It’s funny how themes often come out of the same weeks. ‘Game is hard’ has cropped up on my radar several times this last few weeks. So I am going to deliver a pep talk, not too dissimilar from my last post.
After I have rambled on for a few paragraphs about nothing in particular.
I still have some infields from this summer to edit and post. I’ll get round to it. I am pretty busy with all these side projects. I have four books I am writing, two I am reading, TEN songs I am writing and recording (check out my latest here), also Krauser is putting together an album of game themed songs for his Black Book product and we’ve discussed collaborating on a few ditties there. What else? Books, blog, music, work, oh… that other thing I am involved in… not illegal but… weird.. that’s something I hope I can reveal soon.
Oh remote coaching. People seem to have taken to mailing me their infield videos and asking me to evaluate them. Now I do this for guys I have coached, I do it all the time, but somehow random people have started asking for it too. I can only presume someone mentioned it somewhere and word got out. Now they just email me and say ‘what do you think of this set’.
Surprising how many people email me with random game questions too. ‘Jimmy, how often should I swear in set?’ I am serious. I think people see the free coaching and think, ‘well this guy’s approachable so I’ll ask him that one weird question I have that he might know the answer to, but I don’t actually want to have to pay anyone to answer’.
It’s all good though, banter aside. I like to answer them and chat to people. You never know if anyone is actually deserving of a helping hand but, let’s say every third person is… and I suppose it keeps me in ideas to blog about.
Which is partly where this post has come from. I’d written most of it in an email so I may as well maximise my labour. My helping someone out has given me something to write about which keeps my readership of 3.5 happy. So here goes, paraphrasing:
‘Dear Jimmy, I have been doing day game on and off or a year now. I am happy with my quality but I get a lot of rejection. I have done 100 plus sets and only got 2 lays and a few dates’.
Right. Game is generally a lot of graft and hard work. There’s not much glamour in the moment. There’s only glamour when you look back over 12 months. Day to day, it’s just a load of graft. Even the top guys have their tough days. Hell, even the BEST have tough days. I was actually thinking about this as I read Bodi’s book. He talks about when he first came on the boot-camp and assumed we were getting laid constantly all the time of super hot girls. Well… we were to a degree but it depends what you mean by ‘constantly’. On a week by week basis, not a lot happened. It was the year by year that brought the glories, the models, the TV personalities, aspiring models, established models, pitch perfect sets, hard won sets, great stories of wing technique, the threesomes and close calls. It was a constant drip-drip of activity.
I remember one time in Zagreb I was dating two really hot young girls, both 21, and I had two other really hot young girls in their early 20s orbiting me too. Genuinely orbiting me. I spent two weeks getting laid at least once a day, sometimes twice and the only thing that stopped me getting the other two notches was that I simply didn’t have enough hours in a day to service everyone effectively.
It was definitely one of my high points. But that came after four weeks of approaches. Between say five and ten a day, some days off, 30 approaches a week. And multiple days would go by where I got nothing. Or flakes, or dates with girls who were just boring or weird or feminist or complaining or not that hot at second glance. Too young, too old, too loud. Blah blah.
The ‘no’ days are the ones that can grind you down. I mean, I love chasing skirt and I even love the no days, sure they’re a bit long winded and frustrating but as long as I am in field I am happy. There’s nothing like that delicious moment when your feet move. And those moments in set where you see the tumblers clicking into place. Or she says something out of place, so miniscule that most people would ignore it, but you know she wants to open up about something.
I love it when they give you the stack. You’re one minute in and looking to stack and bang, she gives it to you on plate.
‘I’m from St. Louis, do you know it? Most people think it’s a really horrible place ha ha ha’.
But this is the thing. This is the point about Bhodi’s book I would like to make, or one of them.
It doesn’t matter how many ‘no’ days you get, as long as you’re getting a couple of ‘yes’ days* in there with them. It’s the ‘yes’ days that count and only the ‘yes’ days that count. They are the ones that pull you a new girlfriend in. That new girlfriend fills your dance card for months and months. Over time you slowly add experiences and suddenly realise you have several amazing girls on the go and the ‘no’ days don’t matter so much any more.
I look back right now. I can only remember one blow out clearly. All the others just got sent to the recycle bin in my brain and deleted.
Several hot girlfriends might be three months work, that may well be 20 ‘no’ days and only 5 ‘yes’ days. But what does it matter when you wake up after three months and realise you have seven hot girlfriends? You can only handle so many anyway. As I said, I just about balanced two girlfriends when I was in Zagreb.
Some you close quick and some you close long, some you date for a day, some for a year. An amazing girl you met in April, you might close in September. That’s five months, sure. But you’re fine because you have the girl you met back from January on the go in the meantime. So what’s the rush?
So what I did over my decade was accept there’ll be ups and downs and play the numbers. Don’t let it fuck with you too much. It will come over time. If it came for Bodi, believe me, it can come for everyone.
I’ll tell you something else. Right now, it’s dark, cold and boring here in this little room in Gloucester. But rewind just three months and there I am, somewhere in history, standing in the blazing sunshine on Jelly Square Zagreb, Me, Irish, Rapid and Yohan. Those boys were hitting up sets at will. We were having the time of our lives. It was like the old days. I’d be in the cafe watching Irish in one set, then he’d disappear on an instant date, then Yohan would turn up
‘I’m getting nothing but you should have seen this last chick, she was smoking, but her boyfriend showed up’.
At that moment we’d see a leggy blonde walk past the cafe and then a second later we’d see Rapid zip past us after her. We’d watch him. He’d get her number. He’d turn and see us and give us a smile and the thumbs up.
‘I’m going back out there’, Yohan would say and set off with renewed intent.
Rapid enters the cafe. ‘That went better than the last few. I think there’s potential today, where’s Irish?’
‘He’s on an instant date, he texted he’ll meet us on Tkalceva in an hour, she was hot’.
And so on. Now that’s living. That’s how you spend the afternoons. Chasing skirt with the boys. That’s fucking cool.
I can’t remember which one of the gang it was, who said something like:
‘I used to think players were suave and suited lounge lizard types who go to expensive bars in fine clothes. Like the cartoon on the Neil Strauss book. They’d be slick and sophisticated. But they’re not. They’re the opposite. They’re the guys who rent cheap rooms in high traffic locations, fly Ryanair and hit the streets day in day out. The sit at home knackered in their underpants Facebooking with targets. They troll dating sites in their dry spells and their cupboards are always bare because they live and eat on the street. They have dedicated so much of their time to skirt that they often don’t have serious careers so they wouldn’t ever spend money on clothes cars and watches. They’re cheap, charming and persistent’.
*The point of his book wasn’t lost on me. He wasn’t getting any ‘yes’ days either. I get that, but my overall point still stands.