#95-100: The Punchline

“Life is a joke; death is the punchline”

Someone, maybe me, I don’t know

I made it. I finally made it! After years of arduous effort, long dark nights of the soul, epic introspection and even epic-ker LMR battles I reached the milestone every man dreams of: 100 lifetime lays.

Okay, it didn’t actually take too long to get here (I was on three when I started with Game in late 2016)… It wasn’t too hard either… And of course this is only the aim of a few men. (In case you didn’t realise, I was kidding with the first paragraph so don’t get your panties in a twist… you know who you are!).

One important thing that helped me hit this milestone was to be consistent and not have any years when I was in an exclusive relationship. I might not get the most lays each year (I get a lot but not the most) or have the best ratio (it’s good but not the best) but what I do have is the determination to keep plugging away, to methodically and systematically move towards my goal. If there’s something I want then I go for it and don’t stop.

When you break a guy’s 100 down it actually seems quite simple. Let’s say a guy gets started at university at 18: he needs 10 lays a year from any source to hit his 100 by 28. Then if he has some naturally occurring plus points – I’ve always had my extreme height and ginger hair, for example – then he can rely on that to give him a few extra lays every year. That’s the blessing of being naturally polarising: I’ve always had a subset of girls who would be into me no matter what because I present a genetic edge-case.

Then if he’s at least decently handsome – I don’t deny that I am this, though some disagree – then there will be a grey zone of girls who he’s better looking than, but who are still considered cute or pretty by the wider population and who he wouldn’t turn his nose up at, who can contribute to the 100 milestone. And let’s face it: no one is getting to 100 lays by only banging eights; you would probably need to be a model or famous to do that. Any person’s 100 is going to be composed of a lot of sevens, some sixes, some eights and the odd girl he’d rather forget about. If a guy claims that he mostly bangs eights he’s either overrating them, underrating his own SMV heavily or a combination of both.

At the end of the day if you’re in the right situation it’s not so hard to hit it… And that’s one point that I want to stress: when you break down this milestone you see that it’s not so special. It’s just the outcome from a certain amount of work applied to a somewhat reliable lever over so many years. Have what the other party wants and exchange it for the thing that you want then keep coming back to the market.

If that sounds rather mundane, I guess that’s because I consider it to be. There’s no “magic” in male-female relations once you understand what people want. It’s one thing that six years of approaching has proven to me: you can’t beat the SMP and that there is always a reason for a couple to pair up. Similar to how Morpheus tells Neo:

“Unfortunately, no one can be told what the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself.”

You’ve probably heard the phrase “you can’t beat the SMP” before: the notion that the SMP matches up high value men with high value women. Sounds simple enough, but beginners and some intermediates don’t grasp this, and continually seek for the special set of lines, tools and techniques to apply so that they – a lower value man – can sleep with high value women. Just like magic! Of course, there is a grey area: you do need to have functional training so that it goes into your muscle memory and in the long run it’s not a tool or a technique anymore, it’s just “you being you,” but it’s still not magic. There was no magic involved to get to any of my 100; each one liked a particular thing about me enough to sleep with me.

But of course, for the average guy, who’s in the average situation, reaching 100 must be somewhat magical because the number is beyond his grasp. He very rarely gets those easy lays; he doesn’t have anything that special about him which would let him rack up the numbers. He maybe had a girlfriend in school or university, plus a few lucky drunken nights out, and maybe another girlfriend, and that’s it. And that’s at least the guys who have things going for them somewhat. You’d be shocked at the number of guys who are unmarried in their thirties with less than five, maybe less than three, notches to their name. You might guess who they are by looking at them, but I’m not even talking about troglodytes here. The notion that you will simply collide with sex like bacteria in a petri dish is a theory popularised by guys who were already getting female attention. For them, female-stylised advice such as “just put yourself out there” works because at some point in history a woman chose them and that let them build the confidence to become good with women.

I always need to remind myself that sex is distributed exponentially among men. Most men have very little of it and some men have most of it so that when you’re dealing with someone who is getting more than you it sounds like magic; each step up is worth 1.5x your lays or somesuch. So for that guy with a few lifetime lays it’s easier to find a guy who is in the next tier, and the tier after that – there’s always that one guy you know who’s good with women – but after a while the tier stretches out of sight and goes into magic territory. I remember a couple of guys in my old job hearing my lay count back when it was around 70 and they reacted as if I had told them I had shit a solid gold brick the previous evening. It was as if it was too much sex for them to comprehend. I might as well have exchanged the gold brick for cash and given it to them; enough money that they could buy their wildest dreams, and more. The kind of money people say they “wouldn’t know what to do with.” The kind where people ask “he’s already got so much, why does he want more?!”

It’s probably best for the average guy’s mental health that he considers it magic because otherwise it would bring the reality of the SMP home: a reminder of his averageness and his inability up until this point to make anything more of himself, if it’s even possible. As a sidenote: I think this is one of the reasons why many people prefer Messi to Ronaldo. Messi is “the magician” but Ronaldo is the machine; people don’t like thinking about the latter because they don’t like to consider what they could have been if they had put the work in.

And so all that makes reaching 100 seem quite mundane. I went through the motions with 100 women, had something they wanted – whatever that was – and we slept together. Then why even care?

100 is an arbitrary number. Perhaps we only venerate the number “100” because we have 10 fingers and that 10 times that amount must be a lot. I mean, why is it 100 and not 95 or 113? Maybe if we had eight fingers then we’d all care about getting to 64 lays. Or if Roman numerals were written differently maybe we’d care about other numbers. But really, who cares? That’s just how it is. It’s arbitrary and silly but there has to be a line in the sand drawn somewhere. That’s why this collection of lay reports is called “The Punchline” and why I put that quote at the top (I don’t know who to attribute that to and I might have a vague recollection of hearing it somewhere, but if not, then it belongs to me).

We set ourselves these arbitrary goals (the joke) and when we hit them we “realise” how arbitrary they were (the punchline). I put realise in quotes because I think that everyone deep down knows a priori that they’re arbitrary but it seems to be the moment when it hits home for most people. But I can say, and sorry for going all “look at me I’m so special” on you, that I went for the 100 knowing that it was arbitrary. In my life philosophy, code of living, whatever you want to call it: arbitrariness or circular action is not a bad thing.

Take something as simple as eating. You could ask yourself “why eat food now? You’re only going to be hungry again later on.” But obviously, we’ll eat when we’re hungry. Because we want to. “Why go for 100? You’ll only want something more afterwards,” or “Why go for 100 and not 64 or 95 or 113?” I can’t tell you exactly why “100” but I can definitely tell you that I wanted it. For me, that’s all the reasoning I need in the world.

So even though it was an arbitrary goal, I do consider this an achievement. I set myself a task and I completed it. I enjoyed the telling of the joke, laughed at the punchline and can see how I’m a different man to when it started. I’m not going to be one of those guys who has some deep nihilistic realisation about life and risks tipping into an existential crisis. Or else sits moping about thinking “woe is me, why is human nature such?!;” there are already enough sad sacks in the world.

If anything, what if it was possible to “complete” life? That there was some kind of finishing line after which there was nothing left to strive for. That would be truly depressing. Even a retiree with everything in place works to preserve what he has or has smaller and more local aims such as a garden or seeing his grandkids as much as possible. At the end of the day, the circular nature of setting arbitrary goals and achieving them is such a part of human nature that we would be broken without them.

I had a lot of fun reaching that arbitrary goal and, since society considers 100 to be a big number, I’m officially in that bracket of “guy who gets laid” and has had more than his fair share of women. I carry that belief into every interaction I have now: “you should be into me because… just because.” And yes, I made the point earlier that for a guy in my situation it’s not all that hard a number to hit, but I’m going to have my cake and eat it too. I get to choose my thoughts and beliefs, no one else. I can draw inspiration from what other people think even though I know the mundanity of the achievement itself.

And would I recommend going for 100 yourself? It depends on your situation and the pace you can set. I knew I’d be going for 100 early on because I was in a good place. But if you’re a virgin then don’t make 100 your goal; try to lose your virginity first. Then get three lays. Then ten. Then 30. Then 50. Then 100. Think about where you are and pick a goal which is hard enough to encourage personal growth but not too hard so as to be next to impossible.

And what’s next for me? Set another arbitrary goal of course! For me that means family and kids (the big goal) but I first want to hit 100 Daygame lays (I’m currently on 75 so it shouldn’t take too long to reach that). Why am I going to do that? I just want those things. I don’t fret or worry why that is. I just go for what I want. For me, that’s what an arbitrary goal is: something which you don’t have to do or for which there is no higher power leading you towards, but which you do simply because you want to.

Which brings me onto this point of admin: from now on, there will be no more non-Daygame lay reports written on this blog. None. Zilch. Nada. Nolle. I made a promise to write a lay report for every lay up until 100 from all sources, and from there to only write lay reports for lays from Daygame up to the 100th. From then on: no more lay reports at all.

After a certain point you lose the excitement to write about each individual lay. When I first started Game I would write multi-thousand word lay reports just to share with one friend. I think he stopped reading them after a while because of how large they became but I kept on writing them because I wanted to; it would give me a good feeling to replay the events in my head and then describe them on paper. Nowadays I’m more interested in longer term trends and themes (you’re already over 2000 words into this post after all!).

So without further ado, let’s get into the 2022 H2 collection!

#95

It feels odd writing about this experience given it happened in the middle of last year: in the warm bath of summer compared to the grey will-it-rain-will-it-not in-between weather of mid-winter.

I had just finished a long session with Oscar Wild PUA. We said goodbye at Tottenham Court Road and as I went to go home I got an IOI from a little Estonian. The set was fizzy and it sent my vibe soaring – even though she had a boyfriend and it went nowhere ultimately – and so I decided to see how long I could ride the high for. I didn’t want to stay around central though, it was too hot for that, and so I headed north and walked all the way to and through Regent’s Park.

I didn’t see any sets on the way but the vibe seemed to last, because once I was in the park, and as I went towards Camden, I hit a rich vein of form, taking three numbers from three sets in thirty minutes.

The 2nd of those was a big IOI. Jane was quite short, about five feet I think. A normal face; nothing to write home about. Late 20s. She was very lean though; her body was definitely her leading feature. I caught her looking at me and our eyes tracked each other as we passed. I stopped after a few paces and looked back up the street. She had turned around too. We acknowledged and walked towards each other and the set went very smoothly as you’d expect: get the earlier thing done correctly (the pre-approach) and the next thing is easier (the set). After chatting for a few minutes – a long set for me these days is five minutes and I can tell if a girl likes me and where it will go within the first thirty seconds – I told her I needed to go meet my friends; she had her phone out already.

I normally wait 1.5 – 2 hours to send my feelers (which is fully explained in my texting guide; upsell! upsell!) but half an hour after the set I checked my WhatsApp archive to see she’d messaged me first. Apparently she was glad I’d said “hi” because she had wanted to come and talk to me but had chickened out.

There’s no point playing it cool when a girl is into you like this; just make things happen, now (that’s the 20% I talk about in my texting guide). I wanted to get her out ASAP to capitalise on the interest she’d already shown but I knew that I had a jam packed schedule for the coming weeks and we weren’t able to line up. I suggested that the last alternative was to meet her later that night when she had finished work. She accepted.

As you’d expect, it was the plainest of sailing. We chatted more and I did some light escalation. I didn’t try to kiss her in the pub we went to because the seat configuration made it a little awkward. It would have been possible, of course, but I knew exactly where things were headed and so didn’t need to. Escalation and escalation ladders are simply that: a ramp you use to reach a higher level; if you’ve already agreed to that higher level then there’s no need for the ramp.

Jane had said it could only be a quick drink because she had to get back to hers to feed her dog. Maybe she was seeding the pull on me? It seemed like an easy and smooth way to invite myself back to hers so I asked to meet him and she said yes instantaneously. No LMR. +1.

#96

While I value Wolfe as a wing and as a mate, I don’t think that my liver says the same. He’s always down for a couple of beers and generally so am I, but the thing is that “a couple” doesn’t quite hit the spot. It just feels way too restrained and well-behaved. A couple of rounds, on the other hand, now that does hit the spot, and that’s exactly what Wolf and I set out to do one warm summer evening in my local area.

We started off at a local brewery, taking a couple of pints in our stride, as well as a crafty half pint I recommended we both down at the start to get things going, and chatted about Game and life.

We were on our way to a second pub – Wolfe accurately noted that I was cleverly bouncing him closer to my apartment – when I got an IOI from Jane. Mid-20s. She was similar to Jane from #95 in that her face was fine but her body was her leading asset. In fact, she was just on her way home from sports practice and it showed.

Now, by this point I’d not only had the two and half pints with Wolfe but a few drinks earlier that day on an afternoon date. I definitely wasn’t drunk, but I definitely wasn’t sober either. I was more focused on my next pint but I thought “what the hell, it was a proper IOI, I have to go” and then excused myself from Wolfe for a minute to go and talk to her.

I opened and we got talking but, as with many American girls, they just don’t know how to flirt: it’s supposed to be a cheeky back and forth usually played along some line of roleplay; maybe you’re the professor and she’s the student; or you’re the horny bad boy and she’s the good girl who won’t acquiesce. But Americans… you try to frame yourself above them and it triggers them; they immediately go into logical mode as to why something isn’t true and come across as overly defensive. It’s just flirting! Anyway, we clunked through a few minutes of conversation before I took her number and rejoined Wolfe.

This theme continued over messaging, and is something I bring up in the section on calibration in the texting guide (what? Another upsell? No!). Put simply: with American girls you want to avoid using overt dominance and stick to covert dominance. Read my book if you want to find out more!

It turned out that Jane didn’t drink – a respectable and quite uncommon trait for an American – and so I met her in a cafe for our first date’s first venue. I was working from the perspective that she’d already signalled that she liked me via the IOI and that in running a date as I would on, say, an Eastern European girl, would trigger her. That meant I would totally avoid verbal escalation and focus entirely on getting to know her: where’s she from, what was it like moving to the UK, why doesn’t she drink, what led her to that decision, was it hard to do it, etc. It turned out she was vegan as well – which I guess helped to keep her lean – and so I dove into that too. Get her to talk herself into bed.

We moved from there to a bar where I started to escalate physically and I could see that she started to anticipate something because she began scratching her neck. I kissed her then eased off and thought about whether to try and bounce her home that evening. On one hand, she was from the midwest which is slightly more conservative and she didn’t drink – alcohol lowers inhibitions after all – plus she hadn’t had that hunger in her eyes that signals that a girl shows up to a date anticipating sex. On the other hand, she was American (the number one slut tell).

I decided to try and square the circle by returning her to the station and talking about meeting again, part of which would include a “movie at mine” as a kind of fourth wall attempt to show her I was letting her go today but intended to try and take her home next time. However, as we got around to doing so she got iffy about scheduling another date and so I smiled and said we’d work something out.

I pinged the next day and she replied, but the day after she sent me The Message: she had just broken up with her boyfriend, she thought she was ready, etc, etc. The best thing to do in these circumstances is to say “Okay. No worries.” Don’t treat it like a shit test where you have to get her to “laugh” her way back into wanting to date you. This is the time to show her that it’s water off of a duck’s back and that she can come back to you when she’s ready. Then when she does you’ve already had the first date and so there will be no issues with her sleeping with you, which is exactly what happened.

Two weeks after The Message I sent a photo ping. No response. Another two weeks later I sent the cheesy “still alive?” resurrection ping. She responded. “Right then,” I thought, “this could happen.” Once I’d established our line of communication – a couple of back and forths – I went for the date request and made sure to include going to mine as part of it. She accepted. It was very on.

Somehow Jane had the luck of catching me on another heavy drinking day. I had met up with Kaiser late that afternoon and we did a tour of London’s two-for-one Peroni’s and then to another bar for happy hour cocktails. Once again by the time I met her I wasn’t drunk but wasn’t sober either. We chatted for half an hour and then went back to mine. Didn’t mention the movie. +1.

I wanted to ask one thing afterwards, though: what would she have done if I asked her back on the first date? Jane said she wouldn’t have come home with me that evening (though how much can you trust what a girl says on these matters?). In contrast I’ve had girls before say they would have come back with me on the first date even though I left it to the second (a statement I trust more given how girls will usually want to appear as chaste as possible). I can’t know for sure, but I feel that I made the correct decision and that my gut instinct had been right. I think that if I had tried to pull her home on the first date that she would have put me in the thirsty box and that in being easygoing and in letting her come to me in her own time got me the lay.

#97

It was absolutely lashing down with rain and I was taking cover under the TK Maxx shopfront on Chmielna in Warsaw. As they say, always take the weather with you, and I appeared to have transported at least a little bit of England to Poland because it would quickly shift from torrential rain to glorious sunshine.

A couple of the local Daygamers and I stood under the awning and listened to a local band while we caught up on each other’s lives and goings on. In particular I was interested to hear about the impact of a), the hordes of Daygamers who had descended on the city like a rampaging band of horny Mongols, and b), the Ukrainian refugees.

When it comes to Daygamers flocking to a place: it’s always going to happen, it’s happened before and it will happen again. And yet, no Daygame location has been permanently burned as there are always different areas to go to and a conveyor belt of fresh, unsuspecting locals every year. With that being said, at any one point in time there can be an overload in certain areas with Zlote Tarasy being the big offender in Warsaw. Nowy Swiat isn’t such a great place either, but that’s moreso because the whole street is so visible to itself and so the spotlight effect is huge. But Zlote was for sure the place not to be. I had avoided that mall like the plague throughout my trip and had only used it for toilet breaks or to grab a coffee.

After working hours, and on weekends, you would see the same few guys on the ground floor, standing at their posts, watching intently for any attractive girl to enter. Their sets always looked the same: they would stand quite far away – outside of an arm’s reach that’s for sure – and there would never be any passion. On either side. Whatever “it” is, they didn’t have it. Sometimes they would take a number (most likely an Instagram, I expect) but most of the time the girl would excuse herself. Sometimes I would stand and watch a few minutes of the conversation and it was more than once that the Daygamer turned to catch me peeping. I’d then quickly look up and around, start whistling and twiddling my thumbs, and zoom off to the nearest bathroom. I think I got away with it.

My position on whether a city can be burned or not is that girls don’t even class approaches by uncalibrated Daygamers as in the same bracket as the calibrated ones. It’s like white noise compared to a tuned orchestra. I’m sure that all of the girls I’ve laid from Daygame have been approached before, and they may have even attributed those to Daygame with a capital “D,” but when they get approached to by a guy they like they’ll either turn a blind eye to it or else rationalise it as being something else. “He didn’t sound like the other guys, there’s no way he’s one of those Daygame guys.” That’s why it’s really important, as well, not to read from the “Daygame script” once you’re beyond the beginner stage because she’s likely heard it before and she knows that she’s on your conveyor belt of approaches that day.

When it came to the second point, the refugees, I had heard mixed messages: some guys said that average quality had jumped significantly whereas others complained that the Ukrainian families added a kind of smokescreen which meant you couldn’t see the Polish students anymore. I myself don’t go for many Ukrainian girls: I don’t like the lip filler princess look. But there is one hidden upside: Belarusians. Now, there has always been a fair amount of them living in Warsaw but with the political climate being what it is I could imagine more of the free-spirited, independent, liberal types moving to Warsaw, or at least staying longer in Warsaw than they otherwise would.

The rain had cleared and sunshine broke out again, which I took as my cue to say goodbye and walk off down Chmielna. As I did I copped a little look and a smile from a Belarusian girl with blonde hair and a beautiful face (and a new flag!). An eight in my books. I went over to talk to her and her English was okay – we did half of the conversation using Google Translate – and I moved her over to the side of the road so we could continue talking because a car was trying to force its way down the narrow street.

That’s the “mini-bounce” as Torero used to call it, and it’s something I try to do more and more these days. First, it tests for compliance: she’ll say she needs to go if you do this and she’s not into you. Second, it lets you reset the proximity of the set and get closer to her. Third, it puts you into a much more natural looking place to have a conversation. Let’s face it, you can spot a Daygame set from a mile off, no matter how advanced the guy is, because of how the two of you stand and how unnatural that is. If you move her over to the side of the road then it really can just look like a regular conversation.

I took Jane’s number and she was quite responsive though I held off on sending my date request that evening, even though she seemed to be fishing for one. I’ve just had too many bad experiences where I’ve spoiled a number by going for it on the same day of meeting her. But once I had a response from her the next morning, it was all systems go, and after one apologetic, good faith flake from her we were meeting a few days later.

We met at the most luxurious, high-end, chic establishment in the whole of Warsaw: the Hard Rock Cafe (my AirBNB was on that side of town). She was into me from the start. But that didn’t mean that it was going to be a cake walk. She rejected my first kiss attempt, saying “not on the first date,” but she kept on smiling and I could tell she liked me enough that I just needed to run down the clock, just not on this date. I took Jane for a little walk around the Palace of Culture before kissing her as we said goodbye.

Over the years I’ve come to the conclusion that if a girl doesn’t want to kiss me on my first attempt, that I won’t lay her on the first date. That might come as a surprise but it’s how my dating experience has played out: if a girl comes on a first date anticipating sex then she will at least be thinking about kissing me and will let the kiss happen. She’ll have spent time shaving her legs and God knows what else, picking out sexy underwear and the rest of her outfit, doing her hair, nails and make-up, and so when I move to kiss her she’ll go for it because it’s confirming I’ll give her what I want. Saying all that it doesn’t mean I’ll only try to kiss her once if she rejects it, but I’ll know to ease off and go for the second date if so.

That means that at the end of the day dating, for me, is more like finding out where she stands. I always go for the kiss on the first date because I want to set a certain pace: a first or second date lay. For some girls that’s too fast and it filters them out. Some girls come on the date saying “we can kiss but nothing more” so I find that boundary, stop, and lay the foundations for a second date lay. And then some girls turn up anticipating sex and I’ll drive through to the finish line.

Following the first date we went from nice-reliable-fun texting to sludgey-slow texting, but I was fine with it. Between the first and second date, when she knows what will happen when she comes out again, you have to stay calm and non-reactive. This is just a manifestation of her taking some implicit responsibility for sex because she knows what will happen. Don’t fret, it’s totally natural, and it doesn’t mean she likes you less. She flaked on our first arranged meeting, but again it was in good faith, and eventually met a couple more days later.

Things were relatively straightforward, though I was a little anxious since my time in the city was drawing to a close, but all the signs were there: we’d already kissed and were meeting late(r) on a Friday night. We went for a cocktail and then I walked her to mine. There was the token umm-ing at the door and the obligatory “this is your place?” but that was nothing a little “we’ll only go inside for 15 minutes” and “we’re just going to have a drink” wouldn’t assuage.

About 30 minutes of “LMR” later I had my +1. I put that in quotes because I don’t get LMR anymore in the sense of multi-hour wrestling matches; nowadays it’s more of escalating until she pulls away, at which point I look at her as if nothing changed and we go back to having our drink. A few minutes after that I’d try again and we’d progress.

Afterwards I found out that Jane had broken up with her boyfriend about a month ago. I thought it was ironic that I was the rebound… on a second date, one month later. Many girls would have rebounded a hell of a lot sooner.

#98

I was walking around on a drizzly Monday with Juergen, the “male 8” who I ended up coaching in Warsaw (you can find his review here). We’d met earlier that day for a coffee to get to know each other and for us to ensure that my coaching was suitable for him. Since we got on we decided to go for a short walk afterwards. It was during that walk, when we had momentarily paused in one of the streets just off of the central area, when Jane gave me a short but sharp IOI before racing off back to work. She was mid-twenties with a good face and body and long dark hair. The typical kind of Warsaw seven.

In each of these mini-lay reports I try to touch on a topic and in this one I want to talk about IOI’s. I mentioned all of this in the opening section of this collection, but it’s not hard to imagine that being 6’8”, with long ginger hair – though I wear it in a man-bun – shaved sides, a short and neatly kept beard and being reasonably handsome gets a lot of looks. Add to that my style: leather jacket, printed t-shirt, a very large watch, a couple of rings, a bracelet and a necklace; that garners more attention but doesn’t do so because it looks wacky: this is all part of one coherent style. And lastly, my eyes: I can convey a lot of emotion through my eyes and can be very dominating when I want to be. Plus, they’re blue, and so they stand out from my pale skin and ginger hair. Add all of that up and you will get a lot of girls looking at you.

Just note that a lot of the above factors have been purposely amplified by me to garner more attention. Yes I’m naturally blessed with height, eye colour and the colour of my hair, but the length and style of it along with the clothes that I wear are conscious decisions. I take care of myself as well, of course, and make sure I’m regularly going to the gym – usually five times a week – as well as eating healthily and wearing moisturiser and sun lotion every day. What I’m getting at is that you should ask yourself how you can do the same thing. In which area are you falling down? You might not be able to get as many looks as I do but you can probably get more than you do now. And when I compare myself to Juergen, he was getting more IOI’s than me in the same way that I get way more than the average guy. Just because you’re not getting the most IOI’s in the world doesn’t mean you shouldn’t strive to get more.

Then there’s what I literally do with my eyes, which is to look at girls I find attractive as they walk towards me. It takes two to tango, as it were: you need the girl to look at you and you need to notice her looking at you too. Jabba calls this “The Net:” a kind of soft focus look you have of the people who are coming towards you and if a girl starts to look at you, or you find her attractive, your eyes will be drawn towards hers. That’s one thing I’ve done for a long time: actively look into girls’ eyes as I walk along. In doing so, I spot more looks than the average Daygamer, and it’s something which students regularly point out to me during coaching as I let them know that they might have got an IOI. Then there’s the added benefit that people tend to know when you’re looking at them and so they tend to return your eye contact: “forcing IOI’s.”

This is an interesting and somewhat contentious topic and I think it stems from the actual words “forcing IOI’s” because you can’t force someone to like you. But perhaps when you add in a little theory and a helpful mindset, maybe you can. The theory part goes like this: we look at things we want and like. As you walk down the street and see a hot girl you can’t help but look at her. It gives you a good feeling to do so. So the same should go for a girl, whether consciously or subconsciously, if she glances your way, that it’s because she likes you. This goes way beyond a guy being simply good looking or not: there might be a genetic complementarity between the two of you that she instinctively likes. Maybe you dress in the same way as her favourite singer. Maybe you remind her of her dad. You never know, but there are many, non-obvious reasons why a girl might like you. You don’t have to be classically good looking to get IOI’s.

Okay, she’s glanced at you: it’s even better if she does a double take or gives you a sustained look because that lets you know that she really does like you. But how do we know if she didn’t just glance at you because you were in her way? Or that you looked different to everyone else? Was it a chance look or did it mean something more? This is where the mindset comes in: if I’m affecting a girl’s behaviour in any way it’s because she likes me. Now, this may or may not be true, but it’s certainly a beneficial one to have. Just imagine how much better you’ll do with her if you go into the set thinking “she already likes me.”

IOI’s are a big topic in Jabba’s book Primal Seduction and you can read my review of it here (link). Now back to the lay report.

I went after Jane and got in front of her – she was walking quite fast – but she was quite determined and started to veer off to go past me on my right. “No, I’m not letting you go until I’ve talked to you,” I thought – there was the improved conviction from the IOI – and so I stepped backwards and to the right as if I was a knight in a game of Chess, smiling warmly to let her know that I wasn’t a threat. That let her momentum slow down enough that she stopped.

It was a super short set but I left with her number… and a banana of all things. She had two of them in her pocket and she had given me one after I’d pointed out how it was funny that they were sitting there, very healthily, while she simultaneously smoked a cigarette. I let her go off to work but within an hour she’d messaged me first, and we set up a date for the next day. She couldn’t make that one but flaked in good time – a good faith flake – and we easily rescheduled for the following day.

The date went smoothly. We went to a pub and had our first drink. She hadn’t eaten anything and so ordered a portion of chips for herself. On all the dates I’ve been on where the girl has ordered food, I’ve always gone on to have sex with her. That’s because she’ll order them apologetically and eat them really quickly because she knows it’s somewhat against the seduction to do so; these aren’t the kind of “let’s tool him for food” situation. If you’re the kind of guy where you seem to get tooled for food quite regularly then you need to ask yourself whether you’re manly enough and are presenting yourself as the kind of guy who doesn’t take shit.

She said she liked to drink beer and so we went to a craft beer place afterwards. It wasn’t your typical seductive second venue but I could feel that the evening was heading towards sex and so had no need to shoehorn it. I liked beer and so did she: it was a natural next move. I kissed her outside as she smoked a cigarette and then I escalated a bit more inside, before walking her back to mine where there was a bit of LMR – the standard pauses to pull back and see how I’d react – before I got the +1.

#99

I was out for a lunchtime session on Marszałkowska and was just about to turn back towards Chmielna when Jane gave me a strong IOI. Early twenties with long blonde hair and a good body, Jane was around a high seven. I went over to investigate but very quickly found out that her English was not very good. “I’m not going to give up this easily,” I thought to myself, buoyed on by the IOI, and so I took pains to speak extremely slowly and in an almost comically Tarzan-esque manner, supplementing it with some Google Translate where needed. Nonetheless, Jane was apprehensive to agree to go on a date “another time” and I was starting to tire of the baby talk. I was about to leave when she suddenly spurted out, “do you have Instagram?!” I thought, “what the hell,” and exchanged it with her.

I left the set thinking to myself that I would consider this like a free hit. Message her, see how she reacts, and if she’s open to it, she’ll come out. That’s not the typical mindset I have once I take a number: I’m usually thinking about sending my feeler and then getting my date request out there the next day, and which days would be best to schedule the date for. But with Jane I was in more of a take it or leave it state of mind.

About an hour later I saw that Jane had requested to follow me on Instagram, that was a good sign, and she proceeded to like a bunch of my pictures: another good one. I sent my feeler and she replied. Okay, this might happen, I thought. We went on to message each day for the rest of the week with me giving a lot of comfort and assuaging her fears over the language barrier while throwing in innuendos to keep the conversation spicy. It seemed that Jane wanted to meet and was really into me but only needed to be coaxed out. This wasn’t the time to be cocky and flippant, it was the time to be genuinely warm and to show her that she wouldn’t feel embarrassed by her level of English while around me. That’s the difference between trying to draw blood from a stone and someone who wants to do the thing you’re suggesting but is a bit nervous. In the latter case you can feel that the dial is ever so slowly turning in your favour.

We met and went for a cocktail and even though she had come straight from work I could see the effort she had put into her make-up. She was into me straight away and I just needed to let her feel relaxed in my presence; I kept the conversation purposefully simple to begin with before moving it onto more sexual topics. We ended up talking about the films we liked and it seemed like the most natural thing to then say we go and watch one at mine. She said she was unsure but agreed when I again set her nerves at ease and added “let’s watch 15 minutes and see how you feel.” In these circumstances you have to get her home in baby steps.

We got back to my apartment and I patiently got her over her nervousness. She was just an anxious person and was concerned about what people thought about her in any situation. Though just like the messaging, I could feel the dial moving my way, and so I knew that I only had to patiently keep on moving forwards while letting her know I wasn’t judging her and let her take her time to warm to the situation. +1.

#100 (DG #75)

I was back in London and was idling around Covent Garden, waiting for my wing to finish a set. He was chatting away next to the Apple store and I had posted up nearby on one of those huge columns, intermittently checking his set to see when he would rejoin me and looking at my phone. It was then that I got a little tap on my arm and an “excuse me.” I looked down to see a mid-thirties woman. “She probably wants directions,” I thought to myself.

“Hi,” she began, “I wanted to tell you that my friend thinks you have lovely hair.”

Oh! Well, I guess it wasn’t for directions then. I looked over at her friend and she actually looked pretty good. This was a nice surprise. By this point my wing had finished his set and he had come back over, and so now it was me, my wing and the friend standing there, in Covent Garden, as I tried to wave the one who had complimented me over so I could talk to her. It did feel a little odd. Understandably, Jane was a bit bashful, and was so nervous that she tried to leave the conversation twice, but I sure as hell wasn’t letting her leave without getting her number. Jane was in her early thirties and had taken care of herself. She would have been really cute ten years earlier but by now was “merely” cute. I asked for her number and we sent the two on their way.

I opened the texting with a photo ping and said “I bet your night isn’t going as good as mine” and she replied with a barrage of her own photos, showing me what she had been up to that evening with her friend. It was pretty easy to set up a date, but here’s where we ran into a small snag: she thought we had agreed to meet at 7pm whereas I had written 8pm… She had dutifully arrived for the earlier time and when I didn’t turn up for 30 minutes she thought I had stood her up. Luckily she realised her error and so when I did eventually arrive, she burst out laughing, realising how silly she’d been, and showing how she must have been on her own emotional rollercoaster inside the past hour.

We sat down inside a pub and she ordered some food; again getting something small and eating it very quickly and apologetically. I kissed her pretty easily – once she’d finished eating of course – before bouncing her to a bar where I gave more physical comfort. I suggested grabbing a bottle of wine and having a drink at mine and she gave me an intense stare, checking for any sign that I would back down. I didn’t. We went to mine. Standard little-pauses LMR. +1.

And that was it. Lifetime lay #100. You can read all of my thoughts on that in the first section of this behemoth. From now on the lays will be denoted by which Daygame lay number it is (this one is #75).

Yours unfaithfully,

Thomas Crown

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