5pm. Gorgeous European HB8 approaches me for directions to a famous bridge. (A pleasant surprise after holding back on opening all day.) I give her directions, with good subcommunication, and let her go, and she walks away. But she waits at the stoplight. So I go, "Where are you from?" "Russia." I say hello in Russian, the one word I know. She comes back to me, and we start talking about what sights she wants to see. She hands me her map, and we're both looking at it, and now I'm locked in. We start walking together, and I'm holding on to her map, and instead of offering to walk her to the bridge, I'm now using her map to look for where I need to go. She asks me where I'm going, and I'm headed to Chinatown, and she says she wants to go to Chinatown to buy souvenirs, and she'll just check out the bridge later. She comes with me.

Along the way, we see a courthouse. She's fascinated. I offer to take a picture of her, so she hands me her phone. We're crossing the street, the cars are coming, so I hold her back (kino! DING!). Then I say, "Let's go! Run!" I grab her hand (DING!), and we run across the street, dodging cars.

We see a group of people, she asks me what they're doing, "Are they protesting?" It turns out they're actually shooting for a film, using the courthouse as a backdrop, so I take pictures of her in front of the extras.

I learn that she's lost her friends who were touring the city with her earlier. Her English is very limited. She's been studying in the US for a month, and is leaving for home in a couple days.

We go to Chinatown. We hit up the shops, presumably since there are good deals. We walk around like a couple, checking things out, negotiating prices, and not buying anything in the end. I pay $1 for some exotic Chinese fruit on the street, and offer it to her, and she likes it, and wants to buy more. I play with her hair, rubbing her head, messing it up. We buy a couple snacks for like $3, and despite her protests, I force my way into paying for her (since she was really budgeting her money for gifts), and she seems upset. She really insists that the next round, she gets to pay.

At one point, I put my arm around her, but she pushes it off. "What are you doing?" in a nasty kind of way. I shrug and go, "OK", back to being happy. (intjpua once said that you're not supposed to react too much to this type of thing.)

There's a bridge near Chinatown, and she gets this idea that she wants me to take a picture of her lying down on the road (cars are coming down this road super fast), so we play this dangerous real life game of frogger, trying to wait for traffic to subside so that she can lie down in the middle of the road, and I plop down next to her as well, to get the right angle. She's really picky about her photos, and we do this maybe half a dozen times. We're laughing our asses off, and as we're leaving, I tell her, "You're trouble!" I want to take a picture of her with MY phone, but she really objects and only lets me take a pic of our feet pointed at each other.

It's been over an hour, and we decide to check out the bridge. We run into her classmates that she lost earlier. They start talking in Russian. A couple Chinese girls in their group start chatting me up, social proof. Strangers come up to me, and ask me for directions, and the girls say in Chinese, "Wow, this is like your territory!" More social proof.

Her Russian friends ask her if she's had dinner. "No." "Want to come with us for dinner in Chinatown?" I thought for sure she was going back to be with her friends. She says, "No it's OK, I'm going with him to check out the bridge." Her friends give me an approving smile like "Dude you're doing something right." Sweet, isolation.

In fact, she suggests that we check out TWO bridges. On the bridge, I try to initiate kino, and she tells me: "Stop! Don't touch me. Russians don't like to be touched. Unlike Americans." Fuck. Uncalibrated? She goes, "Chinese people don't like to touch either." "Yes, but I grew up American." She goes, "That's true."

We wander off the bridge. She's getting thirsty and hungry. I stop a hispanic woman on the street to ask for directions, she doesn't understand English, so I bust out my Spanish, and get directions. I build some rapport with her, and the woman actually says she'll walk with us, and she leads us to the store. She told me she didn't like beer earlier. So I go, "Hey want some beer?" This time, she insists on paying, so I let her.

We sit down on a stone bench to eat our food, and talk to a couple random girls.

We get on the second bridge, and she's getting tired and bitchy. She gets bossy about me taking her photos, and starts acting like an entitled bitchy princess. My bad game was that I didn't whip her into line, and do a take-away, and instead LET her boss me into taking photos of her. Her attraction really waned here.

We sit down on a bench, and I lean in, for some deep comfort building. I ask her questions, and I look really deep into her eyes. She keeps testing me, to see if I'm actually paying attention to what she's saying, and I am. Some rapport got built here, because she established she's going to a top university in Russia, and she's a really smart girl, and I'm letting her shine and qualify herself, and am genuinely listening.

Unfortunately, she got uncomfortable with me being so close, and she seemed really annoyed by that. We get up and walk. I'm clearly distant now. She's like, "Why you so quiet." And I go, "I don't get it." We talk about her relationship history. Then she catches herself, and goes "Why are we talking about this?" I go, "Because I like you." "Well, I don't like you." Then I distance myself. She goes, "Why?" I go, "So you trust me, but you don't like me. That's strange." She goes, "You a good guy. I have boyfriend." FAIL. FML.

Sometime later, she goes, "Maybe I like you if I didn't have boyfriend."

It's about midnight. We wander off, buy more groceries to eat. And now her feet really hurt, and she's really complaining. So we sit down near a hotel, and eat. And chat there until 3am. She recited 3 long Russian poems for me (and I recited Chinese rap back). She told me stories, made me tell her stories. I finally told her about my girlfriend (and she was really surprised), and we showed each other phone pics. We talked about honesty in relationships, and she says, "Everybody lies. I lie. I flirt. But I never cheat." She talks about how she's going to break up with her boyfriend when she gets back to Russia, because he doesn't want to be an adult. A lot of emotions conveyed. Her appreciation for the people she's met in America, and genuine sadness about her leaving -- she seemed so moved that I was moved.

3am. We go see one more tourist spot, with her barefoot. We take a cab. She suggests we hang out the next day, but I say "Maybe." She hands me her number.

I drop her off. 4am. Despite the lack of escalation and interest, it was beautiful, really.

Lessons Learned

In hindsight, I think I should've just gone for kissing her early on, instead of inching my way up the escalation ladder and she had a chance to verbally establish, "no touching". This way, I would've had the benefit of "innocent American" and also the benefit of rapid escalation, which is attractive. Several times, I thought about cave-manning, but some intuition told me I shouldn't with this girl -- who knows, maybe just my inner AFC.

Notes on Improving Inner Game

For better or worse, I got into a long-distance relationship recently. I've stopped responding to other girls texting me, or asking me out. I've cut down on going to bars & clubs. I've been holding back on cold approaches during the day.

It's kind of a shame because recently my subcommunications have gotten better (girls have been giving me more IOI's). I think this recent development comes down to a certain amount of self-acceptance (embracing my various imperfections) that comes with having a girlfriend. This self-acceptance is the source of a feeling of deep entitlement to women, the opposite of neediness or desperation. It is a sense of confidence quite distinct from feeling state-pumped and "high value" -- the douchebaggy but short-lived confidence that I get from when I dress better, or have a lot of social proof. A girlfriend shit-tests you a lot, so you get used to constantly maintaining your state all the time. A girlfriend is also more "comfortable" around you, so she's more liable to shit-test you heavy, instead of the more polite shit-testing you get on first or second dates. Hence, you start building inner game that doesn't falter when something in your environment gives you any form of state break (shit-test, IOD, AMOG, or bad shit happening in general), because you know that she likes you, so you learn that these temporary shit storms shall pass, so they don't faze you as much. In other words, you become more immune to stress, by becoming desensitized to it, because your girlfriend stresses you out so much with shit-tests -- so much so that shit-tests just bounce off your chest like water, and you kinda just go "Meh, that's just how women act. Haha, it's kind of cute."

Additionally, I feel that a big reason why I get shit-tested so much is that my game isn't quite there, and most girls still feel the need to test me. If I were truly on top of my game, the shit-tests and contempt would pretty much stop, and girls would stop trying to stress me, and just accept that they're attracted to me.

If I were to describe what good inner game feels like, it's this: "Me and her are both in-the-know that I am a really well-grounded man, who can securely hold her attraction. This security creates good feelings for the both of us. It's why she wouldn't feel the need to talk to other guys, and why I don't feel the need to seek her approval." So a shit-test comes, you demonstrate your security, and her affection returns.