Went this weekend to visit college friends in a different city and had a chance to reminisce, catch up, and discuss the virtues of seddit and the community.

Late in the night when most of the boys had gone home, I wound up at a dirty dance bar with great music and cheap drinks. I see a girl on the dancefloor waving around a toy lightsaber and ask her to knight me. I kneel down and she obliges. Then I grab the lightsaber and ask her to kneel and knight her, and then as a reward I said, "Good, now do a spin." You know what I think about spins.

We get to dancing and grinding and poking each other playfully with the lightsaber. Before long she asks me what my name is and where I'm from. I tell her my name but ask her to guess where I'm from, with a catch: "You have to do a spin every time you guess wrong." So she guesses: Baltimore. I raise my arm and spin her. Atlanta. "Sorry, spin!" Boston. Spin. Until she finally guesses my city. I nod. At this point I pull her in close, look her in the eye, and kiss her.

Yadda yadda yadda she gave me her number and promised to call me next time she was in my part of the world. I think that reward-and-punishment paradigm, as well as the tension that builds as a result of getting warmer and closer to an answer is pretty effective.

One more "move" I've used to build tension and create an expectation for resolution: in college I was at a frat party and sitting with a girl on the second floor. We were chatting and touching, sharing a hookah, just having conversation. I put my arm around her and she said, "I think we should go downstairs" (to the dancefloor). I said, "Just give me five seconds" and began to count while looking into her eyes and inching closer to her. "1, 2, 3,...4,........5" and then we started making out.