Background: I'm a guy just getting back onto the field after having been in a five-year relationship. Prior to that, I had an extremely polished game.

So perhaps it's rust, but I'm having trouble plotting out my next steps with my first post-relationship goal: a perfect 10 who I happen to share college classes with.

Now, I'm a 6.5 on a good day, but my confidence and don't-give-a-shitness about failure have stuck with me. It was easy to start talking to her, easy to establish sassy back-and-forth rapport, easy to establish kino.

But here's the problem: I've tried twice now to get us alone off-campus. In a recent "Weekly Single" column in our college newspaper, she highlighted a hatred for the standard dinner-and-a-movie date. In person, she pouts about how her ex and most men who hit on her are "meatheads" that she can't talk politics, current events, etc. with. Need identified, and while I satisfied it a bit at first, I knew I shouldn't give it all over and friend zone myself. Via Facebook, I suggested a local theater troupe's rendition of a Pulitzer-winning play that was finishing out its run.

Nope, she replied; packed next two days. I saw her in the hall an hour or so later, and used a combination of negs, flattery and humor to really put me in what I felt was a good place. I left her a) laughing b) committed to attending a political lecture on a free day she had followed by drinks to discuss it.

Well, she flaked. 10 PM the night before the event, she told me she'd "forgotten" about having to work the next day.

The message is loud and clear: I'm doing something wrong. My assumption is that she's testing me; as someone who offers no clear monetary, physical or status advantage over other men, she's making someone a weight class below her earn it. To test this, I began selectively ignoring her while also talking more to her friends. No obvious snub, just a casual decision not to talk to her directly. When I have to, I'm engaging and charismatic, but still use the opportunity to neg her. THIS seems to be working- yesterday, she made an almost pitiful joke about how I HAVE to be lusting after her. Once again, I casually brushed her off ("Yeah, yeah, OF COURSE I am").

I don't want to spend too much time on this. I learned a long time ago not to put any woman, now matter how much of an HB, on a pedestal. If I can't close the deal in a reasonable amount of time (re: two, three weeks at most) I'm not going to make myself look like a desperate fool. And it's nearing that amount of time.

But, according to you folks, am I making some sort of rookie mistake? Is there an easy fix here that I'm glossing over? One thing that I neglected to notice right away is that "not a dinner-and-a-movie" may mean "$100 a person dinner"- as a 10, she's used to having everything given to her, and recent circumstances in her life have forced her to work a job for the first time. Regardless of game, I just may not offer enough from a pragmatic standpoint. Again, nothing I can do to fix that, and I'm not going to go into debt to bag her.