EA: My new AA

I'm trying to get at the root of my escalation anxiety. Basically, this is keeping me from having success. I need to figure out why I'm doing it, and how I can get through it. From working with Doc Holliday and ruthless self-analysis (as well as a healthy helping of community material), I think that it comes down to two major things: Verbal and Physical Escalation. I also have been thinking a lot about building a solid routine stack.

Verbal Escalation
My game involves chatting normally with a girl, and hoping that she is attracted based on kino and eye contact. Sometimes this works, but it doesn't escalate as well as I would like. I need to escalate more verbally. This could be done via banter.

I downloaded a PDF of banter flash cards, and have been going through them a few times a day. I have started using some of the lines, but not the ones I want. I picked out a few, and I'm going to make it a point to use them in set. Even if they are totally off and miscalibrated, I am going to run as many of them as possible. Once I have the first few down, I can move on to others, until I have the entire deck at my disposal. I think that I'm uncomfortable with banter, and need to get better at it.

Physical Escalation
Same thing. I downloaded a PDF of physical escalation flashcards. I'm not sure if the "put hands down pants" flashcard should be used before or after you open ;-)

Seriously, I think that I need more intent. Kino during sets isn't a problem, but kino escalation is. Most importantly, I need to isolate. I think that I'm going to start saying "I'm going to borrow you for a second," and then try to move the girl to another location in the club. Hopefully that should get me on the right track.

Boredom
I think that another sticking point is boredom. When I run a routine too many times, I start to abhor it. On some level, I would rather blow out the set rather than hear the same dumb story again. This brings me to my next point

Routine Stacks
I used to hate routine stacks. I wanted to be "natural." For the first six months I was out, I ran "no game game." I would go in, introduce myself, and talk to the girls. Sometimes it worked great, at least for the first 30 or 40 minutes. Sometimes I had nothing to say after "Hey. How's it going," and walk away immediately. When I was having a shitty night, this would happen to most of my sets. When I was having a good night, almost everything would hook. Over time, I got to the point (even on bad nights) where girls rarely blow me out. Rather, they stop talking, and I stop plowing. After a while, I usually walk away.

So the problem was twofold. First of all, I was inconsistent. If I wasn't in super state at the beginning of the night, I might as well go home. Plus, my natural game isn't super dominant or sexually aggressive. I lack natural escalation (or intent, as purewin calls it). I fixed the first by canning a semi-interesting story. If I'm having a non-exceptional night, I launch my opener, and then follow it up with the story. Most of my sets hook when I do that. But I don't always do it. And using the same canned story gets boring after a while.

I went to a lair talk by DJ Fuji, Mehow's head instructor. This guy is clearly good. One of the first things he said is that you are shooting yourself in the foot if you don't have a routine stack. He asked for a show of hands, and out of the 20 or so guys in the room, maybe two had routine stacks (and one is taking his training program). The Boston Lair is pretty focused on natural game, so routine stacks are out of vogue. If you asked somewhere else, you might get a different answer.

After I initially thought that he said that just to push Mehow's shit, I realized that it actually makes sense. Always having something to say can never be a bad thing. There are a lot of resources on how to think up something to say, but nothing is better than having a few fallbacks. You don't always need to use it, but its nice to have. I think that, for me, a routine stack would work wonders on shitty nights. I would have a bunch of amusing material to run when I'm feeling about as creative as a block of concrete.

Plus, some canned attraction and comfort material would be a good thing. Might tighten up my sets, and make verbal escalation easier.

The moral of the story is that I'm going to put together about 30 minutes of material that I can run in any situation. We'll see how it goes.