So I've been lurking here, and some other Game related places for a while, but this is my first post.

I have learned and gained so much in the past two years. I improved my physical condition from being 235 lbs at 6'1'' down to 190. I quit trying to comb hair over my balding and just starting getting it all shaved off. I've learned more about clothing from /r/malefashionadvice than I ever thought could be known. On the love/sex front, I am currently in a situation that has gradually developed from a simple FB to a non-exclusive LTR.

But that isn't what this is about. This is about how even with all of these gains, I still have shyness, I still have approach anxiety, I still don't talk to strangers as much as I'd like (for example, my current LTR approached me, and I don't think I would have approached her). I also don't escalate when I later realize I should. I don't close when later I think I could have.

So for the 2nd half of 2012 I am not going to rest on the laurels of having a LTR and just keep working on this, every week. I'm going to go out, find something fun to do where there are going to be a mix of people of both sexes. I'm going to drink in moderation, talk to people, and try to get over my reluctance to kino, close, etc. I don't know if I will end up with MLTRs or just having fun on the side.

SO... what'd I do last night.

I went to a bar to see a blues musician play. Sounded interesting. When I got there, I sat down in a visible and obvious corner of the the bar, where I could see all the girls and they could see me. I made eye contact with a hot redhead who was part of a group on the otherwise of the room.

I was sitting between a couple who kind of stuck to themselves, and a fellow we'll call "Buddy", who was old, hard of hearing, very drunk, and maybe not all right in the head but seemed friendly. So I got to talking to Buddy (which involved a certain amount of yelling), and bought him a drink.

At some point he went in the bathroom, and the group that include the girl I'd seen from across the bar came over and sat next to me, taking Buddy's place. This group was a well-dressed man and three, count 'em three, HB's. A blonde, brunette, and redhead. Based on how they were sitting with his arm around her, the blonde seemed to be "his" and the other two just along for the party. He was buying liquor for the whole crew, and lots of it.

I started making smalltalk with the redhead who was closest to me, finding out what she did for a living. Apparently all three of these chicks were "dancers". That is, strippers.

Buddy came back, and I realized I let them take his seat without defending it, and felt kind of bad. The redhead got up to let Buddy have his seat back, but he was too nice to take it back, and the situation got kind of awkward until the brunette offered to take Buddy "dancing" and the two of them walked out the front door together!

Just when her friends were starting to worry about her, she came back alone. I think Buddy decided to call it a night once she got him out the door.

So I asked the redhead, who was still sitting closest to me to get up and dance the blues with me (if you've never done blues dancing, it involves a lot of touching.. good kino), to dance and she wouldn't, but the brunette wanted to, so I danced with her, just holding hands and touching her back and moving to the music.

At some point when we were back at the bar, the redhead came back from the ladies room and ran SMACK into a support pole in the middle of the room. I joked that you'd think in her line of work she would at least have learned how to act around a pole. She acted kind of butthurt about this comment, and was kind of a closed-off to me from then on, but her dark haired friend later told me should thought it was really funny.

So I danced with a lot of different girls, and talked to the ones that wouldn't dance. But it was all just casual chatting, and no touching beyond what the dancing called for. Also talking to guys, and to couples, about just random stuff.

Late in the evening the brunette HB came up right when I was in the middle of talking to some other people and asked me to dance again, since nobody else was dancing at the time. I told her OK but since she was (a) interrupting and (b) making us start in the middle of a song, she now owed me the next dance too.

I called her by what I thought her name was, but it turned out I was wrong!

I had by this time spent a lot of time not even thinking of her as my "target" while I was dancing with other girls, until she re-approached me for another dance. I'd like to say this was deliberate game, but it was not. I had written her off with her pissed-off friend. She was much, much hotter the girls I was talking to when she asked me to dance.

We talked some more while we were dancing, about our musical tastes, about her upbringing and family and how those fed her musical tastes, she was a sweet acting normal girl she didn't seem to have the kind of "bitch shield" I would expect a stripper to have.

The dancing got closer. There was some grinding from behind and from the front. We playfully grabbed and released each others hands. I put my hands on the lower back more and more, closer to the ass. I ran my fingers through her black hair. We were now dancing the third song in a row. She was starting to look even more attractive, in that way that I've gradually learned that my mind makes women look hotter when they are attracted.. I don't consciously see IOIs very well, but some base instinct makes women look better and better when it thinks I have a chance with them. It speaks loudest when I've had just a little to drink, but not sloppy-drunk.

I was literally seconds from trying to kiss her, when the redhead and the other two people they were with grabbed her by the elbow and said it was time to go home. I was kind of blown out by this. All I could come up with was something about hoping to bump into her at that bar again. I was too shocked by the audacity of this interruption to try to #-close or anything.

I didn't stick around the bar much longer after that. There were still plenty of girls there, but they were by this time all part of a particular social circle of "dance people" that I know, where you have to be an almost pro-level dancer to have status. Also I just didn't feel like hanging around anymore without my favorite girl.

I went to one other bar on the way home, but I didn't stay long. There was mostly couples (either they came together, or they'd found each other and made their choices by the time I got there). There was only one set of two single girls, and I got blown off by them fairly quickly with the excuse that one of them was having a lot of personal problems and needed the other one to stay focused on her, or something. I danced with an older woman, and she planted a kiss on my cheek before going back to make out with the older guy she was there with. The closest thing to a k-close all night.

These are some of the things I think I learned:

  • escalate quicker, before someone has a chance to spoil it all
  • isolate the target, get her away from those people somehow? suggest going someplace else?
  • if I'd kissed her, she would have absolutely been the hottest girl I've ever kissed in my life. take that chance sooner next time.