The Game

was on hold with the cab company, and she started getting all frustrated because she had to wait, which was annoying. So I got ready to leave.
    I chatted with her a bit more. She said she noticed in the club that I had lots of energy. She liked it.
WIDEFACE: What are you going to do now? ( It was 3:30 A.M .)
    EXTRAMASK: I’m going to another club to hook up with my friends. ( I got even more energetic. I jumped around. )
    She totally didn’t like that I said I was going out again. And I really wasn’t. I just lied to her. I did it because I was pissed that she was trying to get rid of me so quickly. Overall, I wanted to leave her place immediately—I just wanted to leave on my terms.
    So the cab arrived and I left her place. We kissed about three times before my exit.
    I didn’t get her number because:
    1. I didn’t want to fuck her again.

    2. It was obvious this was a one-night stand.

    Just to be on the safe side, I made sure I wrote down her exact address when I left—just in case I forgot shit there. I would rather have it than not have it.
    So that’s it. I stuck my junk in a chick. I lost my virginity. The sex was horrible. I felt a bit dirty and used after the act.
    Overall, I don’t feel any different compared to when I was a virgin. However, I believe this will help me subconsciously in my sarges. I mean, I’ve had sex now. I know this. So from here on in, any girl I chat with, I’ll be even more like, “Who gives a fuck? I don’t need what you got.”

    —Extramask

How do you kiss a girl?
    The distance between you and her is just three inches. It’s not a long stretch, by any standard. You barely even have to move your body to bridge the gap. Yet it is the most difficult three inches a man has to move in his life. It is the moment when the male must concede all the privileges that are his birthright; put his pride, ego, esteem, and hard work aside; and just hopehope that she doesn’t deflect it with her cheek or, even worse, the let’s-just-be-friends speech.
    As I went out every night training to wing Mystery’s workshop, I soon developed a routine that worked—at least to a point. Rejection wasn’t an option. I knew how to open a group, respond to most contingencies, and leave with a phone number and a plan to meet again.
    Every time I went home, I reviewed the events of the night, looking for parts of a sarge that I could have done better. If the approach didn’t work, I thought of ways to improve it—angles of advance, backturns, takeaways, time constraints. If I didn’t get the phone number, I didn’t blame it on the girl for being cold or bitchy, as so many other sargers did. I blamed myself and analyzed every word, gesture, and reaction until I pinpointed a tactical error.
    I had read in a book called Introducing NLP that there is no such thing as failure, only learning lessons. I wanted the learning lessons to take place in my head, so that in the field I was flawless. I would have to prove myself to Mystery’s students, just as Sin had proven himself to me. And one public failure would discredit everything. The students would post reviews saying that Style was an imposter, a joke.
    But there was still one problem I couldn’t work through. Though an opener, a neg, and a demonstration of higher value were enough to get anyone’s phone number, I had no idea what to do next. No one had taught me.
    I mean, I technically knew the words of the Mystery kiss-close: “Would you like to kiss me?” But I was too petrified to actually speak them. After spending so much time bonding with a girl (whether for a half hour in aclub or several hours at our next meeting), I was too scared to break the rapport and trust I had built. Unless she gave me a clear indication that she was sexually interested in me, I felt like trying to kiss her would disappoint her and she’d think I was just like all the other guys.
    It was such stupid AFC thinking. There was still a nice guy lurking in my head that I had to get rid of. But, unfortunately, there wasn’t going to be time to do so before Belgrade.

I’d learned several sleights of hand, a principle of magic called equivoque, the fundamentals of rune reading, and a way to make lit cigarettes disappear. It had been the most productive plane trip of my life. And now Mystery and I were in Belgrade at probably the worst time of the year. Ice and slush lay heavy on the street as Marko drove us to his apartment in a silver 1987 Mercedes that had a