The Game

I was exhausted from months of travel and constant pickups, but I wasn’t going to pass up the challenge.
    Heidi spun around and approached three girls who were sitting on the patio smoking. The battle had begun.
    I opened a nearby three-set—two men and a lady who looked like an anchorwoman in search of a camera—with the cologne opener. Afterward, I asked the usual fact-finding question: “How do you all know each other?” Unfortunately, she was married to one of the guys in the set.
    Just as I was about to eject, Heidi marched in.
    “So,” she asked my former target. “How do you know Style?”
    “We just met him,” she said.
    “You looked like old friends,” Heidi told her with an obsequious smile. Then she turned to me and whispered, “They’re boring. Let’s move on.”
    As we left, I asked how her three-set had gone.
    “The girls were all twenty,” she said. “I could have turned them out in a half hour.” Evidently, pickup to Heidi Fleiss meant recruiting girls as escorts.
    Minutes later, she was in another group. I had to give her credit: She had no fear of approaching. I decided it was time to humble her with the awesome power of my newfound game.
    She was kneeling on the ground in front of two women with gold glitter lightly dusting their cheeks, talking about local restaurants. I walked in with a new opinion opener I had made up about a friend whose new girlfriend won’t let him talk to his ex-girlfriend from college.
    “Is she being fair?” I asked. “Or is she being too possessive?”
    The point was to get the glitter girls talking amongst themselves, but Heidi blurted, “The guy should just fuck both girls. I mean, I always put out on the first night.”
    The line must have been part of her routine; it was the second time I’d heard her say it. I also noticed that she always kneeled on the ground after approaching, so as not to intimidate the girls. I was glad Grimble had called: Heidi Fleiss was one of us.
    In recent weeks, I’d figured out my own routine. It was a simple structure that allowed me to determine the direction in which I needed to take a girl: First, open. Then demonstrate higher value. Next, build rapport and an emotional connection. And, finally, create a physical connection.
    So now that I’d opened the set, it was time to demonstrate value and blow Heidi out. I ran a piece I’d invented after meeting the fake sisters in Miami—the best friends test.
    “I have to ask you guys: How long have you known each other?” I began.
    “About six years,” one of the girls said.
    “I could totally tell.”
    “How?”
    “Rather than explain, I’ll give you two the best friends test.”
    The girls leaned in toward me, thrilled by the idea of an innocous test. Guys in the community have an expression for this phenomenon: I was giving them “chick crack.” Most women, they say, respond to routines involving tests, psychological games, fortune-telling, and cold-reading like addicts respond to free drugs.
    “Okay,” I said, as if I were about to ask a serious question. The girls huddled in closer. “Do you both use the same shampoo?”
    They looked at each other to decide on an answer, then turned to me and opened their mouths to speak.
    “The answer doesn’t matter,” I cut them off. “You already passed.”
    “But we don’t use the same shampoo,” one of the girls said.
    “But you both looked at each other before you answered. See, if you didn’t know each other well, you’d keep eye contact with me. But when two people have a connection, they look at each other first and communicate almost telepathically before answering. They don’t even need to speak to each other.”
    The two girls looked at each other again.
    “See,” I exclaimed. “You’re doing it right now.”
    They burst out laughing. Big points for Style.
    As the girls started telling me how they’d met on the plane the day they’d moved to Los Angeles and been inseparable ever since, I looked atHeidi Fleiss kneeling there uselessly. The girls seemed to have completely forgotten about her.
    But Heidi was no quitter. “So,” she announced loudly, “are any of you girls gonna fuck him?”
    Ouch.
    In one sentence, she had humiliated me. Of course none of the girls wanted to fuck me—not yet. I hadn’t even made it halfway through my sequence, and even if I had, the comment still would have blown me out. “Hey, I’m not that easy,” I responded, recovering a little too late.