The Houston Press has an interesting article on pickup… Check it out:
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Keeping Score
Get a girl in record time, then get another one
By Craig Malisow
Well, some people try to pick up girls / And get called asshole / This never happened to Pablo
Picasso — Jonathan Richman, “Pablo Picasso”
We’re upstairs at the Red Door when Bashev sees his target: four girls in a flurry of tight pants
and spaghetti straps. They’re hot babes. HBs.
It’s a warm Friday night, and the Midtown rooftop is packed with well-dressed, attractive
twentysomethings. Beautiful people in the know go to the Red Door, and the owners ward off everyone
else by not even having a sign.
Before I know it, Bashev’s in the girls’ midst, and I think, What is he doing? A solo sortie like
that takes guts. But Bashev’s been studying fast-seduction for three years. He told me earlier he
doesn’t usually try to pick up girls (“to sarge”) with wingmen, but I offer my services anyway. If
we run into a pairing that includes an ugly girl (UG), I may have to — in fast-seduction lingo —
jump on the grenade.
Bashev decided earlier to use one of his favorite stories. If a girl asks what the 24-year-old does,
he’s not going to say he’s an engineering grad student at Rice. He’s studied hypertechnical concepts
at Amherst and the University of Massachusetts, but big freakin’ deal: Women don’t like the
“ultra-rational” mind, he says. They like the unpredictable.
He spends most of his time in class, bogged down in technical studies. He once worked on a project
titled “Automated Synthesis of Numerical Programs for Control, Simulation and Animation of Virtual
Robots.” Women don’t want that dude, he says. They want mystery, romance, fun.
Bashev once took a girl he liked to his computer lab at school, where he deconstructs algorithms and
multivariable calculus. He wooed her for a semester with linear algebra and software design
methodology. Unbelievably, she split.
So that’s why he’ll get women to ask what he does, whereupon he’ll point to his shoes and casually
say, “I’m a foot model.” Tonight, I’m to be his colleague, a model of the posterior. He doesn’t
expect them to really believe it; it’s just supposed to distinguish us from the endless succession
of cheeseballs who drop the same tired lines.
Bashev is tall and lean, with short light brown hair and a friendly Bulgarian accent. So he should
have an edge, but by the time I work up the nerve to actually say something like “Yes, you heard
correctly; I’m an ass model,” a girl with long black hair has already shot him down. He didn’t even
get to his foot-model spiel. So he just opens with one of her friends. He asks if she thinks
American reality shows are really real.
The first girl looks at me, rolls her eyes and says she doesn’t care in the first place. I just
stand there and do a really good impression of a dude who has nothing to say.
Bashev’s not a bad-looking guy, but he’s not getting anywhere. In the parlance of fast-seduction,
these girls have just demonstrated the bitch shield. It’s kind of like an electrified razor-wire
force field they activate to fend off idiots at places like this. It doesn’t mean the girl’s a
bitch. It means she’s acting like one to protect herself from the silk-shirted vultures who want to
talk about their Beemers and Bulovas.
A genuine pickup artist (PUA) can penetrate the bitch shield through sheer wit and charm. But
Bashev’s not an official PUA, and pretty soon we’re treated like we’re invisible. The girls
eventually form their own continent and drift away to a table. Bashev smiles, shrugs it off. He’s
just getting warmed up. There’s plenty more sarging to take care of. I head to the bar while the
lazy lion of the Serengeti surveys the scene.
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I like the intro line about “reality shows being real.” That’s very use-able.
The rest of this is available at their site…