Ever get flaked on by a girl? Of course you did, it’s normal, it’s human nature. Sometimes it can be disheartening, sometimes you just ignore it and move on, sometime you try to learn from your mistake. But rarely do you get a chance to find out straight from the source what you did wrong, or what she thought of you. I mean a flake is the ultimate form of rejection – apathy. It’s like in the pro wrestling world – the best guys are the guys the audience either cheers the loudest or completely shits on with boos, but the guys that you don’t hear about are the guys that just simply get no reaction, positive or negative, whatsoever.

Bumping into a former flake just doesn’t happen every single day, but when it does, man does it feel enlightening (or embarrassing… or both).

Flash back to last week, I was hanging out with a few friends of mine, having a low key night comprising of Hookah, followed by our familiar Tuesday spot famous for it’s $2 beers and amazing burgers. However the Tuesday spot was overflowing with Yankee fans, since this was the very first game against their series with the Twins. Beer and baseball flowed through me, and I was relaxed.

But when I stepped outside to make a phone call, I saw a slightly familiar face… Who was this girl…. where did I… Oh, that’s right, I met her at a bar downtown almost 1 year earlier, we exchanged contact information but nothing ever materialized. All I got was dead radio silence. So as I walked by her and her friend, I looked at her and said “Hey, didn’t I hit on you last year?”

We chatted for a bit. It was obvious she kinda remembered me, but it was also obvious that this interaction had absolutely nowhere to go. I went back inside for more beer, burgers and baseball.

However, right after the game ended (go Yanks), and several delicious but judgment impairing IPAs later, I thought to myself – “This might be your only chance to get an honest look at yoursefl and how you handled things”. Ok, I’m down.

It wasn’t pretty (although she delivered it in a sort of “it’s no big deal” kind of voice). Little did she know that I used to pay waaaay too much attention to this shit.

“It was just weird, I didn’t feel like we had any kind of connection, you were doing most of the talking, and then you tried to distract me with these weird bar tricks. Ok, you got a free drink from me because the circumference of a pint glass is bigger than its height. Ok, you got a free drink because I messed up on a 5 questions game, but it was like you were performing to an audience, it really wasn’t about us it was mostly about you. Then you swipe my phone by saying you want to look at it and put your number in there, that was just weird”.

And then I remembered how I was last year, and how I am now, and it all made sense. I used to be “gamey” as fuck, trying to put on a show every time I went out, and this is what happened. Yes, I got a bunch of numbers (mostly VERY flaky), yes, I got some lays (less than I would like to admit lol), but my success exploded when I abandoned the idea that “game” is the end all be all only way to get laid and realized that I was a pretty awesome dude that just needed to be a bit more direct, physical and sure of myself.

The worst part, however, was re-reading my “field report” from that night. It’s too embarrassing to share here. Needless to say, I was mentally masturbating over the fact that I got a hot girl to get me free drinks, got her number and used words like “compliance test”, “giving massive value” and spent several paragraphs retelling a normal conversation between two people. I mean there I was, commenting about what I saw and being spontaneous, but I was writing about it like I just invented the wheel!

Ugh.

However there is an upside to all of this. I changed, I got in touch with my awesome side, and I am reaping the rewards. All because I am honest with myself, honest with the girls I meet, which leads to honest (and awesome) interactions. Tonight I’m going out with a pretty girl that I met at that same bar, 2 weeks earlier, by having a normal conversation, teasing her a bit, inviting her to another spot and varying between talking about awesome stuff and making out. Her hobbies include playing on her old Super Nintendo. Awesome!:-).

To be honest, I think I’m gonna go back and re-read my old “field reports” to see how big of a douchebag I really was.