I went out to a concert last night where I’m a part of a group on meetup.com. I show up to the show, but the problem is, I have no idea what these people look like or how to find them. So I stood around for 5 minutes like a socially awkward penguin. What would SAP do at this point? Just stand by himself for the whole show and not ever meet up with the actual meetup group even though they were in the same venue.

I realize I was being totally SAP and needed to correct this. Fuck it, I’ll just start approaching groups of people and ask them if they are here for the meetup group. I start at the stage. Go up to about 4 people sitting at a table. “Hi, are you all here from the meetup group?” …Felt so awkward. “Yes we are! Welcome!” Huge sigh of relief. But seriously, why was this such a big deal? I don’t know, we are former Forever Alones so something as simple as this social interaction was unnecessarily stress-inducing. Anyway, I introduce myself and we talk for a bit, getting comfortable.

I’m not physically attracted to any of the women in the group, but it was still good to meet new people and make new friends. There was one girl who was definitely into me and kept asking me questions. I thought this would be a good time to practice my social interaction as I was feeling good. And this brings me to the topic of this post.

It is good to be a little difficult.

The girl asks me how old I was. Now, I could have just answered truthfully and said, “23”. Then what happens? “Oh okay”? That’s no fun at all. Be a little difficult, a little challenging. Amuse yourself. So whenever someone asks me this question, I simply respond with “Guess.” So I told this girl to guess my age and she starts coming up with all of these theories of how I could be either 32 or 21 or 26…She keeps changing her mind and each time I tease her a little bit that she can’t make up her mind. Finally she settles on 32 due to my “maturity” level. I am actually 23 so this was interesting to me. She then asks me for my real age and I say, “I’ll tell you later, maybe.” She gets all riled up and wants to know right away. So I finally tell her and she’s shocked.

This is good, fun banter. Take something as simple as asking what your age is and be a little difficult. Don’t be a dick, but have some fun with it. If you are amusing yourself, then you are living in your own reality and are subsequently more attractive as a result.

A good rule of thumb is that if a girl asks me a question I don’t want to answer or if she tries to throw me off or mindfuck me, I just respond with a question of my own. Sometimes, answering the question at all is wrong because their is no right answer.

Some examples:

Girl asks, “Do you like me/my friend?” – Response: “Why do you ask?”

Girl asks, “What makes you different from all the other guys?” – Response, “What do you think?”

Girl asks, “Do you have a girlfriend?” – Response, “Maybe” or “Define girlfriend.” or “Why do you want to know?”

Girl asks, “Is someone using that chair next to you?” – Response, “That’ll be 5 bucks.”

Those are just a few examples. The idea is that you don’t necessarily answer the question and that’s it. Flirting is not an interview process. It’s a fun give and take.

So at the end of the night, I number-closed her. She could be a good friend to have, especially at future concerts for this meetup.