- Joined
- Nov 14, 2017
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- 315
NOTE: I'm putting up reports way out of sequence. And the greater than usual uncertainty over facts in this report is because I waited a day to do the dictation I normally do on the way home.
So, I was recently at a Caribbean cultural event, and the group putting it on is one I'm often involved with; the organizers know and like me so I had free run of the whole venue. This particular event could be likened to a fashion show. I wound up spending a lot of my time before the show hanging out in the large (2400 sq.ft.) temporary dressing room where most of the pre-show action was, where the (mostly volunteer) models and outfits were being prepared. With great care to not foul friendly waters, I hit on (just) two of the models; this post is about the second.
My Blasphemous Blessing
I was sitting with a relative of a friend, on some chairs along one wall of the dressing room. Some people had left their belongings beside where I was sitting. One of the girls came over to get shoes or something from her bag.
Actually, I had run into her earlier when she was first arriving at the venue. She was walking in as my buddy and I were walking out to help carry in some of the outfits. Medium-dark black girl. Rather petite - not my ideal, but with kinda cute, unusual facial features that caught my eye. (Incidentally, she did not strike me as Jamaican, though I could be wrong.) I'm not sure if my buddy caught me looking or if this comment was unprompted, but he made some kind of off-put remark about her not even being a half-bite. (This guy always gives me physical assessments of girls around us, often unnervingly close to their earshot!)
So now sitting in the dressing room, I had some equipment of mine in front of me which was blocking the girl's path to getting at her belongings. She asked if she could move it and as I absently told her to go ahead, she added something like, "I know it's your baby". She had a cute and friendly demeanour. (To be clear, I actually love cocky/crass/loud/aggressive girls, but cute and friendly is at least not intimidating at my present skill level.)
If I recall, I somewhat off-handedly but personably asked her while she was rummaging through her stuff, if she had stage fright. I had asked the other one the same thing, so I may be getting this confused. If I asked, she answered in the negative, and may or may not have answered or volunteered that she's done it many times before.
I left it at that and she scurried off to what she was doing. She came back for something else later and I didn't engage her at all, partly out of approach anxiety and partly out of not quite having anything to say at the ready.
The third time she came over I knew I had to say something, and had only a couple seconds to do it, so my mind spat out the only thing it could think of in short order. It's something that I regret even if it was effective.
Now more closely looking at a runway photo of her (with a cute, huge kool-aid smile), her hair looks like Type 3A but more frizzy in particular towards the ends. It's pretty voluminous, and to be honest, on a girl of her skin tone, while possible, it's extremely unlikely it's natural. I'd put it on quite likely weave, or at the least artificially texturized. The ringlets are on average a lot wider than a twist-out on Type 4 natural hair, the latter being a look I love, along with just raw Type 4, especially 4A & 4B, just out or pulled back or up.
But in that split second I was looking for something to compliment her on, I was tricked by the relative lack of either the bone-straightness or highly ordered waviness or uniform loose curliness typical of weaves, and remarked something like, "I like your hair." It was only a half-truth, but that's all you get for a few hundred milliseconds of search time. The things I actually liked about her were not that easy and/or socially normalized to put to words - a dilemma I face on an almost daily basis!
I think she was knelt down on the floor near the chair I was sitting on, and before saying that, I may have tapped her shoulder or something.
She thanked me in a sincere but distracted manner. Being aware of the at-best ambiguity, I queried whether it was natural. As she scurried off again (they were running insanely late), she answered "no", in a cute manner as making an admission, with a "sorry to disappoint you" undertone.
I can't believe it. I complimented artificial hair on a black woman. I have disgraced Yemọja. My soul shall burn in hell for ever and ever. (In the dictation I told myself to "calm down; like fuck man, it's not like you went up to a black girl with fucking bone-straight fucking butt-long hair and said 'I like your hair,' okay!")
Anyway. I didn't run into her again until after the runway ting was done.
Disappearing Difficulty
When I was putting my stuff away, I saw the girl back at the same table I had my stuff near. So I came up to her and re-engaged her. I may or may not have tapped her. If I recall I asked her if she was participating in the actual event which this show was advertising. She said she was.
She asked me if I was. I said I wasn't sure yet and added, possibly in response to apparent curiosity, that I wasn't sure if I'd be in the country. (Women are luring me to East Africa, but I haven't determined when yet.)
She slightly surprised me by remarking something along the lines that she knows a few people who aren't sure they'll be in the country. I just said something like a mildly surprised, "Really?" and repeated what she had told me. She said something like, "yeah!", reciprocating my "that's kind of interesting/unusual" vibe.
I think it was at this point that I told her, "Tell me your name." Hitting on black girls, I don't think I'll ever run out of names I've never heard before.
I offered my hand and did the usual holding her hand between fingers and thumb thing. We kept our hands together for an extra moment or two (though not with the hotness with which Tanika and I did it).
If I had to guess, I said something like "nice to meet you," and she reciprocated unremarkably. I can't recall if she asked my name, but if I had to guess she didn't, and if she didn't, I didn't tell her.
I probably could have had a bit more of a chat with her, - for instance canvassing for studies, as I ordinarily would, - but for whatever reason I decided to get straight to the point. "We should grab a coffee."
She seemed flattered and somewhat interested, with fairly open body language, although she was also in a rush to get out and get home.
She said, and it actually did not feel like her brushing me off, but more in a "just to let you know" kind of way, "My boyfriend's crazy!" She may have said this somewhat laughingly. She immediately added, "He's Jamaican!"
Was this the point at which I was supposed to get scared?
Well, I was pretty much unfazed, due to a combination of factors:
I may have been slightly concerned that she was trying to reject me, although even that didn't get to me much because (i) I'm used to the boyfriend excuse, when used as a rejection, being delivered with an entirely different character, so actually doubted it was a rejection, (ii) I approach girls enough now that a single rejection isn't remarkably significant to me, and (iii) she's cute but she's far from my ideal on multiple parameters, anyway.
My only real issue was not knowing in the moment what was the most effective way of brushing off this little piece of dandruff. So, I did what my brain would usually default to, which is to appease her rational mind. I attempted this by remarking something like, "It's just coffee." I was pretty calm in my delivery of this.
This seemed to have the intended effect of defusing her objection. She seemed satisfied with this and I continued in the same manner I'd have done had this not come up, and she was co-operative.
In retrospect, while this seems to have worked, I wonder if I would have been better to employ some tactic that didn't imply that our relationship is to be innocent. Are her and I still on the same page here, or am I going to face huge escalation resistance out of a girl who now assumes that we're just friends?
Fizzling
Anyhow, I took out my phone, entered her name (which I probably had remembered by repeating it back to her), and got her to confirm the spelling. I needed to drop a silent letter. She may have been physically occupied as we made this exchange. I went to hand her the phone, to which she remarked that she had just changed her number (and didn't remember it), so she instead got her phone, which she had to go somewhat out of her way to get. She got and read off the number for me, which I typed into mine.
Due to the doubled potential for human error here, I really ought to have at very least read it back to her. Or better yet, I have a clever routine I'd tried a couple times pre-GC to good effect which makes some light sexual humour out of texting her on the spot. I had been resisting that approach recently because it doesn't give her your name, whereas the "Hey X it's Y, save my #" routine does. However, in retrospect, if she gets any given text or call on the spot, you can get her to save the contact with your name! Duh! Alas, I didn't do anything to confirm the number was right.
We drifted away for a bit after I got her number. I wanted to close it out more gracefully, so this bugged me slightly.
However, she reappeared, this time on my right side, closer to the wall. One or both of us were at various points knelt down to go through our things on the floor.
(I'm pretty sure, though not positive, that the following happened after the date proposal and number close.) She remarked that if I'm participating, I should definitely do so in the unit she's in, and added something about theirs being the best unit. I think she made this suggestion repeatedly.
She may have left again, but once she was back somewhat nearby, and it looked like she was about to finally depart, I came over and said something like, "it was nice meeting you." (I ought to have used her name, but didn't.) I presented my hand and we did a hand clasp but then she gestured for a hug so we did that, and then she left.
My non-verbals were unmonitored but probably not bad, and may have been made better by the girl's technically being the one who came over to me, which gave me the benefit of least effort and also didn't give me time to get in my head. I did some incidental touch, though could have done more. The girl's demeanour had been open and friendly. Not exactly throwing herself at me, but reasonably encouraging.
It was stupidly late when we left, and I didn't feel to send an intro text at the ungodly hour the usual 30 - 120 min. later would've been, so I left this for the next day. I didn't get a chance to write until 1:30pm:
So far, contrary to something I've read around here, getting no answer on the above type text has been a fairly strong predictor of a girl being completely non-responsive, although I don't have enough data to say for sure.
I stayed silent a day and then sent this 11:40am the day after:
Analysis & What's Next?
Maybe she was totally uninterested, but that doesn't feel like the most likely explanation. Usually when a girl gives an actual rejection and uses a boyfriend as an excuse, she just gives a matter-of-fact, unemotional "I have a boyfriend", instead of elaborating and dramatizing. What she did felt to me a lot more like a shit test.
Maybe she's actually taken and actually faithful to the guy, but that doesn't feel like the most likely explanation, either. Somehow.
I feel a lot more like I have or had a chance and have failed to do something. Two possibilities in particular occur to me:
It's also possible one of us made an error on the phone number transcription. It was extremely careless of me to not check it or have her check it. I might run into her in a few months from now, and if I find out a digit got slipped, I'm going to be pissed at myself.
So, what now?
If the problem is (1), then I probably can't do a heck of a lot now, I'm guessing.
If the problem is (2), would trying to actually call her and take a few minutes to connect help? But I generally find girls don't answer the phone unless you already have a good connection with them. (Admittedly I rarely try, as text seems less try-hard and risky.) On the other hand, trying to connect over text I would think is a bad idea.
My success rate after the very first material (not intro) text has gone unanswered is zero. (And I never react in an annoyed/hurt/needy/lengthy manner.)
Any wisdom most welcome!
So, I was recently at a Caribbean cultural event, and the group putting it on is one I'm often involved with; the organizers know and like me so I had free run of the whole venue. This particular event could be likened to a fashion show. I wound up spending a lot of my time before the show hanging out in the large (2400 sq.ft.) temporary dressing room where most of the pre-show action was, where the (mostly volunteer) models and outfits were being prepared. With great care to not foul friendly waters, I hit on (just) two of the models; this post is about the second.
My Blasphemous Blessing
I was sitting with a relative of a friend, on some chairs along one wall of the dressing room. Some people had left their belongings beside where I was sitting. One of the girls came over to get shoes or something from her bag.
Actually, I had run into her earlier when she was first arriving at the venue. She was walking in as my buddy and I were walking out to help carry in some of the outfits. Medium-dark black girl. Rather petite - not my ideal, but with kinda cute, unusual facial features that caught my eye. (Incidentally, she did not strike me as Jamaican, though I could be wrong.) I'm not sure if my buddy caught me looking or if this comment was unprompted, but he made some kind of off-put remark about her not even being a half-bite. (This guy always gives me physical assessments of girls around us, often unnervingly close to their earshot!)
So now sitting in the dressing room, I had some equipment of mine in front of me which was blocking the girl's path to getting at her belongings. She asked if she could move it and as I absently told her to go ahead, she added something like, "I know it's your baby". She had a cute and friendly demeanour. (To be clear, I actually love cocky/crass/loud/aggressive girls, but cute and friendly is at least not intimidating at my present skill level.)
If I recall, I somewhat off-handedly but personably asked her while she was rummaging through her stuff, if she had stage fright. I had asked the other one the same thing, so I may be getting this confused. If I asked, she answered in the negative, and may or may not have answered or volunteered that she's done it many times before.
I left it at that and she scurried off to what she was doing. She came back for something else later and I didn't engage her at all, partly out of approach anxiety and partly out of not quite having anything to say at the ready.
The third time she came over I knew I had to say something, and had only a couple seconds to do it, so my mind spat out the only thing it could think of in short order. It's something that I regret even if it was effective.
Now more closely looking at a runway photo of her (with a cute, huge kool-aid smile), her hair looks like Type 3A but more frizzy in particular towards the ends. It's pretty voluminous, and to be honest, on a girl of her skin tone, while possible, it's extremely unlikely it's natural. I'd put it on quite likely weave, or at the least artificially texturized. The ringlets are on average a lot wider than a twist-out on Type 4 natural hair, the latter being a look I love, along with just raw Type 4, especially 4A & 4B, just out or pulled back or up.
But in that split second I was looking for something to compliment her on, I was tricked by the relative lack of either the bone-straightness or highly ordered waviness or uniform loose curliness typical of weaves, and remarked something like, "I like your hair." It was only a half-truth, but that's all you get for a few hundred milliseconds of search time. The things I actually liked about her were not that easy and/or socially normalized to put to words - a dilemma I face on an almost daily basis!
I think she was knelt down on the floor near the chair I was sitting on, and before saying that, I may have tapped her shoulder or something.
She thanked me in a sincere but distracted manner. Being aware of the at-best ambiguity, I queried whether it was natural. As she scurried off again (they were running insanely late), she answered "no", in a cute manner as making an admission, with a "sorry to disappoint you" undertone.
I can't believe it. I complimented artificial hair on a black woman. I have disgraced Yemọja. My soul shall burn in hell for ever and ever. (In the dictation I told myself to "calm down; like fuck man, it's not like you went up to a black girl with fucking bone-straight fucking butt-long hair and said 'I like your hair,' okay!")
Anyway. I didn't run into her again until after the runway ting was done.
Disappearing Difficulty
When I was putting my stuff away, I saw the girl back at the same table I had my stuff near. So I came up to her and re-engaged her. I may or may not have tapped her. If I recall I asked her if she was participating in the actual event which this show was advertising. She said she was.
She asked me if I was. I said I wasn't sure yet and added, possibly in response to apparent curiosity, that I wasn't sure if I'd be in the country. (Women are luring me to East Africa, but I haven't determined when yet.)
She slightly surprised me by remarking something along the lines that she knows a few people who aren't sure they'll be in the country. I just said something like a mildly surprised, "Really?" and repeated what she had told me. She said something like, "yeah!", reciprocating my "that's kind of interesting/unusual" vibe.
I think it was at this point that I told her, "Tell me your name." Hitting on black girls, I don't think I'll ever run out of names I've never heard before.
I offered my hand and did the usual holding her hand between fingers and thumb thing. We kept our hands together for an extra moment or two (though not with the hotness with which Tanika and I did it).
If I had to guess, I said something like "nice to meet you," and she reciprocated unremarkably. I can't recall if she asked my name, but if I had to guess she didn't, and if she didn't, I didn't tell her.
I probably could have had a bit more of a chat with her, - for instance canvassing for studies, as I ordinarily would, - but for whatever reason I decided to get straight to the point. "We should grab a coffee."
She seemed flattered and somewhat interested, with fairly open body language, although she was also in a rush to get out and get home.
She said, and it actually did not feel like her brushing me off, but more in a "just to let you know" kind of way, "My boyfriend's crazy!" She may have said this somewhat laughingly. She immediately added, "He's Jamaican!"
Was this the point at which I was supposed to get scared?
Well, I was pretty much unfazed, due to a combination of factors:
- I know this could well be a shit test. The guy may not even exist, and if he does, there's a good chance she has grossly exaggerated his ferocity. Indeed, on some level I think instinct was telling me this was a shit test.
- I assume she's not stupid enough to tell her boyfriend what she's up to. Plus, my own friends have a hard enough time finding me, how is he going to?
- I live around lots of Jamaicans.
- This might sound crazy, but I'm actually not that scared of dying. There are worse things. I'd much rather die at the hands of some dude cheesed that I slept with his girl, than live without knowing seduction.
I may have been slightly concerned that she was trying to reject me, although even that didn't get to me much because (i) I'm used to the boyfriend excuse, when used as a rejection, being delivered with an entirely different character, so actually doubted it was a rejection, (ii) I approach girls enough now that a single rejection isn't remarkably significant to me, and (iii) she's cute but she's far from my ideal on multiple parameters, anyway.
My only real issue was not knowing in the moment what was the most effective way of brushing off this little piece of dandruff. So, I did what my brain would usually default to, which is to appease her rational mind. I attempted this by remarking something like, "It's just coffee." I was pretty calm in my delivery of this.
This seemed to have the intended effect of defusing her objection. She seemed satisfied with this and I continued in the same manner I'd have done had this not come up, and she was co-operative.
In retrospect, while this seems to have worked, I wonder if I would have been better to employ some tactic that didn't imply that our relationship is to be innocent. Are her and I still on the same page here, or am I going to face huge escalation resistance out of a girl who now assumes that we're just friends?
Fizzling
Anyhow, I took out my phone, entered her name (which I probably had remembered by repeating it back to her), and got her to confirm the spelling. I needed to drop a silent letter. She may have been physically occupied as we made this exchange. I went to hand her the phone, to which she remarked that she had just changed her number (and didn't remember it), so she instead got her phone, which she had to go somewhat out of her way to get. She got and read off the number for me, which I typed into mine.
Due to the doubled potential for human error here, I really ought to have at very least read it back to her. Or better yet, I have a clever routine I'd tried a couple times pre-GC to good effect which makes some light sexual humour out of texting her on the spot. I had been resisting that approach recently because it doesn't give her your name, whereas the "Hey X it's Y, save my #" routine does. However, in retrospect, if she gets any given text or call on the spot, you can get her to save the contact with your name! Duh! Alas, I didn't do anything to confirm the number was right.
We drifted away for a bit after I got her number. I wanted to close it out more gracefully, so this bugged me slightly.
However, she reappeared, this time on my right side, closer to the wall. One or both of us were at various points knelt down to go through our things on the floor.
(I'm pretty sure, though not positive, that the following happened after the date proposal and number close.) She remarked that if I'm participating, I should definitely do so in the unit she's in, and added something about theirs being the best unit. I think she made this suggestion repeatedly.
She may have left again, but once she was back somewhat nearby, and it looked like she was about to finally depart, I came over and said something like, "it was nice meeting you." (I ought to have used her name, but didn't.) I presented my hand and we did a hand clasp but then she gestured for a hug so we did that, and then she left.
My non-verbals were unmonitored but probably not bad, and may have been made better by the girl's technically being the one who came over to me, which gave me the benefit of least effort and also didn't give me time to get in my head. I did some incidental touch, though could have done more. The girl's demeanour had been open and friendly. Not exactly throwing herself at me, but reasonably encouraging.
It was stupidly late when we left, and I didn't feel to send an intro text at the ungodly hour the usual 30 - 120 min. later would've been, so I left this for the next day. I didn't get a chance to write until 1:30pm:
No answer.
So far, contrary to something I've read around here, getting no answer on the above type text has been a fairly strong predictor of a girl being completely non-responsive, although I don't have enough data to say for sure.
I stayed silent a day and then sent this 11:40am the day after:
So far no answer.
Analysis & What's Next?
Maybe she was totally uninterested, but that doesn't feel like the most likely explanation. Usually when a girl gives an actual rejection and uses a boyfriend as an excuse, she just gives a matter-of-fact, unemotional "I have a boyfriend", instead of elaborating and dramatizing. What she did felt to me a lot more like a shit test.
Maybe she's actually taken and actually faithful to the guy, but that doesn't feel like the most likely explanation, either. Somehow.
I feel a lot more like I have or had a chance and have failed to do something. Two possibilities in particular occur to me:
- Wasn't sexual enough. This could be a failing of basic non-verbals.
It also occurred to me afterwards that I could've maybe gone for a wine (easily the closest thing to sex that might be called dancing). Wining isn't exactly normal conduct in behind-the-scenes contexts, even though it's a prominent part of the culture. However, I have noticed that a small handful of guys actually do occasionally wine girls in these contexts. I'm willing to bet those are guys that get pussy.
- Didn't connect enough. I asked her about her participation in the upcoming event, but I didn't ask about anything outside of this context. On most approaches I've done recently I'll go for some personal detail I might be able to deep dive on, such as being a student. I was probably thrown off that pattern because this is not the usual situation in which I'm talking to girls.
Mind you, on some of the most successful approaches I had pre-GC, I got the date without having first connected on anything other than the culture (though I did get into more personal things on the date); so I'm not sure if that's really the issue. [Disclaimer: My being white I might be benefitting from novelty effects, so this might not apply if you're Caribbean.]
It's also possible one of us made an error on the phone number transcription. It was extremely careless of me to not check it or have her check it. I might run into her in a few months from now, and if I find out a digit got slipped, I'm going to be pissed at myself.
So, what now?
If the problem is (1), then I probably can't do a heck of a lot now, I'm guessing.
If the problem is (2), would trying to actually call her and take a few minutes to connect help? But I generally find girls don't answer the phone unless you already have a good connection with them. (Admittedly I rarely try, as text seems less try-hard and risky.) On the other hand, trying to connect over text I would think is a bad idea.
My success rate after the very first material (not intro) text has gone unanswered is zero. (And I never react in an annoyed/hurt/needy/lengthy manner.)
Any wisdom most welcome!
