I'm Having More Fun Than You (5 page)

Identifying one woman and then focusing all my efforts on her is obviously not the most successful strategy. That’s why I’ve always been impressed with my high school buddy Matt, who’s consistently been able to hook up with girls who are—to be honest—much higher rated than he is. I think this is due to several factors: he’s a smart, funny dude, he has no shame, and upon getting to the bar he goes right for the girls without wasting any time hanging out with his buddies. At the end of the day, though, Matt’s secret weapon is that he plays a different kind of numbers game: hitting on as many chicks as humanly possible during the night, in the hope that the law of averages will produce at least one score. Essentially, he engages in a kind of modified speed dating, except he’s the only guy and “dating” is the least of his objectives. I admire his moxie. But I could never duplicate his success. It requires too much effort, too much rejection, and the ability to juggle multiple pseudonyms and fake careers.

Personally, I’ve found that being completely candid works best in the hook-up game. I’ll tell a girl, “Listen, I’m not really from Quebec. In fact, I couldn’t even point it out on a map.” Women seem to appreciate honesty (short of admitting that I’ve been utilizing a series of exceedingly complicated rating systems to codify their hotness). They don’t appreciate rudeness or pick-up lines. But despite knowing all this, I’m sure the next time I spot an LA eight I’ll regress to the tried-and-true “Wanna go upstairs?” And if she responds, “We’re already upstairs,” I’ll know it’s time to stop drinking.

THE TEXT BEST THING

There is no doubt that the proliferation of text messaging has made the world a better place. And by “the world” I mean “my world.” And by “better” I mean “enhanced my ability to hit on chicks without the risk of face-to-face rejection.” In fact, I believe text messaging has already made the booty call completely obsolete, joining the ranks of buying flowers, going out to dinner, writing letters, and engaging in actual conversation as artifacts in the annals of hook-up history.

The first arena in which text messaging aids a bachelor on the prowl is the process of “laying groundwork.” One of the things I’ve learned is that most women don’t actually mind one-night stands;
they just don’t want it to feel like one.
Laying groundwork simply means initiating contact with a girl via text message approximately one week before contact is likely to take place (for instance, an upcoming party you’re both invited to). This weakens the girl’s defenses by extending flirtation over a longer time period and making it seem like I’m not just hitting on her out of the blue when we see each other. Groundwork is, in essence, the opposite of a booty call. While a booty call is spontaneous—a shot in the dark fueled by alcohol—groundwork is premeditated and therefore twice as devious and effective.

The death of booty calls has also signaled the birth of booty texting—which is really a completely different animal. Instead of calling girls individually, and most of the time accomplishing nothing more than leaving a slurred voicemail at 2 a.m., now I merely send ten girls a mass text message that just says: “Hey.” Most women are aware that if they receive a text message from a guy at 2 a.m. that just says, “Hey,” they can safely interpret that to mean, “Wanna fuck?” Of the ten texts I send out, let’s say I get four responses back, two are promising, and one girl I take home. There’s no way I could achieve that kind of return by actually talking to or calling girls individually. We are truly living in a golden age.

The tricks don’t end there. If I’m texting with a girl, and I somehow cross the line, I can always get out of it. If I write, “u wanna come over?” and she replies, “no way asshole,” all I have to do is write back: “so sorry, my buddy stole my phone. he was messing around, i didn’t write that.” I’m telling you, I do it all the time. Texting with a girl is like those old Choose Your Own Adventure books—if you don’t like where the story is going, you can always back up and opt for a different path.

If you really want to get sophisticated, here’s a method I use to disguise my booty texting. I’ll write a message that doesn’t really make any sense (such as: “can u pick up some eggs and milk?”) and then send it to the girl I’m targeting. She’ll read it and respond: “did u mean to send this to me?” And then I’ll write back: “oh no, wrong person! so…what are u up to tonight?”
Bam!
I’m in and she doesn’t even know what the fuck just happened!

Another text technique I utilize is called “plausible deniability.” Basically, if I get really drunk and start texting every girl in my phone, but I don’t expect anything to pan out, I’ll delete my own outgoing text log just before blacking out for the night. That way, the next day when a girl is like, “Karo, did you fucking text me at six in the morning?” I can say, “Honestly, I have no idea.”

As with any powerful tool, text messaging has its shortfalls. For instance, there’s the dreaded scenario when a girl texts me: “i’m with my bf” and I have no idea if she means “best friend” or “boyfriend.” And when a random text pops up on my phone from a number I don’t recognize, I immediately Google the area code to determine where in the country the texter resides. This knowledge allows me to not simply delete the message, but instead delete the message while exclaiming, “Who the fuck is texting me from [insert city]?”

In my last book,
Ruminations on Twentysomething Life,
I wrote that if a guy leaves a voicemail for a chick, and she emails him back, that’s a pretty bad sign. But if a guy leaves a voicemail for a chick and she
texts
him back, that’s even worse. Because that means she had her phone in her hand, and instead of hitting one button to call you back, she hit fifty buttons to text you instead. That’s how much she didn’t want to talk to you.

Texting is a valuable part of the single guy’s arsenal, but sometimes we forget to text in moderation. Recently I found myself lying in bed on a Saturday, nursing a hangover, and texting with a girl to try to get her to come out that night. When the conversation was over, I looked at the clock, saw it was 11:49 a.m., and realized I had set a new personal record: hitting on a chick before noon.

E-GAME

Technology has enabled today’s bachelor to minimize the number of physical touchpoints involved between meeting a girl and getting her in the sack. We may be introduced on Facebook and then transfer the conversation to email, before finally making plans via text. Or we may discover each other on Twitter and begin emailing, before meeting up via BlackBerry Messenger. Whatever the scenario, electronic game (or “e-game”) is rapidly becoming the most important skill single dudes can possess.

The granddaddy of modern technology—email—is still the cornerstone of all e-game. The first email method I use is called the “solo BCC.” Essentially, I write what
looks
like a mass email (for instance, a query if anyone is looking for a roommate), but then only BCC one person—the girl I’m targeting. If I craft the message properly, I can get her to respond—thereby initiating the conversation—without seeming like I was purposely hitting on her.

Once email rapport has begun, I’m careful never to send two messages in a row without her replying first—that reeks of desperation. If the dialogue doesn’t seem to be going anywhere, or if it’s getting late, I always make sure she sends the final email. That way she’s left wondering what happened until I pick up the exchange the following day. She might even send two emails in a row, thus giving me even more of an upper hand.

One of the pitfalls of emailing (and texting) is that it is difficult to discern nuance in the other person’s messages. Sometimes I’ll be emailing with a girl and the conversation is flirtatious yet also a little adversarial, and so I start to think that there’s a lot of sexual tension between the two of us and that, quite possibly, the next time we see each other, all that tension is going to bubble over and we’re just gonna fuck like animals. But it usually turns out that it was all in my head and she was being kind of snippy not to be flirty, but because she actually genuinely dislikes me.

Email has also gotten me into trouble. Like many guys, I have a lot of nicknames for women in my cell phone—either girls whose names I don’t know, or those whom I felt I would remember better if they were given a descriptive moniker. Some of the nicknames are benign. Others are, you might say, unflattering (e.g., Sergeant Sloppy Tits). Then, several years ago, I got my first BlackBerry. I began emailing away, but soon realized that the girls I was hitting on were either not responding or getting really pissed off. And that’s when I realized that when I set up the BlackBerry, it had automatically integrated my cell phone address book with my email address book. So I had been emailing all these girls and their
nicknames were showing up.
Fuck me.

Some girls use instant messaging as their preferred mode of online communication. I rarely use IM because I can’t stand to sit there waiting for a response, and most people type (or think) too slow. Plus, I’ve always hated those cliché sitcom moments when a character is about to drop a bombshell, but just before he does, the other character drops a bigger bombshell of her own and then says, “So, what were you going to say?” Cue awkward, contrived pause and canned laughter. That very situation happens almost every day on instant messenger. Sometimes I’ll type a message and am about to hit Send when the other person writes something crazy that makes my unsent response obsolete. I then carefully delete what I was about to send and slowly back away from the computer.