Tonight I went out to test something I thought of earlier this week: to game with a "Pangloss" mindset, where I assume every single thing that happens is the best thing that could have possibly happened.

So, every word the girl utters is the exact best possible word she could have uttered. Every time I get blown out, getting blown out is the absolute best possible thing that could have happened. I react to every single event as if it were the best thing that's ever happened to me.

This mindset proved quite hard to maintain, but because it's so simplistic it was easy to resume each time I found myself straying from it.

Although I've only tried it once so far, I must say gaming with this mindset was a huge success. I got a lot of numbers from a lot of cute girls tonight.

Among them all, one set stands out as noteworthy. This was toward the end of the night, when most of the girls had left the bar. There was one table still going, with three girls and two guys. One of these girls was extremely cute. I went up and opened by talking to the guys. One guy kept telling me flat out to leave, but I pretended not to hear. The other was offended because I had forgotten his name (apparently I had met him before), and I played that up. I kept begging him for a hint, and asking the girls to help me out, and when one of them finally told me I made a big show of promising never to forget again. This gave me the pretext to introduce myself to the girls and pull up a chair. The other guy, who was next to me, tried to physically prevent me from doing so, but I opted to not notice, and I pulled up anyway. The three girls were HB6, HB7, and HB9. I was next to HB9, who was in a cheerful mood, enjoying all the attention she was getting from random guys in the bar who kept making passes at her. HB7 was giving me bedroom eyes in a big way. Once I was seated I focused all my attention on HB7, leaning over to her in front of the cockblocker and not even asking for HB9's name. As we talked, HB7 kept trying to move over to my left side, where the cockblocker guy was, but he wouldn't budge as he was still trying to squeeze me off the table. This only served to keep pushing me closer into HB9, who I was still ignoring. Finally HB9 tapped me on the shoulder and asked me my name. I turned to her and instead of answering I whispered in a conspiratorial tone, "your friend is really cute!" and turned back to HB7. HB9 tapped me on the shoulder again and I gave her a "shoo shoo" motion without turning. I kept talking to HB7, who was very happy to have the attention and to be winning out over HB9. After about 20 minutes, HB7 said she had to leave to catch the last train. I made a show of being sad to see her go, and she asked me if she could please see me again. I said yes, I will meet you next week. She said, promise? I said I promise. Then she turns to HB9 and says to her "get his number!" and leaves.

Now I'm right where I want to be. HB9 is jealous of all the attention I was giving HB7, and also she has standing orders to get my number. I use this to my advantage by playing it completely defensive and continuing to deflect, even telling her at one point "sorry but you're just not my type". She says "I hate you!", but she's been told to get my number so every time I turn my back on her she taps me on the shoulder again and persists. Finally I switch gears and say well maybe if you dye your hair back to its natural color I could at least be your friend. She starts arguing that her hair is fine, and she likes it the way it is. I tell her it's a no go. She pouts and, acting magnanimous, I give her my phone and tell her to enter her number. At this point the cockblocker leans on her and calls her "easy". They are coworkers or something, and this stops her for a second. She turns to me and says, "I'm not easy, am I?". I should have said something like, "well, I don't know. But nah, I don't think you're easy". Instead I acted impatient and said "yeah you're easy. Are you still not done typing your number in?". Not great, but it worked. She entered her number and, still pretending to be doing her a favor, I arranged to go to a bar with her near her house next Thursday.

Whether she actually follows through or not, time will tell. For now, I'm not going to send her any messages. I'll wait a day or two at least.

Edit: 7 days later and I just got my first text from her.