Day 1: Observation
I had about three hours in between two of my classes today, so I thought I would start off by checking out a coffee shop I often see but have never visited near my apartment complex. Both this coffee shop and my apartment are close to campus, so unsurprisingly the clientele was mainly college students. I sat down at a small table between two girls and did a little bit of coursework. It was pretty lively, but not too crowded nor too loud, so I definitely think that I could start a one on one convo with a girl here. Next I walk back to campus and decide I'm gonna do a little exploring to see if I can find a couple spots within campus that would be especially good for Day Game. I might not really be thinking about this correctly, though. If the whole campus counts as one (1) place to meet women, should I just be willing to meander about wherever and approach girls when I see them? I was looking for places and times that were high enough traffic that attractive girls would still be there frequently, but maybe not as much in a rush, and by themselves. I found a sort of secluded pathway that was a shortcut between buildings, passing through some science halls, where there were plenty of places to sit and relax on both sides of this path and a fair amount of people walking through it (I guess the shortcut's an open secret!) I will keep this one in mind as I move about campus from now on. I see various lawns with girls relaxing on them, but I feel it might be a little aggressive or "out there" to go up to a girl lying on her belly in her own little world and potentially spooking her. I'm sure there's a way to do this right, I just have to figure it out. There are plenty of benches scattered about and outdoor seating outside of campus dining options that often have girls sitting on them solo. Almost everything I'm seeing seems like a decent option, just requiring a slightly different approach to it, whether she's laying down in a more vulnerable position on a lawn, or sitting on a bench reading a book, or waiting in line for coffee/food, or simply walking by/alongside me. I don't know all the intricacies that these different approaches require, but I'll do my best to at least say something and gain some experience from now on.
I have some more work to do before class, so I head over to the library, which I know is a good place to meet girls. There are multiple floors with varying levels of volume/activity, and it's always full of opportunities to meet and form a connection with a girl that I've yet to take advantage of. What do I mean exactly by opportunities?
Approach Invitations.
I've failed to mention this so far, but my fundamentals are actually pretty good. I said that 95% of the stuff I've read on GC gets lodged in short term memory and then discarded without application, but I have spent a relatively large amount of time working on various fundamentals here and there over the years. Of course my game is still non-existent, as are my results, which is why I'm here. But I get a lot of approach invitations (sometimes incredibly blatant too) and signals of interest from girls when I do get to talk to them, I just always fail to deliver on that initial interest. The reason I finally started this Newbie Assignment today was because yesterday I was waiting at a traffic light, and a girl walked up and did "The Hover". I glanced in her direction and noticed she looked incredibly fashionable, which is rare at my school. Red patterned skirt that stood out, cute black top, stylish boots. Her face was gorgeous too. I had genuine interest in her. I wanted to give her a
genuine compliment and introduce myself. But I didn't. I couldn't. I've read the "I just saw you and I had to tell you blah blah blah... " direct opener example a million times at this point on the blog and the boards, but the rare time where I really would've meant it, I did nothing. So that was it. I couldn't take it anymore and now I want to do everything I can to not let that happen again. Hopefully. I know well how habits and default behaviors/mindsets can be difficult to change. But damn, I have to try.
So back to the library.
I go to take a seat by the window a couple feet away from a cute, petite brunette with blonde streaks, wearing a popular style of... sweatpants and a cute-ish sweater (like I said, girls' fashion is weak here). She makes eye contact with me as I near my personal little table and move to sit. She holds strong eye contact with me, following my eyes as my body drifts down into my chair. At least, like, five seconds of some serious eye-fucking. I'm telling you guys, this happens to me a lot. I'm just a coward. And what do I do? Nothing, of course. I start working on a non-seduction related assignment and get prepared for an upcoming lecture. While doing this, I notice her taking frequent glances my way. After a couple minutes some guy on the girl's other side just randomly blurts out to her (they hadn't been speaking at all since I sat down),
Some Guy: "Hey do you have Snapchat?"
Her: glances over at him hesitantly and nods her head yes.
Some Guy: "Can I have it?"
Her:
Oof. Silence. This guy then stays and waits, looking at her expectantly for maybe another minute or two, I guess thinking she didn't hear him. But he also didn't repeat his question, so i don't know. He gets up to leave. I guess she feels bad so as he's about to walk away, she fakes having not heard him and after he asks again she gives her Snap for him to add. He leaves. Okay. Here we go. If there was ever a time to build that momentum I was talking about and start seducing girls, now would be it. I turn to her after the guy's out of ear shot and kind of mumble to her,
Me: "So, uh, he asked you for yo-"
Her: turns her head toward me furiously "YES! Omg. He was acting very creepy earlier too. I'm definitely not gonna add him back."
Note: Now, I don't know if she was so eager to talk to me because she was super interested in me and was just waiting for me to say anything (the earlier eye contact makes me think partially so), or if she just wanted to vent about some weirdo. The rest of the convo has a similar theme of "I'm not sure if she likes me or is just venting, or if she did like me and I dropped the ball so now she's just venting."
I don't remember the exact sequence of everything we talked about so I'll just list what I can remember.
Me: "Well, I'm sure he meant well."
Her: "Yes! I'm sure. I actually... " starts fast-paced monologuing about freshman orientation and some guy she has a crush on where she asked him for his Snapchat.
Me: "Yeah... uh huh..."
Her: "... and where I'm from we barely ever used Snapchat-"
Me: interjects "Where are you from?"
Her: "Washington"
Me: "Oh yeah? And why did you deci-"
Her: interrupts and goes right back to talking all about the guy she has a crush on, how he's so tall, and she feels so awkward about shooting her shot, how do I get him to like me etc.
Her: "...and I hope we will one day be Mr. and Mrs. Johnson (fake name)... Oh god! What I said was totally cringe, wasn't it?"
Me: "Well, probably don't say that to him."
Okay. I don't want to go through the rest of the conversation in this format. I'm already going a bit crazy just rehashing it, but I think there are a lot of lessons to be learned on my end so I'll summarize the main points.
1. I tried to do some banter and be funny. Don't think I was very good at it. Not super strong reactions on her end, but
reactions don't equal results right?
2. At some point she learns that I'm a fourth year student, and calls me "old" and "so far away from where she is." I laugh and challenge this frame pretty hard "Oh, where I'm at is just around the corner. We're not all that far apart. Just 3 short years."
3. I started to lose interest in the conversation naturally as she kept rambling about shit that wasn't conducive to seduction and cutting me off. So, I shifted my body language away from her a bit, gave her less eye contact, and had a bored look on my face (because I was bored and maybe frustrated that I wasn't capable of navigating the conversation the direction that I wanted). I thought she may get the hint and say something like, "well it was nice meeting you... ?" but instead she got even more invested in our interaction, giving me stronger non-verbals (body facing toward me even more, smiling more, more animated) and now asking me a bunch of questions about myself.
4. There was a general vibe or dynamic throughout the convo of me being in the position of mentor or authority figure, giving her advice and letting her talk a little about her freshman struggles. Some of it was maybe helpful to the goal of seduction, like her asking me for advice on male-female interactions and romantic encounters (she was very inexperienced). Some of it was definitely not helpful, namely her rambling/venting about her problems and her crush on this guy. She even said in half-jest, half-truth at some point, "Thank you for the therapy session, lol"
5. After I started to peel away from the conversation, she was doing almost all of the work to keep it alive. I was able to actually learn a little about her. She didn't get into her dream school; Why was her dream school her dream school; She's close with her family, her mother in particular. I did a little Cold Read that she was probably an honors student and a good girl in high school, which was correct. She started to talk about playing soccer, playing the piano, doing volunteer work, working with some cancer foundation, and many more things one after another. I'm not sure if she was just bragging or qualifying herself to me.
6. After she would finish making a point, I would just let the silence linger and make eye contact with her. I'm not exactly privy on what makes eye contact more flirty or sexual, but there was definitely tension in these moments where we would just look at each other. I'm not sure if this is good or bad. She would then start talking again and taking the conversation wherever she wanted.
7. That last part feels like the biggest misstep to me, that I couldn't lead or control the conversation at all, and only once I became disinterested was when she herself moved the conversation to topics more productive for romance. But I'm still not leading, and that "style," if you can call it that, feels way too passive.
8. Finally, there were a couple guys near us who were probably listening to everything she was saying, which admittedly some of which would be funny to a third party, and whispering to each other and snickering every so often. I made very direct eye contact with one of them in a sort of small confrontation and he acted confused and said "what?" The girl looks back and forth and goes,
Her: "Oh. Were they listening in on us."
Me: "Nah they were laughing about something else. Don't worry about it."
and their behavior stopped after that. But now, I was honestly a bit self conscious, feeling awkward and like I was doing something wrong, which I know is stupid but the feeling was there and definitely influenced my overall disinterest in the rest of conversation, for better or worse.
And so at some point, when the imbalance of investment in the conversation between me and this girl reached critical mass she said, "Well, I gotta go back to the dorms, but it was great meeting you, Wazato."
Me: "Yeah. You too."
Her: stands up and lingers for a few seconds before leaving while I'm already back to working on my laptop. "Well, bye bye!?" she smiles expectantly
Me: "Yeah. Bye."
Man, I feel bad about this. How many women have I implicitly rejected like this in a similar fashion? Starting to feel like a lot, even if most never make it this far in conversation with me. But with this girl, and not to make excuses, it was kinda weird. She was kinda weird and not super socially attuned and rattling on about some other guy she liked and calling me her therapist. However, all her non-verbals told me she was interested, she also even verbally complimented me on things like my style/fashion, and the way the interaction ended told me she wanted me to grab a number. Yet, I still left the interaction feeling confused and frustrated about whether she actually was interested and wondering how I could've done better. The final place to meet women that I checked out real quick was a Barnes & Noble downtown. It looked good and I like smart girls. Not much to say as I was quite tired at this point from a lot of walking, talking, and attending lectures. If my school campus counts as only one place, then that's only three. However, overall I'm happy to get started on what is hopefully a long journey. This ended up a little long for a Day 1 newbie assignment and is probably too detailed for being about the life of a guy who doesn't get laid, but I'm a detail-oriented person. So, for anyone who actually reads this through and has anything to say - thank you and I'm all ears.
On to Day 2.