I went out with 5 friends last night, all in relationships, FML. The goal for the night was to work on eye contact, and as always, to have fun. Sorry for the length...

We met up with a big group of people who I had some familiarity with. There were quite a few couples and quite a few single girls. Unfortunately, I introduced myself while I had a cup of ice water (Florida heat) and a beer in my hands. I improvised and did elbow bumps with everybody, and systematically started talking to everyone. I worked on my Duchenne smile, which involves the muscles around the eyes, as much as the muscles around the lips. It's supposed to be a genuine smile of happiness, and not a social smile. This had a noticeable impact of making everybody I talk to much more easily amused, and I laughed much more as well.

Soon, a HB8 Asian girl introduced herself to me, touching my arm immediately. We talked briefly about a road trip I took moving to the west coast, and she was impressed already, but another girl started talking to me at the same time, and I got confused, distracted, and flustered. They both walked away, haha. We were in a crowd and I'd been introverted too long to be comfortable just yet, not warmed up at all. The group started moving and I expressed to a new friend that I was feeling self-conscious and distracted. It helped to express it, feel it, and it was quickly overcome.

We moved into a bar and there was a HB9 in a white leopard print one piece smoking a cigar. That's right, a cigar. I asked her if she was a zebra or a leopard. Simple enough opener. She touched my arm near instantaneously, IOI, and soon we were having a fairly captivating conversation. We talked about our names, which led to discussion about marriage, music, relationships, emotionality, exercise, divinity, and absolutely nothing had a sexual subtext, which I need to work on. My eye contact and smiling was profound, however.

Everything was going great, she was totally available and present in the conversation, but I barely escalated kino. It started with elbow bumps whenever we had a good laugh. I felt a hair on my hand and I had her brush it off because my hands were full. Eventually my hands were free and I would rest my hands on her hips whenever we laughed. Soon I had my hand on the small of her back, but I realize now I did no push/pull. I still had lots of warming up to do, but I was doing my best. Soon the moment came when the eye contact was strong and the connection was there, but I choked on the kiss.

Something was off, even though everything was screaming at me to do it. Looking back, I should have held her closer with my hands, rubbing my thumb on her back, or dragging it to her hips or hands. Instead, I was distracted by wanting to kiss her, but not actually doing it, and the conversation lost momentum, even though the non-verbal communication was still strong. She could only stand there waiting for so long, before she went back to her friends.

I felt content with the outcome, I began having fun with my friends again, but it sucked when HB9 left without a goodbye as I was talking with an HB8, but I eventually bounced. As I was leaving, I ran into my group and we stood on the sidewalk enjoying ourselves, drinking out of a flask I brought. Lo and behold, HB9 walks back up out of nowhere, and she has her phone out texting. I have a move where I get my phone out and pretend to text along with them. I tell her to give me her phone and I call myself from it. She asks what I'm doing and I said "I'm calling my girlfriend!"

My group bounces, and a highlight is when we're standing around being chodes and a cute HB7 walks by, I can't stand it. I start walking with her. I forget what I said, but she immediately puts her arm around my waist. IOI. I put my arm around her and walk a few meters until I slow down, slide my arm across her back down to her hand, pull her around and embrace her. I look deep into her eyes, and we kiss.

My friend and I eventually lost our ride so we were just chumping it up outside a bar. Instead of moping, I decide to totally reverse my attitude. I tell him let's go have fun and almost immediately I see a 2-set of girls standing outside the bar. I walk up and put my hand on the cute one and compliment her purple hair. I put my arm around her, as I talk to them both. Soon, I have them both in my arms. I drop my hands down to both of theirs and have them both do a double spin, and eject. I'm in state.

I approach almost every group of girls that come across my path, with kino started almost immediately. Out of maybe 20 approaches, only one or two blow outs, and they had no effect at all on my mood. Even the girls who portrayed an off-put attitude, I could see through the shit tests and their bitch shields. There are subtle signs that I am starting to pick up.

Another girl is walking towards me and I initiate conversation while I go in for a side hug. I look into her eyes and kiss her cheek as I give her a hug, and she says 'Oooooo,' as I pick her up and spin her around. I put her back down, and we kiss.

We hit up a bar and there's a HB7.5 that I pick up a vibe from, even though she doesn't notice me, I get the feeling she'll appreciate what I'm about to do. She passes slowly enough by that I use my patented leg hook from jiu-jitsu, where I grip the back of her knee with my foot and pull her in. It's safe enough not to trip them, and non-threatening enough that they'll just follow where you pull them. I pull her right into an embrace and put my hands above her ass. She's laughing and smiling, asking what I'm doing. I looked in her eyes and kissed her cheek, she said 'Ohhhh.' She was enjoying it, I should have kissed her, but my verbal game is non-existent. Kino is only taking me so far, but at least I've come to realize that now. She backs out eventually, and I would have had her if I said anything of substance, my friend likes to say 'I love you,' I think I'll try that out next time. But I felt good about picking up on her vibe.

Keep in mind my friend is being very unhelpful and almost counter productive the entire time. He pulls me away from interactions and perceives them as inappropriate, even though he admits how successful they have been. I feel it was mostly because I was leaving him out most of the time, but I was thankful to have him with me when we were in a bar talking to a group of 5-7 hockey players. I was touching one of their girlfriends, but she was really cool and we hit it off pretty well. I was so impressed with her I went to meet the boyfriend and he was just as cool as she was, I told him I wasn't a threat. I wanted to hang out with this group, especially because there was a HB8 who I put her arm through mine as we leaned on a table.

Suddenly her boyfriend came over and told her not to touch her again, and I was so taken aback I couldn't think how to pacify this AMOG. I told him I was good friends with his friend, but he was having none of it. He said to my friend that he should back me up, because I wasn't budging and he was ready to fight. I was pretty pissed but the adrenaline was running too. I couldn't think of what to say, I didn't want to come off as beta or play into his shit, so I just stood my ground.

My friend picked me up and moved me to the side. This guy was shorter than me, and he wasn't even one of the hockey players, but he definitely AMOGed me. Totally took me out of state. It's been a while since I've had to deal with that, it's pretty shitty, especially because I had just found a cool group of people. We bounced and somehow found our ride again.

One last approach was actually already a warm one, because I had approached this HB8 earlier in the evening when I was in state, and gave her a very eloquent compliment about how gorgeous she looked and ejected. She remembered me, as did her gay friend, who was an awesome wing man. Her and I talked and got on pretty well. She was extremely shy, but I had my hands on her arms, hips, and back in no time. I see now I would have benefited from more push/pull, I think my touching was still very passive. Another mistake I made was to ask if she wanted to go for a walk, instead of working myself into a dominant and leadership role, and just isolating her. I think once I told her I wasn't living in town anymore, she became cold, especially after her cousin interrupted the conversation and was totally vibing on me. Her cousin kept talking to me, kino and was close enough to kiss, but I resisted because it seemed dickish to HB8, even though she was totally asking for it. I ejected from talking to her cousin, kind of regret now, and got HB8 to put her number in my phone.

All in all, pretty fun night out, but I need to work on balancing verbal and non-verbal game. I learned a ton from making about 50 cold approaches last night. I'm getting better at picking up on the receptive ones, who I should make more of a point to escalate with and make something happen. Questions and comments welcome.