I need a new hobby

Thank God I’ve had a student with me this last few days. I think I may have just crumbled otherwise.

There have been a superb few days in Zagreb this last week. It has been 18 degrees at times and the tree-lined streets have been bustling with people. The girls were out and they were back to being their well-dressed best. I am announcing the official start of the summer game season.

It’s tough for me. I just can’t kill the urge to chase skirt though. I am beginning to doubt I’ll be able to enjoy game by proxy long term.

When I met JJ, I was out of game. As far as I knew, I was out of game for good. I had no blog and no plans to ever return. I met JJ in the usual way while on a few days break with Lee and I never mentioned game to her. Why would I?

All she knew about me was that I was some kind of IT worker from London. She became my girlfriend based on the information I’d given her. This caused me a problem further down the line, because as we got involved, she didn’t realize this other side of me.

Usually, it’s something I’d have been up front about. ‘I’m a pickup coach, I’ll be around other women a lot’. With JJ, my decision to return, albeit in such a modest way, was a bombshell that I introduced a year after we’d started dating. It was like dropping her into a bucket of cold water.

‘By the way, I am a pickup artist, oh, did I not say? Well, I’ll be travelling Europe chasing other women. It’s purely professional, no need to worry’. Returning to pickup was a fundamental change to our relationship that I don’t have the right to force onto her one year after the beginning of the relationship.

She, of course, doesn’t particularly want a man who is rolling around Europe chasing other women. Certainly not here in Zagreb, because it’s a small enough town that it would only be a matter of one week until I stopped one of her friends. I already have done so twice, but I just about got away with it.

It’s a hard deal for me to take. Life has lost a lot of its shine for me. Without the adventure of skirt, all I am doing is drinking too much coffee and eating too much ice cream. What’s the point spending summer in Europe if I can’t shimmy shammy around town snaking my way into girls’ hearts?

If we ever break up (and I don’t see that happening) then I am sure I’ll be back to my old ways pretty quickly, but at the moment I have to admit it’s hard. I am trying to accept that my role now is simply passing on my humble experience to others if they have the time to listen. It was fun while it lasted. Really, enjoy it while you can. Even the bad days are great days.

Girls aren’t just ‘all the same’. They may have many dynamics in common, but they are a long way from being interchangeable appendages to a man’s life. It’s not simply a case of ‘well, she’s a brunette 9 but I’ll drop her, spend another 5 years having fun then I’ll keep the next brunette 9 I meet when I’m 45, because they’ll be the same’. Skirt is not quite like some classic car which you can delay purchasing until the time is right.

Maybe it comes to all of us eventually? Game is a skill-set you build and build and then one day, you have to just let go. Eric Clapton will never have to stop playing guitar, David Beckham will never have to stop playing football, but a pickup artist eventually has to hang up his top hat and goggles.

Am I different? I love game. I don’t see it as a chore, as a necessary evil you have to do to get laid or find the right woman. I see it as an end in itself. It’s a fun game. It’s a challenge. Being in set last week with the taser girls was phenomenal. Lee and I working almost telepathically along our age old framework, rules, secret signals and code words, like we’d never been apart. Then we had these two cute, witty, slightly alternative twin sisters feeding us stories of their insane lifestyle. Better than a night getting drunk watching EPL then going for a curry.

I’ll take my glories as they come for now. My situation didn’t prevent me from getting old Lee laid last week did it! Did it fuck. I was magic. The JJ train rolled into town and Budapest knew about it pretty damn quickly. Two of his three successes came from sets in which I played a fundamental part in orchestrating and I loved every minute of it.