also a classic and deals with this area. Whether or not you are into
Woody Allen films or not (the cinematic equivalent of marmite), his insights
into women and dating are spot on.
15
“OMG!” I hear you cry. “Are you suggesting that I shouldn’t be myself?”
Yes, I am. And, anyway, it probably isn’t your true self. That takes work,
paradoxically.
16
You should always try. Nothing is lost.
 4

Date 3: Portugal Girl

Y ou may be asking yourself, “Why did he call this

chapter, ‘Portugal Girl’?” Well, this is the story of
the one that got away, the fish that I managed to get into
the cockpit of my boat, but which then flopped over the
side and vanished into the deep. Or, in this instance,
vanished to Portugal.
I met Portugal Girl in a Warsaw shopping center
called “Arkadia,” and it had been a far from Arcadian
visit as on this particular weekday afternoon, there was a
voice playing in the back of my head that was telling me
that I was a sketchy misfit. It was playing, round and
round, like a cracked record. And after wandering around
for nearly an hour, it had a good hold on me. It was
telling me that I had no place being there and should
really go and do something sensible with the afternoon
(and my life). I should go to the gym or get back to work
at my law firm or just do … something else altogether.17
I was in a bit of a trough, my knuckles dragging on
the floor as I moped and padded around the halls and
corridors, staring blankly at girls. I had made a couple of
halfhearted approaches and was ready to throw in the
towel. I had not seen many attractive girls, and the
shopping center was not all that busy.
And then I decided that I needed to pull myself
together. This was crazy. It was less than pointless
wandering around like this, getting more and more
disorientated. So I said that I would just give myself
another half an hour, approach four or five more girls,
and then that was it. I would go home. Whether it was a
sketchy thing to be doing or not, I should at least finish
what I had started.
It was only a few minutes after having made this decision
that the first pretty girl that I had seen that day wafted
past.
I suddenly found myself chatting to a blonde dentist.
It turned out she had a boyfriend, but she nevertheless
gave me her number. As I walked off, I had a feeling that
perhaps it would probably go nowhere, as a girl who tells
you she has a boyfriend during the initial interaction is
probably just giving you her number for friendly, social
reasons, or perhaps because she is extremely polite and
just wants to escape.
But, as is often the case, it had somehow got my vibe
going and given me a lift. My mood had started to
change. And it was only moments later as I turned a
corner that I saw a brunette and our eyes met. She was
slightly on the buxom and voluptuous side (which I like),
and I guess she was about thirty years old. She seemed to
be quite relaxed and open as if she had a day off work or
was on holiday. After the initial compliment, I
immediately and quite boldly started playing a mini-
game in which I said that she had three guesses to figure
out where I was from and what I did for a living. I found
myself flipping the whole conversation around by
making her do the work. It was fascinating to me that the
“vibe” had gone from washed-up to electric in the space
of a few minutes. It reminded me a little of the two back-
to-back dates with two different girls I had had in
Kraków, with my vibe high for the second date after the
groundwork of the difficult first date.18
I also could not believe how brilliant this little trick,
which I had never used before, was working. She had
been taken aback and had really enjoyed the compliment,
and she was now happy to play a daft little game. It now
made her the one who was trying to win my attention, as
I said to her, “If you get it right, I will give you a prize.”
“What prize?” she replied.
“A date out with me, of course. So think carefully.
Take a good look at me.”
She did, accepting without comment my confident
statement that I was already talking about dating her.
“I don’t know—you’re from the UK?”
“Yes. You get a point for not confusing me with an
American. But what is my profession? And that is the
key. It is a ‘profession.’ Do you understand that English
word and its implications?”
She looked at me—confused. In fairness, this was a
little complicated for a non-English speaker. I smiled and
continued.
“Basically I’m respectable, right?”
“A lawyer?” she said, guessing wildly.
 “I don’t believe it! How did you guess?! Good work.”
I gave her a high five. It was weird how she had
guessed so quickly. I changed the conversation, and then
after some chit chat, I suggested we go for coffee. She
was very compliant and allowed me to lead her there. As
we went she told me why it was she was so relaxed and
seemed to have plenty of time on her hands. It was
because she had just flaked on a blind date. The date had
been due to happen that afternoon. And so, in her mind,
our meeting had the hallmark of “serendipity” or
“synchronicity.” As guys, we tend to take the credit if we
get the result, and if we flop we blame ourselves, but it is
worth noting that here I perhaps happened on a girl who
was in just the right place and that it was her vibe that
brought mine out, rather than the other way around.

I took her to Cafe Nero on the mezzanine area of the

shopping mall. We sat down and had a cup of tea. It was
extraordinary to me how natural and effortless it all felt.
Barely fifteen minutes earlier I had felt like a sketchy
misfit, and yet now it felt like a scene from a movie in
which a girl and a boy magically meet in a crowded
street and sparks start to fly. But there were no sparks. It
was better than sparks. It was just fun, casual, and
effortless.
She told me about her love of travel and that she
worked for a five-star hotel as a manager. She did a lot of
traveling as the hotel was setting up, it appeared, in other
countries, and she told me about a recent visit to Saudi
Arabia. She described how it was quite a culture shock,
or perhaps a culture “surprise” would be a more accurate
description. It seems that she had gone to a hotel in
Saudi, and while there her hosts had appointed her a valet
who was charged to look after her. So while she went
about her business during the trip, she actually had a
personal attendant, and it slowly dawned on her that the
attendant was, in fact, a chaperone. In other words, his
role was purely to make sure that she did not misbehave!
“What do you mean?” I said.
“Well, I think his job was to … you know … ”
“What? Yes, no—sure. But what I mean is, was his
job to protect you against predatory males or was his job
to protect you from yourself!?”
“Yes, that—the second one,” she said. Then she
laughed as if it had only just occurred to her.
 “Well, I underestimated the Saudis!” I laughed
loudly. “They obviously do really know about this stuff.
It’s perfectly obvious. And, in fact, think about it—here
you are misbehaving in a shopping center on a weekday
afternoon, not a chaperone in sight. Having stood up one
dude, you’ve decided to start hitting on others! And here
we are. I’m with the Saudis on this. Definitely. You do
need a chaperone.” I now realized there was an excellent
theme here and a great tease for the future, so I
committed it to memory. I could return to this theme
whenever conversation on a future date with this girl
needed spicing up, should the meeting lead to a proper
date. I was now getting carried away with my theme.
“Yep, I’ve always suspected that women are the
predatory ones and men the little bunny rabbits. Women
—the sisterhood—know exactly what they are up to.
They hunt silently and stealthily, and they have military-
grade radars. They lock on to a male target and throw an
innocuous glance or toss their hair. The poor saps are
drawn like bees to a honey pot. Or moths to a flame. I
underestimated Islam and the Saudis. No wonder they
put them in burkas from head to toe. Islam’s attitude to
women never made so much sense! Men clearly need
serious protection.”
“Haha. Yes … ” she continued, “there was definitely
a feeling that I was being watched. I don’t know the
word, but, you know, like in a movie where the hero is
told by the villain that bodyguards are there for his
protection, when in fact they are there to prevent his
escape.”
“So, have you had other run-ins with foreigners?”
She then told me that she had a difficult experience
while working for an airline before she got into the hotel
business. It was with an Iranian woman who was wearing
a burka and who refused to take it off when she was
checking in at security, even though they needed to
identify her and her passport. “It was ridiculous,” she
said.
“Well, you’re not entirely sympathetic to foreign
cultures here in Poland,” I said. “I’ve hardly seen one
black man since I arrived. And basically, you might as
well just have a sign on the border, ‘Muslims and blacks
—this way to Germany. Pass directly through. No
stopping.’”
The ice now broken and the conversation flowing freely,
she started to tell me about her dreams for Portugal. She
said that of all the countries she had visited she loved
Portugal the most, and her hotel was also planning to set
up there. I followed a few basic rules during the
conversation, making sure that she was talking about
herself at least two-thirds to my one-third and that I was
remembering to tease and spike from time to time.
Although to be fair, I was quite relaxed as I had already
done a lot of spiking and teasing when I first approached
her, so really this instant date was just a case of
grounding the interaction.
I kept it reasonably short and we exchanged numbers
and said goodbye, leaving the whole interaction on a real
high. I felt amazing. As if I was treading on air. My
whole afternoon had flipped around one hundred and
eighty degrees, and I now felt an injection of fresh
energy. Indeed, I suddenly felt that I had plenty of time
left in the day to go and finish some work at the law firm,
go to the gym, or do a whole bunch of other “sensible”
things—all things that society would have approved of!

***
We met for our first proper date at one of my favorite
bars called Jacks. I scheduled the date on a Saturday
night. I rarely schedule dates on a Saturday, but I did in
this instance as the instant date had gone so well and it’s
good to experiment from time to time. But I did give her
a time of 5 p.m. I did this so that either of us could roll
off with the excuse that we had other plans later that
night. Saturday night does not really start until 8:30 p.m.
anyway, so this gives you both the excuse to leave early
and pretend you have other plans if it doesn’t work out.
I was five minutes late and found her already sitting
at a table. This was annoying because I prefer to sit with
girls at bars on the first date, where possible, as it tends
to be easier to create a physical connection in such
situations, but I turned the script around and made a
positive out of a negative by getting her to come over to
the bar in order to choose a cocktail. I grabbed her bag
and coat and bundled her over. I led.
We sat at the bar and chit-chatted away merrily. I
cannot now remember what we actually spoke about, but
it went well enough that at one point we took a photo of
ourselves together. There was a gadget at the bar at
Jack’s, a mini photo booth, and you can turn it on and get
it to take your photo. I think it must be some sort of
promotional thing. Anyway, we used it to take our photo
together, and we were laughing and fooling about,
blissfully ignorant of anyone or anything else in the bar.
And so it seemed that we were really getting on.

The second venue I took her to was quite a contrast. It

was similar to an old-fashioned cocktail bar from the
time of the British Raj. Yukka plants were dotted about
and there were high ceilings with fans, bright and airy. I
liked it because it had sofas upstairs in a quiet area.
Unfortunately, the upstairs area was roped off, and so we
had to sit at the bar instead. Once more, the logistics
were not ideal as bar stools at the first venue is fine, but
you need to be escalating at the second venue, so a
private, low-lit area is best. Preferably with nice deep
sofas. But here at the bar, it was very light and bright,
and the barman was right in front of us.
Nevertheless, we soon got into our own little bubble,
like couples on a date do, oblivious to their surroundings.
The conversation really warmed up. We had talked about
her experiences with foreigners during the instant date,
so it was relatively easy to pick up this thread again—it
provided the perfect opportunity for further banter. I
asked her about the types of customers she had at the
hotel and to rank them by nationality. Who were the best
and the worst? She started with the worst. I wondered
what she would say. Would it be Russians, for whom the
Poles have a natural antipathy? Or perhaps she disliked
loud Americans? Or was it the stiff and boring Germans?
Would the clichés about nationalities be reflected in her
answer? It was a large, well-established, five-star hotel
and I was genuinely curious about her answer.
“Israelis,” she said.
I laughed with surprise.
“What makes them so tricky?”
“They are just so awkward about paying and always
demanding on price, and they basically always expect the
earth for nothing. And they are so exhausting the way
they are always trying it on for a discount.”
“Yes,” she said, conclusively, “Israelis are the
worst.”
This was funny to me, perhaps because it was
unexpected. I had no idea that the Israelis were regular
visitors to Polish hotels, but obviously, the hotel was
popular with them for some reason. It was also amusing
because up until this point, Portugal Girl (Natalia, to say
her actual name) had projected such a sweet, girl-next-
door personality that her sudden passion about disliking a
whole class of people was amusing. She was suddenly
talking quite frankly.
“Second?”
“I had thought about the Russians being first, but
actually I am putting them second. They are actually not
as bad as the Israelis because they do not argue about
price. But they are so loud and … ” She paused,
struggling for the words.
“Uncouth,” I said.
“What?”
“Primates. Like cavemen.”
“Exactly,” she said. “Rich Russians. They do not
have social skills. Once I found one asleep. I came to
work at about seven. It was the morning and there he
was. On the staircase to the private staff area. I don’t
know how he got there. He was just laying on the stairs
drunk, somehow managing to sleep there. Perfectly
happily, without his clothes. That often happens with the
Russians.”
“Naked?!”
 “Yes.”
“Oh my God. You’re not serious.”
She threw back her cocktail, and I ordered some more
drinks.
“And so which are the best?”
“The Saudis are okay. They have money, of course,
and they book many rooms. We have a special room, that
is many rooms that you can interconnect and make a
huge suite. One of our regular clients stays there. He is
fine, really polite and respectful and brings presents. He
has parties there, but they are always polite, and if there
is a mess, they send gifts and apologies.”
“And they like Polish girls?”
She did not answer. I imagined she raised an
eyebrow. It’s always the sweet girls who get up to the
most mischief, I reflected.

During the conversation I had been touching her from

time to time, putting my hand on the small of her back
and standing up out of my stool to do so, and leaning into
her. I also did the “hand trick” and asked to look at her
hands. I held hers up against mine and wondered whether
she was artistic or not as her hands were quite cute but
stubby. She did not know what the word meant, so when
she asked, I replied, “Podgy. Short fingers … ” I kept my
hand against hers for longer and did not pull away.
“But homely, loving hands. I like it. I bet you bake
nice cakes and stuff and are good at rolling pastry.”
She laughed.
I then took her hand and held it for a few moments in
mine—held it properly and ran my fingers through her
fingers, clasping them tightly. She did not pull away.

I now felt that there was a moment and I needed to seize

it. We were staring into each other’s eyes and I said,
slightly tipsy from the wine I had been drinking, “You
know, what I like about you is the way you are so
straight and not afraid to talk about yourself, even though
it might make you look bad.”
“Really?” she said. I think partly because she did not
quite know what I meant.
“Yes. You told me about that woman in a burka at the
airport and how annoying it was. And then the pecking
order of nationalities you dislike most. At first, I thought
you were just a sweet wallflower, but you have spirit and
do not mind speaking your mind, which, in fact, I find an
attractive quality.”19
A pause.
“How good are you at kissing?”
She stared. I was, by now, playing with her hair and
leaning in, oblivious to the fact that we were at the bar in
full view of the barman and there were not many other
customers. Would she be shy about kissing in public?
And on a first date? I did not wait for an answer, of
course, but simply lent in and said, “Let’s find out.” We
kissed.

It was magical. The kiss was amazing. The climax to a

great date.

We did not stay out long. Perhaps until 10pm. She said
she had a lot of things to do before her trip to Portugal,
and I said that I had actually been ill from food poisoning
the previous week and was still taking it easy. The walk
back to the metro hand in hand was also amazing. I
kissed her goodnight. She only kissed lightly, now more
self-conscious and not so lost in the moment as she had
been at the bar. She disappeared down the escalators.
 I walked back home treading on air. I reflected on the
night’s events and how seamless it had all been. It felt
like the most amazing date and that I had played a
blinder. It had all escalated so smoothly. From me taking
the lead and moving her from a table when I arrived at
the bar, to us taking each other’s photos on the Jack
Daniels’ photo machine, to the spot at the bar, the
gradual touching, and then stroking her hair. And I
reflected on how powerful that moment had been when I
started to talk to her about what was so especially
attractive—her bold personality and ability to talk about
her prejudices. It was a little cheesy, but I was carried
away with the moment and knew intuitively it would
work, that we were in the bubble and that she would kiss
me. It had been like that moment in wintry Kraków, in
the Old Town Square with the Red Head.
Then there were a few pings back and forth:

Sunday (day after the date)

Me: Hey story girl ;) Fun nite. Trust you found your
way safely home and avoided talk with any more
strangers ;)
 Her: Cześć Alex. One stranger is enough for me, so I
did not talk to anyone else :-) I hope that today you feel
better and you can completely forget about the food
poisoning.
Me: Now I think only of you :p
Her: Oh..only of me..let it be a secret because your
other girls will be sad :-)
Me: Top Secret. I am a British agent after all
[Sunglasses Face]
Her: I knew that! Nice to meet you Mr Bond, James
Bond! :-)

This was great stuff. It was clear that she was hooked and
a second date was definitely on. I had to move fast
because I was going on a ski trip to Austria and she was
going to Portugal.

Monday Morning
Me: Hey Hey. Secret Agent wants to see you before
he goes to Austria on wednesday. Are you free tuesday?
Her: Yes I am free on Tuesday evening.
This was great. But the text did not end there.
Mysteriously she added this:

Monday Afternoon
Her: I thought a little bit about “us”…and I am sure
that we have got completely different expectations and
you seem to be a womanizer :-) truly you are a mystery
for me…I don’t even know if you have good intentions. I
am not looking for any troubles. Sorry for my doubts, I
am a woman I have to talk about them ;-)

What on earth was this? It had seemed to be going so

well. Why the sudden doubts? I thought hard about how
to reply and finally sent this:

Monday Afternoon
Me: No problem :) And nope, I’m looking for a long
term relationship. But I’m flattered you think my dating
skills are that good! ;)

She did not reply and then later that same evening I sent
this message:
Monday Evening
Me: But although I’m not a womanizer, there is a
bigger problem…
She responded immediately:
Her: What kind of problem?
Me: My age. I’m 87 ;)
Her: I know…pressure…you have to hurry :-)…you
do not have too much time :-) any last dream?..jump with
a parachute or glider flight? ;-)

It seemed to be back on track. But then when I suggested

a time to meet up on Tuesday, she messaged that it would
be hard to meet after all as her boss was sick and she had
to get up at 4 in the morning to go to work. She added
that her day was so busy that …

Tuesday Morning
Her: “…by evening, I could be dead ;-)”
I pinged back:
Me: “No worries. Take it easy, Working Girl. I’m
sure you’re reserving your place in heaven [saint
emoticon]”
And so the window of opportunity passed. She left for
Portugal. I rolled off and told myself, The date went
great and she reciprocated afterward. There was just no
time to meet. You can get it back on track when she
returns.
We then exchanged messages on Facebook while she
was in Portugal. A couple of days later, I pinged her that
I hoped she was behaving herself and not hanging around
cocktail bars or chatting up complete strangers, and she
responded by sending me loads of beautiful photos of the
apartment, countryside, and hotel and said, “I’m
emigrating here!”
When I teased her that she had met a Portuguese
cocktail waiter, obviously, she replied, “I’m not
kidding!”
Suddenly, it really did feel as if there had been a
window of opportunity—and that the window had closed
shut. We pinged some more but her replies were shorter
and more sporadic. Then, when she was finally back in
Warsaw, I asked her out on a date:

Weekday
 Me: Listen Portugal, just landed from Uk and got a
busy week. Let’s meet up for coffee at the weekend. What
day suits?
Her: I was thinking some time ago a little bit about
our strange relationship…and I am sorry but I am not
going continue with this. I have never felt better, I don’t
want to meet anyone. Sorry for this misunderstanding!

The tone was suddenly different. Something had changed

during that trip to Portugal. Had she got off with a
Portuguese waiter, after all!? I had genuinely liked her,
and, moreover, I had thought that the dynamic was good
between us. I was not “head over heels,” but simply had
really enjoyed her company. It felt as if the rug was being
pulled from right under my feet. And it did not make
sense. I spoke to a friend, and his view was that I should
have pulled her back to my place on the night of that first
date as it was clearly very “on.” He suggested that
perhaps that was really the only option as it was always
going to be difficult with her going off on this extended
trip to Portugal for work.
I fell prey, as we all do, to the usual mental
convolutions:
 Had I made a mistake in not escalating harder?
Surely I had escalated hard, certainly by conventional
standards? I chided myself, I should not have got myself
so lost in the moment but should have acted decisively
and bounced her back to my flat. I should have slept with
her that night and escalated hard. Then an emotional
connection would have been created, and as the PUAs
tell you, once you have slept with her, the game is over,
you can relax and be yourself. Then you can make a
much better decision about whether you want to get into
a long-term relationship with her. And then you are in
the stronger position and have the frame. Damn it!

I sent her a ping about three weeks later, but she ignored
it.
I have not seen her since.
Topic: Frame Tests
So, let’s go detective and try and figure this one out.
“Just exactly what happened?”
Now, the first thing to appreciate as a guy who is
learning about women and dating is not to start telling
yourself stuff like, “It was not meant to be,” or “The stars
were against us,” or “It was her loss, not mine.” You are
allowed to be annoyed about it, especially after a great
date has gone so well, but if you are determined to learn
and improve then you must at some point—in the cold
light of day—take a good hard look at what happened.
Most guys never do this. They just move on to the next
girl without having learned anything about themselves.
The first thing to say is that my friend was almost
certainly right. All that was really on was a romantic
night together, and I missed this window and that, in
reality, there were external, logistical issues in the way
that were always likely to have made it difficult.
What I noticed as I reflected on the date many
months later is that I pushed it quite hard. This was
natural, I guess, because there was only a small window
of opportunity to see her again. But there is always a
danger that you will come across a little needy. And I
actually think that one problem was the clue afforded by
the small matter of that single text. I think there was a
real frame test in there. Women test men to see how they
will react. She had sent me this message:

Her: I thought a little bit about “us”…and I am sure that

we have got completely different expectations and you
seem to be a womanizer :-) truly you are a mystery for
me…I don’t even know if you have good intentions. I am
not looking for any troubles. Sorry for my doubts, I am a
woman I have to talk about them ;-)

And I had replied with this:

Me: No problem :) And nope, I’m looking for a long term

relationship. But I’m flattered you think my dating skills
are that good! ;)

What I did here was give a logical response to her

message and told her basically, “No! I’m not a nasty
womanizer! I’m a nice guy who is looking for a long-
term relationship! Don’t worry!” Even though I added
the bit about dating skills and being flattered, this is
essentially the tenor of the message. Now, this stuff is
nothing if not counter-intuitive. And it actually reminds
me of a very similar incident that happened over a year
previously, which I wrote about in my first book, Too
Late, Mate?20
In that earlier incident, a girl had sent me a message
that I was “too old for her” and she “did not want to mess
me around.” It had been a very similar sequence of
events in which I had been on a couple of great dates
with this girl (and kissed her) and the vibe was really up,
so I was astonished to get this message from her:

Her: I was thinking about our age difference and it’s

bigger than I thought. I think ur a nice guy but can’t see
it being anything id want. I hope u understand. I think we
get on and enjoy your company, but don’t want to mess
you around. X

Luckily, at the time I received this message, I was having

a drink with a very experienced player. I showed him the
message and asked for his input. He read the message,
laughed, took my phone, and said, “You need to text
something like this,” and he then proceeded to draft up a
text in reply to her message:

Me: I’m not as nice as you think. Don’t you think you can
keep up with my experience! Listen, I’m out tonight with
my friend Lauren but def catch up soon. Laithwaites are
doing some wine tasting this month if u fancy?? X

At that time, this offended my sensibilities.

“Outrageous!” I said. “Who on earth is Lauren?”
“Doesn’t matter,” said Richard, “just so she knows
you have other girls, other options. Pre-selection.”
“You can’t do that!” I said.
Then I sent the text.
And I kid you not, on this occasion that stupid little
text turned things around. I actually went on to make a
lot more progress with that girl, and we had some great
dates afterward and made out. Somehow, that one text
seemed to change the tenor of the relationship.

Applying the same principle to the message from

Portugal Girl, in which she had doubts (which a girl is
always going to express because she wants to test the
strength of a man’s frame), I should probably have either
ignored or amplified. I could have said something like
this:

Me: You should be careful. I’m on the run from the

British authorities. Many women have reported me. You
should check with Interpol ;) Look, have fun in Portugal
and we’ll hook up when you’re back. Behave yourself, no
hitting on strangers ;)

And then just rolled off.

We all know that women are not looking for logic.
And with Portugal Girl, I had been too logical in wanting
to reassure her that I was not a player. I should have gone
the other way and told her that she was absolutely right, I
was a terrible Casanova.
If I had rolled off like this, it would have taken the
pressure completely off and she could have just enjoyed
her time over there. I would have then pinged her a week
or so later perhaps, and she might have had this fond
memory and pinged back. We could have simply
resumed play upon her return.
 Perhaps this is a little too much analysis and, of
course, you never really know as a guy what is going to
work and what is not. You simply send it out there into
the Universe and maybe it will come back—but the main
thing is to at least feel confident that you have played it
well and been cool, playful, and non-reactive. This is
extremely attractive to a girl. She wants a bit of mystery
and she enjoys the pursuit. I did not play this text
exchange as well as I might have thought at the time.
Maybe nothing would have happened anyway, but at
least I would have known that I had given myself every
chance of success and put the odds in my favor. You
cannot really ask of yourself much more than that.

The other thing to note from this date is that, in all

likelihood, she had been through one or two long-term
relationships in her life and I dare say had only recently
emerged from the latest one. There was clearly a timing
issue at play for her.21 In those circumstances, the only
thing to be enjoyed was a romantic liaison. I had quite
possibly given mixed signals. On reflection, this is a
problem from the very nature of the project I was
embarked on because I was applying seduction principles
that telegraphed “adventurous sex” but I was actually
interested in a long-term relationship.
This is a theme that runs throughout these books and
is an interesting dilemma for a guy who wants to acquire
skills but is also looking for a long-term relationship or
marriage. Should you apply the same seduction skills to
someone whom you want a relationship with? You may
have to wait right until the end of Volume II for the
answer to this question, which is one of the reasons why I
added an epilogue.
In the case of Portugal Girl, I believe I gave off
mixed signals. She was definitely relationship material,
but simply not in the right place to offer much more than
a romantic liaison. You need to take note of what is in
front of you, not what your agenda is, and accept
anything that the universe has to offer as a gift.

17
These voices are familiar friends, and I dare say that they will never go
away. After all, in truth—certainly by society’s standards—walking around
an Eastern European shopping center in the middle of the afternoon in
March and going up to strangers, interrupting them as they go about their
daily business and hitting on them is hardly a conventional pastime. Why is
this? Is it because I should be doing something more sensible and productive
with my time? Is it because of the sexual component and the fact that I am
doing it in the daylight hours? Is this simply a major breach of society’s
code of conduct? A social crime? There can surely be no ethical or moral
objection to a man going up to an attractive girl and seeing whether she
would like to go for coffee. Can there? She can always politely say, “No.”
Is what society dislikes the premeditated nature of it and the fact that it is not
just some happy, accidental, and romantic collision? (It is, after all, the
daytime equivalent of “going on the pull” at night.) But in that case, why
does society disapprove if it is acceptable to do it at night? And who is this
“society” who disapproves? Your friends? Your family? Your sisters?
Perhaps it is because we like to think we are “civilized,” and in a civilized
society, males do not go around “hunting” females in the streets.
Is it perhaps “an attack” on society itself? But then again, if the mating game
was all just left to chance and accidental, romantic collisions, you wonder
whether anyone would ever get anywhere and the world would be left
unpopulated. Surely it is normal and natural for men to want to hunt? You
can only start to conclude that it is a somewhat arbitrary rule set by society
and that, in fact, it really just creates boundaries and limits and ring-fences
sexual behavior of this sort. It is almost as if society is afraid that if it does
not create a code of conduct around this behavior, human beings will go
rampant and breed like rabbits, leaving babies at every street corner. It feels
as if society itself is afraid.
18
See Date 1
19
I am not sure how well she understood the point that I was making, but
the thing is I said it with conviction and real emotion and this energy was
probably more important to creating the right vibe than the content itself.
20
Chapter 13—Hobbit, Essex Boys & “The Text.”
21
In the general, modern-day, and sentimental climate of the concept of “the
one,” guys may be forgiven for thinking that the timing and location of
meetings with girls are secondary. But they really are not. You only really
begin to understand the importance of this when you adjust your thinking
and start to replace the concept of “the one” with “a one.”
 5

Date 4: The Smartly-Dressed

Professional

I met Date 4, an accountant, in a shopping center at the

entrance to a clothes shop. What impressed me about
her was that she was dressed really well. She was
probably in her mid-thirties and looking really good for
her age.
The compliment ran along the lines of her looking
like a movie star from the forties or fifties because her
dress was somewhat formal, and it seemed as if she
belonged to a different age, where people really did dress
properly, rather than the casual and sloppy way people
dress in the modern age.
 “You look like something from another era, an iconic
film-star era,” I said. “Like Claudette Colbert from ‘It
Happened One Night.’ In fact, I reckon you are a bit of a
daddy’s rich girl, swanning about on an idle Friday
afternoon, running through your trust fund on clothes!”
She probably had no idea what I was talking about,
but it didn’t matter, she was intrigued by the way I was
amusing myself, I think.
She took the observation and compliment with a
smile and after a short conversation, I found myself
floating the idea of a cup of tea right there and then and a
break from her shopping. I then added, “Or were you
about to try on that dress and you need more time
browsing?” Of course, this reverse psychology led her to
say, “No, no! I can do this later.” And then suddenly she
was taking charge. She told me that there was a good
spot upstairs on the mezzanine area and she pointed up
the escalators and before I knew it she was leading me,
rather than the other way around!

Do women get more demonstrative the older they get?

Have I accidentally stumbled onto one of these
‘cougars’? I asked myself. She seems to know exactly
where she is taking me. Does she do this a lot, perhaps,
swan around shopping centers waiting for men to hit on
her and then lure them into her lair, this cafe on the
mezzanine area?
The spot she found was pretty intimate and in a quiet
corner, and this reinforced the cougar idea. But still, this
was only a faint resemblance as I have never really
known a Polish woman to be “cougar-like.” They are too
old fashioned in their dating ideas. (Fortunately.)
We sat down and ordered tea, and it now transpired
that she was something of a career girl. She did not have
much of a relationship history from what I could tell, and
she worked at a reasonably impressive consulting firm in
the City in finance as some sort of high-level accountant.
We sat across the table from each other. It was
probably 4pm on a Friday afternoon. The tea came and
there was a pause in the conversation. And now suddenly
things felt really awkward. I do not know why. It might
have been because the initial approach was so fizzy and
now reality had sunk in, that here she was with a
complete stranger and she had remembered that she was
a professional and a career girl and not one to be taking
risks like this and meeting up with total strangers—
foreigners at that. The wild side of her had briefly
surfaced and her feminine nature had responded
favorably to my masculine approach, but now social
conditioning had kicked back in.
I tried various tricks and techniques, but somehow
the mood was not right. There was something about the
timing of an afternoon instant date that precluded against
anything too personal or too flirtatious. There were a
great many clunky moments and awkward silences. Now,
there is nothing wrong with silence, of course, but during
the daytime after a first meeting, you really do need to
engage in conversation. It is not like meeting a girl at
night in a bar or club where you can be far less vocal and
far more physical. Conversation skills are important
because of their power to break the ice, and if you are
able to keep a conversation going, then you feel more
comfortable on the date and, perversely, can speak less
and be comfortable with that. But we had not got to that
stage.
I finally decided to wheel out that classic staple, the
truth game.
“Okay, let’s play a game. You have three questions
and I have three questions. You can ask anything you
like, but you have to answer honestly the first thing that
comes into your head.” I was also about to say, “You can
refuse to answer, but if you do, you have to drink a shot
of vodka.” But this felt wrong as we were not in a bar.
They probably did not serve spirits. Perhaps she picked
up on my hesitation because when I declared, “Okay, you
start. You can ask me anything. Anything you want,” she
just looked at me wide-eyed, as if I were crazy.
And I realized that somehow this was out of place,
playing this game. Playing it on a proper first date might
be fine, but this was a very sudden and unexpected
instant date and it simply felt clunky and contrived.
And now, in spite of, or perhaps because of, that
initial fizzy conversation over the clothes racks, the vibe
died. Dead as a goose, it was.
“What on earth am I doing here?” was written all
over her face.
It felt as if one or both of us might start playing with
our mobile phone, out of nervousness, which was a
horrifying prospect barely fifteen minutes into the date.
This was a real dead moment.
Tumbleweeds rolled through the barren land …
I had no idea what to do, and I felt that there was nothing
in the dating toolkit that would work. Certainly not
conversationally. This date was sliding into a coma and
none of the normal conversation tricks looked likely to
revive it.
One of my rules is that it is okay to experiment. It is
better to do something and get it wrong than do nothing. I
gave myself permission to try something new. I decided
to try something counter-intuitive and to just “get
physical.” This seemed wrong on one level. It was mid-
afternoon, there were people around and we were in a
busy shopping center. I was not in a crowded bar or club
on a Saturday night. We were sitting across the table
from each other sipping tea. But the whole point of my
experimentation rule is to try and do something
surprising and different.
So I just got up and I walked around to her side of the
table, which, at that point in the interaction and
considering how recently we had met, was pretty bold. I
just got up and did it. I am not sure I even had a line to
bounce off! I just moved. And then I saw that her
handbag was in the way between her body and mine and
so I moved it. She did not protest, although I fully
expected her to leap up and say, “What on earth do you
think you are doing?! Get back to your side of the table
this minute!”
I then brushed up against her and put my arm around
her waist and pulled her in a little. It was just an
affectionate gesture. I had no idea what I was going to
say, although my gesture did seem to require some sort
of comment or conversation. But I did not have any, and
I decided not to manufacture one but simply to look her
in the eye. To my amazement, she did not pull away and
she even let me leave my hand on her leg for a couple of
moments. It was quite a basic, primal gesture and one
which connected with that wild, feminine side that she
was clearly trying to keep under control.
In fact, a conversation did now arise quite naturally,
after a few moments. This was because I was so close I
noticed the design of her earrings. I touched them and
commented that she had a great retro look. Her earrings
reminded me of why I just had to approach her and that I
had felt inspired.
Then a further fresh vein of conversation arose as a
conversation idea popped into my head that a fellow
Daygamer had told me about. The idea involves painting
pictures with words and trying to evoke an emotional
response. I asked her to paint a dream picture of her life
in five years’ time, as though she was a director in a film
that she was producing. I asked her to describe what the
scenes in her own personal movie would show. I said that
she had to fill in all the little details, whether she would
have a house by the sea, a rooftop garden in the city, or a
job as an art collector, and if so, what sort of art would
she have hanging in her home? Or in her office? Would
she have a private office and her own consulting firm by
then?
And with that, she finally started to talk more freely.
She talked about how she loved the country and would
have dogs, and although she lived in the city, she would
spend her weekends there, in her country house. She also
told me how she liked outdoor sports. She said that she
would be married. I asked her whether she had ever been
married before, and she had not. She was looking for the
right guy. As she opened up a little, I felt more and more
that she was conservative, old-fashioned, and belonged to
another age. She would have fit in as a shy relative of the
British Royal Family.22
 When it came to the time for me to describe my own
five-year dream, it involved an Austrian ski chalet, an
apartment in London, and being a big-shot film producer.
I described how my helicopter would fly me around. (I
have never been in a helicopter—this is one of my
random dreams.)
Having melted the ice, I did not want to prolong the
conversation too long. After about forty minutes or so, I
brought the meeting to an end and we exchanged
numbers. I was relieved that we had at least managed
some level of connection. It had been hard work.

Texting afterward was likewise somewhat awkward and

gauche:

Saturday
Me: Hey Fifties Movies Girl ;) Unexpected but fun
meeting you. Alex

Sunday
Her: It was nice to meet you :)

Wednesday
 Me: On train to Vienna. For some Austrian mountain
air and that dream chalet ;) Life is sweet.

Sunday
Me: [Photo of me relaxing on the ski slopes] Taking
a break amongst the pines
Her: Amazing view :)

She was not giving me much. I also felt that we were

unlikely to share a long-term future together and that we
had not really hit it off.
So I moved on.
Topic: Observation
I have approached a lot of girls in public places, and what
I have found is that observation is one of the most
powerful ways to generate a conversation. Every guy is
afraid of running out of things to say after initially going
up to a girl and paying her a compliment. How on earth
do you just create a conversation out of thin air when you
are both complete strangers?
There was a time when I had a lot of energy and
enthusiasm and would run up to girls and try not to think
too much about what to say, for fear of getting “analysis
paralysis.” But as often as not now, rather than rush in, I
like to just take a look at the girl and see what it is that
catches my eye about her or whether there is something
interesting or unique. This is so I have somewhere to go
with the conversation after the initial interaction. Girls
like to be thought of as special, of course, so if at all
possible it is better to have something specific to say
about why she caught your eye.
An observation can also open up strands of
conversation so that in making it, you seed possible
conversation topics. A lot of it is about striking the right
tone of amusement and teasing but also communicating
that you genuinely like what she has got going. In the
case of the observation I used with Date 4, I combined
the idea of her classic, retro look from an old movie with
the suggestion that she was spoiled—a rich daddy’s girl
shopping away her inheritance on a Friday afternoon.
One of the keys to all of this is to be able to amuse
yourself. You can start to riff off an observation and
paint pictures and draw associations. It probably will take
guys a lot of practice before they get over the initial
nerves and start to enjoy themselves (but beginner’s
enthusiasm can, in fact, take you a long way). If she had
been one of those girls who does not give much, even
though they may be interested, you can stretch out the
observation.
Here I referenced the actual actress from an old
movie, Claudette Colbert, and this helped communicate
knowledge about films, which in turn helped to ground
the conversation and show that I am a well-informed guy.
I am, of course, now comparing her to a movie actress
too. I can then, if she stares at me blankly, tease her for
not knowing her film history or challenge her on whether
she just watches YouTube videos and has never seen a
classic film in her life: “Didn’t you know they made
movies in black and white once upon a time?”
If I had felt that I was being too challenging, I could
have talked about how she took care of her appearance
and did not dress like a slob, how so many people these
days don’t bother to dress properly and how “I like it.”
The words “I like it” can often help deal with times that
you accidentally are a bit too challenging or abrupt or she
does not get the joke.
This ability to paint pictures and tell stories is also useful
on a date, and here it was a bit of a reference point as she
did have certain dreams and plans that seemed old-
fashioned and tied in with my initial observation. If you
paint a picture, say of an elaborate and fantastical
lifestyle—the more fantastical the better—painting that
picture, especially if you run with it and really draw it
out, can also really help to lay down conversation
markers that the girl can pick up on. Storytelling is a
whole other subject, but even just a simple observation
can take you a long way. Also, once you have made the
observation, it can lead you on to making assumptions
more easily, which is a vital part of talking to girls on the
streets.
So, for instance, I could have continued after the film
actress reference with, “I’m guessing you loved to dress
up when you were a kid and perhaps you were a bit
theatrical and forced your parents to watch plays in your
living room (and probably charged them for it). You
probably raided your mum’s wardrobe for over-sized
posh clothes and wore heels far too big for you. I can just
see you waltzing around the house with clunky heels, a
massive pearl necklace, and one of those ridiculously
long cigarette holders sticking out of your mouth.”
And with an air of self-amusement, I could have
concluded, “Yep, you were definitely a theatrical child!”
Or I could have kept it simple and said, “You’re
probably in some glamorous industry—like you run a
lifestyle magazine. I’m right, yes? No? Okay, so you flip
burgers at McDonald’s. There’s no shame in that.”
You obviously leave a pause and wait to see if she
hooks onto one of your assumptions. Leave gaps before
moving on. More likely than not, she will want to
disagree or agree with whatever you are saying, if for no
other reason than to prove your assumption is wrong or
to justify herself.
If she says, “No, I’m an accountant, actually.” You
can then say, “Ah! So this is like a fantasy life you lead!
On Friday afternoons when you’ve skipped out of work
early. It all makes sense!”
She then may justify why it is she is out of work
during the afternoon. Or she may not give you much, in
which case you can start to try and explore the topic of
being an accountant.
“So what sort of accountant are you? A rich one, I
hope?”
The objective of the initial approach is often simply
to find a topic that the girl gives you that you can talk
about, tease, and challenge her on. You can’t start a
conversation with a stranger with questions from the
start, you have to get things going with observations and
assumptions first. And it does not matter whether your
assumptions are wrong or right.
A keen observation can act as a bridge. Initially just
being able to paint some fun pictures or associations off
the back of a particularly interesting observation helps to
break the ice with a girl you have just met and gets you
through that initial cold approach with a total stranger.
Even if you cannot think of an interesting observation,
you can use a stock one, such as, “I couldn’t help notice
your dreamy walk. I’m guessing you’re a student.”
Indeed, if you’re not a word merchant this may be more
congruent with your nature. Fine. Keep it simple.

22
This reminds me of my old self. Old-fashioned values inconsistent with
the current times and the idea that the right one will turn up eventually! This
is more forgivable in a girl, but a guy needs to take action. Whether and
what action girls can take to improve their chances at dating is an interesting
topic, but unfortunately outside the scope of this book.
 6

Dates 5 and 6: Young &

Gauche

I have put these dates together because they were both

young women, probably in their early twenties, and
both attended University, or at least recently graduated in
the case of Date 6. They were also young in a different
way, insofar as they were not quite conscious of the
power of their own sexuality and seemed somewhat
“gauche” and inexperienced. One was a lawyer, one an
academic. They were both reserved, shy, and
uncomfortable with dating. And yet some sort of
attraction had been triggered in them by the directness of
my initial approaches during the daytime, in two separate
shopping centers in Warsaw.

***

Date 5 was a 22-year-old blonde girl and had been so

struck that she agreed to an instant date without much
persuasion. She was drifting dreamily along on a Sunday
afternoon staring into shop windows, looking lovely in a
very revealing black and white striped dress with
shoulder straps, and she was somewhat unaware of her
own attractiveness. She was innocent (almost), as if she
had only just recently taken possession of her sexuality.
The instant date at an adjacent Costa Coffee was very
clunky. It was clear that this had never happened to her
before, and she had probably gotten more than she had
bargained for that day. I felt that it was very likely that
she had spent most of her adulthood to this point with her
head in her books and doing little in the way of dating
and certainly even less in the way of flirtation and
seduction. The black and white striped dress with the low
straps felt like a sudden, bold decision to experiment.
Almost as if she was only just coming into her
womanhood at a late stage, and something in her, some
primal, subconscious force or urging, had led to the
decision to dress up on a Sunday and swan around a
shopping center.
Many younger girls pay little attention to what drives
them. They strike me as butterflies who simply cannot
help fluttering about in an attempt to draw attention to
themselves (quite rightly so) but have absolutely zero
idea of the powerful biology that they are in fact in thrall
to. Especially so in the case of academic or intelligent
girls whose heads cannot square the circles with their
hearts, of course. Although hearts is the wrong word. It is
their primal instinct, their biology that they are struggling
with and alarmed to find themselves in the grip of. In the
case of this butterfly, I almost expected her to be carrying
a school book and wearing spectacles. It was not that she
was young, so much as she was not sexually mature.
The instant date was, as I said, pretty clunky. She was
clearly in the category of “Hot Academic” as she spoke
five different languages. (How is that even possible at
such a young age?) As we chatted, the impression was
reinforced that she did not get out much, although it was
clear to me that she was definitely now reviewing her life
decision to be a bookish-student and was starting to try to
spread her wings.
Still, the date was hard work, and, perhaps to my
discredit, I bailed after about 40 minutes because of this.
There was also a part of me that was not hugely attracted
to her. I do not mean to say I wouldn’t have slept with
her. I would have done. But for the amount of investment
it would have probably taken to get to that point, it did
not seem worth it. This is why more mature girls can
often be rather more interesting to men, at least to me,
especially if they stay in shape.
Men can be lazy beasts, and while they might lick
their lips at the prospect of the hunt upon seeing an
attractive young antelope pop out of the long grass, the
amount of effort required to chase it down—and the
amount of dancing about it does—suddenly turns the
whole enterprise into an exhausting project in their
minds. So instead, they roll onto their backs and decide
to snooze instead!

***
Date 6 was indeed very similar to Date 5, although she
had recently graduated and was in a job. She was a Polish
girl from a city called Bialystock. I wish I could show
you her Facebook profile. She looks like a doll. Strong
red lipstick and curly fair hair, lots of it, like a
mannequin in a shop window. It’s as though her mother
just bought her the “Girl’s Book of Beauty” for
Christmas, and she is trying out different styles. The day
I met her, she was on page one: “How to look stunning
on a date.” Although judging by her later appearance on
the date itself, I think she had drifted onto page 18, “How
to dress for a ball with the Royal Family.” A part of me
imagined her still a girlish teenager, rummaging through
her mother’s wardrobe, trying on her mother’s shoes and
clothes far too large for her.
I first approached her at the bottom of an escalator in
a shopping center, and she really was wowed. I think it
was the way that I just sort of “pounced” by jumping in
front of her without a moment’s thought. My attention
had been immediately caught by her young beauty and
her makeup looks. (I am as much a victim of my biology
as she is of hers.) I went straight into my flow and had an
excellent vibe. It reminded me of something I had heard
the famous Yad (he of the early Daygame.com days) say:
“If the vibe is right, you can literally get away with
anything.”23 And I think this was proof of that statement
in action. I was a much older guy, and here she was, a
young woman of barely more than 22 or 23 (a big age
gap).
She was very circumspect in the texting in between the
approach and the date. When I asked her out, she texted,
“I’m too young for you, but okay.” In fact, after the very
first text I sent her, she actually sent the same text twice,
the second text simply correcting a spelling error in the
first and to apologize for it! She was afraid of meeting
me, partly because of her English.

***

The date itself bore out her inexperience. She dressed up

in a very posh dress and high heels in spite of the fact we
met for coffee on a Sunday morning in Cafe Nero in a
shopping center. It cannot have been much later than
11:30 a.m., perhaps the earliest date I have ever had.24
“Logistics,” as PUAs say, became a problem with
this girl as she lived in another city and only came to
Warsaw once a week, usually on the weekends. So this
was why we ended up with an unusual date on a Sunday
morning.
It was immediately quite awkward, and I was struck
by the amount of makeup she had on. I felt like telling
her, “You’re quite attractive already, you know, and
anyway, I’m one of those guys who’s more into a girl’s
figure than a pretty face.” But this would have been a
rather bold statement right at the beginning of the date!
The awkwardness of the situation was not helped by
the fact that we sat in chairs across from each other at a
cafe in a busy shopping center. The chairs were deep and
you sunk into them. It would have taken a cherry picker
to get us out of our seats they were so deep! And because
of the very busy and public location, there was very little
opportunity to touch or to have any intimacy of any sort.
She sat the whole time with both her bag and her coat
on her lap, as if she might finish the date at any minute.
So I manfully carried the conversation as best I could. It
ranged over an array of topics that did not yield much,
and I started to wonder whether the problem might be her
English. I do talk quickly, and maybe she was so nervous
because she was struggling to follow me but too polite to
say anything.
Eventually I stopped talking. It just felt like one of
those old-fashioned dates I had been on where you just
talk for the sake of talking because you find silence
uncomfortable. But the silence was hard work too. Poor
girl. I almost felt sorry for her, sitting there struggling to
deal with a guy twice her age, waffling along in a foreign
language, a victim of her biology which meant she had
pretty much no choice but to want to meet me and come
out because of the primal attraction I had generated in the
street.
Like Date 5, she was an intelligent, educated girl, and
she might have been totally at sea, a whirl of conflicting
emotions, her head and heart in fierce competition. She
reminded me of myself, in fact, as a younger man,
incapable of exerting any sort of control or structure onto
a wacky, crazy situation like a date, in which of course so
few of us are given any real training.
However, I was no longer that young man, and I had
some training. I managed to find my bearings and asked
myself mid-date, What now? What’s my next step?
 It was clear to me that I needed to take action, some
sort of action, and I had reached that moment before with
Date 4.25 It was now becoming obvious to me that it is
the taking of action that women are attracted to, and it
hardly matters what action you take. I had to change
things up, spin things around. There is perhaps nothing
less attractive than a ditherer on a date. Even an asshole,
in spite of a woman’s protests, is probably better than a
ditherer. At least she knows where she stands.
Anyway, while covering a wide range of topics,
desperately looking for some common interest, I
stumbled on one in skiing. But because the conversation
was so clunky and had almost run dry, either because she
did not understand my English or just because she was
painfully shy, I yanked myself out of the depths of my
comfy sofa chair and grabbed a chair from another table
and came and sat next to her.
I produced my mobile phone.
Remind me never to select sofa chairs like this again,
I said to myself, as I scrolled through photos. They are
death to a date. Not only are they deeper than the Saint
Mariana trench, but they have these stupid curved arms
that make it impossible for you to get anywhere near the
girl.
The phone idea turned out to be a good one. I recalled
some advice from a PUA who had said that you need to
have a good collection of photos on your phone for this
very eventuality or where a girl speaks very little
English. I showed her photos of my recent ski trip. At
last we had something to gush about and compare notes
on, and she produced her mobile phone and scrolled
through her photos too.
Because I had positioned myself around to her side of
the table, I could touch her as we looked at our phones. It
helped to create a little more connection and avoid the
date becoming too much of a Sunday-morning social, but
eventually we ran out of photos and we lapsed back into
awkwardness. I was then perched next to her, looking
over her, and the physical dynamics suddenly felt wrong.
So I declared, “Let’s go for a walk.”

We walked out of the shopping center and around the

park outside, and it freed up the situation. At least a little.
I then found myself giving her an English lesson, and
talking very slowly in order to do so. That seemed to
help, and for a few minutes, we did actually enjoy a walk
together. I even put my arm out, and she took it. But then
we reached a point, having gone one lap around the small
park, where it felt really awkward again. She had, you
will recall, been teetering on the edge of her seat with her
handbag in her lap ready to go at any moment, and I
think she felt that she had already spent too long and got
too intimate with me on a first date.
Then we reached the final awkward moment where
we said goodbye to one another. We did a stupid air kiss
—any sort of actual kissing was totally out of the
question, of course, as she was not relaxed and the vibe
was not at all there—and walked off in opposite
directions. She to the station and me back to my flat.

There was quite a lot of texting afterwards, and looking

back on it now, I am surprised I was not able to get her
out on a second date. Working against me were two
factors. The first was simple logistics. She lived in
another city and this meant date requests were
complicated. On one occasion I did actually line up a
date in her city, as I happened to know another girl from
the past who worked at a restaurant there, and I used this
to explain why I would be in Bialystok. But I never really
intended to meet this girl from the restaurant.
Unfortunately, I could not quite make it work. This is as
close as it came. Having told her I was coming up for the
weekend to visit my friend who worked in a restaurant,
here is how the rest of the conversation went:

Weekday
Her: But I’m working this weekend in my office…and
meeting with my family…so I don’t know…sunday at
8am and saturday at 22pm so maybe next week…Monday
is better for me.
Me: Monday I’m back in Warsaw. No time on
Sunday?
Her: No :(

And so it petered out.

Or did it?

Well, in fact, in between writing drafts of this chapter

and a good nine months after the date itself, I actually
bumped into her in the same shopping center where we
had originally met. The conversation was quite lively,
albeit short, and I was quick-witted enough to put in a
long time constraint when I told her, “I’m pretty busy
this month, but perhaps next month we can grab a drink
and catch up.” When we wondered out loud whether we
still had each other’s phone numbers and she put her
hand in her pocket to get out her phone, I gestured for her
to put it away.
“I’m sure I’ve got your number,” I said.
We did then go out on a second date, probably almost
a year after the first and it was very eye-opening and
helped me come to some conclusions about older men
and younger girls.26
Topic: Is an Awkward Date a Bad Date?
Before I get onto the main reflection of this date, let’s
discuss a couple of simple points that will help make
dates easier. These are “Must Dos!”
The first is to have a bunch of fun photos on your
phone that you can show any girl any time. The second is
to have Google Translate on your phone. Both require a
relatively minimal investment of time and energy and
could really help you out during difficult periods on a
date. You’re not Casanova yet, and don’t be an arrogant
prick and think you don’t need these aids! I spent 15
years being an arrogant prick and thought that I did not
need to learn this stuff. In fact, I thought that there was
nothing much to learn anyway. It’s painful for me to
think of how much time I lost.
And if you think that Google Translate does not
work, then please wait to read the later dates in this
series, particularly the ones in Russia, to see just how
powerful a date can be without either of you speaking a
word of each other’s language.
The second and main reflection I have is that just because
a date is awkward does not necessarily mean that the girl
is not interested. It could, in fact, be quite the reverse. I
gave up on Date 6, partly because of the problem of her
living in another city, but partly because of the
awkwardness, which I interpreted as being a bad sign.
We had “nothing in common,” I told myself, “It’s too
much like hard work,” and “She’s clearly not interested
and just enjoying a cup of coffee with a guy for fun.”27
You may recall that I had a brilliant date with Date 3,
Portugal Girl, and yet ultimately it all went nowhere. The
big lesson is that you should not judge a date by how it
“feels.” Just because it has been terribly awkward, you
should not decide that the girl is not interested, that you
are not making progress, or that it’s “going badly.” This
is an erroneous link in the chain of thinking, and a link
that I suspect, if the rest of the male world is anything at
all like me, is not infrequently made.
Indeed, there is an argument to say that awkwardness
is good. You as a guy need to learn to ride it out and be
happy to bear it for as long as it is needed and simply not
react to it. Reacting to it in this instance would have been
making inane conversation just for the sake of filling the
void or silence.

In the case of these two dates, it was clear that they were
young and gauche and that this was always going to be a
problem.
Young girls who just may be shy about the whole
experience and naive sexually just need a lot of comfort
first. I remember a buddy telling me about his experience
with one girl where she was saying nothing and being
very shy, and he was basically just walking her around a
park, perhaps touching hands once or twice and then
almost going back to the drawing board for the next date.
And the next. And the next …
But eventually she relaxed and eventually he got her
back to his apartment and eventually they made sweet
love.
The trick here was to put her at ease and just take it
real slow. Also, keeping the dates short, if necessary, can
give her the illusion of having known you for longer.
Don’t rule out an awkward date. Be patient. Even an
Ice Age has to thaw. Eventually.
23
I have done a podcast with Yad on the origins of Daygame, which you
can find on my YouTube channel.
24
You can actually see a still of her if you watch the YouTube video on my
channel.
25 In the case of Date 4, you may recall that I just got up from my side of the
table and walked around to hers, moving her handbag in the process so I
could get closer to her.
26
See the Epilogue of Volume II.
27 If a girl has shown up for a date, especially if she has dressed up like Date
6 had, it is “on.” And yet a guy will sit there and do mental yoga, contorting
himself into a position where he actually starts to believe that it is just
clearly a social, friendly meeting and there is no sexual chemistry
whatsoever.
 7

Date 7: “The Girl with No

Name”

I met “the girl with no name” in a city square, and what

drew me to her was her great physique. She stood
elegantly and confidently next to a tram stop, talking on a
mobile phone, while her long, red hair blew lightly in the
breeze.
The approach was fun and playful. I was confident
and told her I wanted a quick word, then, when she had
put the caller on hold, I asked her if she was speaking to
her mother. She was, of course—a high statistical
likelihood in Poland I have discovered. She told her
mother she would call back.
 After a few words she “hooked” and started to ask me
questions about myself. I took her hand and introduced
myself. This is a good excuse to create a physical
connection. She held my hand for some time.
And then, after a little banter and a good amount of
flirtation, I asked for her number and got out my phone.
As we were putting each other’s numbers into our
phones, I saw her hesitate and teased her:
“Do you remember my name?”
“Oh.” A pause. She laughed and then looked
apologetic. “No.”
“I don’t believe it!” I declared. “I only told you a few
moments ago!”
“Alex,” I said, helping her type in the digits.
But it wasn’t her poor memory which was to play
such a key part in the date that followed …

***

The first date took place not far from where we had met.
In fact, I think that if you are struggling to think of a date
location, it is not a bad idea to simply tell the girl to meet
you where you initially met. We went to a bar at a funky,
warehouse-y complex, and once there, jumped onto bar
stools and began chatting. It was going well—the
location was good and the bar stools made it easy to
touch her from time to time and make a physical
connection. She was wearing a sort of azure-blue
necklace that made her look like Cleopatra, so I could
easily reach forward and touch her necklace and tease her
about looking like an ancient Egyptian (and a notoriously
hot one, at that).
It all seemed to be going well … so I pushed it one
step further. I “spiked” up the conversation.28

The way I did it on this occasion was to get her to stand

up, suddenly complimenting her on her elegant stature.
“You know, what I noticed about you … when we
first met … ” I said, gradually.
“Yes?” she said, curious.
“In the street—I was actually some distance away
from you in the square … ”
“What did you notice?”
“Your stature—well, posture. The way you carried
yourself caught my eye. I bet you were an athlete or a
high-jumper or something when you were young. I like
it.”
“Oh, well,” she began, bubbling away, “I was an ice
skater when I was young. And we trained, regularly, with
a real tough lady teacher. She was Czech.”
“So … you took it quite seriously?”
“Oh, yes.”
“As a career?”
“Yes.”
And then she drooped a little.
“But … I don’t know … it didn’t work out.”
“But you’re quite tall for an ice skater, surely? I
mean, you know, like these Chinese girls and whatnot,
they have to be super tiny so the dudes in the stretchy,
shiny leotards can fling them around like tinsel. I’m not
saying you weren’t talented or determined, but you’re
being a little hard on yourself, because you’ve got to be
pretty lucky, physically. If you’re not, you can end up
throwing your life into it and become terribly
disillusioned. It’s a short shelf-life for an athlete. You’re
probably best out of it.”
She seemed reassured—it was a sincere comment—
and I left my hand on her leg as I made the speech for
emphasis (and also because, of course, she had nice legs
and I wanted to touch them). 29
There was a pause. We were both relaxed. It was
about thirty or forty minutes into the date and the ice was
broken. We took sips of our drinks …
Now, before I go any further, I should just explain that
while I was getting ready for the date, which on this
occasion I did with military precision (there is nothing
worse than messing up a date just because you missed
out on basic preparation), I realized with alarm that I had
forgotten her name. Hang on! It will be in my phone, I
said to myself. I checked, but it wasn’t. These days if it is
just a street number that I got, I don’t usually bother
putting the name in right away, but I will usually type her
name into a draft message, like, “Hey Claudia,
unexpected but fun meeting you earlier.” After all, you
never know whether they are going to flake on the date.
But in this instance, I hadn’t drafted a text at all.
I then said to myself, So what? What does it matter?
I mean, just run with it. People forget each other’s names
all the time. In fact, I said to myself, why not just make a
virtue out of it and experiment? Just throw the fact of it
into the conversation and be bold as brass and see what
comes. Make light of it. After all, what is the big deal?
It’s not like she’s your sister or something!
It’s a rather basic error that most guys make, of
course, because they think that women think like men. Or
should, at least. Men projecting men-thinking onto
women is one of the classic errors men make. It’s
probably the underlying cause of frustration when a man,
sometimes even with pride, declares, “I don’t understand
women!” In other words, if you had met a man and
forgotten his name, or even if you had forgotten your
best friend’s name, it would be a subject of great hilarity
but of no consequence.
So, I shrugged it off with a smile, slightly smug and
pleased with myself that I was showing such bravado.
So, back to the date. I put down my drink. I leaned back,
confident and cocky.
“You know what?” I said. “I don’t remember your
name.”

A beat.

She stared.
I shrugged. I took another sip, a little more nervously this
time, a tremor of anxiety suddenly running through me.
This particular silence seemed like a different brand of
the usual silence, and rather than it pumping up the
tension and being sexy, it felt scary. My remark hung in
the air like one of those petite Chinese ice skaters I
mentioned, who has been thrown up high by her partner,
and there she spins, hanging like a helicopter, pirouetting
high up into the sky. Watching this, you take a sharp
intake of breath, wondering whether or not she is going
to come crashing down.
Well, to stretch the analogy further, I don’t think the
judges on this occasion would have lifted up a row of
five perfect 10s for me. The fall was painful.
“You don’t remember my name?”
“Nope. Not at all. Isn’t it funny? Completely left my
mind!”

She stared some more and blinked.

Thinking back on it, she might well have thought that the
way I expressed myself was a bit cocky and arrogant,
whereas in my mind I was just “being honest.”30
“I don’t believe it,” she said. “Do you often approach
girls in the street?”
She was suddenly suspicious and I replied by
qualifying and agreeing, “Oh, yes, you were number 38,
hahaha!”
But the old favorite didn’t work this time. Instead, it
sounded hollow and out of place in the context of the
conversation.
She now clearly had the idea that I had approached
lots of girls, but it was not in a good way. I had not
anticipated this as the consequence of my honesty. She
now may have thought that I was just a random weirdo
who approached people in the street. I said, “Finish up!”
and announced that we were going. I paid, and there was
another long period of silence as I completed that
transaction, and then we left.
We walked side by side. Now the next venue was a
little way, as the square where we were was not close to
my flat on this occasion, so we had quite a walk. And as
hard as I tried to talk about other topics, every time it all
came round to that. And it just hung in the air, like a
sword over me, the whole walk. The walk was a good
fifteen minutes, which felt like an age.
On the way, she teased me, because, as she pointed
out, “I can’t believe you forgot, because of what
happened.”
“What do you mean?” I ventured, feeling like,
although I was already in a corner, I was going to get
squeezed in even tighter.
“You don’t remember?”
What can she possibly mean? I wondered. I mean,
I’ve stopped about 45 other girls since I stopped her, I
can’t remember every conversation!
“In the street,” she continued. “Our conversation?”
I tried to recollect what she was talking about. The
trouble was I had been on quite a few dates already, even
before my project. In the future, I would actually record
short voice memos on my phone after getting a number
in order to reflect on what had happened. But for now, I
could remember nothing, and all my approaches were
jumbled up together.
She decided she was going to milk it. When I put my
arm around her for a moment she pulled away.
 “I guess you have just spoken to a lot of girls and
you’re just mixed up, right? But what is surprising to me
is the way you gave me such a hard time.”
We walked a few moments more.
“It’s not far,” I said, ignoring her taunts. “Just up
here.”
“You told me off for not remembering your name,
don’t you remember?”
It slowly dawned on me. I had completely forgotten
about the conversation in the street. My mind did a triple
axel as I thought, Oh shit, this is bad. She has totally got
“the frame” and is nailing me.
“Yes,” she said, driving home her point. “I can’t
believe you’ve forgotten.”
We walked some more, this time in silence, and I
wondered what I was going to do. It did not feel as if I
could leave it and totally ignore it. Anyway, I had tried
changing the subject, and it just snapped back to this
topic every time. I decided that the best thing to do was
simply to make an apology and be sincere. And so as we
got to the corner where we had to turn, we both stopped
and I said, “Look, I’m sorry about the whole name thing.
I forgot. But, you know, I like you. I’ve enjoyed your
company, and I’d like to hang out with you some more.
So if you want to grab a quick drink, I know a nice little
bar down here.”
And I held out my hands and shrugged.
She now went “coquettish.” It was like her feathers
suddenly preened themselves out in a colorful fan. She
lifted her head and said, “I don’t know. I think I might go
home … it’s a weeknight and I have work early.”
She hesitated, but I was not about to try to bring her
round again (nor was I capable of doing so at that
moment), and so I simply said, slightly annoyed at her
coquettish reaction to my plain-speaking, “Okay, let’s go.
I’ll walk you to the metro.”
We arrived at the metro entrance, and at the top of the
steps, she paused before leaving. By this point, I felt she
had gone too far, and I was just pissed off that she was
milking it so much. I suddenly started feeling annoyed
with her behavior. I don’t need this. She’s not all that hot
—nice figure but not totally hot—and I’ve got options
right now. I actually think she’s being a bit of a bitch.
And so I said something short like, “Okay, well, have
a good week.” And I felt that I had sounded pretty final.
 But somehow she seemed to misunderstand me, and
she said, “Maybe, we’ll see.”
She had obviously thought I had said something like,
“See you next week.” (English was not her first
language, after all.)
She was being coquettish again.
I just walked off, and she walked down into the metro.

I never did text her. I decided afterward that I should not

just follow up with every girl. I talked with a mate and he
found her reaction a bit over the top, totally milking the
whole silly thing, and so I decided that that was it—I
would not see her again. This project was not purely
about escalating with every girl, but about keeping an eye
on and being discriminating about the girls as longer-
term partnership material. Some girls just think they’re so
special and love to jump on a guy if he so much as puts a
single foot wrong. Who do they think they are? They’ll be
more forgiving when they’re 40, by which time it may be
rather too late to learn the lesson that they can’t get
away with bad behavior!
Topic: Owning Your Mistakes
There are two different musings I have after writing up
this date. The first is to step back and look at it on a
purely practical level and to see what can be learned for
next time. There are perhaps three different things that I
could have done. What do you vote for?

1. Not brought up the fact I had forgotten her name at all

and hoped it wouldn’t come up;
2. Found a cunning way to find out her name. For
example, asked for her help with the spelling so I could
write it in my phone; or
3. Been open and honest about it and simply asked
her what her name was as I’d forgotten.

Well, the answer is none of the above.

Before I discuss what I think is the “right” answer, it
is first worth stating the obvious, which is that you
should try to avoid ending up in that position in the first
place! Obviously, as men, we are renowned for not
listening to women and this is the first lesson to learn. I
simply should have listened. And one practical answer
for the future, which I adopted as an experiment for the
project, is to make a voice memo of every conversation I
have with a girl who gives me her number. This helps me
to really reflect on what has happened. It is all very well
to get excited about the fact you have gotten a girl’s
number, but there is a lot further to go on the date. I
guess some guys might prefer keeping a journal or
something like that. But just “becoming a good listener”
will never work without some method.31

The second, more important, musing I had about this date

was that, at the end of the day, you are going to make
mistakes.32 A girl is going to test your frame and the way
you respond to your own cock-ups is as important as not
making them in the first place, if not more important.
It is important to recognize that what is very
unattractive to a woman is a guy who backtracks or
apologizes for himself, and we need to accept that we
will all make mistakes, but the important thing is that we
must own them. Now, in my case, I perhaps affected a
carelessness and bravado, but it was quite reactive. I was
preempting the danger of being found out by boldly
announcing it, which is perhaps better than nervously
squirming about forgetting her name and apologizing
profusely, but reactive nonetheless.
Rather than do nothing and waited for it to go away
(as in the first option above), I should have just waited
for it to come up because I know, as a confident guy, that
I could have dealt with it—and made a virtue of it to
boot.
So what would this have actually looked like? Well,
it would have been better to spin it around in a self-
amused way. It occurs to me that self-amusement is a
good touchstone here. For example, let’s assume she had
raised it or it had come up in conversation, I could have
spun it like this:
“You know what, I’ve actually forgotten. I think it’s
like—during my time in the Korean War, I got a bit of
shrapnel lodged in my brain, and I’ve had blackouts ever
since and can’t remember the names of the girls I’ve
been with. Not one. Terrible.”
“Oh right … ” She is already smirking. “You don’t
remember the names of any of the girls you’ve slept
with?”
 “Irresponsible, I know. I’m a pig. In fact, frankly, I
don’t know why you are having anything to do with me.
Take your chance before it’s too late. I would leave now
if I were you. And by the way, I’m also a classic, lazy,
beer-drinking British male with the memory of a
goldfish. Look, I don’t want you telling me later you
weren’t warned.”
And you smirk. And she smiles …
She may even say, under her breath, “Idiot.” Which is
a good thing.

I was also reactive in another way, of course, like we so

often are as human beings. I got annoyed, and in order to
protect my ego, I decided to shut her out. She had been a
bit too coquettish, and it was not impressive, but so
what? What am I here to do if it’s not to learn to become
better at dating and seduction? It was too early to reach
that decision anyway, and I made a snap judgment off of
one short date and one incident. I might as well have
decided she was not the girl of my dreams after a few
more dates with her. So, I reacted by deciding not to
follow up.
 Looking back on it, it was once more a painful lesson
in the importance of rolling off, shrugging your
shoulders, and taking the hit. And then perhaps making a
positive out of it by responding in a self-amused way
with a smile. It might well have made her more attracted,
rather than less.

28
Spikes are some of the first things you learn when you learn about
Daygame, because, unlike in a bar or club, it may not be so easy to create a
physical, sexual connection. During the daytime or on a first date, you do it
verbally or physically, just a few times during the date, pushing it and
coming out of your comfort zone for a moment, before rolling off and
returning to normal conversation. I learned about spikes from Tom Torero’s
early material. I just have a few basic ones, like in this story, that I
repeatedly use.
29
Incidentally, there is a photo of this girl on the vlog I recorded on my
YouTube channel.
30
Oh, how poorly misunderstood is that expression, along with that other
old favorite, “just be yourself”!
31
Does this seem all rather contrived? Well, the whole thing is contrived! I
mean, whether it is following a structure or routine on the date or during the
approach. If you are reading this book, you have accepted that these are
skills that you need to learn and structures or principles that you need to
follow. You can choose to stay with the idea that dating is all some sort of
“beautiful synchronicity” in which two people meet and there is chemistry
and sparks fly and absolutely no work is required. Or, if you are reading this
book, you are probably now healthily skeptical about this and realize that
work needs to be done.
32
I have been reading Kezia Noble’s book The Noble Art of Seducing
Women. In one anecdote she points out that if you make a mistake, that is
fine, but it is how you handle the mistake that is the key thing.
 8

Date 8: Monty the Python or

“When Was the Last Time
You Had Sex?”

I met Date 8 in a Cafe Nero in the center of town, and

we had a good conversation. It was one of those
situations that had arisen very naturally—I was working
in the morning on my laptop. She, on the other hand, was
not acting so naturally, but busy moving furniture around
in a rather energetic fashion. We were the only two in the
mezzanine area of the cafe. She was a confident and
spirited girl and had a nice figure.
I opened up a conversation, and it turned out she was
actually getting ready for a job interview and was
paranoid about the seating positions of her and her
prospective boss. We chatted for a while and then
exchanged numbers, and I wished her luck in the
interview.33

I did not get her out on a date straight away. It had been a
solid interaction and there was no rush. In fact, I forgot
about her. And then a few weeks later, a girl waved at me
in the mezzanine area of Cafe Nero one morning, and I
realized that it was the same girl.
In the run-up to the date, she actually phoned me a
couple of times. I do not think this has ever happened to
me before or since. She was definitely one for “frame
control,” although it was not a conscious thing. She just
had a lot of energy about her and perhaps she was also
nervous.
The second time she phoned was actually on the
afternoon of the date, and she wanted to change the time
and the venue. She did not want to meet in a bar in the
evening around 6 p.m. but instead suggested meeting in
The Palace of Culture in the cinema coffee shop. She
also wanted to change the time to 5 p.m. and wanted to
emphasize that it was “just for coffee.” So I acquiesced
rather than get into a debate about it.

***

When I showed up for the date, she was already there,

sitting on a sofa in the far corner. I noticed this high level
of energy once more, the energy that had been there
during that morning when she had been rearranging
furniture. She sort of “jumped up” and wanted to order
the drinks immediately. She ordered a hot chocolate, and
by the time we had paid, someone else had unfortunately
stolen our sofa. So we ended up in full view of everyone
by the entrance on a table with two chairs, beneath a row
of photos of the famous actor Steve McQueen looking
down on us. It was tricky. She was clearly either
completely new to this or just a crazy high-octane
character.
We talked about something or other, but I cannot
remember what, just social chit chat, before I decided to
try playing “the truth game.” But when I started to
explain the rules, she wanted to change them all.
 “So you have three questions and I have three
questions … ”
“Why? Why three?”
“Well, you can have more if you like … so you can
ask anything you like or you can refuse to answer. But if
you refuse to answer you have to drink a shot of vodka.”
“Why vodka? I don’t like vodka. Why can’t it be
some chocolate cake?”
“You can’t have chocolate cake! That defeats the
whole point of the game. It’s got to be a forfeit. Not
something you really, really like.”
We started to try and play, but it was no use. I should
have learned my lesson by now that it is best to either
informally slide into the truth game or, when the mood is
not right, not to do it too early. The wheels came off this
topic and we sat there, not in silence, but just saying stuff
to each other like tennis players hitting balls over the net,
with no real communication. The conversation was
superficial.
Eventually we got round to the topic of sports, and it
seemed as if this was something she was genuinely
interested in. I guessed she had been a bit of a tomboy
when she was younger. She was certainly very energetic.
She had, by this point, told me she had two jobs, not one,
and she now told me that she was also a semi-
professional snooker player! Her week must have been
like a whirlwind.
I mentioned to her that when I was a boy, I used to
love watching snooker on the telly and used to spend
hours doing so, usually at night after my mother had
turned the lights off. Snooker had just “arrived” with the
advent of a show called, “Pot Black,” which was on
BBC2 at the time and was a very popular show. She had
actually heard of it, which, considering she was far too
young to have ever seen it, as well as the fact she was
also Polish, was remarkable.
She also remembered the famous snooker final
between Steve Davis and Dennis Taylor in 1985, which
was almost certainly before she was born. And it was
there that somehow the conversation and the date came
alight. It was because I found—in a topic area of interest
to her—something that also really interested and amused
me.
“It’s incredible, but you know that the show was
watched by about 18 million, which would be unheard of
now on live television. It went on for two days. A
marathon. And it went to the final black! Of 35 frames.
Do you remember that dude, Dennis something, with the
huge glasses that he used to peer over as he was drawing
back the snooker cue, and they were sort of cut off at the
top so he could see over them when he was potting,
presumably?”
“Oh, yes! Dennis Taylor!”
“You saw it?!”
“I’ve seen it, yes—obviously not at the time.”
“But, you know, thinking about it, the really amazing
thing was the show itself. I mean, can you imagine the
conversation between the producer who came up with the
idea and the television executives he must have
persuaded? Imagine trying to persuade them today:

“So I’ve got this great idea for a television show.

Sports.”
“Okay, great. What’s the idea?” asks the eager
commissioning executive.
“So we get these guys, dressed in weird dinner suits,
black waistcoats and they play snooker.”
“Snooker?”
 “Yeah. Snooker. With balls. You know, like pool but
it goes on a lot longer.”
“How long?”
“Well, a match is about 35 frames … ”
“Frames?”
“Games.”
“How long is that going to take?”
“Could be like five hours or something.”
“Jesus. Five hours!”
And a second executive around the table pipes up
optimistically, “So, what is the viewer looking at exactly?
I mean, what’s the production setup?”
“Well, obviously we’ll have a camera setup of the
players, and then the main one is just over the table
itself, so you can see the whole table.”
“So … like … we watch from above, looking down at
a green table and watch balls being potted into holes?
And it lasts five hours … ”
The executives start to scratch their heads.
“On average. Sometimes they last a couple of days.”
A few titters break out around the boardroom table.
“And what time were you thinking this would air? I
mean, it’s sort of graveyard-slot territory, early morning,
right, for insomniacs?”
“Well, no. After the watershed, sure, but I was still
thinking around prime time, 9 or 10 p.m.”
After the producer has left, the commissioning
executives all look round at one another, boggle-eyed.
Eventually one executive says, “Jeff’s finally lost it.” The
others all nod to one another in sad agreement.34
“I don’t know how that producer sold it. He needs a
medal,” I finished.
She was now laughing and suddenly, as so often
happens in dates, the ice had broken and we were talking
freely. And I don’t know what it was exactly, but now
she started talking about herself quite a lot. Certain
interesting facts about her started to come out, as I sat
there sipping my glass of whiskey and she sat there with
her hot chocolate. It was starting to become a really
enjoyable conversation.
She moved on from snooker, and I asked her, now
drifting back onto the truth game, “Are you a dog person
or a cat person?”
“Mmm … ” she said, thinking. “I prefer dogs but not
those little things you stuff in a lady’s handbag. I can’t
see the point.”
 “I agree,” I said. “A dog should be a proper dog. Like
for hunting, rounding up sheep or something, or killing
burglars. So do you have a dog?”
“No,” she said. “I have a rat.”

“Ah,” I said with faint surprise. “Really?”

I don’t know why I should have expressed any surprise at

all. I mean, rats are probably like pigs, I said to myself.
They are surely perfectly respectable, very clean and
hygienic creatures. They just have a bad rap from
humans.

“Yes,” she continued, “… and a python. It’s called,

“Monty.”

A silence.

This was a little different. I tried to conceal yet more

surprise. I floundered for a response. “Does that work
…? I mean, is that a good idea?”
“Obviously not in the same tank,” she said, tartly.
“But actually they do get on. It was quite funny … ” she
continued, coming up with a story of her own. “But I
went to the pet shop recently—you know, to buy some
mice.”
“Of course,” I said, supportively.
“So I wanted to get about a dozen … ”
“Yesss …” I said, sort of hiding behind my whiskey
glass.
“But then the pet shop owner was a bit suspicious.
‘Why do you want that many?’ he asked. But what
business was it of his? I thought. Well, he didn’t actually
ask, but I could see it on his face, you know? That he
really wanted to ask me what I was going to do with 12
mice. He was obviously thinking. He was really reluctant
to give me any.”
Suddenly she became really animated and hyper,
pushing away her hot chocolate.
“But what business is it of his?! He’s in the business
of selling animals and stuff and making money. He
should be grateful that I’m buying a large quantity. I
should get a discount.”
“Live mice?” I asked, eventually.
“Of course.”
 “No, sure.” I quickly nodded. But then I couldn’t help
asking, “12?”
“Monty won’t eat dead ones,” she said, ignoring my
question, as though I were a confused idiot.
“So they were for the python?”
“Yes,” she said, “for Monty.”
“Monty is the name of the python?”
“Yes. I just told you!” she blurted out.
Interesting girl, I thought to myself. I sat there,
struggling with my prejudices. Some people like snakes
and rats. What’s wrong with that? And a python needs to
eat like anything else.
But I also felt that this was a slightly exceptional girl
and not one who was especially into boyfriends and
dating, and it was starting to feel like one of the most
non-sexual dates I had ever had. It was suddenly going
south, the initial bubble having burst again.
It occurred to me that there had been very little
flirting, if any, and the date all seemed way too social. So
I now decided I really had to spike it up somehow. A last
throw of the dice. (After having first got off the
conversation of rats and pythons.) But it was not a good
situation, as we had lost the nice big sofa and were stuck
sitting across from each other in a busy area near the
entrance.
I carefully reviewed my options … Should I lean
across the table and take her hands, or suggest that she
has nice hands, or perhaps palm read her hands? Or say
that she looks like a musician? No, no, no, no. That won’t
work. She’s sporty. And anyway, it’s far too wide a table.
It would be really awkward leaning over.
So it would have to be a verbal escalation. And I
considered that we had been playing touch and go with
the truth game, so perhaps now was the moment to ask
another question. She was still bubbling away, and I
interrupted her, “Listen, we’ve forgotten the truth game,
we each have one more question … ”
“Okay,” she said. “I can’t think of anything. You
ask.”
Except for this time, I needed to take a risk and really
push the boat out. I needed to sexualize the truth game
more. Much more.
I looked at her long and hard, formulating my truth-
game question. Finally, I looked her in the eye and asked
her,
“When was the last time you had sex?”
 She stared at me for a few micro-moments.
“Sorry?”
“Sex. When was the last time?”

She stood up, stared at me, then grabbed her coat and
left.

I stared into my glass, perplexed. Not my finest moment,

perhaps. I stared up at the photos of Steve McQueen
above the table, looking down at me. One of them was
him in a sports car, a classic in black and white, looking
at the camera with an alarmed expression.
Topic: Is it Okay to Talk About Sex on a
Date?
Now, when a guy starts out on this stuff, he probably
needs to sexualize his interactions with girls a lot more
than he has been doing up until that point. He has
probably been very social and has put himself into a
Friend Zone time and again. He probably should say stuff
like, “When was the last time you had sex?” just to
experiment and get himself out of his old comfort zone.
But, of course, this needs a massive qualification.
And the point here is to acknowledge that there is a
world of difference between generating a sexual vibe and
making it clear that you are interested in a girl sexually
and actually talking about sex. I think it is a whole lot
better talking about sex than your job, your relationship
history, or about politics and religion, and this is why,
perhaps initially, you should dive in and be provocative.
It is certainly one way to spike up a conversation. Also, a
guy who can talk about sex freely and without inhibition
is probably attractive to women insofar as he
communicates he is relaxed about it and probably has
experience with it.
It is, of course, such a fine line, and you risk crossing
that line into being crude and making the girl feel
uncomfortable. You also risk showing the girl too early
that you want to have sex with her and are attracted to
her which removes any flirting and mystery. But, of
course, if you are confident talking about sex, then go for
it.
But if it comes to that second venue, and you are in a
quiet corner on a sofa, or if you have gotten her back to
your flat, then hopefully you will be generating a sexual
vibe without talking about it. You can keep the subject of
sex covert, but make sure the girl knows that it is there,
simmering under the surface. As with flirting, in which
you raise the promise of sex without the guarantee of it, it
seems that the best way to proceed with girls is under the
radar and not to be explicit, hinting at it or raising the
possibility of it without actually ever saying it. (Certainly
until you get to know her better or have already slept
with her.) PUAs are all clear that a guy needs to show his
sexual intent, but this does not necessarily, or perhaps
rarely, mean that he needs to talk about having sex.
 Further, if you do raise it—or ask a question that is
sexually provocative during a game like the truth game,
as I did here—it is better done once the ice is well and
truly broken.
My conclusion to this question, and particularly in the
context of Date 9, is that the key issue is calibration.
Calibration is both knowing when to escalate and when
to roll off as well as reading the situation and knowing
how far you can take it. Only an idiot would ever say,
“Never talk about sex,” or “Never reveal to a girl in
conversation that you are sexually interested in her.” The
point is that at times it actually might or even will be
appropriate. It truly is a case of calibration, and this can
only be discovered through experience.
As guys we have to escalate, but we often do not
know when and how much, and the truth is we are
probably going to break a lot of eggs along the way. So
in the case of Date 9, I make no apologies for being bold
and getting rejected. It is better to take a chance by trying
something and risk being burned than it is to play it safe.
Although Date 9 was one of my more spectacular
achievements in this regard. (Though by no means my
most spectacular.35)
 Perhaps I had even had a lucky escape. I might have
ended up in a relationship with a hyperactive, snooker-
playing, exotic-pet maniac.

33
Come to think of it, even from that initial moment, I should have realized
that there was something unique and special about this girl! Moving sofas
around at 8 o’clock in the morning was a bit “hyper.”
34
The show, Pot Black, was a hit. In fact, it helped transform snooker from
a minority sport with just a handful of professionals into one of the most
popular sports in the United Kingdom.
35 See Chapter 12 of my first book Too Late, Mate?
 9

Date 9: “Old, Ugly &

Disgusting ... ”

O n this date I felt I finally crossed the Rubicon in

terms of understanding the importance of teasing
and challenging when it comes to creating attraction.
Teasing and challenging had been something that I had
been taught from the very earliest days on the
Daygame.com bootcamp when we were first taught to
approach girls in the street.36
However, while I had understood this and spent many
hours practicing it, I had always felt that I had never
really gone the distance with it and made it a natural part
of my personality. I had invariably felt tempted to default
to a friendly conversation. This is, of course, the problem
that most guys have and even once they have transcended
this problem on the street, they then often default once
more to a “social, friendly guy” on the date.
But of course you must also remain “congruent,” as it
were, with what you did on the street. The girl is coming
out to date a guy who is the same cheeky, challenging
dude who hit on her in the street and generated attraction.
She is not coming out to have a friendly chitchat with a
guy. She can get that with her female friends. Don’t get
added to her list of female friends!
A story once told to me by a PUA typified this; he
explained that when he was young, before he got into this
stuff, he remembers one kid—a cocky teenager—getting
a fire hose and giving a girl a real hosing down in a back
garden. She was squealing and protesting and telling him
he was an asshole and an idiot. Later that same day they
were heavily making out.
It was only years later that this particular PUA friend
remembered this incident, and, of course, it only really
made sense to him when he had actually become a PUA.
In the same fashion, it was only on this particular date
that the penny finally—and fully—dropped for me. We
spend so much time refusing to let go of old ideas, and it
can take a long time to fully embrace new learned
knowledge. The habits of a lifetime do seem to take a
little time to fix …

***

I was greatly helped in this realization because it just so

happened that Katarzyna was just one of those girls you
cannot help but tease. Some girls are a little shy, mousey,
and introverted. Going heavy with teasing and
challenging is not necessarily a great idea with such girls.
But this one was the opposite. She was a really confident
chick. She was a “Chelsea Girl,” “Sloane Ranger,” or a
“Sloaney Poney,” in London parlance. These are names
given to those entitled, well-bred girls who frequent the
Kings Road in wealthy West London. This girl exuded an
air of guileless confidence. She dressed smart but casual
for our Sunday date, not over the top. She was in jeans
but with an expensive high-end, name-brand jacket and
handbag. Her jewelry was likewise minimal but tasteful.
She wore practical shoes—low boots, in suede. I also felt
sure she wore expensive underwear. (There was no way
it was Primark under her trendy jeans!37)
When I first set eyes on her in the street as she was
flapping and laughing about her inability to figure out a
parking meter, I thought to myself that I would not be
surprised if she had a little doggie, one of those posh
ones the size of a pork pie, and that at any minute I
would see its little head and bulbous eyes pop out of the
top of her Michael Kors handbag. She was no longer a
youngster, probably late twenties or early thirties.
Katarzyna loved to laugh.
I decided that I was definitely not going to just be a
tame passenger on this particular date. I decided that with
this girl, perhaps because I was genuinely attracted to her
and liked her spirit and joie de vivre, and because, in the
past, I had played it too safe with the girls I really liked,
that I would not sit back but take action and escalate.
Taking action meant not just leading and bossing her
about and being the man but also taking risks on the date
in terms of spiking it up, challenging, and throwing in
sexual remarks and innuendos. I decided I would keep
the date fun, frothy, and fizzy and not let it slide into
comfort quicksand in which we were enjoying a nice,
friendly chat—nor would I let it sink into prolonged
silences, staring at our drinks and asking each other
questions like, “So, what do you do for a job?” and, “The
weather is very changeable this week, isn’t it?”
I prepped-up for the date by buying bottles of wine
and keeping them in the fridge at home, planning to use it
as a pretext to bounce her home. I also chose a bar quite
close to home, with a bar and bar stools. It was a posh
little place, by which I mean high-end, light, airy, and
spacious, and I had decided that would be the first venue.
From there I would go from the sublime to the ridiculous
—to a seedy second venue. I decided I would use the
infamous “Klaps,” a bar whose name is the very
definition of seediness and loosely translates from Polish,
“to smack a girl’s ass.”
I chose a Sunday afternoon, a good time I think for a
date. It gives you plenty of time and always the option of
bouncing back home if you arrange it at a sneaky time
like 4 p.m. or 5 p.m. You can then run it into an evening
date.

***
We met and I walked her to the first bar. It was pretty
empty, and the conversation was straightaway quite
provocative. We got onto the subject of cats and dogs
and which she preferred. And would you believe it, but
yes—it turned out that she did have a dog after all. When
she showed me photos, I couldn’t believe it. It was
exactly what I expected—one of those little ones with
bug eyes that you can indeed fit into a Michael Kors
handbag. Worse, she had dressed it up. The poor thing
was in this ridiculous sailor’s uniform.38
“Oh my God!” I said. “Look at the poor thing! It’s
looking up at the camera as if it’s saying to me, ‘Please,
can you help me? I need to escape from this crazy
bitch!’”
Katarzyna laughed, so I carried on the tease. She was
clearly spirited and referring to her as a “bitch” had
seemed to help break the ice, bizarrely. I had, of course,
done it in a cheeky way, in the third person. Mind you,
even if I had called her a crazy bitch in the first person, it
might not have mattered.
I summoned the waiter over and said to him, “Look
at this!”
I took her phone and showed him the photo.
 “Would you date a girl who had a dog like this?”
He smiled.
“I’m sorry to bring you in on the conversation cold,
but really, look at the poor thing. I mean, you’ve got to
feel sympathy for him, surely? Poor guy. Is it a he?”
“Yes.” She giggled.
“Oh my God.”

We then played the truth game, and this time it worked

really well I think because it was already a high-energy
date.
I said, “Okay, look, I think I need to find out a little
more about you, whether you’ve got a criminal record, a
shady past, and what sort of person you are. So listen,
we’re going to play a game. You get three questions and
I get three questions, and you have to answer honestly—
basically the first thing that comes into your head. You
can choose not to answer, but then you have to pay the
forfeit, which is a shot of vodka.”
“Okay,” she said.
“So, I’ll start. Tell me a guilty pleasure.”
She thought for a minute and then said, “Traveling.”
“Traveling?” I quizzed, bemused.
 “Yes, traveling,” she said.
“That’s not a guilty pleasure! You can’t come up
with something like that.”
“What do you mean?!”
“What do you mean, ‘What do you mean’?!
Seriously? A guilty pleasure? What’s the guilt in a bit of
travel? Or were you smuggled cross-border as a child for
the sex trade industry?”
“No!!”
“Well, then where’s the guilt?”
She shrugged.
“You’ve got to drink. That’s definitely a forfeit right
there.”
I waved the barman over.
“Traveling! I’ve never heard such an answer,” I
muttered to the barman. “It’s meant to be a guilty secret
or something confidential you would not even tell your
parents!”
The barman smiled.
“Can we have two shots of vodka, please?”
He poured them and she giggled.
“No!” she said. “I’m not drinking that!”
“Drink,” I commanded.
I said “drink” with some conviction. I had never really
gotten a girl this far and got her to drink the vodka
forfeit, certainly not this early on in the date; but on this
occasion, it worked. She drank the vodka, which
surprised me. It surprised me that she was being so
compliant, which was clearly not in her nature.
I now decided that we would not get too comfy at this
venue but go to the second, but on the way I took her
past my flat and took her in through the gates, walking
her right into the main courtyard.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
“I just need to go upstairs to my flat for a minute.
I’ve got to upload a file.”
“This is your flat? Ugh, this block is ugly.”
“Don’t be such a princess,” I said.
She really was very entitled and not used to such a
rough part of the city.
“Come on.”
“I’m not going up!”
“Why not?”
“No way!”
“Listen, I just need to download a file.”
 “I thought you said upload.”
“Download. Upload … ”
“I’ll wait here,” she said. “I’m not going up.”
It was not the first (or last) time that a girl stood like
a statue outside my front door, steadfastly refusing to
come in. But the knowledge I had gained had taught me
not to be phased by this. The main thing is to try. And
then to be non-reactive if it doesn’t work.
“Okay. No problem,” I said. “Give me a couple of
minutes.”
I had not gotten her back to my flat, on this occasion
at least. But I had a dastardly Plan B, of course.

The second venue, Klaps, turned out to be a great choice.

She walked in and was suitably horrified by the
décor. There was a big papier-mâché penis protruding
out of one wall and a big row of illuminated tits on
another. The bar was grotty and the drinks dirt cheap. I
cannot remember what she ordered, but it was probably a
cocktail.
The teasing and challenging continued, and I pretty
much picked up where I left off for a while, before
noticing that hanging on pegs on the wall were these
wooden shapes that you can put your head through—like
those pictures of a fat man and a fat lady in bathing suits
on seaside piers. You stick your head in and have your
photo taken. Except these cutouts were of a penis and a
vagina. So I took the penis off the hook and tried to
photograph her with it on. That did not get a good
reaction. She refused, screaming and yelling, and the
barman must have wondered what was going on. So I
then just held it up and took a photo of her through it.
“Oh my God! You’re disgusting!” she said.
“Is that how you think of me?” I asked, innocently.
“Yes, you’re an aggressive, predatory male. An old,
ugly, and disgusting one.”
“Old?” I said, surprised.

I was delighted. I had, at last, received a real compliment

from a girl! She was not calling me “nice” or “a real
gentleman” or “a great guy” or any of that rubbish. At
last! Hooray! I was a disgusting, predatory male, and I
was also an aggressive one at that. Now, at long last, I
was getting proper compliments from girls. I was
crossing the Rubicon.
The whole Klaps experience seemed strangely
appropriate—to have dragged this posh girl into a seedy
bar, dolled up in her designer attire, and then to
photograph her through a cutout penis. Perfect.
After the shenanigans in Klaps, we took in one more
bar. The date was going well, or so I thought, but the
question was whether it really was going well or whether
I was just feeling good about how it was going. Two
different things. Not for the first time, I might have been
confusing feeling good with a successful seduction.
Nevertheless, she was out with me at a third venue on a
first date, so that was a good sign. And then, somehow,
we got onto the subject of relationships, and we picked
up where we had left off earlier with the truth game. She
talked about a past relationship, and then we talked about
what I was doing in Warsaw. (Two of the most frequent
truth game questions from girls are, “What are you doing
in Warsaw?” and “Are you married?” Girls, I’m afraid,
are often not the most original of conversationalists on a
date.)
I don’t know why they always ask or assume I am
married. At that time, it made me feel like they were
putting me into a seducer box. Or worse, the box that the
seedy married guys who cheat on their wives are put into.
It also made me think, “So why are you hanging out with
me if you’re so sure I’m married?” Something about the
way that girls ask this, perhaps the way that she asked
this, troubled me. Here she was, at a third venue, having
had a few drinks, genuinely attracted by the bold and
cheeky street approach, styling me as a seducer and a
cheat. And yet she was not going anywhere.
“Yes,” I said. “I have wives in different cities.
Actually, I have a vacancy in Poland at the moment for a
Polish wife.”
“Do they all know about each other?”
“Of course. They understand that they cannot be
selfish and expect that they can have me one hundred
percent of the time. Obviously.”
It felt strange playing this game. I often did it
afterward–deflecting the marriage question and teasing
them, and at the same time projecting myself as a cad.
An arrogant guy. But doing it as a parody. It was a joke,
of course, but I said it dryly. Maybe it left a bit of
uncertainty in the air.
I also felt strange because I had spent most of my
adult life thinking I was right at the other end of the
spectrum from guys who were successful with women at
bars and clubs. And yet here I was making the moves and
generating attraction and here she was, seemingly
unconcerned about my marital status and thinking
perhaps I was the sort of guy who regularly “played
away.” Nothing could be further from the truth, and in
fact, I have the sort of upbringing and background that
literally makes it very difficult for me to be deceitful—I
often wish it didn’t.
“I’m just having fun at the moment,” I said, seriously.
“I’ve spent a lot of time getting overly worked up about
wanting to be in a relationship and not wanting to be
single. But over the past couple of years, I have just been
enjoying myself and enjoying going out dating for fun.”
“So how many women … ” She was about to ask
how many women I had slept with, but then she broke
off, abruptly. “No, I don’t want to know.”
“How many women have I what?”
“No, forget it. No, no, no, no, no. I’m not interested.
Don’t tell me!”
“How many have I slept with?”
She folded her hands over her face, protesting, like
she had when I had taken her photo through the wooden-
board cutouts in Klaps.
“Don’t! I don’t want to know!”

I didn’t know whether to be impressed or alarmed at the

opinion she seemed to have of me. The whole sequence
reminded me of the “Manosphere” ideas promulgated by
people like Rollo Tomassi in his book The Rational
Male. Women work with a different set of coordinates
and reference points. Men have high-flying ideas about
purity, integrity, and honor. These are their reference
points. But a lot of the women I have dated seemed more
relaxed with the idea of cheating than I think I ever could
be. Perhaps this is selection bias, by which I mean it’s
just the ones without scruples who accept the invitations
to date, and the pure and honorable ones don’t.
Nevertheless, I have to say that a lot of the girls I’ve
dated seemed to be very “normal” and not at all
“slutty,”39 and yet quite a few of them seemed to be very
happy to go with the idea of me being married once they
were dating me. Tomassi would say that this is because
of pre-selection, that guys who already have women are
hotter in a woman’s eyes because they clearly have what
it takes—the right DNA or whatever (to take it back to
evolutionary biology). These are then their reference
points.
It seems that, in spite of the real difficulty I had
believing it, I must have been projecting a “player” vibe,
or that of the “r-selected” male as Tom Torero and Nick
Krauser might term it, rather than the “K-selected” male,
and that she saw me in this light.40 She could not,
therefore, help but want to get close to me and flirt with
me, because the vibe generated such attraction in her it
made her helpless to do otherwise. The primal wiring is
very strong, and it is very clear that it works.41
I wondered whether there was another man, perhaps a
long-term partner in the background, and yet here she
was being drawn and lured out of this comfort zone into
a different danger zone, accepting an invitation to go out
on a date in a very seedy bar on a Sunday afternoon.
With a complete stranger. And a foreigner too. I guess
this seemed to hint at the Manosphere ideas about a girl’s
dual mating strategy.

The date was going really well. We finished up and I

decided to try walking her back past my flat a second
time. I did. But when we got there, she pulled away and
insisted she was going nowhere near my place, laughing.
I actually grabbed her and dragged her playfully across
the street, but she batted me off, yelling and laughing.
Finally, I walked her back to her car, and she put her arm
through mine as we walked.
It had been a very good date indeed. The next day I
texted her, but she did not respond. Then I texted her a
day or so later with a ping of her in the wooden cutout
penis with a note that said, “Here’s a new photo for your
Facebook profile.” This got a response from her, of
course, and then she sent quite a long text and it seemed
as if she was genuinely interested. Later on, after quite a
bit of texting, I asked her out on a second date, and she
sent me this:
Her: “Well, this weekend I am quite busy and have some
appointments. I am also still a little bit worry of meeting
you like the last one. You know, too many cocktails, too
many adventures are not a good idea at the beginning of
a new relationship. :) By the way, I’ve noticed on fb you
had a birthday recently. All the best and happy birthday
Alex :) [three birthday cake icons]”
Thereafter, a very long sequence of messaging on both
Facebook and via text unfolded between April and
October. It was light and playful. There is no question
that we had got on. It had been a fun and fantastic date
and I loved her high-spirits.
She wanted to meet again—we kept on trying to line
it up but somehow something always got in the way. I
was traveling quite a bit and had other irons in the fire on
the dating front. She was initially nervous about meeting
because of the high-octane nature of our first date, or so
she said.
Later on, she suddenly declared that she only wanted
to “buddy up.” In other words, she was happy to meet but
only as friends. I got a long text message explaining it
all. It ended:

Her: “I really like your company, enjoyed hanging out

with you, like your sense of humour, but only as a friend.
I would like to buddy up with you. But only buddy up. I
need to clarify the situation.”
It’s difficult to know what all this means. It could mean
what it says, but usually that is not the way with girls,
and if she didn’t want to see me, she could have just
ignored me. Possibly she was just trying to keep her
distance, and a big part of me did wonder whether or not
I had, in fact, overdone it on the date by flirting so much
and being so cocky. In light of that, you could see why
she might want to put up a barrier so that she didn’t
appear too easy. I just dead-batted this comment:

Me: Sure, we can buddy up. When do you want to

“buddy up”? I know a nice place on the river.

We frequently pinged each other photos and had

conversations throughout that summer, and I did wonder
why it was so hard to meet, date request after date
request. We were both traveling and that might have been
the problem, but I suspected there was something more.
It finally looked as if the second date was on:

Weekday
Me: are you free Sunday 8th?
Her: Yes
Me: How’s 4.30pm? Let’s meet for coffee in the Old
Town.
Her: Ok :) Fine

And on the day before the date I wrote:

Saturday
Me: Let’s meet outside Green Cafe Nero at
Krakowskie Przedmiescie 81

But then on the day of the date in the morning she wrote:

Sunday
Her: Hi, the place is ok, I know this cafe. However I
am terrible sorry – I can’t meet you. I completely forget
that today is the important game of polish national
football team [a string of football and trophy icons] and
I promised my man to accompany him. I really wanted to
meet you and it wasn’t intended. I hope you understand. I
am sorry ;( [string of sad faces]

So there was a man after all.

A long-term boyfriend made sense of everything that
had happened. This was a case of a girl with a boyfriend
but who was obviously curious about this new “r-
selected” guy. It made sense of the “buddy-up” text. She
was deliberately keeping her distance and finding a way
to see me that did not feel disloyal and so acting in
accordance with her social conditioning. Although, let’s
be honest—I doubt her boyfriend would have seen it as
just a friendly meet-up with a new friend she had just
made who had hit on her in the street and then taken her
to Klaps! But she was giving her self plausible
deniability by taking that line.
I did not reply to that text as it was bad behavior,
which you should not reward. I was left asking myself,
Was this all an example of a woman’s dual mating
strategy as expounded by those academics of the
Manosphere? But it was cleverly cloaked and concealed
in the idea of being “buddies,” and she was obviously
struggling with the issue. I looked back over it all and
began to realize that if there were a genuine boyfriend in
the background it certainly made total sense of a lot of
what had happened.
This girl was someone who I wanted to explore a
long-term relationship with, but unfortunately it went no
further at this point. However, the spark re-ignited a good
year later, which I cover in the epilogue of Volume 2.
Topic: Teasing
I certainly made a major step on this date by being
cheeky and cocky and teasing her massively. For any guy
starting out, you should definitely do this. I do not think I
need to say much about this as it is self-evident from the
story. But you should be prepared for it to feel weird, as
if you are being extremely rude, when in fact you are
only just scratching the surface. You are probably doing
no more than breaking out of your old “Mr. Nice Guy”
mode. I thought that calling her a “bitch” was out there,
but in the context of the date and the joke, it actually
generated attraction.
For guys who are already quite experienced, it might,
however, be worthwhile warning against going too far, as
I perhaps did on this date. And I cannot help but think
that I should have reigned myself in a little and “dialed it
down.” I think what I learned is that dating is not just a
performance, and you should actually not overly enjoy it
and relax too much. I was really performing, teasing her
massively and taking photos of her, etc. But while this
was good, I did not change down the gears, roll off, and
allow a few mundane silences to punctuate the
conversation.
So what would dialing it down have looked like? I
guess finding the right surroundings for starters. For
instance, I could have taken her to a dark and quiet sofa
area (and Klaps does have one downstairs), rather than
hang out at the bar. I could have simply shut up and
responded only when the need arose instead of feeling
the need to generate constant conversation. This stage of
the date might have featured any of the following:

Hand-holding and caressing;

Hand on leg;
Playing with hair;
Holding her gaze until she pulls away;
Waiting for her to break the silence;
Deep rapport—what I mean by this is a gear change
in the conversation to her private secrets, guilty
pleasures, or making her a confederate or
conspirator against the rest of the world, etc.;
Dropping voice tonality;
Playing music, including actually playing a musical
instrument.
These are some examples. You would still need to
challenge from time to time and deal with frame tests and
tease, but these are not nearly as important later on in the
date. It might also be important to pull away, roll off
from time to time to smoke a cigarette, open your phone,
or just lean away and look absent as if you are thinking
of something else. The key is to suddenly change the
vibe to way more low key.

The fact that I did not escalate on the date in this way and
dialed it down may have led her to become confused
about whether or not I was auditioning to be her
boyfriend or really was a player after all. This might have
then made sense of all that texting afterward and why I
never got the second date, because she was in two minds
about where I fitted in with her other relationship. If it
had just been adventurous sex, maybe I could have fitted
in with her existing relationship. But by presenting as a
boyfriend, she then felt she had to choose.42
One rather unpalatable truth might be that there is
room in a woman’s life for two men, but only if one is a
“provider” and the other is a “bad boy” who she is just
having adventurous sex on the side with. If both are
projecting boyfriend material, then she is forced into
making a choice. Moreover, it is of course very difficult
to compete with her friends and her local social circle.
You’re an outsider. It is always more difficult to audition
for the boyfriend role.
When I think about it, it comes back to a struggle that
I have had almost to the day since I began this adventure
into the pick-up world. And that is whether I really
needed to go down the rabbit hole and become a player
(not easy at 46) or whether I could learn a few basic
skills and then get hitched to a girl. And how would I
know when I had completed this rite of passage?
As I write now, the horrible thought occurs to me that
if you embark on any enterprise or adventure in life, you
need to go through it and come out on the other side, not
skirt around it. And that implies full immersion.
Ultimately, as any decent pick-up coach will tell you,
it is easier to turn that girl you have seduced into a long-
term girlfriend, rather than the other way around.
Courting her in an old-fashioned way but not trying to
seduce her can work, but it can take a long time and you
find yourself in an audition for her affections, in which
she has unrealistic ideals for the perfect mate.43
 The paradox is that once you have been on this
journey and learned to be a player, will you ever want to
make this girl your permanent girlfriend or wife? Or are
you now in unfortunate possession of an inconvenient
truth that completely pulls the carpet from underneath
your previously dearly-held beliefs? You thought you
had gotten into this stuff in order to find a wife or a long-
term partner that would finally put the seal on your
happiness in life—and now you discover that you really
don’t want it. In fact, could really do without it.
For someone from an old-fashioned, more traditional
background, this is a very inconvenient truth indeed.

36
I outline the broad strokes of the method I was taught for approaching
girls in the street in Chapter 4 of Too Late, Mate? Teasing and challenging
are important components of the attraction phase.
37
I actually met her again about 18 months after the first date. We went for
a walk in the woods and she refused to go into a park area where there were
too many working-class types for her liking!
38
Nick Krauser, in his book Male Mastery, describes the different “types”
of girls that there are, and there is a lot of truth in it. She was clearly “a
type.”
39 Whatever that means. Another societal shaming device, I guess.
40
r-selected and K-selected refers to sexual mating strategies in animals. r-
selected species go for lots of sex with different partners and play the
numbers game. K-selected species—like whales, for example—have fewer
offspring and invest in them for a lifetime. So more of a “provider.” It’s
interesting to note, before you prefer one strategy over the other, that both
work in their own ways.
41This finally makes sense of something David DeAngelo said, which I had
never really understood: “Attraction is not a choice.”
42 Another interesting reference here is Dr. Bus’ book Evolution of Desire in
which he gives an example from the animal kingdom involving a certain
species of small bird. In a study, a female was observed with her partner and
then seen to leave her partner while he wasn’t looking and fly into a bush.
Another male bird was hiding there. She quickly copulates with him and
then flies back to her partner through the other side of the bush. He is none
the wiser. (Presumably she has a shower before flying back to him.)
Apparently she does this because she wants to obtain the highest caliber
sperm possible, so she doubles her chances this way of getting higher caliber
DNA into her womb. She already has a provider to look after any number of
children, providing she keeps their origins secret.
43
See Sixty Years of Challenge by Chris Sixty on this issue. He wrote a very
good ebook in his early days about fast escalation. He says that men want
affection but that a girl will not give a guy affection unless he has seduced
her and slept with her. Affection only follows sex. Not the other way
around. It is a very unpopular idea. But I spent years thinking that sex would
follow friendship and never got a girlfriend, time after time after time. You
have suddenly tasted the forbidden fruits of adventurous sex and that many
girls are looking for a “bad boy” and not a provider.
 10

Date 10: “Just ... DO IT,

please!”

B efore you read this chapter, you probably need to

understand that I have been involved in a spiritual
community all my life, one dedicated to the idea of self-
realization and that this is something I inherited through
my family. My father played a senior part in The School
of Philosophy, which in the past 50 years has focused on
meditation and follows an ancient tradition that arose in
India called “Advaita Vedanta.” The School of
Philosophy has its heart in the right place and above all,
to my mind, should be applauded for making meditation
such an important focus of life. Indeed, it was
instrumental in bringing meditation to the West in the
sixties and hosted The Maharishi Mahesh Yogi at the
Albert Hall in London in 1967. This marked the
introduction of meditation to the West.
But like any spiritual organization, it has its quirks,
one of which was its attitude towards sex, women, and
marriage. An idea that I inherited through it, that
probably fueled my own idealistic, romantic ideas, was
that you do not sleep with a girl until you marry her. By
contrast, as was alluded to at the end of the last chapter, I
have in recent years been following ideas almost
diametrically opposed to this, which is that the quicker
you sleep with and seduce a girl, the better. Indeed,
unless you do, you end up risking consigning yourself to
“friend zone” oblivion. This happened to me, in fact, a
few times during my time in The School of Philosophy.
One was an Australian girl (who I mentioned in Too
Late, Mate?) who I met through a School of Philosophy
function over the holidays and ended up following all the
way to Australia. I mistakenly thought that the fact that
we were both into spiritual matters and on a spiritual path
would be the glue that would bind us together into a
happy, long-term relationship. I only discovered my
mistake after I had bought a ticket to a godforsaken part
of the outback in Australia—Wagga Wagga! There,
rather belatedly, I discovered the existence of a “bad
boy” boyfriend.
Now, I do not necessarily agree with either of the
above approaches, but what I do believe in is the idea of
a rite of passage. And unfortunately, like so many
spiritual organizations and mainstream religions, The
School of Philosophy assiduously managed to avoid
engaging properly with this area of life. I do not recall, in
perhaps 25 years of involvement, the subject of sex ever
having come up.44

The time I was most involved with the School of

Philosophy were my lonely years after university. Before
that I actually had a lot of accidental success. But during
the 20 years after university, I had dates and platonic
relationships with a whole string of girls, many genuinely
attractive, and I did not escalate with the girls or actually
perhaps even think that it should—let alone could—be
done. I do not mean to lay my dating problems at the
door of the School of Philosophy, of course. Indeed,
many of my close friends in the organization have had
very successful marriages. But it is a relevant part of my
background and perhaps might explain some old-
fashioned ideas that slowed the process of me reclaiming
and owning my masculinity in the area of women and
dating, once I had discovered this stuff.45 It is in this
context that I raise it now, and especially in respect of
Date 10.
This was a date that had come about from a street
approach in which I had actually not seen her from the
front. She was in the street, breezing along, with long
blonde hair, a short skirt, and nice legs. I did not need to
see her from the front to realize she was worth going up
to and saying, “Hello.”
She was receptive and gave me her number, but then
did not respond to my initial text. I then found myself a
few days later out with a buddy and saw the same long
blonde hair and nice legs breezily sashaying down
another street as we were going to dinner at our favorite
Italian place. Is it her? I thought to myself. Surely not.
Anyway, once again here is a nice blonde girl with nice
legs so I might as well run up to her and find out?! I ran
after her. It was a win-win either way. It turned out to be
her after all. I kept it brief, explaining I was going to
dinner with a friend, and she apologized profusely for not
getting in touch. Later that evening at dinner I got a very
long text from her apologizing for not being in touch but
explaining she had a job interview the day I stopped her.
She said there was a lot happening right at that time, and
she hoped I was enjoying dinner with my friend.

***

When I finally managed to get her out on a date, the first

venue was a funky new bar on the street where I have my
flat. I ordered a small beer whereas she ordered a large
one. After a short while, not more than 30 or 40 minutes,
we moved to a second venue. This was another beer
place in which they let you taste craft beers on a tasting
board, and you have a card and can tick the ones you
like. Well, I guess she had already drunk a pint, and now
we had these tasting boards—as you can imagine, she
certainly got quite tipsy. It was crowded, but we
nevertheless found a spot with two bar stools, and while
at first, I thought it had been a terrible choice of venue,
eventually I decided it was actually quite good.
 The conversation was going well, and there was
already some light touching. I rolled out various tricks
from my seduction locker. For example, I noticed her
hands were quite short and stubby, and I got her to hold
them up to mine. I asked her what musical instrument she
played when she was young.
“It wasn’t the piano,” I said. “Your fingers are cute,
but … ”
“No,” she said, smiling. And then, “but what?”
“Short and stubby.”
“Short and stubby!” she exclaimed.
“Yes,” I said, confidently, aware that it was hardly a
compliment, “but I like it.”
“I like it” is a great way of continuing after you have
been blunt and direct with a girl. You need to be honest.
But this is a nice way of ameliorating it. Anyway, it
created a tactile and physical moment, and the vibe was
starting to feel very good indeed. It was then that, after a
little more casual chitchat, she suddenly asked, “So why
is it you asked me out tonight?”

Now, frame tests from a girl are a routine part of it all.

And usually you get used to a bunch of tests that you
have routine answers to. However, this was unexpected.
It was quite direct. I paused. I screwed up my face in
thought and puffed out a breath. I leaned forward, feeling
that I had to say something and that hopefully the words
would just come.
I said, “You know what, when I met you in the street,
with your long blonde hair all brushed forward over your
shoulders and all girly and pretty and your executive air
… like you were on the way to an important meeting … I
guess I thought to myself that this girl is a nice girl. But
so what? Is there more to her than that?”
I paused.
“But now we have spent an hour or so together, and I
have seen the way you look at me and raise your
eyebrow like this (she raised them in exactly the way I
was imitating), the amount of beer you drink, and the fact
you like me touching you like this (I put my hand back
on her leg), it all seems to me that actually you are a bit
of a devil underneath. There is a naughty devil in you.”
I smiled, and she did indeed lift her eyebrow. She had
this ability to lift just one eyebrow, and it made her look
like an evil ice queen.
She smiled.
 You may have noticed that I completely avoided her
question. I did not realize what I was doing at the time,
but there I was actually just going off on one. And it was
a good one. Because it was one of those classics—a
Barnum statement. A lot of people had told me about
this, and I had never figured it out until now. It’s when
you say something about someone that appears entirely
personal to them, and they take it that way, but in fact, it
could apply to pretty much anybody. (Unless you really
are on a date with an evil ice queen, but then you would
just invert the whole statement and tell her that deep
down there was a sweet girl who wanted to love and be
loved in return.)46
She said nothing to contradict me, of course. She did
not say, for example, “Well, you’ve got the wrong idea.
I’m just here for a friendly drink.” This is the hard thing
for guys. They are looking for positive signals from girls
that they are attracted to you, but girls do not give overt
signals. You have to start reading—and actually
believing!—the covert signals. A quiet, distant voice in
me, that I hardly heard let alone acknowledged, said
somewhere in the distant recesses of my mind, “Yes!
Those signals are signals and they are for you! Yes, she
is saying she is attracted! Yes! She is even saying
perhaps that she wants to fuck you. And yes, that she
wants to do it tonight! Or NOW even!!! And in some dirty
toilet around the back of the pub.”
And the voice had a point. A girl is not going to spell
it out—you have to start believing that when she asks
questions like that and when she lets you touch her and
smiles, she is saying, “Hi there. I like you and I want
wild adventurous sex with a stranger right now.” Society
is in her way, unless she is a hooker, very drunk, or just
generally promiscuous.

We then went to a third venue and on the walk she said

she needed to check train times as she had quite a long
overground train journey out of Warsaw, and her last
train was soon. She did not seem to be too bothered about
catching it and I wondered just whether or not she was
giving me every chance.
I said, “Listen, my flat’s just over here, let’s go in and
take a look at train times on my computer.”
“No, no, that’s fine,” she said.
And so I took her to the next venue, a bar that I often
used—a large, bright, and spacious bar with palm trees,
high ceilings, and fans. It was, in fact, a converted
communist government building. We sat on stools and
chatted, and she said that she had a friend she could stay
with in Warsaw so it did not matter if she missed her last
train. We were now holding hands and drinking vodkas.
In fact, I scored my second success in as many dates by
getting her to drink a shot as a forfeit for not answering a
truth game question. She was nervous about drinking
more, but the barman—who knew me from previous
dates—stepped in and suggested that he create some
cocktails with vodka as a compromise. His idea worked;
he played his part, which was nice of him!
She now started to blab about her own dates,
especially with Middle Eastern characters, and she said
she was being pursued by a sheik. She also said that the
problem she has with men and relationships is that they
fall for her too heavily. She obviously had an idea of
herself as a classic, attractive, leggy blonde in spite of the
fact she was not super pretty. The conversation was now
getting quite deep. “Deep rapport,” the PUAs call it. I
quite liked the fact that, in spite of her not being super
hot, she had this confidence about herself as if she was.
 By this point, you would have thought that it was
really on, right? And now I come back to what I said
right at the beginning of this story which is that I was
having difficulty pulling the trigger. At the end of the
date, I took her past my flat once more, and yet, in spite
of all the early signals (and late signals!) I had had during
the date, whether it was …

—her drinking a lot;

—her flapping about missing her train but actually
not really caring;
—talking a lot about herself, sex, and relationships;
—being very tactile; or
—happy to go to three different venues on a first date

… I did not lead hard and take her to my place.

In fact, I ended up defaulting to boyfriend-mode and

went with her on the tram to the station to catch her last
train, which was a very gentlemanly thing to do. (There
is nothing wrong with being a gentleman, but why not be
a gentleman after sex and stop pretending to be a
gentleman in order to get sex?)
 The issue, you might say, is that I did not know what
to do at that point. I did not know how to escalate her
back to my flat. And that would be true. And you might
also say that actually there were deeper, inner “issues.”
(Although I prefer to talk about “wrong ideas,” “bad
habits,” or “rewiring.” “Issues” is not a word I would
choose as it sends you down the self-help, naval-gazing
hole.47)
But, in fact, what was running through my mind at
the time? Well, on the one hand, I was thinking, I am
interested in a relationship. This is what the 52 First
Dates Project is about. I have plenty of time. I have done
very well on this date and there will almost certainly be
another one. Let’s not push it. Let’s wait and take it to
the next step on the second date.
But on the other hand, another part of me was also
thinking, But wouldn’t Tom and Ian tell me, if they were
here, that the best way of getting into a relationship is to
sleep with her as quickly as possible?
But I tried, said the first voice. It’s fine—just wait for
the second date. This has potential. She may be great
relationship material! So don’t rush …
Really, in truth, I did not try very hard. Sure, I made an
effort to get her back to my flat, but a mix of ideas
clouded my thinking and meant that I did not escalate
aggressively. (By aggressively I mean firmly and with
conviction, of course, which is what is often needed to
get over a girl’s “token” resistance.)
There were two ideas at play. The first idea was
simply not making the effort—it was easier to let her go
than try and figure out how to get her up to my place. I
had already done a lot of work and it had gone well. I
needed a break and I was resting on my laurels. This was
then made easier still by the fact that there was an old
idea in my mind that, I want a relationship, not just to
fuck a girl and leave it at that, so let’s just be a bit
traditional and take it slow.
And then there was the second factor that I described
at the beginning of the chapter, which was that I was not
one of these filthy PUAs, but a 49-year-old man who was
socially responsible and not just some random dude
running around like a jackrabbit fucking girls. So in my
book, it was better to get to know her first than jump into
bed with her.
 That second idea was fine, in a way, as going through
a number of dates in order to find a long-term girlfriend
can work, but was it what I wanted? Was it what she
wanted? I think she was perfectly happy about spending
the night with me and probably secretly hoping that I
would escalate a little harder. There were, after all, a lot
of girl cues, such as faffing about the train, rather than
stating she had to catch it. (She was clearly opening the
door to “missing the train” and so giving herself a
plausible reason for having to stay at my place “on the
sofa.”) Or just being happy to drink a lot and go to three
different venues was quite a strong cue. Girls do not give
guys stronger cues than that.
And, actually, if I were honest with myself, what did
I really want? I really wanted to have sex with her. That
night. Not next month or next year. Not at the end of a
long dating sequence, where it might or might not
happen. And not after a huge amount of investment of
time and energy.

Anyway, I put her on the train. What happened after the

first date with this girl? Well, we went on a bunch of
dates and nothing happened! Not even one proper kiss.
And worse, she actually started playing games. She
would come round to my flat and stay, but then leave
before anything could happen. She would flirt with the
idea of staying over. On one occasion she brought some
work around and we worked together in my flat. OMG!
When we sat on the sofa and had a drink, and I started
touching her again, like I had on the first date, she drew
an invisible line in front of her and laughed, coquettishly,
“No, you must respect my boundaries, I have boundaries.
You are trespassing.”
And now the game was set—she was the pursued and
I was “boyfriend material.” She liked it, and she kept me
at bay. Indeed, on one occasion, two or three dates in
(and only after I had started to fool around with one of
her friends at a party), she stated that, “I like to make
men nearly die for trying to get me—and only then do I
let them get me.” She was a past-master at stringing guys
along and having them dance to her own tune.
This went on for some time before I wearied of this
and became simply less interested in her (although, being
a man, I never stopped wanting to fuck her). I had other
options and I kicked her out of the flat, finally, on about
the fifth date and told her not to come back. I told her it
was a waste of time and energy. For both of us.
She texted me some long and laborious texts after
that, but I stood firm. I was starting to realize that it was
a waste of time to try over and over with the same girl.
This is a real big cul-de-sac! This is a dead-end creek that
you can paddle up and get lost in forever. All I wanted
with her was a mini (sexual) relationship, but my old
ideas had held me back on the first couple of dates, and
now it would be like pushing a boulder up a hill or
turning an oil tanker around. Better to let go and move on
to other options, rather than lead her on, or have her lead
me on, whichever it was.
And finally—I don’t blame her. She wanted a long-
term relationship and this was what I had projected early
on, rather than being clear about my intent, and so I
played a part in turning her into the “coquette.”48
It was only many months later that I realized that a
girl really is responding to where you are coming from,
and if you are not 100% happy with the idea of a
beautiful, one-off sexual experience, then she will not be
either. If you give off mixed signals, she will be
confused. It then becomes a traditional model of you
auditioning for the role of boyfriend which can, of
course, still work. But be clear what role you are playing.
Topic: Intent
The big topic for me here is being clear about your intent,
and I am reminded of a podcast I did with Yad on my
YouTube channel about that. It is very important to
communicate to the girl where you are coming from and
what you want. I opened this chapter with talk about my
background. Well, what that has done is create a drag on
my Daygaming. We all have this “drag” from the past,
one way or the other. It just takes different forms and you
really need to be able to identify, be aware, and actually
have some self-knowledge about where you are as the
result of your past.
This could take different forms. For example, you
may come from a place where you are very successful
with girls on a one-night-stand basis, a hunky guy
perhaps who is young and knows how to generate
attraction in girls. I did a podcast with Dave Diggler for
my channel, and he had that ability. He literally bounced
girls from the first venue on the first date to his bedroom
around the corner after one drink. And according to him
—and I believe him—his success rate with those girls
was phenomenal.
But there are others of us who are not in that vein,
and perhaps more significantly, we have not learned to be
very sexual. Often, there is an idea under that. For
example, you may have such a strong idea about being a
gentleman as the result of your background and
upbringing and so you struggle to convert on a date. That
is certainly where I was, at least on this particular
occasion. I wanted to push on through and escalate and
be seductive, but ideas from my background held me
back. This is quite an interesting area, in which a guy’s
identity might be bound up in being a gentleman and
being the opposite of the “bad boy.” Indeed, this may
have served him well up to a point in his life.
The problem is he may then struggle to accept that a
one-night stand could be a great experience—a dirty,
beautiful, and exciting adventure. And if he struggles
with this idea, the girl will not buy into it, of course.
What is my realization about all of this? Am I saying
that I was not clear about what I wanted from Monika? I
guess that is right, certainly that was the experience on
the date, that I did not go into it with the decision that “I
am going to try and sleep with this girl tonight.” I was
probably far less focused on that idea, and I was also
enjoying it for its own sake and having too much fun.
Now, although I might have felt that I was being a
player and a seducer and practicing my seduction skills
on this date, I was probably falling in between two stools
—in other words, not really being clear about where I
was going and happy to have the girl think I was
boyfriend material. And because of my upbringing, I
have never really accepted that sex alone, just sex, can be
a beautiful thing.
So now we come on to the Yad podcast. It is
definitely worthwhile listening to his podcast in that he
goes on about how sex is a beautiful thing and how
important it is to really be happy with the fact that you
are out having some spontaneous, beautiful, dirty sex
with a stranger. And that is okay. The problem with me is
that I did not fully accept that on this date. It is a part of
me that I have not fully accepted or embraced, I guess
you could say. It is a lost part of me. Buried deep. I think
that the podcast with Yad helped me to see that “just sex”
can be a beautiful thing. I have been around PUAs who
see it as a pursuit of nailing birds, and it can at times be a
pretty sordid business, in a way, and that is simply not
my bag. This has alienated me from the idea of wild,
dirty, random sex as well. So Yad made me see that
fucking is great and can be a beautiful fantastic thing,
and if you are not really thinking that at the time of the
date, then the girl will pick up on it and not be
comfortable with having sex with you. Quite deep stuff.

To come back to the thoughts at the opening of this

chapter, the problem with a lot of religion (and this also
includes certain groups or spiritual groups) is that you are
simply not allowed to enjoy sex in this Epicurean way.
This seems to be the legacy of the three main Western
monotheistic religions: Islam, Christianity, and Judaism.
The Kama Sutra to such people is a filthy pornographic
book that should be burned. They have labeled it as
“wrong” and have created a taboo around it. So had I,
over these years, at least since the fun times at university
when I was more liberal.
This conclusion does not, of course, exclude those
who really just want a girlfriend. The point is to be clear.
My take is that I want to go through it. I want to go
through not around. And this means going through a rite
of passage. I do not want to spend the rest of my life
chasing girls around and being a seducer and a lone wolf.
But I do want to go through a rite of passage and an
adventure and have fun, so that when I get to the other
side, I am stronger for it and better able to handle a
relationship. On this occasion, because she was not “a
one,” and because she seemed to want dirty, beautiful,
adventurous sex, it would have been a wonderful thing.
You live and learn. (Hopefully.)

44
If only a religion or spiritual organization could provide for all our needs
and take all our problems away. If only we could hand over our own faculty
of reason to such organizations and be free of the problems of self-reliance
and independent decision making. It sounds so alluring!
45
I heard it said recently in a Real Social Dynamics (RSD) vlog (the biggest
pick-up company out there) that older men should really be able to learn this
stuff ten times faster than younger men. They often are more established,
clear about what they want and who they are, and know about working hard
at something and committing to it to get a result. But the thing that gets in
the way is old habits of thinking. Old ideas die hard. These ideas may even
have helped guys up until this point in their life. This means it can actually
be harder for older dudes. Incidentally, the vlog with Tyler and Jeffy is
called “How To Pick Up 18+ Girls As An Old Man (With NO MONEY!) - 2
Old Men’s Game Revealed.”
46
The general rule with frame tests is to either amplify or ignore them and
change the topic. Amplification would have been to say, “I asked you out
because I am in the sex trade, illegally trafficking Polish girls to London.
I’m actually looking for blondes … ” In this instance, I kept the frame by
changing the topic and using a Barnum-style statement. Barnum statements
were invented by the great American showman, P T Barnum. There have
also been many psychological tests in which individuals give high accuracy
ratings to descriptions of their personality that supposedly are tailored
specifically to them but that are, in fact, vague and general enough to apply
to everyone.
47
This is my biggest beef and something I feel qualified to talk about as the
result of the number of cul-de-sacs I have gone down. There are many who
attack and criticize the game for not addressing inner issues and not working
on yourself. But for heaven’s sake, what is it if not working on yourself to
learn social, dating, and seduction skills?! You are taking steps—concrete,
outward, measurable steps—towards change. You are addressing those old
ideas, that wrong thinking and wiring.
And anyway, who said that learning the game is going to make you a happy,
fully-rounded individual? Of course, learning the game is not going to
deliver that! But if you are struggling in this area of your life and you want
to learn to get girls and master dating skills, then this is the way. Having
other areas of your life sorted out will obviously allow you more freedom to
obtain mastery in this area, just as it would in any area of life where
acquiring a new skill is concerned. But it is not going to help you improve
your dating life per se, no more than, for example, keeping fit is going to
improve your football skills. It helps, but it is not going to teach you how to
play football. And you want to learn to play football.
You see, a lot of guys who get into this stuff decide that you do not really
need to fix anything, that you just need to “be yourself” or get the rest of
your life sorted out and your dating life will improve naturally. But the
problem is that they do not really prescribe any clear action plan and method
to do so, unless you mean meditation, religion, or therapy, etc. But these are
just ways of keeping fit, as I have described above. And actually, that is the
very best they are. As often as not, they are distractions from sorting out this
area of your life, which, as is often the case, requires taking action and then
asks of you courage and stickability.
Finally, if you do start to get overly distracted by focusing on your
“issues”—attending Tony Robbins conferences, seeing a psychotherapist,
and reading a bunch of self-help books—you actually run the risk of simply
inflating them into an even bigger issue by giving them air time. That will
just blow them up by giving them oxygen to breathe and grow. And you
might then become something of a self-development junky.
The way to really address issues is by taking action, off the back of solid
resolutions, and then often you naturally “cure” inner issues and problems in
that way. You will, if you are observant and awake, see those old ideas pop
up and dissolve, and you will feel them loosen their hold. Obviously, part of
this process is reflection, discussion, and analysis—but do not make that the
only focus. Above all, you are a man. Your nature is to take action.
48 I played the part of making myself boyfriend material. She continued to
pursue me later, in fact, and on one occasion turned up on my doorstep, a
long time after I thought it was over. We had a pleasant conversation and
then she left. This was a case of an exception, perhaps, where you do not
sleep with the girl, but she nevertheless becomes a little besotted with you.
 11

Date 11: The Tinder

Experiment

T his was my first Tinder date of the series and my

first Tinder date ever.

It seemed like a good idea to throw in a few dates that

had come about other than through Daygame, that had
been obtained by more conventional means. A couple of
experienced and successful Daygame buddies persuaded
me to try it. They helped me take some photos and
created a profile for me, and in fact, one of them actually
handled the texting side, as I was pretty busy. So it
seemed like a fun experiment. I decided I would do at
least three over the entire project in order to spice things
up a bit.
Whereas my Daygame approaches had tended to be
more solid and I usually got a feel for whether they
would come out on a date or flake, Tinder was quite
different. The first one or two dates that my mate set up,
the girls flaked. One flaked while I was standing outside
waiting for her. This girl just messaged me, “Really
sorry, late at work and not going to be able to make it.
Sorry!”
Jesus, I thought. These sorts of girls deserve
everything they get when they get a bit older and no
longer have men snapping at their heels. I immediately
started to wonder just how productive Tinder dating was,
but I tried to keep my prejudices at bay as I wanted to
enter into the experiment open-minded.
And then at the third attempt, I got my first Tinder
date. She was a corporate lawyer, probably late thirties or
early forties, and she had decided to show willing after a
short text exchange.

***
I waited at my local bar, my usual for any type of date,
just outside as it was warm weather on a Sunday
afternoon. I was not sure whether, owing to the warm
weather, I might change tack and take her to an adjacent
bar which has an outside area. There was also a band
playing in the bar that night, which might make it quite
noisy.
While I was waiting, I got chatting to the girl taking
tickets for the band. She was attractive, late twenties or
early thirties, so I started to open up a conversation. It
turned out she was the girlfriend of one of the guys in the
band. When I told her I was waiting for a Tinder date and
asked her for her views, she said she had tried them—
briefly, while travelling in the US—but never did them
now as she did not like the impersonal nature of them
and the way you just “stacked up” people you liked. I
started to wonder whether I was likely to find attractive
girls like her on Tinder …
I had, in fact, partly opened up a conversation with
this girl to add value for when the Tinder date turned up,
since she would see me talking to an attractive girl. But I
also did it partly to distract myself. Why? Because I was
scared! I wanted to take my mind off it.
 “Scared?!” I hear you cry. “What are you talking
about? You’ve been on loads of dates with girls you have
approached cold in the street!”
But the thing that scared me was that I knew hardly
anything about her, and I had enough experience to know
that a photo was no good judge of what to expect, so it
was a complete lottery. What was I going to get? And if I
did not get on with her, it could become a real drag.
Actually, meeting up blind and having to hang out with
someone you don’t get on with for an evening was
suddenly looking like an alarming prospect.
I was beginning to give up hope that the Tinder girl
would arrive. She was now very late. I was starting to
feel rather relieved that I had avoided the date.
And then she turned up.

She apologized and explained she was driving and had

been unable to find anywhere to park. She was in her
forties, perhaps early forties, and she was not unattractive
for a woman of her age, but I instantly knew that I was
not attracted to her. I suddenly realized that on my
Daygame approaches, I had been singling out the girls I
found attractive, and they were invariably (but not
always) a lot younger and a lot more attractive than the
sort of girl I might expect to get online or on Tinder.
Tinder did seem like a lottery, after all, at least in this
moment. Sorry to the ladies reading this book, but there it
is. Guys are attracted to younger, hotter girls. And
unfortunately, we often make up our minds in a split-
second.
But at the end of the day, I should make an effort—
she was, after all, another human being, and I should
treat her as I would want to be treated myself. And it was
all part of the date experiment to handle a date nicely,
whether or not I was immediately attracted to the girl.
And who knows, I said to myself, perhaps I will find her
more attractive if I give her a chance?
We sat outside in the bar next door and had a coffee
together, and it was clear that we both knew that the
etiquette was to have one drink or so and create a little bit
of a time constraint whereby blushes are spared if either
party is not attracted to the other.
We chatted about this and that before ending up on a
conversation about Truman Capote, of all things, after
she had started to tell me about her ex-boyfriend. He had
been a younger guy who was not particularly wealthy,
certainly compared to her, and she had realized that he
was just interested in her for the money. He had declared
one day, “Let’s build a house together!” meaning that she
should pay for it and he would then have a joint share.
She described how the penny dropped at that moment,
and she realized that she had to break it off. This got us
onto a conversation about Truman Capote because he
wrote a short story called Breakfast at Tiffany’s and the
central character in that, the writer, is actually a “kept
man,” since he has a patron, a rich older woman whom
he is, by implication, exchanging services with.
We ended up having an interesting conversation
about this whole area of older women and younger men
and vice versa, and it opened up to me the idea that we
have very fixed ideas in both directions about this.49

During the date I felt that I should at least try to add a

little polarity and try and sexualize the interaction, even
though I was not initially physically attracted to her. And
here is a little side note: touching her hands under the
pretext of inspecting her many rings and asking her to tell
me their story did generate a spark, and suddenly,
momentarily, I was attracted to her. It was interesting
that taking action like this can actually generate sexual
attraction.
However, the spark was not long-lived. And I quite
quickly started to hear a debate between a devil and an
angel on my shoulder. The angel was telling me, “You
should take this seriously. Just because you have been on
all these Daygame dates with younger, hotter women
doesn’t matter—she might be a really nice person.”
“Yeah, you bet,” said the devil, smirking and
enjoying the interruption. “She’s probably a really nice
person. Like that hot young Ukrainian at university with
the blonde hair and long legs was also a really nice
person.”
“Shut up!” said the angel. “Listen … ” he continued,
taking me to one side. “You need to find someone your
own age, someone who you are compatible with—a life
partner. This girl is still younger than you by a good five
years, and she is a lawyer like you, and you probably
share many similar interests.”
“But I don’t want to shag her!”
“Exactly!” said the devil. “Great point!”
“Is that seriously all you are interested in?” The angel
stared at me, disgusted.
 “What’s to be so ashamed of, wanting to hook up
with a young, hot Ukrainian student?” I asked. And
suddenly it occurred to me, “Well, what is there to be so
ashamed of? I’ve had enough of feeling ashamed about
stuff in my life.” Suddenly, I felt angry and annoyed that
for so much of my life I had allowed myself to absorb so
much shame.
“There’s no hope left,” I heard the departing voice of
the angel say. “You’ve become polluted by all this pick-
up stuff.”
“You’re an angel,” I protested. “You’re not meant to
throw in the towel.”
“You’re a lost cause. I’m off.”
And he abruptly vanished.

But actually, I wasn’t a lost cause. I still believed a lot of

what was being said and that is why I tried hard to
generate some attraction and give the date every chance.
This seemed the nice and proper thing to do. This is why
I tried to get tactile with her and see whether or not I
could generate some sexual attraction, whether it might
take time to get to know her, and then I might become
attracted, after all. And, in fact, we did have a very
interesting conversation, and as I say, we did generate a
little sexual attraction or at least a spark.
But at the end of the day, we eventually both
wrapped things up after one drink. She had probably
picked up that I was not massively attracted to her. And
she was businesslike in keeping it to one drink as well.
Which suited me. Because otherwise I wasn’t really
being honest with myself, in going with what I wanted,
but just following what society was telling me I should
want.
I was left with the impression that she was a nice girl
and that she was not just interested in sex, but was trying
to find a partner. This was a surprise as people say that
Tinder is just for sex, but perhaps for an older age group,
it can be used in a more traditional way.

My first impression of my first Tinder date is best

expressed in the question that I found myself asking at
the end: Why would I want to put effort into generating
dates online when I have no real idea who I am going to
meet? It is a hell of a lottery compared to approaching
girls in the street, who I am genuinely attracted to and
really want to take out on a date.
 It suddenly occurred to me that it might be pretty
slim-pickings for guys on Tinder unless they are younger
and particularly attractive. It also occurred to me that you
can, in fact, find out quite a lot about a girl in ten minutes
on the street, far more than an hour spent fiddling online
or “swiping right.”
Still, I decided not to cogitate on this question further
but resolved to keep an open mind, and I did go on two
more Tinder dates later, that you will hear about in due
course. For now, the jury was out.

49
Rollo Tomassi talks about this in his book The Rational Male—that there
is a social and feminine imperative that shames men for liking women that
are younger and hotter and creates social pressure on men to date women
their own age. I felt this during this date, in the form of a voice that cropped
up and started telling me I should be grateful and it was wrong to be chasing
younger, hotter women. Tomassi suggests that this is some sort of
conspiracy by older women when it is (certainly from an evolutionary,
biological point of view) quite natural for a younger, hotter girl to go after
an older, more established, and more confident male. I’m not sure where the
idea of older women and younger men fits in with this, as was raised by our
discussion of Breakfast at Tiffany’s, but I guess a young male without any
money may well break with social conditioning and do something a little out
of the norm in order to secure an advantage. This is to trade his youth and
healthy DNA for resources and so compete with those older, more
established dudes who already have plenty of resources and can attract
younger, hotter women, leaving the older cougars to fend for themselves.
And providing they can still produce children, the fact they have resources
may make it a clever maneuver after all. Nature, not necessity, is the mother
of invention.
 12

Date 12: Miss Adventure

D ate 12 was a girl who I met at a social event—one

of the few dates where I did not meet the girl in
the street. In fact, it was a good old-fashioned case of
social proof. At a networking party I had arranged,
loosely associated with my law firm, Date 10 turned up
with a friend and Date 12 turned out to be that friend.
She was quite the reverse of Date 10 who had been
aloof and stand-offish in the dates we had had after the
first date. She was an adventuress, a free spirit who was
tactile, liked a good drink, and did things like go sailing
in Croatia or work as a dive instructor in Greece.
During the party we got quite tactile and touched
each other a lot and fooled about—we did not make out
though. It was a reasonably small group and we could
only do so much, and I was the host.

***

I had high expectations of the date as a result of the

initial interaction.
She turned up wearing very short shorts and looking
sexy, but although she was clearly uninhibited about sex,
the initial chat was quite clunky. In fact, when I asked
her about her day, she said “not great” and before I knew
it, we were onto a conversation about the fact that her
family owned a property and there was a bit of a dispute
over the land and she had had to go to a quite strained,
awkward family meeting with their lawyers. So we
started to have a serious conversation. Before I knew it, I
was talking about one of my favorite pet topics of that
time—land theory and land tax valuation!50
Odd. It’s funny how your habits of thought, your
precious ideas, will just come out and ambush you, and
you cannot help yourself talking about them.
I decided to blow the whistle on the venue and to
change things up. I stuck a 100 PLN (about $25) bill out
to the barman, and I told her we were going to a different
venue and to drink up. It had barely been thirty minutes
into the date.
We walked past my flat on the way to the next venue,
and I was about to pull out the old trick of saying, “Hey,
my flat’s here, we’ll just go up for two minutes as I need
to upload a file” or something. But I chickened out,
perhaps in part because the vibe was just not there.

Anyway, we got to the second venue, and I got her to

buy a round of drinks (she was not the type of girl who
had any sort of a problem with this), and I said I would
go and find a nice spot. I found one down a wrought-iron
staircase into a private cellar area.
Emilia came down and joined me there and there
were no barriers, quite unlike the experience I had had
with Date 10, Monika. She came around to my side of
the table, whereas Date 10 had drawn an invisible line
and joked, “Don’t touch. This is my territory!” Emilia
just came around to my side and put her legs up and let
me use them as an armrest.
The conversation had initially got into a dry and arid
place since the conversation about land tax valuation and
the family lawyers. But the second venue now allowed us
to completely change the subject, and I started asking her
some personal questions, starting with what animals
scared her. She was scared of chickens, bizarrely. So this
opened up a conversation and got her talking about her
childhood. The vibe picked up and was more fun and
fizzy, and I started to lean in. I smelled her perfume at
one point and even kissed her neck, although when I tried
to kiss her on the lips she pulled away.
That, in fact, was as far as I got.

Sometime shortly after, the date just died. I do not know

if it was the expectation that had been set up by the
positive vibe we had had at the party or whether it was
just that both of us were distracted by other things going
on in our lives that day, but it simply had lost its magic. I,
too, was just not feeling it and was not in a great place,
having had a hell of a day at the office. I guess both of us
saw this and decided to call it quits.
She called a guy to pick her up in his car, whom I
later learned was her regular boyfriend!
This was a girl who would occasionally come back
on the radar over the next year or so, a little like Date 10.
She was clearly keen but I was only interested in some
fun with her, rather than something long-term. She was a
little too wild for me. Once again it was a classic case of
a guy just wanting some fun, but the girl looking for a
long-term relationship, and using sex as a negotiating
tool. Neither ends up satisfied.
Topic: Boyfriends
I am not sure there is a lot to learn from this date, other
than the way girls seem to have boyfriends like they have
shoes, handbags, or other accessories—or perhaps little
doggies. In fact, I often use this as a tease if the topic
comes up, as the best teases have some truth in them, of
course.
Later on when I had progressed to date 3 or 4 and
Emilia had started to come over, I was a little
uncomfortable about the fact that she had a boyfriend. In
fact, the first time she stayed over, she had her boyfriend
pick her up the next morning. Not that I had sex with her
on that occasion—she was too drunk and threw up, in
fact, all over my bed!
But over the past two or three dates, I had certainly
begun to realize that girls are not the sweet, innocent
buttercups that men would like them to be. I was really
quite surprised to learn in practice what I had only known
previously in theory—that girls are happy playing games
and being dishonest with boyfriends and are real naturals
at it.
Let’s just flip it around. Let’s say it was my girlfriend
who was picking me up from a friend’s place (who
happened to be a girl) at eight in the morning. What
would she say? Perhaps something like this …
“Who is she?”
“What do you mean?”
She just stares, really wide-eyed.
“Seriously? You’re out getting drunk and spending
the night over with some random girl … how old is she?”
“I don’t know.”
“Is she attractive?”
“Perhaps. Not to me, but … maybe.”
“Give me a break! You slept with her, didn’t you?”
“We shared a bed, sure—but there was only a sofa,
and anyway, I was drunk so I just fell asleep.”
The wide-eyed stare of disbelief comes back, and this
time it lasts an ice age.

Now let’s look at it the initial way around. I imagine the

conversation with Emilia’s boyfriend would have gone
something like this.
“So who is this guy you stayed with?”
 She gives a wide-eyed stare.
“Seriously? I don’t believe it.”
“I’m just asking … ”
“Well—don’t. He’s just a friend. He’s teaching me
English, and we just had a drink. I didn’t want to wake
you.”
She stares some more. Resigned, she adds, “And you
know, I have to say, this is really out of order. It’s like
you’re turning into some creepy control freak. If you start
to ask questions every time I go out on a Friday night,
this relationship is not going to work.”
In the face of such a clever role-reversal, turning him
into the jealous interferer who will not give her any
space, she shuts him up good and proper.

50
A similar thing ambushed me once before. See Chapter 20 of Too Late,
Mate? “Sweet Summer Fling.”
 13

Date 13: The Amazing Instant

Date

I was out on a completely ordinary Wednesday

afternoon on the way across town to buy a pair of
glasses. I decided that if I saw any attractive girls along
the way, I would, of course, approach them. I did see a
couple, but perhaps my mood was flat and my vibe low,
because they pretty quickly made their excuses and did
not stop to engage in conversation long enough for me to
get anywhere near asking for their telephone numbers.
I got lost on the way to get my glasses—I forgot that
the streets are very long, like some North American
towns. I also had to travel about 100 yards up a dual
carriageway in order to access tunnels underneath to take
me across to the upper end of this long street, virtually in
a completely different district by the time I got to it. I
found the opticians—it was not a shiny, new glasses store
but an old-fashioned place where they did comprehensive
eye tests, so I think the word “opticians” is appropriate.
There was a queue of people waiting to have their eyes
tested, and I was subjected to this old-fashioned series of
eye tests when I eventually reached the end of the queue.
On my way back from what had turned into a major
expedition, I hardly considered approaching any girls as I
was weary and keen to get back to my office and finish
up work. But then, as I was walking across a busy
intersection, I saw a girl in a gaberdine trench coat
walking across the pedestrian crossing in a very languid
and attractive way. She had a short skirt and bare legs,
which was all that was visible under the trench coat. The
trench coat, of course, to the excitable male mind,
suggested that there was nothing underneath, and before I
knew it, I had turned and was running after her.
Almost instantly she was wide-eyed and receptive,
and I quickly suggested a drink. She readily accepted,
and we walked into a shopping center. It was after 5 p.m.
by now, so I suggested a proper drink, rather than tea,
and to my surprise, she accepted.

***

There is a French bar, or rather a French-imitation bar, in

this shopping center, called something like “Paris Paris,”
and although it is a bit of a cliché, I like it as it has good
bench-seating on one side and a type of bottled beer that
I like called “Leffe.” I also knew the staff quite well by
now as I had been there on numerous occasions. I sat
across from her, and we started up a conversation, but the
truth is, I cannot recall what it was about; furthermore, it
hardly mattered as I had almost immediately reached
across the table and taken her hand. The meeting in the
street had been pretty sensual, and the instant date here
was no different. I am not sure I have ever escalated so
quickly before on a date. I kissed a girl once right at the
beginning of a first date, but that was a few days after we
had met in the street. Like that girl, what I noticed is that
the faster the escalation is, the easier it is, and it is far
less awkward than the usual dates. This is why
conversation, although it flowed, was unimportant. The
sexual element was there and now it was acknowledged
and out in the open, and here I was holding her hand; it
made everything so much easier.
The waitress came and we ordered drinks—I think
she ordered vodka and cranberry juice or something
similarly strong, and I joined her, and it was not long
before we were merrily chatting away. Because it was so
easy being with her, and I was holding her hand, I found
myself telling her that I was writing a book about women
and dating. She said she wanted to see it, and I told her I
had a spare copy back at my flat and we could swing
round after the date.51

It was then that she started talking a little about her own
dating situation and about a work colleague. Apparently,
she had been working closely with this guy, and it had
become quite awkward over time because she could tell
that he was clearly interested in her romantically but not
really showing it and being a bit creepy by playing the
best-friend card without declaring his interest. It had
become quite a problem, so by the time he did actually
say something, it was very awkward, and she had to give
him the “I like you as a friend” speech. I have to say, I
felt for the guy. This is exactly the situation I had found
myself in five years ago before I got into women and
dating.
“Yup, well, most men have been there. It’s a hard
habit to break for a lot of the male population. They find
it incredibly hard to tell a girl they like her early on. If a
guy is interested in a girl, he needs to let her know
because what you’re describing is the classic recipe for
confusing a girl and weirding her out … ”
“For sure.” She nodded.
“A guy doesn’t need to make it explicit and declare
his undying love … just needs to spike up the
conversation when he is in her company and make sure
he has polarized the dynamic. Otherwise, especially in
the case of a work environment, it could be really
awkward and painful for the guy. Guys like your guy
were never taught this stuff and can’t make that leap of
faith. Even telling the girl straight that you are attracted
to her isn’t a bad start. While declaring your interest
early on might be a bit uncalibrated, it’s better to go for
it, in my view, and crash and burn, rather than risk a
friendly series of pseudo-dates to nowhere.”
 “Yeah, for a long time I just had no idea where he
was coming from,” she said reflectively.

During the date I got up and went over to order some

more drinks from the waitress, a deliberate ploy so that I
could return and sit next to her, rather than opposite.
When I did she immediately said, “I prefer you over on
that side of the table,” and I replied, “Yeah, but you’ve
got this great seat here, with a view of the whole
shopping center and all the passers-by, don’t be hogging
it all for yourself!” And so she relented. I then leaned in
and I put my hand on her leg and left it there. For some
time, in fact, and she made no objection. We carried on
chatting away. It was as if we were just boyfriend and
girlfriend and my hand was just casually on her bare leg.
And then I put my hand through her hair and gave her a
squeeze. She drank her vodka, and we carried on with
our rather interesting conversation about relationships.
She then told me it had got worse with this guy. She
was clearly very curious about the whole topic.52
“Somehow or another he got himself a move upwards
so that he became my boss. So then it got really weird.”
 “A sort of situation in which he thought that he might
be able to now start afresh and have a second attempt at
winning you over with a completely new dynamic.”
“It was heavy. He had actually engineered the move
so that he would be my boss, he admitted later.”
“Guys don’t realize that girls really want it, but at the
same time are pretty anxious about what craziness and
weirdness guys are going to get up to. Major
embarrassment is always around the corner.” I laughed.

At the end of the date, we walked through the park. I

suggested she come back to my place, but the alcohol
had worn off and it had been a long while since we had
talked about that spare copy of my book on the shelf
back home. She declined and I walked her to the Metro.
We hugged but did not kiss and, having exchanged
numbers, said we would see each other again.
I walked back to my apartment on air—although I
was also tipsy!—as it just seemed amazing to me how the
whole afternoon had turned around and what had been a
dreary Wednesday had in fact become this fascinating
romantic liaison with a complete stranger. Despite the
fact I had been doing this stuff for three years now, I
could not help but think how wondrous Daygame was.

***

There was then some very good texting throughout the

month and it was really very “textbook” with teasing,
humor, and subtle sexual references. She was giving as
good as she got with lots of smileys and other crazy icons
that only women seem to be able to locate on their
keyboards. She even wished me fresh inspiration for
writing a second book.
The second date took place at a regular haunt,
although not my usual date location, and she joined me
as I was finishing off a drink with a buddy, who had
agreed would leave shortly after her arrival. The date was
pretty “okay,” but not great. We talked about our
backgrounds and childhoods, and she, like me, had come
from a broken home. Perhaps this was what PUAs call
“deep rapport,” and while it can work well during certain
phases of a date, on this occasion, it felt like I was getting
into emotional quicksand and eliciting emotions out of
her that were perhaps not conducive to seduction.
Certainly, looking back, it was too heavy.
The date ended reasonably early. This was a girl who
was happy to express herself sexually and that is, of
course, sometimes (though by all means not always) an
indication of a broken home and those father issues that I
had come across before.

***

In spite of the relatively flat second date, the fun

flirtation continued over the phone throughout the next
month, although with perhaps a slight falling off with her
responsiveness. But that is nothing unusual when things
have been cemented over two dates. The texting is less
relevant. However, getting the third date proved difficult.
I made a date request in June (the month we met) and a
further one in July. On both occasions, there were
problems at her end. At first she was suffering from a
cold:

Weekday
 Her: Hi, a drink with colleagues is always good idea
to start a nice Friday…, however I will let you know
around 4pm, being honest I am not in good shape - I am
little cold [emoticon with thermometer in mouth]. We
will be in touch.

And the second request, she was meeting with the owner
of her flat:

Weekday
Her: Hi, sorry for delay, I was quite busy. I will let you
know about Thursday, I will have meeting with owner of
flat at 6pm and I don’t know what time we finish
conversation…
Me: ok
She did not get back to me to confirm, so in order to
“protect my value,” I canceled the morning of the date
citing some IT problems at work (which was partly true).
I then rolled off for two weeks and pinged her while on a
trip to the coast. There was then some pinging, and I sent
her a date request:

Weekend
 Me: When are you free next week?
Her: I don’t know yet
Me: When will you know?
Her: I will let you know

This annoyed me and I reacted in frustration:

Weekend
Me: Sounds vague Olga and not for the first time. I
think if we’re honest with each other, you’re just fucking
me around
Her: This is your problem if you think this way. Take
care and good evening

This was pretty much it. I might have been right in my

suspicions, and what guy has not gotten totally
exasperated with girls and their lovely vague and random
ways! But the key is to know how to deliver a message
like this without reactivity and emotion. Since that time, I
have developed (with the help of a buddy) a response to
this situation:
Me: Listen, [name]. I’m a busy man at the moment. Got
quite a lot going on. If you do want to meet sometime,
feel free to suggest something. Alex

The last time I did that (with a subsequent girl in this

dating series) I got this response:

Her: Sure I understand you [smiley face] I will let you

know

This keeps it open and I can still ping the girl in a month
or two if I hear nothing. But with Olga, it was another
infuriating case of the fish that got away and I had not
seen enough of her to form any views as to whether there
might be a longer-term prospect here.

51
Seeding “the bounce-back.”
52
There is a world of difference between moaning about your past
relationships—which should obviously be avoided on a date—and
discussing topics related to sex and dating, in which you are using your own
experiences as examples. The latter is fine.
 14

Extra Date: Barcolina Forever

T his was a date that fell a little outside the time

frame of the 52 First Dates project but I have
included it here because it provides a very good contrast
to Date 13. It is an illustration of how easy seduction can
be if the escalation is fast and effortless.
I met the girl in question, Barcolina, in the central
park of Warsaw, under the shadow of Stalin’s Palace of
Culture. She had lots of flowing blonde hair and was
attractive and spirited. She was in her early thirties. What
I liked about her most of all was her physique—she
looked very tanned, healthy, and happy. My approach
went like a dream and I challenged her for being a
wealthy globe-trotter who clearly lived an aristocrat’s
life, and if there had been a Polish royal family and
ruling class, she would certainly be one of them.
She laughed and threw back her hair—which I think
was simply a natural reaction to being hit on so directly,
as well as evidence of a lively and buoyant spirit.
“Sicily, actually—I’ve just come back from a long
break there. Well, I spend a lot of time there.”
“I knew it. You are part of the European elite and the
idle rich.”
“I love it there,” she said.
“I bet you got hit on every other minute by all those
hot-blooded Southern Italians.”
She laughed and admitted that it was so but that she
had been a good girl and had not succumbed to any
temptation.
“I’ve made a point of it, rejecting their advances,”
she said, as seriously as she could muster, but also in a
way that suggested she rather enjoyed being hit on but
felt she should exercise proper womanly restraint.
During the conversation I moved very close to her. I
noticed that there was real chemistry and that she was
happy to be touched. Suddenly it occurred to me that I
could have stepped forward and kissed her there and
then.
“And the reason I’m laughing so much is that now I
get back to chilly Poland and you approach me and here I
am, chatting away.”
“Being naughty and breaking your own rules,” I said,
stepping in quite close.
“Yes.”
“I’m Alex.”
“Barcolina,” she said.
I held her hand for quite some time and she did not
pull away.

***

I met her two or three days later. We arranged to meet

outside a bar, one of my regular haunts for dates, next to
a tree that spread its branches over a small terrace
adjacent to the street.
When she showed up, she was as good-looking as I
remembered. I had decided that I was not going to hang
around but try taking it as far as I could and sexualize as
quickly as possible. Perhaps it was because of the
sizzling chemistry generated in the street. Perhaps it was
also because I felt that I wanted to experiment with the
speed of seduction. Many guys who I knew, the
successful Daygamers and PUAs, had talked about,
rather prosaically, “same-day lays.” It sounded a bit
seedy but it also sounded fascinating and very cool to me
that a guy could escalate so seamlessly that he could
literally walk a girl off the street into his flat and have
sex with her in the middle of the day.
Well, this was our first date, not our first meeting, but
it did turn into quite a fast seduction because barely two
minutes after we had met I had taken her around a corner
into a side street.
As I stood close to her, with her back against the
wall, I simply said, “Look, let’s just break the tension
and enjoy each other’s company for the evening and
clear up all that nervous nonsense around whether and
when to kiss. Don’t you think that would be cool?”
Before she answered, I moved forward and kissed her
and that then turned into a proper make-out.
We certainly broke any tension and the date was
pretty much a dream from that point on—so much so that
I can hardly remember what we babbled on about, but it
didn’t much matter. We were both in a bubble, just
fizzing along, dancing from one topic to another and
throughout I was becoming more and more tactile until
eventually I just said,
“Let’s go.”
“Okay, where?”
“Let’s get an ice-cream.”
“But it’s not summer.”
“Do we need an excuse for ice-cream?” I declared,
with as much surprise and bewilderment as I could
muster.
And so I took her to an ice-cream parlor across the
street from my flat. She knew instinctively that I was just
bouncing her closer to my place and she was happy to
play along. So after we had bought some ice-cream, I
walked her across the street and into my flat.

I decided to keep it simple and just play a movie and get

her on the sofa with me. I put on a Woody Allen film.
She was quite a smart and well-educated girl and I had
recently stumbled on a very nice date movie called
Magic By Moonlight, which is full of romance and period
costumes. What could be better?
 Well, she was delighted with the choice of movie and
there we lay, together on the sofa, whilst the story
unfolded. But the seduction was not quite that effortless.
It is never entirely plain-sailing and I have to confess that
I let the movie go on too long before trying anything. In
fact, we watched the whole thing without much
happening. Well, nearly. Towards the end, I decided I
had to take action and I didn’t get too complicated about
it. I simply rolled on top, kissing her, and then I took off
her top. She had a nice, frilly, silk bra on and I can even
recall the color, which was a light orangey-gold. She did
strike me as rather an aristocrat and certainly out of my
class. She spoke several languages and ran a business and
seemed very well-traveled indeed. Clearly part of the
European elite.
She had one of the loveliest bodies of any girl I have
slept with. Perhaps it was all that healthy, outdoors
Sicilian sun. She seemed to be such a fun-loving girl. Not
an “Ibiza beach-party girl,” just an adventurous free-
spirit.
There was the inevitable clumsiness as we struggled
to remove clothes whilst in a horizontal position. But
eventually we were both quite naked. I made love to her
on the sofa and it was blissful. At that time my living
room was also my bedroom as I had a friend staying for a
few months and after the sofa, we quite quickly moved
our spontaneous and excitable love-making onto the
double bed. With her long blonde hair flowing over her
naked body and her big fizzy smile, she was quite
alluring and I had no difficulty getting myself aroused a
second time. I can still recall her wrapped around me,
quite passionate, and for a fleeting and dizzy moment, it
did really feel as if our two bodies became one.
Afterward, as often seems to be the case, we had the
most beautiful conversation as she wandered about the
living room and explored the rest of the flat, carefree and
completely naked. We then engaged in an amateur photo-
session, as she let me take photos of her, which she threw
poses for. Needless to say, I have these pics hidden away
in a secret place on my mobile phone.
Eventually we settled into a conversation about her
life. And it was then that her carefree spirit suddenly
made sense to me. She had fallen in love and married
quite young, but her husband had died of an unexpected
brain cancer very early in their marriage. She was happy
talking about it—it had been a long time ago—but it put
me into a reflective mood. I felt compassion and
sympathy for her life story. But she herself did not
wallow in these sentiments. And what I realized is that
this was the cause of her carefree nature.
It had made her realize that life is short. We all say
this some time or other, but she had really experienced it
and had very practical knowledge about the truth of it.
She was not about to let the grass grow under her feet
and, by all accounts, she had led a very full and
adventurous life since her husband’s death.
I might just add that she did not seem at all “slutty”
(whatever that means). It is easy to think that girls who
will sleep with a guy on the first date are “easy,” but I
never got the impression that she was sexually
promiscuous. In fact, it felt rather an endearing quality,
insofar as she was not one to trade her beauty for some
sort of return, like a negotiation, as is often the case with
girls, but that she wanted to give of herself freely and
fully. Or perhaps I had just lucked out after her period of
lengthy Sicilian resistance and the walls had come down!
Whatever the reason, I hardly cared. It was one of the
most memorable nights of my romantic life. And I will
never forget her.
Topic: How Important is it to Escalate
Quickly?
It is an odd paradox, or perhaps law, about Daygame
(and the game in general) that the faster you escalate, the
better it seems to work out for the guy. Whereas the
longer you take, the more impossible it becomes to
sexualize the relationship. Indeed, if it is taking forever,
it is probably better to pull the ripcord and move on. But,
of course, we don’t, do we? I guess that it is simply the
case that you are presented with two choices when you
meet a girl. You can choose to project a masculine-
feminine polarity in which it is clear from the get-go the
sort of relationship you want from this girl. If you do
this, somehow it seems to flip a switch in her, some
primal biological switch that means a completely
different woman materializes in front of you than might
otherwise.53
I guess that being bold and brassy and grabbing and
taking what you want is somehow attractive to a girl,
albeit that it would be a huge misstep in political
correctness to announce to the world that this is what
women want from men. Huge! And yet, the strange truth
of it is that women have all sorts of fantasies about stuff
like this which means that they really do want a man to
take charge of them in a romantic context.54 They want
him to lead and they want him to physically assert
himself. That perhaps is the basis for a successful
relationship as well as for a good first date. And you
cannot help but think that when you see a woman who is
wearing the trousers it is an unpleasant dynamic. No one
likes to see a man in a relationship where his balls are in
a jar on the top shelf. Whether you’re a woman or a man.
(Just as no-one likes to see an abusive husband.)
So it would seem that there really is something very
primal going on in this area and it is in our nature and it
is best to go with it and own it rather than be ashamed or
shy about it. You want to fuck a woman? You’ve got to
be honest with yourself and go for it.
Now for me, it has not been and is not an easy lesson
to learn. Something always wants to hold me back. And
it reminds me of a section in a Mark Manson book called
Models in which he says that a problem arises when a
man is more invested in his own fear of rejection than he
is in his healthy, masculine desire to have sex with a
woman. That seems to be the uncertainty and fear and
hesitation that is infecting men these days and I guess
this is why it is so liberating for both the man and the
woman on the street, as they can for once own this part
of their respective sexual natures.
On Date 13 with Olga, I saw quite clearly how
important it is to be direct with a woman about what you
want, and although it felt odd or even “wrong,” it is clear
that the stuff that I learned about spiking—such as
touching and talking about risqué subjects and so on—
helped me to jump tracks from socially clumsy to
sexually honest and in tune with this masculine-feminine
polarity. With Barcolina, I simply went for it very early
on when it was clear to me the signals were there. No
hesitation whatsoever. It showed me a lesson that as guys
we take many experiences to learn, and in this case, the
lesson is that the quicker the escalation the easier it is for
the guy, and the easier it is for him to relax and enjoy the
girl’s company without any self-imposed pressure. And if
you “crash and burn it” and she does not reciprocate,
well, don’t worry. It is far less painful than if you wait
and dither for ages, date after date … the rejection at that
point is far more painful.
 As such, it seems important to show your masculinity
and sexual interest quite quickly. And even if you are
rebuffed, she may not be rebuffing you permanently (in
fact, she probably will not), and you are giving her the
gift of knowing you are attracted to her, which may lead
her to fly back to you one fine day. She’s not under any
pressure.
The problem with leaving escalation too late and
failing to sexualize the dating sequence early is that you
end up in a toxic spiral of doubts and difficulties. You
have lost the frame and the game becomes a sort of trade,
in which the girl is withholding sex. (Cf. Date 10.) What
is she withholding it for? Well, in her own mind she is
likely to start auditioning you for the role of “boyfriend.”
She is likely to be applying a “tick box” to your actions
and words. Even if you want to be her boyfriend, it
makes it very difficult for you (though not impossible, of
course) to meet the audition criteria. It is like you are at a
casting with a dozen other dudes, all auditioning for one
part, and the casting director wants to be sure to find the
right actor. She may not feel any of those auditioning
come up to standard and even hold a fresh set of
auditions! That doesn’t trouble her. She has enjoyed the
audition process for its own sake.
Another question that arises is, of course, the speed
of escalation. I think my view on this is that you should
not worry if you have not had sex with the girl by the end
of date 1! (Or date 2, or date 3 … ). There are all sorts of
variables at play here, from the fact she may be from
Eastern Europe and conservative about dating, or a
virgin, or for some other external reason you do not
know about, such as a recent bad experience. So I
disagree with the testosterone, competitor-driven model
of “banging the girl by date 3.” The more important thing
is that you have escalated, from date to date, if only
gradually, and that you have cemented the fact that this is
a romantic dynamic. Just don’t tread water. Providing it’s
at least moving forward—fine. Don’t be hard on
yourself.
In some ways, the question itself is based on a false
premise. For a guy who has not learned this stuff, it is
probably important that he has had a bunch of
experiences in which he has escalated quickly with every
girl, girlfriend material or not. Only then will he have
those important reference experiences which will make
him far more comfortable with the longer dating
sequence that might occur when he finally does meet the
woman of his dreams.
So, unless one of the exceptions applies—such as
some religious aspect, for example, or cultural element,
or some sort of difficult experience the girl has recently
had—it really is best to escalate, and escalate as quickly
as you dare. Go for it! Crush it or crash it!55

53
Does this mean that you always do this? What about in some type of
social or work setting where it might be inappropriate? I think even then the
answer lies in the story of Olga and her boss—it is better to be reasonably
clear about your romantic and sexual interest early on. It is, on balance,
better, especially for newbies, to be clear about your intent. Once a guy is
really experienced with women, he can take it easy. But remember the
mantra, “Use a thorn to remove a thorn”? Once you have used a method or
tool and made it work and it has become naturalized, then you can—and
probably should—throw the thorn away. Another example would be
scaffolding around a building. It is no longer needed once the building is
finished.
54
Read Nancy Friday’s Secret Garden.
55One final note on this topic is that if you have found a girl you really like,
but you have stumbled in the dating sequence, roll off for a few months. Go
out and get more dates and come back to it later, with a cheery ping. It may
be that you can “reset it.”
 15

Date 14: The Photographer

T his story is about a really lovely girl who became a

friend. And to be fair, I do not propose to tell you
too much of the story, because, as is often the case with
happy stories, there is not much drama, intrigue, or
conflict.56 We met at a cafe and the first date was at a
local bar. As usual, it was a bit awkward at first, but not
for long, and we were soon enjoying each other’s
company and comparing lists of the films that we liked—
or rather the films that she liked, as she had a very long
and eclectic list.
It was a Sunday afternoon and the date could not
have been more relaxed, although there was a suitable
amount of “frisson” in the air because we were, after all,
attracted to each other. She was blonde and beautiful,
early thirties, had a cool, quirky, artistic vibe, and was in
touch with her own femininity. Her looks had not, it
seemed, affected her, in terms of her personality. Some
girls who are very pretty can have it go to their heads, I
guess, whereas Antonina was just a simple girl with
simple loves for art, music, theater, and cinema. Mind
you, she was not quite so innocent as I later found out
she had a very long-term boyfriend.57
On the way to the second venue, I tried to bounce her
upstairs to my flat, which was very near the bar, but she
stood steadfastly in the courtyard and refused to come up.
So I pretended I needed to upload a file for a couple of
minutes and then came down.
It was at the second venue, a very fine and funky
restaurant, seated at the bar enjoying late-afternoon
drinks, that things opened up. After a drink or two, we
both relaxed and started to simply enjoy each other’s
company. I started to fool around, first complimenting
her on her earrings in order to move in and smell her
perfume, putting a hand on her leg as I did. By this point,
she was happy to lift her head to one side and let me take
a deep breath of her perfume, smell her hair, and brush
against her—ever so lightly—cheek to cheek.
Eventually, after a mellow couple of hours together, I
walked her home, teasing her for being a crazy girl for
having such a long list of eclectic, if not outright bizarre,
films on her to-watch list. We smiled at each other, and
then she was gone. Into the Metro.

***

The second date pretty much picked up where the first

one had ended, and we went for a walk and made out.
There were lots of kisses this time, whereas, during the
first date, kissing was entirely absent.58

***

But it was the third date that was the magical one. It was
a weekday afternoon, about 4 p.m., in the late spring. We
went for another walk, this time to a park where we sat
on a park bench and chatted away for a while. She had
some mistaken idea I was a player or something, and I
reassured her I was just going through an adventurous
period of my life and had just decided to enjoy the dating
process for its own sake. On the walk back, we both fell
silent. We walked through a copse of trees, and there was
a little mound of rocks that created a sort of hidden glade
—high enough that you could lean against.
So I took her hand and dragged her against the rocks,
and there I kissed her some more—this time it was pretty
passionate. We went back to my flat and in about 30 odd
minutes or so, we were completely naked and making
love.
That, in fact, was the first and last time.
I think it was the last for me, partly because I
subsequently learned that she had this long-term
boyfriend. For me, a one-off is a one-off. It’s not
complicated. Sex once or twice more and it becomes a
“thing.” Once you have a mini-relationship and it gets
steamy, it has turned into an affair of sorts. This just felt
wrong to me. I could tell that this guy had been with her
a very long time, and by all accounts, they had a good
partnership and he was a decent guy.
I also have to be honest and say that I was not so
incredibly, wildly, crazily passionate about her that I
wanted to carry on having sex with her, in spite of her
obvious charms. She probably felt the same way.
Now, this is the first and the last time this has
happened in recent memory and an exception since I
started Daygame. And what was strange was that
something of a friendship followed afterward—I don’t
think either of us, perhaps for different reasons, wanted
to jeopardize this by taking it any further. The friendship
was actually more important.
And indeed, I spent quite a bit more time with her,
but they were all just friendly outings. One time we went
for a bike ride together, and it was simply magical. It was
just lovely being with an attractive woman and enjoying
some feminine company, and I realized that, as a man, I
really needed this. What was interesting is that it was not
at all about the sex. I had (as had she, I think) made up
my mind that I would not have sex with her again. I had
my “Dates” project and other girls on the go and that
abundance helped with this decision.
What I started to realize is that I had been engaged so
much in my masculine activity of running a business and
being an intellectual, a lawyer, and getting really heavily
involved in this, as well as the “52 First Dates” project,
that I had not really enjoyed spending quality time with
attractive female company for its own sake. It was
nourishing.
It became obvious to me after my time with
Antonina, that lasted during the summer, that there are
very few men who can live without women, without that
feminine energy. Those that do? I don’t know—they are
either monks, saints, or they are gay and don’t know it.
After our summer outings together, during which
time we never once so much as kissed, her boyfriend
finally proposed to her and she happily accepted. She
told me about it as we went for another walk in a really
cute park, where we played a bit of badminton together
with a couple of toy rackets, whiling away the afternoon.
It felt as if the time we had spent together had helped
her to finally make that decision, and in a subtle way, it
had perhaps even communicated itself to him too. I was
absolutely and quite genuinely delighted to hear the
news.
Of course, he must never know about me. And in
fact, the bittersweet side of this is that I will probably
never meet him, and my friendship with Antonina will
also fade out.
 It was the exception that proved the rule—a woman
can be a friend, after all, though it is extremely rare. But
it was not the same quality as a male friendship. It had a
fabulous feminine energy, and because we had had sex,
there was no game playing and we could completely
relax and enjoy ourselves.
And, of course, in this instance, like so many good
things, it came to an end. It was a friendship that
flowered for a brief time only. But was the more glorious
for that.
Topic: Can You Ever Be Friends With a
Girl?
Well, this is, of course, the When Harry Met Sally
question.59 I would simply say, “No.” I used to think it
was possible, of course, when I was a young, romantic
idealist at university (and had no idea how to put the
moves on girls either). But I think as this story—or
perhaps even that film—illustrates, if there is a friendship
quality in the air, it will not last very long. The guy will
want to have sex and make it official, and the longer this
does not happen, the greater his pain and anxiety, which
he keeps concealed from her, of course.
He may very well play along with the illusion that
women and men can be friends, in order to buy himself
more time, deluded into thinking something magical will
eventually happen. On the other hand, if there is a sexual
element, he will either agree to get hitched or she will
eventually become exasperated with his lack of
commitment and move on. Her clock is ticking.
I stayed friends with this girl for a while and we
would occasionally meet for coffee, but it did slowly fade
because she had a man in her life and had decided to
make that relationship work.
When these very unusual male-female friendships do
blossom, it is a beautiful but very ephemeral thing that
only flowers for a short time. Perhaps only once or twice
a lifetime, during some quirky rite of passage.

56
… wait for Date 17!
57 I think this date showed me more than any other that women will stray if
the right opportunity comes up, and they do not seem to have a particularly
strong moral compass! I say this because, getting to know her better as I did,
after we had dated, I discovered she was quite a loyal, straightforward, and
honest girl. So if she was prepared to stray …
58 It’s worth noting here that when I started out, kissing or attempting to kiss
on the first date was pretty important, and I think that is right for a beginner.
But after a dozen or so successful dates, it now seems actually more natural
and effective not to try and even to wait for a second date when you are in
private together. Maybe a girl can read a beginner from a more experienced
guy. She likes the beginner’s bold and brave attempt, whereas she knows it
is no big deal for a player and can tell he is confident and in no hurry.
59
You can quite easily YouTube the relevant clip, which takes place in a car
between the two “friends” Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal. I’ve sent it to a girl
or two to prove my point that it’s not possible, usually when a girl is testing
me with the standard, “I just like you as a friend,” or, “This is not a date,
okay?”
 16

Date 15: Lana Del Ray Girl

N ow, this is one for the older dudes out there.

You might think that there is, at the very least,
a limit on age. In other words, while you might concede
that a 10 or 15-year age gap might be fine, what about if
the girl is in her early twenties and the guy is in his
forties? What about if he is in his fifties? At what point
does the age gap start to take you into “creepy territory?”
Have a think. Then ask yourself where that yardstick
comes from. What is it that makes you go, “Ewww!”?
Does he have to be senile with a walking stick and she a
teenager? “Ewww!” Or is it enough if he is old enough to
be her father? Is that the yardstick? And where did you
pick up this yardstick—this point of view? Is it
something you were told at school as part of your formal
education? Your parents? Or was it just that you once
heard your older sister or a classmate gossiping,
critically, about one of her friends dating a guy older than
her own father?
I guess my default position as the result of my
background is that if you add a maximum of 15 years to a
girl’s age, that is entirely acceptable. But on this date, I
was way over. A 50-year-old guy and a 23-year-old girl,
as I recall.
Actually, this girl, Erika, was a rather special date. I
felt that she was positively seeking out older dudes, and I
escalated quite a long way with her on the first date,
more than I previously ever have with other, older girls.
It therefore meant more of a vindication of something I
had previously only understood theoretically but had no
real experience of. There was something about her that
made me realize that some girls mature very rapidly and
could not be less interested in men their own age,
whereas many girls, perhaps most, would go, “Ewww!”
at the idea of a much older man.
It was difficult to believe that this girl was only 23,
because on one level, while she was so much younger
than me, she was so mature and such a real woman.60
When I met her in the street, she had on a lace top
that revealed just a little of her bosom, a nice wide skirt
that showed off her legs, and she was wearing low heels.
Her skirt was not above the knee—she was attractive and
pretty but also a little demure and certainly not over the
top. I was actively out approaching girls at that point and
was just walking back to my flat through the tunnels
under the Metro. She held my gaze as I looked at her
while walking past, and I just had to turn on my heels
and rush over to her. I instinctively knew that she would
be receptive.61

***

I met her for our first date at an outside bar on a Sunday

afternoon. The more dates I go on, the more I realize that
there is no point in making it complicated, so I chose a
bar that I often go to and where it is nice to sit out on a
summer’s day. She was in a lovely mauve dress that
accentuated her curves, as she was more Marilyn Monroe
than Lana Del Ray. But, in fact, Lana Del Ray was really
the touchstone for this girl, as became apparent once the
ice was broken and the conversation had properly gotten
underway.
She was comfortable in conversation and talked
effortlessly about her past; she revealed that her father
was over 20 years older than her mother and that she was
a complete accident. It had been a very passionate and
romantic liaison with a man her mother was not married
to and would never marry (even though she subsequently
spent the next couple of decades with him). She loved
and admired both her parents and told me how they were
unreformed hippies of the ‘60s and were currently
driving around Europe together on the back of a Harley
Davidson. I listened as she told me that she traveled a lot,
was currently regularly visiting the Canary Islands, ran a
YouTube channel, and was also an artist.
We both sipped at our glasses of wine as we chatted
merrily away. We both readily agreed to a second when
the waiter came over, a wry smile on his face (he was
beginning to recognize me by now), and asked us
whether we would like another. I then told her what I
liked about her, physically, and why it was I had stopped
her, and she said she loved the way I spoke English as it
was so correct and proper. I said that she spoke English
well enough, but her accent was quite amusing and
sounded a bit like a girl from the East End of London.
This then led onto a game in which I asked her
whether she knew of the play Pygmalion by Bernard
Shaw or the film My Fair Lady. Very quickly we were
into a role play in which she was Eliza Dolittle and I was
Dr. Higgins. I actually got her to sound some words and
emphasize difficult vowels like “rain” and “through” and
“thorough.” She eagerly complied and was happy to play
the student. I even told her to show me her profile and
her teeth, as if I were inspecting a horse for its pedigree. I
did it as a parody, of course, which made it acceptable,
but I have to admit that girls seem to like it when you
treat them as children or pets. Not a remark that will
appeal to the politically correct out there, but the fact is it
just works in helping to generate attraction and
emphasize the male-female polarity, which both sexes
seem to enjoy.
The interesting thing about this girl was that she
clearly knew how to look after herself, and as I
mentioned, she also ran her own YouTube business. And
yet, she knew how to be feminine and girlish when
required. This gave the lie to the chip that some women
have on their shoulders that women who behave in this
way are somehow giving up their power or showing
weakness. Quite the opposite—they are simply owning
their femininity to the full.
After about fifty minutes or so, I told her to drink up
and I took her to another bar. As we were walking along
in the summer sunshine and I was now holding her hand,
I decided to try my familiar ploy of inviting her up to my
flat as we walked past, under the pretext of needing to
“upload a file.” It had not worked at all on the previous
few occasions I had tried it. Usually the girl stood
defiantly out in the courtyard not moving an inch.
But on this occasion, she was happy to come up.
We sat on the sofa and I asked her about her artwork
and her YouTube channel. She started to talk even more
freely and showed me her website. Once you have done
the work and broken the ice, it does work quite well to
simply just encourage the girl by finding out about her
and asking her to talk about herself and just listen. I had
perhaps learned something from my experience with
Date 9 in which I had engaged in something of a
performance in massively teasing and challenging her but
had not really dialed the vibe down afterward.
 As she spoke, I gradually made my move, like a sly
fox, moving my hand onto her leg as we sat together and
actually putting it underneath her dress and letting my
hands linger and wander quite a long way up underneath.
She seemed not to mind. (Do you see the power of
listening?!) I then went towards her and she offered me
her cheek. I smelled her perfume, said she smelled nice
too, and played with her hair—but she would not kiss
me.
Nor did she pull away, and in fact, she started to
show me her favorite music. She made a point of
declaring that this was her most favorite song and that if I
wanted to know more about her, I need only watch the
music video.

It was “Ride” by Lana Del Ray.

Being a 50-year-old dude, I know hardly anything about

Lana Del Ray, and I watched with fascination as it all
started to make sense. There she was, this famous singer,
climbing onto the back of motorcycles outside gas
stations somewhere deep in the desert of Midwest
America and holding tightly onto older biker dudes,
clearly much older than she, her summer dress riding up
her lovely legs as they take off into the desert sunset.
Other scenes in the video include one in which she is
playing a pinball machine and an old, tattooed biker dude
comes come up behind her, and it literally looks as if he
is taking her from behind.
Marvelous. Fabulous. There were girls in the world
who owned their sexuality and doubtless got pilloried or
ridiculed in the press for it, and thank God for Lana Del
Ray that she had inspired a generation of girls to do the
same, thousands of miles away in Poland.
And now, after we had watched the music video on
YouTube, I moved in for the kiss and she reciprocated. It
was delicious.
We fooled around on the sofa, but actually not for
long. She suddenly became coquettish and got up with
her glass of wine, went over to the window, and turned
around, her bum up on the ledge and her legs crossed
provocatively in front of her.

I did not, however, take it any further and this date did
not make it into the bedroom. Once more, being still
inexperienced in this area, certainly relatively speaking to
those in the PUA community, I was probably resting on
my laurels, just as I had with Dates 3 and 10 where there
had been this great magic, but I had not taken it to the
next step.
Was it because the girl was saying, “No”? Perhaps.
But very few girls are entirely “Yes” girls and most are
“Maybe” girls and you need to seduce them. (Please see
note on “Yes” and “No.”)62
Rather, I think it was because I was enjoying it too
much and thinking that I need not rush it—there was
always a second date—and convincing myself that
actually escalating too quickly can sometimes be a bad
thing and that she “wasn’t that sort of girl.”
And indeed, I did in fact line up that second date
there and then, as she was leaving. I said I would take her
out that Wednesday afternoon, when she was free, to a
nearby lake and I would hire a moped. (I had recently
discovered a cool moped shop at the top of my street. Not
exactly Lana Del Ray territory, but the best I could
muster on short notice.) We would have a fabulous
afternoon together in the sunshine.
After the date, I talked enthusiastically about how
well it had gone and how we were going to go up to the
lake together, and it would be a great adventure and
undoubtedly right up her alley. All the signs were there
that we would go all the way.
But it never happened.

She texted, briefly, in response to the date confirmation,

but on the day, she flaked, saying that she was feeling ill.
I couldn’t get her out again. And then I believe she flew
back to the Canary Islands.
I was once more learning the lesson that you need to
read what is in front of you. In this instance, she accepted
an invitation back to my flat on the first date, and she
was a Lana Del Ray wild child who would not be pinned
down. She would certainly “spread the love,” and if the
moment was right, being an artistic and creative girl,
happily engage in an amorous summer afternoon’s sexual
adventure, but I should not expect her to be predictable
and come out on a second date.
Once more, I was kicking myself for having missed
out on a window of opportunity that had now firmly
closed shut.
Topic: Older Dudes and Younger Girls
I think that older guys who get into this stuff sometimes
think that they need to imitate the younger guys out
there. This might be reflected in their fashion or their
manner. They might wear jewelry or tattoos without it
really being consistent with who they now are, or they
may try to be too cocky and funny in conversation. But
what they fail to realize is that some girls are attracted to
those qualities that come with age, when older men do
not feel like they have to make conversation and be a
cocky, funny monkey. You will notice that a lot of
younger guys, often even experienced PUAs I have seen,
play it up as a bit of a performance. Their boyishness
does not work on that category of girls for whom age and
maturity are sexy and they get brushed off.
Now, this may not be an easy pill to swallow, firstly
because these types of girls are not the norm. Perhaps
33% of them, or 25%. (I am talking here about a 20-year-
plus age gap.) So an older dude may feel he has to make
himself younger, somehow.63 Mark Manson’s book
Models is good at illustrating this point. He talks about
polarization. It is important for guys to polarize
themselves and risk being rejected. This is especially true
of age. Older guys need to have that penny drop. Act the
cool, sophisticated, worldly-wise, mature dude who has a
little bit of an older James Bond about him. They should
dress smart, say little, and be socially calibrated. This
may show itself in little ways, like tipping waiters
properly or being polite to shop assistants. They need not
be in a hurry. They should be grounded.
The second reason why guys have so much difficulty
accepting this is that they project their own value system
onto girls. So we are interested in girls who are young,
pretty, and have nice figures. We assume that girls have
the same value system. They don’t.
I recently had a Russian girl send me on Viber a
whole bunch of photos that were taken on an amorous
trip to the mountains, two nights with her and I sharing
the same hotel room. I looked at them in shock. At how
ugly and overweight I was. But if I step back and look at
it rationally, the simple fact is that she was attracted to
me in spite of all of that. And I mean sexually attracted.
I also had a 21-year-old down to her underwear in my
bedroom recently, making out. If you had seen her, you
would agree that she was very pretty and had a lovely
figure.64

What was she doing with me?

Who cares? Get over it.

You, like me, may be fat, ugly, or both. Suck it up. It’s
difficult to understand, when I look at myself in the
mirror, that a girl would be in the market to buy what I
have for sale in the shop window. But she’s just not all
that mad about looks in the same way you are, as if it’s a
top priority that makes everything pale by comparison.
And you know what? Even a bit of weight does not seem
to matter. I can now talk from experience as seen in the
results of this project.65
A final thought is that some guys may recognize in
themselves this residue of traditional thinking I have seen
in myself, as has been described in the case of Dates 3
and 10, where I felt it was ungentlemanly to fuck a girl
so quickly. This sort of idea operates very
subconsciously. I also think that there is a romantic
idealist in guys who think it is somehow uncool to
engage in dirty, filthy sex. However, since that date, I
have interviewed the immortal Yad on a podcast and now
feel that a one-off sexual experience can be a beautiful
thing. His take on this stuff is not like some of the PUAs
I have met, who approach the game as a notch-counting
exercise.66

60
It is interesting to note that both guys and girls can easily spend a lifetime
getting to grips with their masculinity or femininity whereas some seem to
own it from an early age. The trouble with guys, particularly the intelligent
ones, is that they hate to admit to not being good with women. A guy may
say, “I’m rubbish at sports,” or, “I was never really academic,” or, “I pretty
much bailed out of school,” or, “I’m no good with children”—all of these
remarks are perfectly commonplace and often made in a public, social
setting. But have you ever heard a guy say, “I’m no good with women”? I
don’t think I can ever remember a guy telling me that, even if he was a close
friend in a confidential conversation. Let alone in a public, social setting.
Yet there are far more men who lack competence in this area of their lives
than in sports, academia, or parenting. A very toxic mix of shame and social
conditioning (that tells men they are not allowed to be skilled in this area)
keeps the problem bottled up.
61
More experienced guys in this area do not actually approach many girls
(unless they are super hot) without an Indicator of Interest (IOI). Only when
you get really experienced do you pick up on these very subtle signals that
girls give off, often subconsciously.
62 Girls like to put up token resistance towards a guy they are interested in.
It is, of course, part of the mating dance. This can take many forms, from
playfully pushing you away to not returning your calls, to telling you that
you are a bastard and she hates you! It can also be communicated verbally,
“No.” People who are out to get PUAs obviously leap on any opportunity to
portray them as manipulators, aggressive sexual predators, or, of course,
rapists. Hence, there is a lot of confusion around this area. The word “token”
helps distinguish a real “No!” from a playful “No!” Girls like to give token
resistance. If every single “No” ever communicated by a girl to every single
guy had been taken at face value, every single time, the world would
probably be depopulated by now.
63
This is the equivalent of girls who turn to cosmetic surgery. And how
much of a turnoff that can be.
64
I mention this partly to brag, of course! But also because I want any guy
reading this to realize the truth in this area and not to start planning his life
on a falsehood promulgated by the health and fitness industry. Personally, I
do want to lose weight as it can only help, if even a little bit, in this and
other areas of my life. But I no longer think it is a prerequisite to getting
women into your life, and focusing too much on it could take time and
energy away from more important pursuits—like getting out there and
actually meeting women.
65
60 Years of Challenge is very good on this subject in one of his first
ebooks http://escalationisattractive.wordpress.com. I am not sure it is
available in the same format anymore, but he now has a new website, and
you may be able to find it there: http://www.60yearsofchallenge.com. Also
watch that Tyler video I mentioned in Part 4: “How To Pick Up 18+ Girls
As An Old Man (With NO MONEY!) - 2 Old Men’s Game Revealed.”
66
I interviewed him for a podcast in my 52 First Dates series on YouTube.
 17

Date 16: The Ukrainian

Student

D ate 16 was a Ukrainian student who I met in Cafe

Nero one morning while I was working on my
laptop. What I’ve found is that when you just approach
girls as you are going about your day-to-day business
(spontaneously rather than leaving your front door with
the specific goal of approaching a bunch of girls and
trying to get some numbers), it can go one of two ways.
As often as not you are not very socially-calibrated and it
can come off awkward or it turns out a bit too social or
you don’t quite know where to take it.
 But on the other hand, some of my best approaches
have been like this, particularly in the street when you
are running after a girl and there is some natural energy
there, or you are even slightly breathless. It takes a lot of
effort to rip yourself away from whatever mental
cogitations are running about in the back of your mind—
but when you do, it can be incredibly exhilarating and a
real tonic. And the girl picks up on this.
Approaches in coffee shops tend to be a little more
social, or can be, but they are of course excellent places
to meet girls and there is a conventional, anecdotal
wisdom that says that girls would most like to be
approached by men in a coffee shop.67 It’s a good
environment. And they will probably be more accepting
of the approach, unlike in a street where there is always
the danger that they might think you are some kind of
crazy person or street performer.
This coffee shop approach went very well and we had
quite a long conversation. It turned out that she was a
Ukrainian student and so it was easy to tease her about
lazing about a coffee shop, pretending to do work, but
really just drinking lattes and playing on social media.
After the approach I was surprised that she did not
respond to my texting, so sure I was that it had gone well.
But then a few weeks passed and I bumped into her in the
same coffee shop.
In fact, initially, I had no idea who it was and just
saw this girl waving at me through the banisters as I
descended the stairs from the mezzanine area where I
liked to work. I waved back. She was pretty and
wherever I had met her it was worth going back upstairs
and pretending I knew her. Then I remembered her and
she explained that she had wanted to meet up with me
but had lost her phone and had got a new number.

***

The date went well enough, although she was slightly shy
and mousey and I felt that she was a lot younger than
even her 21 years suggested. There is not much to tell
about this particular date and she had to catch a bus later
that day to travel 24 hours to Kyiv and would not be back
in Warsaw until the end of the summer. So I will not
prolong the story unnecessarily. But there were two
things of note.
 First, I decided to take her hand the moment we set
eyes on each other as she was waiting outside the
Atlantic Cinema on Chmielna. I took it again as we
walked to the first venue. Not for long, but for long
enough to cement the dynamic of romantic rather than
social interest. This always feels like a bold step, but it is
surprising how often it works and simply makes you feel
comfortable that the polarity in the relationship is clear
and set—regardless of whether she ultimately rejects you
or not.68
Second, I had recently been following Black Dragon,
a US guru for older dudes, and one of the things he had
recommended was keeping dates short, which is
especially appropriate for older dudes who have full lives
and careers, often having to work long hours, and for
whom time is simply at a premium. This has a double
benefit because it helps you to relax when you know this
is just a short, introductory drink. It also heightens your
value, much the same as when you use a time-constraint
on the street, such as, “I’m just hurrying to a meeting, but
I had to just say you look nice … ” Furthermore, if you
have read The Mystery Method, you will have understood
the importance of comfort to a girl and creating the
illusion of them having known you longer. One simple
way of doing this is simply visiting two different venues
on one night.
Black Dragon’s advice was a variant of this, but
working with the same underlying principle that as often
as not a girl is unlikely to let you escalate far on a first
meeting, so why not just get the first meeting over and
done with as quickly as possible?69
So this was the start of a number of shortened dates
for me, and it was something I was interested in
experimenting with, as this was what the 52 First Dates
project was about. I was also trying to juggle a busy
work-life with all the dates and all the street approaches
and long dates to nowhere were best avoided.
Black Dragon also recommends not trying to kiss the
girl on the first date, although obviously making sure it is
sexualized, for the similar reason that it is going to be far
easier on a second date because the girl will by then have
decided that she knows you better.

67
So what I am saying here is that it was the indirect game rather than the
direct game. At least initially. And all “indirect” really means in this context
is that you do not immediately open with a clear indication as to your intent.
However, that does not mean that later on you become “direct” as it is
important of course for the girl to know where you are coming from. In
other words, you can start social, but at some point, be direct or give
indications of genuine attraction. As you become more experienced, these
indicators of intent should probably be more subtle, physical, and less
verbal.
68 As you get more experienced, the techniques change so that a more
experienced, effortless seducer would not feel the need to be specifically
overt, such as taking a girl’s hand. But at my intermediate stage, I definitely
felt it was extremely important to make it clear to myself and the girl that
this was a sexual connection and a possible romantic relationship. There is
nothing so painful in the world as being rejected by a girl and put into the
“friend zone” where you have just let the dynamic slide and allowed her to
prevaricate about where you are coming from. Mark Manson’s book Models
is helpful in this regard, in which he talks about the importance of
polarization and forcing a girl to decide how she feels about you. He talks in
terms of three categories: receptive, unreceptive, and neutral. It’s those
neutral ones that you need to “polarize” through your behavior and bring
them into the receptive zone. Otherwise, if you do not take action, they will
invariably drift into unreceptive, which is the deathly “friend zone” territory,
greatly to be feared!
69
In the instance of this girl, however, because she was leaving the country
the next morning, it might have been better to try and escalate more quickly.
But I don’t think it would have gone far as she was not that compliant. But it
makes the point that ultimately you need to be awake to what is in front of
you and respond to that rather than stick rigidly to your plan.
 18

Date 17: Anastasia, the

Russian Business Lady

I t was not long before I had the chance to put into

practice the knowledge that I had gleaned from Date
16, which in this instance meant keeping the date short,
sexualizing the interaction, but not trying to kiss her on
the first date.70
The initial meeting with Anastasia was one of those
interactions where the whole thing goes wrong.
I met her in the main park in Warsaw, under the
shadow of Stalin’s Palace of Culture. It was a cloudy,
windy day and there was spitting rain. As I walked across
the park I saw this ridiculously well-dressed girl in her
thirties, and I distinctly remember her white dress with
white roses pressed into it, but crenelated. She was
wearing heels—high ones, of course—and God knows
how she was handling the cobbles on the main pathway.
She was on her phone, but stationary, and looked a little
lost. I just knew there was no way she could be Polish
and I ran up to her, inspired by her crazy dress. “Have
you lost the address for the wedding?”
The laptop bag she was carrying gave the lie to the
question, but it was a good line anyway.
She stared at me.
“You look great,” I said.
She stared some more and smiled. She had no idea
what I was talking about. She had no idea what language
I was talking in. But my intent and the underlying
message was clear enough.
And then the rain started to come down. Quite
heavily. The two of us had taken out our mobile phones
and were both typing into Google Translate. But now we
scuttled to the big, squat Metro entrance to Sródmiescie
in order to take cover. Very little happened as she did not
speak a word of English and I didn’t speak a word of
Russian. We tapped away at our phones but Google
Translate did not work all that well and there was a lack
of connectivity and it took ages for the translations to
come through.
Ultimately the only thing we could manage was to
swap telephone numbers and that was pretty much it.
After the interaction I was left wondering what on earth
had just happened. It had been such a comedy of errors.
With the rain, the language barrier, and the clumsy
brevity of the interaction, I hardly expected her to
respond to a follow-up text. But of course, when it comes
to girls you just have to completely give up the idea of
any correlation with how well the interaction went and
whether she actually comes out. There is just an infinite
number of variables.
I think it was just a testament to the power of a street
approach, which this particular Russian girl must have
found ballsy, that the approach alone (providing you are
not apologetic about it) can actually do a lot of the work
for you.71

***
The date was also a comedy of errors at first. (Indeed,
this somewhat came to typify the date sequence with this
particular girl in general, as you will see if you read Parts
7-12.)
Even at the time of writing, I have not yet learned to
completely relax in advance of a date. And I am often
paranoid about being later than the girl. I needn’t be, as
so many girls are outrageously late for dates. This girl
was particularly late, 45 minutes late in fact, and there
was a lot of nonsense just actually trying to meet up. I
had been running a little late myself because I had been
with a photographer who had been shooting some photos
of me talking to girls in the street for the cover of my
book Too Late, Mate? which I was just releasing at the
time, and it had taken longer than expected.72

I hurried to the meeting spot, which we had agreed

should simply be the spot where we had exchanged
numbers outside the Metro entrance to Sródmiescie.
Anastasia was not there. I waited and then got this
garbled message from her, which I had to put through
Google Translate. It was not easy as she was on Viber
and the connectivity was not great. I had waited for
nearly 20 minutes and so she was now about 30 minutes
late. I decided enough was enough and messaged her that
I would be in Zloty Tarasy shopping center in Cafe Nero
and to come and find me there.
Anastasia finally turned up at Cafe Nero in a white
jacket, heels, a knee-length black skirt, and with a huge
big bag and at least two phones (perhaps more) in that
voluminous bag. She was no longer as hot as she surely
was when young but she was nevertheless voluptuous,
curvaceous, and with a beautiful bust. The thing that
struck me about her was that she really did make an
effort when it came to looking good. This impressed me
and added to her attractiveness. She understood a simple
truth that a lot of Eastern European girls get, that if you
want a man you need to present yourself in the best
possible way.
Needless to say, initially, it was hard work on the
date. It always is at first and if it isn’t then that’s
probably a sign that there is a problem! She wasn’t happy
with my choice of table and wanted to move and her
messaging on Google Translate was pretty blunt. It was
my first introduction into the way that Russians can be
very direct, and also that they tend not to get any subtlety
or wit, especially not over text. But they are straight,
which is refreshing.
Here is a sample of the initial texting on Google
Translate, after we had got past the initial niceties:

The Date
Her: What do you want?
Me: To spend time with you. I enjoy the company of
attractive Russian women. (I squeezed her hand as I said
it.)
Her: What are you doing in Warsaw?
Me: I am here hitting on Russian women. (She
laughed. I stared into her eyes and moved a little closer.)
Her: I am a simple Russian woman. Here in Warsaw
on business.
Me: I am simple British man. I like beer, football on
television – and (I shrugged) Sex.

She was disarmed by my blunt response to her blunt

questions and could not help rolling her eyes, then
laughing.
After a while, I moved around to her side of the table
in order to communicate better on Google Translate, to
show her the translation on my phone. (Ah! I said to
myself, Google Translate clearly has its advantages!) I
put my hand on the small of her back and her leg and I
took her hand at one point and gave it a squeeze. What is
good about Google Translate is that it makes you think
more about physical escalation because the verbal is such
hard work. And this helped polarize the meeting. It was
becoming very clear what I wanted from her.
She told me she was a very busy woman and, almost
as if to prove the point, she broke off at one point to deal
with some messages that she received during the date. I
was starting to hope that this was the sort of girl who was
a professional, mature business lady who would diarize
afternoon sex and be Route One about it.
At this point I wasn’t quite sure what to do next and I
decided not to do anything. She seemed to have enough
questions and enough energy for both of us. And so I just
counted in my head, up to five. Which is good discipline
as it stops you just blurting stuff out nervously whilst on
a date. I stared at her and smiled and then she took up her
phone again and tapped something into it and showed
me. She said, “I like swimming.” I guessed that we must
have touched on hobbies or something like this at an
earlier point in the interaction.
I looked at her and I said, “I like swimming too.
Especially naked.” Her eyes rolled into the back of her
head once more and she laughed, in exasperation. But
making it sexual, although it might not be the most artful
seductive maneuver, at least made me relaxed and
therefore relaxed her too.
I took her hand again and told her that the date had
been great fun. I told her I had a meditation class but
said, “But I’ve really enjoyed hanging out with you and I
think you are a fun, fizzy, and attractive woman.”
And so we both left together. As I walked off, I
thought to myself that I should use the short date
technique more. It kept things fresh and fun and there is
just a lot to be said for pulling back and dialing it right
down once it is going well and ending it early. It is, I
guess, a form of “push-pull,” in which you express a lot
of interest but then pull away.
She was responsive after the date and I thought that
this one would go places. But little did I know to what
unexpected places it would take me and how difficult it
would be to move things forward, and that not only
injury to my ego might be caused along the way, but I
would suffer actual physical injury to boot. But that is
another story… involving a mountain adventure away-
break and a slippery marble floor while fooling about
naked in a shower!
Topic: The Language Barrier
The major discovery on this date was that speaking
completely different languages was not an obstacle but a
positive advantage. I was speaking recently with a young
legal assistant at work about this and told her that we did
not speak the same language and she was astonished.
“Oh my God! How can you possibly have a
relationship without conversation? That’s so important to
be able to talk about stuff. I don’t believe it and I can’t
see how it’s possible.”
But of course you should ignore girls and their
opinions on dating. They think one thing and say one
thing but their biology drives them, not their intellect.
Their social conditioning means that they are very
unreliable about what actually works on girls, as opposed
to what they think ought to work.
I have recently met a fellow writer who publishes
paranormal romance. Every girl he talks to denies
reading romance novels of the salacious kind and yet it is
astonishing how many of these books are bought. (Most
of the sales are on Kindle because you can hide a book
on Kindle more easily than a paperback book.) And the
interesting thing is that he makes far more on Kindle
Unlimited, where Amazon pays him by pages read, than
on the normal sales of the whole book. This is evidence
of the voracity of the readership because Kindle
Unlimited is really targeted at voracious readers. Who is
reading them? And when?!
Girls are definitely at least as guilty as men of double
standards and what they say they do is certainly not the
same as what they really would do or really feel or really
want to do. These books don’t dive straight into the sex
scenes, but when they do get to the sex parts, they
certainly make up for the delay and are as steamy and
salacious as anything a man would dream up.

In any event, on the date itself, lacking a common

language was not an obstacle. This was partly because of
Google Translate, but perhaps not in the way you would
think. Having to go through the laborious process of
typing things up, or talking to the phone which
understands you half the time and then just turns your
comment into gobbledygook the next, actually helped to
slow me down.
 Slowing down is really important. The situation
meant that I had to hold silences for periods of time and
be relaxed with that. So it began to curb the tendency to
want to just keep a conversation going, which can of
course kill the romantic connection and turn the whole
meeting into a friendly, social get-together. This is
probably not the reason that you wanted to meet up with
the girl.
And the other reason it was helpful was that it meant
I had to look for other, physical ways of creating a sexual
connection rather than the usual conversational spikes.
And so I quite quickly moved around to her side of the
table and took her hand and looked into her eyes. I put
my arm around her too. I just went over-the-top
physically to create a connection. She was okay with it
(and she talked too much anyway).
Ultimately I was able to spike conversationally and
using Google Translate was actually quite cool, a good
tool for flirtation, because I would write something a bit
“racy” and smile as I was typing it in and then there
would be this suspense as I waited for Google to translate
it and she was wondering why I was smiling in such a
cheeky way.
 It does of course require work. I have tried it a few
times on the street since in Russia, where there is a lot
less English and it was pretty essential. But while I was
initially nervous that breaking off a compliment to get
out my phone and start using Google Translate would
create some sort of terrible hiatus, it worked fine, and the
girl was happy to wait as I typed in a question. Even
though it slowed the whole interaction down, it did not
matter. (Pauses are really important and it’s worth just
practicing those alone on a date, even at the risk of
coming across as creepy.) I discovered, as I did with
Anastasia, that it could even become a playful toy that
added to the interaction rather than detracted from it. And
this is a girl who I saw many more times and whilst we
have not yet had sex, we have showered naked together,
for example, and so it has gone a very long way. (That’s
a whole other story that I cover later.)
So long live Google Translate!

On the broader language front, my experience (which I

admit is anecdotal) also bears this out. I have had, as you
will learn if you read on, dates with four Russian girls
that have gone a long way or all the way—three of them
from the same city—and whose level of English is pretty
low if non-existent. What’s interesting is that the one
who was the most awkward and difficult to date was the
one who actually spoke the best English. (She is an
English teacher.)
My conclusion from having approached many foreign
girls and dated many foreign girls in Eastern Europe is
that, as far as women and dating are concerned, there are
far more serious obstacles than not speaking the same
language. And I mean not just obstacles to a seduction,
but to a relationship. Yes, I totally mean that. If someone
says to you, “How can you possibly date a girl when you
don’t even speak the same language?” as if it is an
insurmountable obstacle, they are talking ill-informed
rubbish.
As I write, the two strongest connections I have are
both Russian with a low level of English. It is by their
actions that we assess the caliber of the people in our
lives and our interest in spending time with them on a
longer-term basis, not by what they say. A lack of
common language actually reveals people’s natures in
this respect more starkly. What surprises me is that, since
psychological factors are far more important for women,
the language barrier has not been more of a problem for
them.

70
It occurs to me that there may be a criticism of what I do in terms of
going on a number of dates in order to practice dating skills. Is this ethical?
Should a guy be going on lots of dates just so he can get better at dating? It
feels like a theoretical problem in my case, as I am serious about the
possibility of a partnership, but it is a relevant question nevertheless and an
objection I had when I first started with the street approach.
One response to this idea of using girls and dates as “target practice” is that
a girl herself—at least on an intellectual level—would be appalled if you
told her that you had just approached a half dozen girls before her, or that
she was the third date this week. (I say on an intellectual level, because, on a
deeper level, if she knew that a bunch of other women were dating you, that
would tend to raise your social value and be proof that you were a guy worth
dating.) This is probably a reflection of the fact that as a species, we are very
much more wired towards monogamy—in the hierarchy of nature, that is.
We tend to focus on rearing only a small number of children and dedicating
ourselves towards the job full time, at least until they are old enough to fend
for themselves. As a species, human males do not go around impregnating
as many females as humanly possible, as a general rule. If this was all that
there was to it, a guy would be better off donating to a sperm bank!
What’s of more interest here is the objectification of girls as mere “targets”
or “training wheels.” This is the same objection when it comes to
approaching girls on the street. You should not just be spam-approaching
girls in any situation. That is the objection. It’s a tricky one because it is
difficult for a guy to become good at anything without practice. The female
world expects guys to just be good at this stuff, but I think that guys have
become so bad at it—the natural has become so unnatural, and social
conditions are so unpropitious—that they have to go through a process to
unplug or rewire. It is important, above all, for guys to learn how to be
comfortable around women that they are attracted to. To be comfortable
being a man. There are a great many men who are not. Perhaps it is the case
that desperate times call for desperate measures.
71
But don’t be seduced by those critics who say that it is all “just a numbers
game.” I recently began approaching girls at the time of writing, after a
longish break, and I got three telephone numbers from four approaches that I
did during the day while I was going about my ordinary business. More
importantly, they are all strong numbers and are all texting well at the time
of writing. I have a buddy who had a similar experience. After you have
done enough of this stuff and learned the basic principles, you develop a
confidence that leads to success and gives the lie to the above quote.
72He was, in fact, a paparazzi photographer whom I had befriended while in
Costa Coffee, as we both used to work there over a cup of coffee. He was
excellent and got some really good photos.
 19

Date 18: The 2nd Tinder Date

T his was my second Tinder date and to be fair the

experience up until that point was mixed. Because
of the pressures on my time, I had been “outsourcing”
my Tinder messaging. A mate had been handling the
texting and then handing the messaging over to me when
the girl confirmed a date. Outsourcing in this way
seemed perfectly appropriate for a tool for meeting girls
which is so arbitrary and impersonal. The amount of
times I must have been “swiped left” hardly bears
thinking about. Furthermore, warm leads had proved
very fickle, with some message chains just completely
dying, and at last two flaked dates, one in which I turned
up at the bar only to have her flake fifteen minutes into
the start of the date. Her excuse? She was busy at work!

***

Unfortunately my initial impressions of this second date

confirmed my prejudices, at least in this particular way,
which was that the girls who were interested in meeting
were a lot older and less physically attractive than the
ones I met in the street. My heart sank a little when I saw
her approach as I waited outside my usual bar. I guess I
had been spoiled by Daygame, in which you are nearly
always looking forward with excitement to the date
because you selected her when you approached her in the
street. With Tinder, of course, the reality is that the girl
selects you, even though you may think you are doing the
selecting.
For the second time, I found myself on a date with a
girl who was not ugly—but was almost my own age and
was nowhere near as attractive as some of my Daygame
approaches.73
So once more I found myself making an effort for a
girl whom I was not particularly attracted to. I pitied in
that moment guys who have to go through the whole
online process to meet girls and who think that there is
really no other way so they had better just get on with it.
Things looked like they were going to get off to a bad
start when she started to talk politics. With alarm I tried
to steer the conversation away as she started to touch on
Donald Trump. I have manfully managed to avoid
reading any newspapers or watching any television news
for about two years now, a virtual black-out, and I do not
miss it a bit. When I do hear about the latest news, it’s
like someone is telling me a story about something that
happened long ago, some anecdote of history, which it
usually is by the time I have got up to speed. It is much
the best way to follow the news—as history. That takes
all the heat and political correctness out of it. But,
anyway, it really is a godsend on a date because it just
means you have absolutely nothing to say about politics!
Since it is a sort of “date death” to talk on this topic,
along with religion and your own job, this is no bad
thing.
Luckily I managed to change the subject easily
enough. I wondered how I was going to add some value
and make the most of this date. And I said to myself, You
know what? I am not hugely physically attracted to this
girl. Why not just enjoy a good conversation and talk
about what you want to talk about, rather than play it
like a game?74
Now there were two topics that interested me. One
was the whole Tinder business and how and whether it
really worked and two, what girls thought, if at all, about
guys and the fact that we are the ones who have to do all
the approaching. I thought I would broach the subject of
Daygame as well, to see what she thought about this.
The first thing I told her was, “You know, you
actually look a lot more attractive than you do in your
photo, what’s that all about?”
She explained that she had been married and her
views had changed and now she deliberately took photos
so as not to look too attractive, for fear that she would
attract the wrong sort of men. (Sadly, little did she know
that most men were “the wrong” sort, at least in this
regard.)
I said, “Yes, but most men are attracted by the
physical appearance first—it’s just the way we are wired.
Women are attracted to different things and a wider
range of factors. But I do not think women should
dismiss a man or play down their own looks. I can’t
imagine that a good man is going to be put off by you
looking attractive and you might just put one or two of
them off if you don’t make the most of your virtues.”
“I guess,” she said, reluctantly admitting to the logic
of this.
It occurred to me that she reminded me of my
mother. A good-looking woman, no longer young, who
had become disillusioned by guys just being attracted to
her looks in the past and who had entered into an ill-
advised marriage that had ended up on the rocks. The
chain of logic that led to a conclusion not to dress
attractively was understandable but flawed, it seemed to
me. And yet we do react to events in life in odd ways.
Sure, a woman wants a guy to like her as she is, for who
she is, but she has to accept that physical attractiveness—
and just looking good and presenting yourself well—is a
key thing for a dude. It’s just biology. Nature. Why fight
it? Instead become smart at weeding out the right guys.
This led me onto the subject of Daygame.
“Listen, I don’t generally use Tinder,” I said.
“Actually I’ve been on a bit of an adventure these past
two years, hitting on girls and going on dates. And the
way I’ve been doing it is learning skills on how to strike
up conversations with girls in my daily life, in the street,
coffee shops, at a bus stop—wherever.”
She listened and seemed genuinely interested.
“And I have to say that it has been quite a surprise to
me, how flakey people are and how ineffective online
dating really is, in spite of the fact we assume that
technology has made our lives all the more efficient. I’m
not really sure it’s even more economical.”
“So you approach women, just anywhere?”
“Yes,” I said. “And it’s a lot better than Tinder or
online. I see a girl I like and I approach her to see
whether I am going to be interested in her. It’s just a skill
set that in fact, any guy can learn. It’s more economical
than online, in fact, although it can be pretty difficult
taking rejection.”
“What do you mean?” she asked, puzzled.
“Rejection. You know. By a girl.”
She actually didn’t seem to quite compute. It
occurred to me that a girl could go a whole lifetime and
not realize that for a guy to approach a girl and tell her he
liked her was a big deal.
“Girls don’t realize,” I continued, “what a big deal it
is for a guy to go up to a girl … ”
 “Is it?”
It was amazing to me that she might not know. How
was it even possible a girl could be blind to this for so
long? It’s crazy, I thought to myself, how we live in
different universes, rarely communicating with each
other about what is really going on and learning about
the underlying dynamics. We spend so much of our lives
in simple—blissful—ignorance. Certainly in the area of
the battle of the sexes.
“Yes, it is! Compare it to physical danger, for
example. A guy would probably far rather become a
soldier and join the army, get posted to some foreign
country, and march around the desert getting shot at
rather than risk his ego being wounded by going up to a
girl who then rejects him. This basically telegraphs to
him and anyone nearby that she does not consider him up
to scratch, such that she would have any interest in
furthering his genetic line. That’s a pretty harsh judgment
for a guy to have to stomach! He’d rather catch a bullet.
He kind of knows where he stands with the bullet!”
“Really? So it’s a big deal for a guy, like he’s laying
his soul totally bare?”
 “Yup. It’s a death to the ego, which can be far more
painful and difficult to live with.”
She was curious and fascinated. It made sense and I
spoke with conviction, and yet it was outside her realm
of experience.
“Here’s another thing. Guys and girls have totally
different objectives or criteria for success when they go
out conventionally to pubs and clubs. This makes the
rejection even harder to bear.”
“What’s that?”
“Well, you know how you might go out for the night
with your girlfriends, yes? And you will spend a whole
evening together and enjoying being hit on by men and
love the attention, right?”
She smiled. She did not need to say anything. She
knew it was true.
“And you go home at the end of such a night, having
not so much as kissed a guy, but just had some guys
orbiting your group perhaps and entertaining you … ”
I broke off. I wanted to know that what I had been
told by the pick-up industry was true.
“I mean, is this right? Do you recognize this at all?!”
“Yes.” She laughed.
 “You’re like flowers who need the sun, right? So that
is a good night for you. You and your friends would
consider it a good night if a few dudes had showered you
with attention and chatted you up, maybe got a kiss here
or there, but otherwise you had just hung out together
and it was clear to you that they found you attractive.
That would be a good night.”
“Pretty much.”
“Well, to a guy that would be a disaster. A full-blown
catastrophe! He has been out all night, nervous,
expending large amounts of energy just trying to get over
his nerves. Keeping a conversation going when it looked
about to die, dealing with a girl’s quixotic nature, her
challenges and shit-tests, at times flattering his ego and at
other times like a cat playing with a mouse.”
“You saying women are cruel?”
“Worse, they’re like tigers … they’d maul him to
ribbons if their mood changed.”
“Carry on,” she said.
“So the guy spends a whole night with these girls,
hoping to get it together with the one he fancies, and then
at the last minute, after all that effort—and let’s say
they’ve now gone to a second or a third venue together or
they’re at a club—the girl just decides to go or her friend
turns up and yanks her away. The guy looks at her
dumbfounded and she just smiles innocently and says,
‘Bye!’ And the guy is stood there, thinking, ‘How come?
She spent a whole night in my company and is now just
doing a vanishing act? I don’t believe it!’”
“Wow,” she said.
I paused. “Another drink?”
The waiter had appeared and asked us whether we
both wanted another glass of wine.
“So that is a night of disaster. The guy goes home
miserable and hating himself.”
I changed my mind suddenly, intuitively sensing that
the mood was right and it was good to cut things short.
“Hey, listen, let’s go to a little Italian I know for coffee.
Can we have the bill, please?”
The waiter produced the bill and we paid—she paid
half—and we got up and left.

I resumed as we walked the short distance to the second

venue. “But that’s not the worst situation a man can
face.”
“No?”
 “Then there’s the ‘friend zone.’”
“What’s that?”
“Well, men and women can’t be friends, right?” I
was just exploring, to see whether she would agree. She
said nothing. She was unsure. If she had been a
youngster in her early twenties she would have piped up,
“Of course they can! I’ve got lots of men-friends! Why
not?!” But she had seen a lot of life and was in her late
thirties or early forties and was reflecting on the question.
We walked the rest of the distance to the Italian in
silence. We took a table outside. It was a balmy evening.
“Watch this,” I said.
I got out my phone and found the YouTube video of
that famous scene in, “When Harry Met Sally,” with the
two of them driving to New York together. I was very
relaxed at this point and just enjoying her company.
“Take these,” I said, and got out my headphones and
gave them to her, making sure she was all properly set up
and connected to the bar Wi-Fi. I let her take her time
and just watch.
She laughed. I do not think she had seen the film,
although she recognized the name. It was true. What the
guy was saying was true. She knew it. That is why she
laughed. (That is why we laugh about anything where
good comedy is concerned, because it hits on a truth,
often an unexpected or surprising one.)
“I don’t know,” she said, taking out the headphones,
“perhaps what you say is right.”
“By the way, do you accept that girls are attention
junkies and that their definition of success on a night out
is completely different from men?”
“Yes. I think I can probably go with that.” She
smiled.
“But you still think that men and women can be
friends?”
Now I decided to just wait and see if she would
answer. She did not. I was now looking straight at her
and I had leaned in. I took her hands and told her she had
artistic fingers. She let me. She was compliant. I was not
that attracted to her, as I’ve said, but I tried to see what
would arise if I acted as if I was, just as I had on the first
Tinder date.
I suddenly realized that we were on a date and I
found myself acting as if I was sexually attracted, even if
I wasn’t, much as I had on the first Tinder date. I had
generated attraction in her without realizing it.75
 And I found some sexual attraction arise in me. Now
my flat was almost across the road at this point. We had
actually changed venues during the conversation and you
could see my flat window from where we were. I
considered bouncing her back to my place. I could.
Certainly.
Why not just suggest a quick cup of coffee? I said to
myself. “Let’s take this intriguing debate up to my flat.
But you can only stay for a quick coffee as I have an
early start tomorrow,” would be my line.
But I did not. I could not. It might have looked
impressive and I could have bragged about it afterward to
my mates but the idea of waking up the next morning,
having had sex with a girl I was not all that interested in,
made me feel lousy. I would just be doing it for the notch
count.
But then I thought to myself, Am I being self-
righteous, arrogant, or prudish? Who am I to deny her
sex? Perhaps she hasn’t had it for ages. Why should I
decide for her that she is just looking for a partner, a
relationship? Just because she is older? She might just as
likely be looking for a one-night stand.
 But at the end of the day, I just could not do it. Not
for a “reference experience” and not for a notch and I
was just not massively sexually attracted to her anyway. I
had also slept with another girl earlier the same week, so
perhaps that too played a part.
I let the moment slip and leaned back in my chair and
the conversation turned to a classic film of the eighties,
Tootsie, in which Dustin Hoffman, playing a desperate
and out-of-work actor, pretends to be a woman in order
to get a part on a daytime TV soap opera. It was an
interesting film reference in light of our conversation, as
he learns more about women in that short time than he
has in the rest of his life up until that point. It’s a great
film because it makes you realize how little we know
about the other sex’s point of view and we can go a
whole lifetime without any real idea where the other sex
is coming from.
I called for the bill and called it a night. She was
interested in the film references and asked me to text
them to her.

The next day she messaged to say how much she had
enjoyed the evening and I sent her the film references.
But I left it at that and took it no further.
Topic: The Elephant in the Room
I discovered something largely by accident on this date,
which is that you can call out the situation, the game, and
it can actually work to generate attraction.
Up until this point, on dates I had been largely silent
on the topic of my Daygaming and had certainly
mentioned it only obliquely, if at all. I had not told any of
the girls, except my friend Antonia, that I was going on
loads of dates. But here, because I was not so sexually
attracted to the girl, I felt free to experiment and do what
I wanted and talk about what I wanted.
It reminds me a little of a film, Roger Dodger I think
it’s called, in which the player in the movie, in the
opening scenes, talks to girls about how biology—and
their biology—works. He projects a certain cocky
confidence and generates attraction through the very
debate about attraction and his knowledge on the area (in
this scene he expounds his evolutionary theories relating
to female genitalia.) The girls around the table in the
posh restaurant are simultaneously shocked and
attracted.76
 Anyway, on this date I just talked about all of it,
telling her all about Daygame—the fact that I had learned
skills to help me approach girls in the street—as well as
being a little cocky myself in telling her how things are.
Lecturing her on men, women, and dating. I guess that,
as had happened before—for example with Date 2, the
married lady—intelligence can be a quality that presses a
girl’s attraction triggers and physically turns her on, as
difficult as it is for a guy to believe. Personally I often
assume that the girl will think I am some nutty professor
or blinkered intellectual, or a geek at best, but the truth is
that I need to learn to own this because the evidence
shows there are a lot of girls for whom it really works.77

I should perhaps add that calling out the elephant in the

room is more accurately calling out the fact that you are
on a date. I did not do this, in this instance, rather I called
out the fact that I was a seducer or a player. Or at least
actively practicing pick-up skills, of a sort. I did not go
into details with her but simply talked about the fact that
I did it and that it was a skill. To have gone into the
details, of course, would have just marked me out as a
kind of loser who had to buy a book and watch videos in
order to be able to hit on girls. It’s a bit of an irony
because guys do need to learn this stuff. And yet girls
expect you to just be natural at it and really do not want
to know about the process and the fact you had to learn
this stuff. They just want the finished article.
“Life’s not fair!” I hear you cry. You would have
thought they would have a little bit of sympathy,
wouldn’t you? I mean, after all, they know what it’s like
to have to paddle real hard, keeping up a beautiful
appearance in their lives 24/7. Pumping zillions of their
hard-earned dollars into the beauty business. But no.
They just want George Clooney to rock up. They
certainly do not want to know that you had to make
hundreds of goofy mistakes on hundreds of awkward
dates in order to make it look effortless.
To attempt to answer the question here, I guess that
the general rule is not to talk about how you are a
Daygamer, or into “the game,” but that it is good to
allude to the fact that you are dating, and so talking on
this subject is far, far better than talking about politics,
religion, or your career.
And perhaps what is best is to actually talk about and
reveal your knowledge of how it works as this is a
fascinating topic and implies to the girl that you are
sexually experienced, without talking about your
exploits. Talking about your exploits is of course
unattractive because it is bragging.

73
Sometimes it’s hard for me to accept that I am just your average male
who is driven by his dick and the level of physical attractiveness of what is
in front of him. It’s hardly surprising that women worship at the altar of
beauty. The fashion industry is so huge because men prioritize the visual
appearance of women so highly. I am currently dating a Russian who has a
young daughter and she sent me a photo of the girl and a message. The poor
girl, age 10, was all made up and trussed up in proper glad rags, her mother
having insisted she look beautiful for some important function or other. Her
comment to me on Viber, loosely translated, was: “She was not happy. I had
twisted her hair, dyed her hair and she was hurt. And I say that beauty must
be tolerated.”
74
I think that in the final analysis being who you are and talking about what
you want is a good thing, but please do not take this as an invitation to do so
unless you are already experienced and good with women. The accepted
wisdom as far as society is concerned is that this is what you should do on a
date. Talking about topics that you enjoy and interest you are all part of the
“being yourself” mantra. But it is fatally-flawed wisdom, especially for a
beginner, and nine times out of ten will end up putting such a guy into the
“friend zone.”
Of course, one time out of ten it will work, and the detractors of the game
love to use anecdotes to help themselves avoid the difficult business of
looking within and acknowledging that they have to improve. This
accidental success usually happens as the result of drink, or the girl is in a
certain mood and really up for something at that point in her life. But rather
than applauding such accidental success, a guy should be really concerned.
Just as a golfer would be concerned if, down the driving range, he only
manages to hit one out of ten balls properly. This stuff is a rite of passage
that, at some point in life, a man must go through. He should only improvise
and relax once he has gained a reasonable level of mastery.
75
It made me realize that she might just have been agreeing with me
because she liked me. Truth and facts are a movable feast as far as a girl is
concerned—they are not interested in establishing, beyond a reasonable
doubt (like guys are), the factual position. It depends totally on the
circumstances. She would make the argument either for or against the
proposition that men and women can’t be friends depending on how it made
her feel and how she felt towards me. If she had been vigorously disagreeing
with me, it would have meant that she was testing my frame, not that she
was actually genuinely disagreeing with me and interested in the outcome of
the debate. Upon reflection, I realize that the person I was most convincing
was probably myself!
76
It’s an unusual movie and worth a look because it is a true Indie movie
that does not ape the populist “Hollywood” model of comedies and romantic
comedies that so often start well and then melt into sentimental slush. I put
Hollywood into quotation marks because many Hollywood movies do now
break the mold, but the ones that are designed to reach a wide audience, the
populist ones, do still have to conform. Take Hitch, for example, which has
some really interesting and comedic moments, but is a perfect example of
some of the most repulsive, sentimental slush you are ever likely to see and
is probably of far greater danger to male civilization than porn ever was!
77
Again, I am reminded of Mark Manson’s Models and his comments on
polarization. By being bold and engaging in this discussion, I was polarizing
myself and forcing the girl to make a decision. It might be a negative, which
is something that happened six months later (during my Russian adventures,
as you will see if you read on) when I called out the elephant in the room
once more and this time it did not work. But at least you can then move on
to the next girl without wasting time and energy. Conserving your energy,
especially as an older dude, is really crucial in this area. Fortunately, in the
case of this girl, it was a positive. I would not recommend it to a beginner,
but used judiciously, I guess it can work.
 20

Date 19: The French Secretary

T his date started like so many others, with me

approaching her in a shopping center and taking her
number in the usual way. It was, however, unusual
thereafter. Firstly, I discarded the number as I received
no reply to the first two texts.78
It was then a few weeks later that I heard from her. It
turned out that she had been in France, where she had a
job as an au pair-cum-secretary.

***

We had a date at one of my favorite locations, a bar with

an outside area of wooden tables and funky décor
surrounding a tree—quite a feature for the middle of the
city. At first she appeared to be a conventional girl. She
was of university age, probably in her early twenties, and
had only recently graduated. She was attractive enough,
and she was in quite casual dress, but nothing particularly
distinctive and so you would have easily mistaken her for
a regular student.
But during the date, I started to recognize a very
distinctive air of worldliness about her. She was rather
more mature, or certainly experienced, than her early
years suggested and I could not help but draw contrasts
with the Ukrainian student I had dated not so long before.
They were both a similar age and both at university or
recently graduated, but whilst one was something of a
mousy academic, the other was rather a mature woman
who had come fully into her sexuality. French Secretary
had a very knowing look in her eye.
I rolled out my usual techniques from the dating
toolbox, deploying the “strawberry fields” game.79 I also
played the classic favorite the “truth game.” But actually
neither worked particularly well. Perhaps they were
feeling a bit formulaic from overuse. Or perhaps she was
a little too sophisticated to run with them. I don’t know.
So I just changed tack and asked her what sort of men
she liked and it was then, quite suddenly, that the
conversation opened up.80

It transpired that the type of men she liked was the hook
that generated a decent conversation and in this instance
the men she liked were French. Indeed, I learned a few of
the details about the real reason she had not been in touch
—she had had something going on in Paris. But first she
told me the story of her first love and the main long-term
relationship in her life up to that point, who was certainly
not French but from a very traditional Polish family. It
turned out he was a young man, about the same age as
her or even slightly younger, and he moved in with her
and she fell out massively with his parents. They,
particularly the mother, were strongly Roman Catholic
and regular churchgoers.
The more I thought about this girl, the more it
seemed as if she was very “French,” even if it was in the
clichéd way that foreigners view the French. She seemed
to be sophisticated and intellectual and not at all
interested in religion and family tradition. It seems that
the main person in the relationship with her boyfriend
was not him, but his mother! Things had gotten pretty
bad with the mother and on more than one occasion the
mother phoned their apartment to check where her son
was, and French Secretary lied that he was at church and
reassured her that this was “as usual.” She had no
problem with the invention and clearly loved stories.
Eventually, things came to a head as this girl, who
was clearly pretty self-assured, got really annoyed with
her prospective mother-in-law and during a dinner at her
house, she finally let loose and had a real go.
“I’m sorry. I’m afraid I’m just plain sick of all this
religious talk!” she blurted out randomly whilst the
mother was complaining that the local priest had handled
the sacrament at Sunday’s mass very clumsily, but that
she had seen the newlyweds Piotr and Agnieszka there
and they were both so happy together. “In fact,” she
declared, somewhat spontaneously, it having never
occurred to her before, “I’m an atheist! I object to this
discussion.” She paused. “As a matter of principle.” She
pouted.
The mother was stunned. The father was stunned.
The boyfriend visibly drooped and looked pale. It seems
that the boyfriend did not know how to deal with it. For
French Secretary, this was very important to her and the
final nail in the coffin. She realized that he was a
“mummy’s boy” and very emotionally immature.

During our date, I did attempt to physicalize the

interaction. I moved around to her side of the table so
that she could show me some photographs. I took her
hand, briefly, and ran my hands through her hair. She
was totally okay with this and was anyway preoccupied
with telling me the story of “my boyfriend’s mother.”
I also became interested in the story. The writing was
on the wall for this girl, who was simply so much more
mature and experienced than this poor lad, and so she
started to plan her exit. She laughed as she said it.
“I had to figure out a plan just to avoid having to deal
with the fall-out of him being depressed after I told him it
was over.”
She gave me a wry smile at her childish plan, and it
made me realize the lengths women will go to avoid
conflict and not “upset” people. But the lengths she went
to were somewhat surprising. She decided to arrange a
new life for herself in France; she literally felt so
suffocated that she just had to “get out.” She decided she
would take a job as an au pair in Provence. She felt the
French countryside sounded idyllic.
And so she packed her bags—quite literally, as she
was going to make a surprise getaway. But her boyfriend
came into the flat and found her packed and so she had to
break the news. He was, of course, once more, stunned.
After a heated argument, she simply said, “Okay, well,
bye.” She shrugged and walked out.
She spent a couple of months in the French
countryside, riding a moped around and flirting with
country folk, but quickly got bored. So she moved to
Paris, somehow, although it appears she also had to
travel backward and forward to Poland in order to do so.
I was never sure why. Perhaps she was still studying or
perhaps it was some visa issue to do with work. But I feel
it was also so she could get a job in Paris, which she
realized was the place where she belonged.
She then met a Polish businessman who worked in
Paris. He had a family back in Poland, and this is where,
in his Polish office in Warsaw, she first interviewed for
the job as an au pair-cum-secretary. His wife was in the
same office, and the devilish beauty of it was she was the
one handling the recruitment process on behalf of her
husband. So no suspicion could be aroused or
accusations made. She had picked French Secretary out
of all the applicants as the stand-out choice! And so
indeed she was, at least insofar as her husband was
concerned.
She told me how clearly she remembered that first
interview. The wife was totally oblivious to the sexual
chemistry that immediately sparked up between the boss
and interviewee while she busied herself in another
office, adjacent to her husband’s, and left him to run
through all the important details of the new job.
She clearly had a low moral threshold when it came
to these things and was no Roman Catholic. And off she
went, after the job interview, to Paris with him. I’m
guessing this gentleman did a lot of “traveling.”
It appeared that this new intrigue in her life was
relatively recent, as she explained that she was in
Warsaw to arrange some sort of work visa, and in fact,
that was what she was doing the very next day. (She had
not had a lot of time to answer my texts.) But it is
testament to the power of Daygame when you do it right,
that with all the shenanigans going on in her life, she had
nevertheless remembered me weeks later and wanted to
meet up.

The date was relatively short. I was still experimenting

with limiting the time spent on a date and not going for a
kiss. But hindsight, which has always been a very
annoying companion on my Daygame journey, made me
realize that this had not been the best strategy.
While the date seemed to have gone very well and
there even seemed to be the beginnings of a romantic
connection, ultimately it went nowhere because she was
not in Warsaw for long enough. Not for the first time, I
missed signs that were quite obvious in retrospect. The
only thing to be done on the date was to escalate fast and
risk burning it because there was really not much to lose
in light of the time and logistical constraints.
But then, if I had done so, I would probably not have
enjoyed such fascinating insights into womankind as the
result of the window she gave me into her life.
Topic: Women are More Intelligent than
Men
Men often refuse to believe that they are less
perspicacious than women. I am reminded of an image
from my childhood of my two sisters dressing me and
sitting me down for tea in some elaborate scenario they
have arranged, and serving me imaginary tea and
imaginary sandwiches. I sit there, dressed up in whatever
daft clothes they have chosen for me, like the field mouse
at The Mad Hatter’s Tea Party, just going along with it
and cooperating, stupidly and unthinkingly.
They set up the scenario and I have to comply. It is a
social scenario. One that I am uncomfortable with.
Suddenly, it seems that they are wielding all the power,
which I cannot understand! I am a man, damn it! I should
be in charge. But I do not really know much about all of
this, not as much as I know about climbing trees,
breaking windows, and stealing sweets from the corner
shop. (And even then, my sisters goad me into it.)
I imagine that women let men grow up thinking that
they are in charge and in control and never let on to men
—whose egos are too big to acknowledge it—that they
are smarter than men are. From an evolutionary
perspective, it makes sense because women have to learn
to be smart. They don’t, of course, have the strength that
men have, so they need to become more skilled in other
areas. I suspect that the only reason that there are not
more women in boardrooms and higher positions in
government is that they are too intelligent to be there,
and they cannot be bothered to compete with men. They
would rather not act like juveniles and get into the
dodgems at the career fairground and go around bashing
and bumping noisily into each other.
This also makes me wonder whether this is not why a
seducer, player, or Casanova can have remarkable
success in the bedroom: because he “gets it.” He is one of
the few men that do, and the fact that he sees through the
facade to what is really happening is what gives him this
power with women. They know that he knows. And he
knows that. Certainly, in my own experience, at a far
simpler level, I have noticed the power of calling out the
elephant in the room, such as teasing a girl about the fact
that we are on a date or whispering things to them like,
“My job is to persist, yours to resist,” when they rebuff
me. The very act of being non-reactive in this situation
alone makes a guy stand out. Suddenly, a girl views you
as a sexual threat who will not necessarily be constrained
by the rules and codes of society. He knows that she is
playing a game and he is testing her. She is disarmed,
and she likes this and is excited by this.
But most men are not like this and just as in the case
of the story of the French Secretary, they are blissfully
unaware most of the time and far less emotionally
mature. Is it hardly a surprise then that younger women
date older men? There would probably be a lot more
dating of older men if society did not disapprove of it.
Ultimately, women do want to find a man who “gets
it” and knows them fully, right through. It must be
bloody infuriating for them to have to compromise so
much, and it is no wonder they go off and have affairs.
END OF VOLUME 1

So, I had enjoyed quite a few dates and had one or two
amazing sexual adventures during the first 6-8 months of
the project. While I had not found a long-term girlfriend,
I had learned a great deal and one or two of the dates
were to pop up unexpectedly in future months. I often
felt like an air-traffic controller, who loses a couple of
planes on his screen, and then they blip mysteriously
back into life on a completely different part of his radar
dish.
The next phase of my project saw me venture further
afield, eastwards, and led to some adventures with one or
two fascinating Russian girls, who had different cultural
imperatives to those of the West. Mini-relationships
followed, which made it difficult to keep up with the
initial objective of getting 52 first dates.
Although I had not, so far, found any relationship
potential (Portugal Girl excepting), my future with
Anastasia turned out to be a rather interesting one,
although perhaps “interesting” is rather too mild a term
and “mad roller-coaster ride” would be more fitting.
WOULD YOU LIKE TO LEAVE A REVIEW?
If you enjoyed this book, feel free to leave a review. Just
go onto the Amazon page and scroll down to the grey
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for taking the trouble.

Alex Forrest’s first book Too Late, Mate? is published in

a second edition on Amazon:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Too-Late-Mate-Daygame-
Memoir/dp/1708328610/ref=sr_1_1?
keywords=Too+Late%2C+Mate%3F&qid=1580379262&sr=8-
1

The YouTube channel is called The Art of First Dates

and my email is Alex.streetstories@gmail.com.

78I wrote my usual, “Hey you, unexpected but fun to meet you. Are you
usually this friendly to strangers?! Alex,” and then I wrote a follow-up a few
days later, “Have you been kidnapped?”
79
This is quite a long game where you ask the girl to imagine she is a young
girl walking through summer fields and spies a strawberry field, but there is
a fence around it. Does she jump over? Then you ask her how many
strawberries she eats. The third question you ask is how she reacts when she
sees a farmer coming over the brow of the hill. I think the strawberry fields
game is actually a recognized psychological trick or tool, which the
dastardly pick-up community has turned to their own advantage.
The first question relates to whether she respects rules and boundaries,
social or otherwise. The second question relates to her appetite after she has
broken the rules—does she go nuts or is she restrained? The third question
relates to whether or not she respects positions of authority. It could be her
father or school teacher or her boss at work. As you can see, it can open up
great avenues of conversation and should not be followed slavishly,
although at first, you might want to stick to the structure before you become
experienced at using it.
80 Playing the date is much the same as playing the approach and both are
much the same as fishing. Take fly-fishing, for example, where you work
the lake or river and you cast your fly out to different areas of the lake. It’s
rather more prosaic than you would think—you don’t sit there with your
float in the water listening to the sound of nature, in blissful solitude. You
work the area of water and you keep on the move, like a hunter. You use
different flies to see what the fish are taking and you cast out to different
areas. This is exactly like the approach where you make different
assumptions about her, such as what she does for a living, what she is doing
in town at the moment, or where she is from. Eventually she may give you a
“topic” which you could describe as the “hook point,” and you use that topic
to find out more about her and to challenge and tease her. The date is the
same; you may work your way through a range of topics to see what works.
It’s not an easy pill for the romantics out there to swallow, and I do not think
that I have properly swallowed it yet, but the guys who are successful with
women, just the same as the fishermen I have met over the years, are quite
methodical and systematic about how they go about catching their prey! And
they are often not particularly spectacular or colorful. However, these guys
have often learned the important lesson—if the fish are not biting, then
move on or try a different fly. Don’t get stuck angrily fishing the same
stretch of river with the same old favorite fly, perhaps having spied a fish
which is not biting, stupidly expecting that eventually it’ll take your bait.
 Note on Authenticity

I thought I should write a note on the authenticity of the

stories in the book. Rest assured that these stories are
“as it happened.” This was particularly important to me
as this journey has been something of a social
experiment to see whether dating and seduction skills can
be learned. I was a doubter when I was first starting out
as I could not quite believe that what all those shiny
PUAs were saying on their YouTube channels was really
true.

The changes that have been made have been to protect

privacy, such as girls’ names.