Opening

Yesterday on my way home, the bus I was riding on came to a stop with lots of young people – in particular, lots of young college age-looking women. My interest, needless to say, was piqued. As I sat in my seat, I watched everyone board the bus out of the corner of my eye… and then, I caught sight of a cute girl dressed very fashionably coming down the aisle. Ooh.

Now, when you’re already settled in somewhere, there aren’t a whole lot of ways you can get a woman to join you proactively. You might call out to her, of course – but this is chasing pretty hard and can hurt your chances, and you’ve probably got to be feeling rather bold to do it. If you are, and you want to try it, go for it; I wasn’t yesterday, but I still wanted that cute girl to take a seat next to me.

So I pulled out my trusty ol’ come hither eyes.

“Consistency” has long been a focus of mine – I tend to be a very busy person with a lot going on, and I want to make things as consistent as possible, to operate as efficiently as possible. Nothing bugs me more than wasting a lot of time on something – including getting girls.

So one of the things I’ve looked for is this: what are the most consistent places to meet women and take them home from?

Nightclubs are good. Lounges are better. But there’s one avenue of meeting women I’ve found that’s more consistent and reliable than anything else:

Something I like prescribing for newer guys as a very low-pressure but high-impact and really quite easy opener is something I’ve begun referring to as “Indirect Direct”, for lack of a better term.

Your run of the mill, general indirect opening – or, engaging a woman in conversation under pretenses other than that you’re interested in her – is a common choice among men. It feels less scary and less like the man is putting himself on the line.

It’s also far less effective than your run of the mill, general direct opening.

Women respond best to men who state – either explicitly or implicitly – their interest. Men using indirect do not do this. And, while they may not realize that women realize what they’re doing, unless a girl is completely clueless, chances are she probably does. And the man looks less for having masked his interest. He looks scared.

Talking today with an acquaintance of mine, we got to commenting on a couple we both knew and how they’d recently gotten together. The girl is a prim, proper girl who is more concerned with clothes and makeup than anything else, and the guy is a little bit of a rough-and-tumble cat from a poorer part of the world – but he’s pretty cocky and self-assured. My acquaintance was surprised the two of them ended up a pair; I wasn’t. “The bad girl got the bad boy,” I said, and he laughed and said that was a good way of putting it.

Maybe my mind was already working that way because of an article I read earlier today on Slate Magazine, called “Freaks, Geeks, and Economists: A study confirms every suspicion you ever had about high-school dating.” The article discusses a study in which, among other things, the term assertive mating is mentioned. Slate defines assortative mating as the tendency of individuals to select for mates similar to themselves; I did a quick look-up on Wikipedia to confirm. The tendency of individuals to select similar mates is known as positive assortative mating; individuals who select for dissimilar traits are referred to as practicing negative assortative mating.

Yesterday, I got into an elevator where I found a really cute girl with an electric scooter. Most people just park their scooters downstairs, so I found it odd she’d brought hers with her. “You’re bringing it with you!” I commented. She giggled pretty hard.

“Why didn’t you leave your scooter downstairs,” I asked. “Afraid someone will take it?”

She laughed again, but seemed not to understand. One of the problems of living in a foreign country is that sometimes people just don’t have any idea what you’re talking about. I decided to try again. “Your scooter,” I said, pointing to it. “Why are you taking it upstairs?” Again, she just giggled and shook her head.

“Are you scared someone will take it? Steal it?” I pressed, trying to be as simple as possible. She still didn’t understand, and we reached her floor and she said “bye bye” and waved and got off.

I don’t know how useful this is as a technique we can discuss here, inasmuch as I don’t know that it’s something you can be taught so much as something you just pick up or develop. But I figured it was worth writing a little about regardless.

I do a little something I call quick reading. Pretty much every guy I know who’s done his fair share of meeting and dating and getting intimate with women does this, and it’s quite different from what you’ll see less experienced guys doing.

What a quick read is is when you very rapidly assess whether a girl is the kind of girl you’d go for.

It’s an extremely useful technique – or maybe habit – that helps a man in two ways:

• Helps him to save time by quickly moving on from women he doesn’t like
• Helps him to end up with women he does like

After a long break from facial hair, I decided last fall to begin sporting some again. I hadn’t had any since I’d shaved off my moustache and goatee back in 2004. This time though, at the end of 2009, I grew a chinstrap and a soul patch. And I noticed an immediate changed in the level of attraction I got from women.

Asian girls from Asia, I noticed, apparently had preferred me clean-shaven, and their attraction for me went down a bit once I began sporting facial hair. But white girls, on the other hand – whoa. Dramatic increase in attraction there. My approach toward them hadn’t changed. My style hadn’t changed. My voice hadn’t changed. But the level of attraction I got from them after growing a little facial hair – that changed over night.