Since a major part of attracting mates is standing out from the competition, I dressed in a style both flamboyant and outsized, a la VH1's Mystery: gold lamé pants, a suggestive belt buckle, a water bra, an enormous hat, lots of eye makeup, and gold glitter spangled across my lingerie-enhanced cleavage. I geared up to go "sarging" by listening to R. Kelly. It seemed appropriate.
Dressed as though auditioning for the slut-cowboy ballet, I was ready to impress folks with my confidence, suavity, and several routines lifted verbatim from my research materials including, uh, magic tricks. But to take the experiment to the fullest, I couldn't just strap on a silly costume, hit on some folks, and call it a night. No, I'd have to live it — a prospect infinitely scarier than, say, wearing a vibrator out in public for an evening. I'd seriously attempt to become someone else — someone able to initiate conversations with strangers without spazzing, able to bang strangers without worry or compunction. It was time to live the game. I went to the grocery store wearing my finest peacocking frippery, where I attempted to chat up ladies with magic tricks and mangoes. The ideal exchange might go something like this: CASHMONEY: I couldn't help but notice — do you knit?
HL: Agreed! Forthwith! Spoiler alert: it did not go anything like this. Observations/Results: Regardless, the peacocking definitely got people's attention. I went to a party in a museum and caught a dude taking my picture. After I'd engaged him with a few choice openers related to banjos, burritos, and the life of a professional loom operator (my personality of choice that evening), dude proceeded to get embarrassingly drunk very quickly. Suddenly he was smelling my hair, trying to draw on me with a Crayola marker, sloppily putting me in headlock-like hugs, and trying to feel my boobs. None of my source materials touched on what to do when you have worked game only to realize that you can't imagine sharing another drink with your target, let alone the rest of your evening (or ten sweaty minutes). How do I get out of this? WWMD? I commented on his wandering hands with a "neg" line lifted straight from the manuals: "Have you always been so grabby?" It's supposed to make your target want you more, but he looked incredibly hurt, mumbled something and scuttled away. I may not like the neg concept, but at that moment I was grateful for it. Other encounters were equally dodgy. At one bar, a woman I was flirting with believed me when I told her I played hopscotch for a living, thought it was cool, seemed charmed, and my brain couldn't keep up with the lies. I started confessing real things about myself, total non sequiturs about Oklahoma and how New York doesn't have decent avocados. I broke the rules and told her my thoughts on the banjo. I was atoning with verbal spillage, which couldn't have been attractive. She walked away. I also told a woman she had man hands. This was not improvisation, but nearly word-for-word from my reference manuals, a way of making your target feel self-conscious. (Thus breaking down her "bitch shield.") I'd done a variation of the aforementioned mango routine, but with liquor. I was caressing her palm when I said, "You kinda have man hands. It looks like you work with your hands a lot, like... a longshoreman?" To say she wasn't feeling my game would be an understatement. It's a good thing I didn't ask if her boobs were fake. After several weekends of ill-fated, forced interactions, I also became hyper-aware of the strategies others employed to try to bed me. One night I was approached by a freakishly confident, mustachioed wingman with a pattern on his shirt that looked exactly like sperm. He touched my arm and told me I had to meet his friend. "And if I don't want to?" I asked. "Oh, you do." Fine, player. It was on.
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