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  FURTHER ENRICHMENT

  The International Bureau of Weights and Measures is a real organization, based in Paris, that maintains the official one-kilogram brick and one-meter stick. These are the standards upon which all measurements in the world are based.

  Allegedly, in that same little room, next to the brick and the stick, sits a ridiculously hot woman. She’s the official perfect ten—the international benchmark for hotness. Her name is Sandra. And you have no shot.

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  Women of New York, my cherished home state, will always be my first love. But after careful empirical analysis, I have to say the chicks in LA are, on average, much hotter. I’m sorry, but it’s true. On the other hand, women in New York (and for that matter, almost everywhere) are more approachable than women in LA. In fact, my frat buddy Ryan even makes the laughable but logical case that the girls in LA are actually too hot. Which prompts me to pose an important philosophical question: If a perfect ten walks in the door but no one can talk to her…does she exist?

  Rating women and scoping out tens are an integral part of the game for guys. Plus, anything with rankings or stats kinda reminds us of sports, so that’s a bonus. In the end, though, hitting on chicks is like the NCAA tournament: on any given night there’s a chance you could take down someone ranked much higher than you. And that, in a nutshell, is the beauty of being single: you never know what girls the next bar will bring. Hope springs eternal. Still, in the numbers game, the odds are often stacked against you. In college basketball, overcoming those odds is called being Cinderella. Every year, when March Madness unfolds, you hear a lot of gushing over Cinderella. But I’d only rate her about a seven.

  THE NAME GAME

  I have never met anyone who says they are great with names. Even I catch myself at parties complaining, “I’m just terrible with names.” And I’m always met with obedient head nods and murmurs of agreement. The fact is, guys remember the names of women they want to remember. If I didn’t get your name the first time, and I don’t bother asking again, that means I don’t give a shit. If I didn’t get your name the first time, and I ask you over and over again, that means I’m interested but too wasted to be of any use to you. If I strike up a conversation with you, and blatantly overuse your name (“Wow, that’s really great, Jamie. Jamie, what is it you do again, Jamie? Really, Jamie, you’re an attorney? I’ve always been interested in the minutiae of corporate law, Jamie.”), that is a telltale sign I’m really into you. Or I have retrograde amnesia.

  One of the rarest and most serendipitous things that can occur when I’m kicking game at a bar is meeting two cute girls who are friends and happen to have the same name. I call this “Double Jeopardy.” Now I only have to remember one of them. Sometimes I get cocky and give the girls cute nicknames for the night like Lindsey One and Lindsey Two. Of course, then I forget which is which. On the other end of the difficulty scale is meeting a chick with a difficult-to-pronounce name. Ladies, when you introduce yourself, if the guy says, “What?” twice or more, you fall into this category. Now I’m drunk and trying to remember both your name and which vowel the fucking umlaut goes over. This is quickly becoming too much work.

  HCIs

  For years, I’ve wondered how it’s possible that annoying people who don’t shut the fuck up don’t realize how annoying they are. We’ve all been there—trapped in a conversation with someone who isn’t able to pick up on the most obvious hints that you’re not interested whatsoever in what they have to say and are desperate to leave. I call these people HCIs—“head cock inducers”—because while you’re standing there listening to them blab on and on, you subconsciously cock your head to the side and think to yourself, “Is this person fucking serious right now?”

  An HCI can be a guy or a girl. Either way, they’re always blissfully unaware. It seems like whenever I’m talking to a bunch of women, the least attractive and most annoying one latches on to me. It’s kind of like when you go to Hooters and get the one ugly waitress. You sit down, all excited—“Hooters, yeah!”—and then you see the waitress start to walk in your direction and you’re like, “Oh no, not her. No [look around], oh no, we wanted Brandi…ohhhhh…I guess I’ll have the buffalo wings.”

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  GLOSSARY

  WASTED HAPPY HOUR CHICK

  A species of HCI that goes straight from work to happy hour and is still there at midnight even though her colleagues are all gone. Wasted happy hour chicks seem like they should be easy prey, considering they’re often found dancing wildly by themselves in the corner. But I’m no longer fooled—there’s a reason she’s been left unpicked-up. And it’s usually the guy in Chicago that she’s sorta seeing.

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  As much energy as I expend chasing appealing women, I spend an equal amount of time avoiding HCIs. Most guys are quite adept at evading girls—which is not surprising given how so many of us seem naturally selected for the very purpose of repelling them. When a girl whom I’ve been trying to avoid calls me and I accidentally pick up, you would not believe the shit I come up with: “Oh, uh, hey Jill. Where am I? You know what’s funny? No one here knows the name of this bar. And there’s no sign. And none of the adjacent streets have signs either. But you should—” and then I hang up mid-sentence (which gives it a feel of authenticity), shut off my phone, and pretend the battery died.

  Women, of course, have a much more elegant method of avoiding male HCIs—they don’t bother talking to them in the first place, a devious tactic I call “preemptive avoidance.” When accosted, though, girls are skilled at shutting down unwanted advances. I’ve found that the less a girl wants to hook up with a guy she meets at a bar, the more outlandish an excuse she’ll give, and it will often be accompanied by blatant giggling and eye rolling from her nearby friends. And nothing inspires confidence in a guy like a giggling, eye-rolling girl telling you she has to leave because she’s got a placekicking tryout with the Giants in the morning.

  THE MINDSET

  The truest and most frustrating observation ever made about kicking game is that it’s all about confidence. Every guy has contemplated how much damage he could do if he could just go back ten years knowing what he knows now. But we’re stuck with what we’ve got. Luckily, the desire to hook up outweighs every other one of our primal instincts.

  My favorite television show is Lost. I’m obsessed with it. There’s just something about these flawed characters trapped on a mystical island that totally fascinates me. But there is one important, real-world lesson that I’ve learned from Lost. After all the survivors have been through—the crash, the smoke monster, the Others—they’ve never, ever given up hope on pulling ass. It’s like the first week they were concerned with getting rescued. The second week they were concerned with getting water. And by the third week they were concerned with getting head. Somehow, it always comes back to that.

  These pressures aren’t unique to us humans. I was recently reading about these insects called cicadas that lie dormant underground for seventeen years. After seventeen years, they come out, they mate, and then they die the next day. And I couldn’t help but wonder, how much would it suck to be the guy who doesn’t hook up that night?

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  GLOSSARY

  DUCK HUNT

  Named for the classic Nintendo game, a Duck Hunt is a bar or situation where girls are shooting guys down right away.

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  Perhaps the most trying situation I’ve encountered is going out on the prowl with friends who are in relationships. I think that the longer you’re in a relationship, the more you begin to forget what it was like to have ever been single, and how the game actually works. Whenever I’m in a bar with a couple who I’m friends with, they’ll inevitably say, “Hey Karo, check out that girl over there. She’s totally cute—you should just go talk to her.” Oh, is that all I have to do? Just go talk to her? Well, thanks for clearing that up, because I was just gonna whip my dick out and hope she came over an
d touched it. But just go talk to her? That’s a foolproof plan! Is that how you two met? Who knew it was that easy? Thank God I have you and your girlfriend here to show me how the world works. Now stop holding hands and drinking chardonnay, and get the fuck out of my face so I can continue stalking this chick from a distance!

  THE COMPETITION

  A cute girl once asked me what I thought about a guy across the bar. I told her I thought he was a douchebag. She asked why. I said because any guy besides me whom a girl is interested in is a douchebag. You see, guys generally don’t like other guys who are not our friends. But we definitely don’t like other single guys who are our competition. It is a well-known fact that women dress to the nines often just to look good in front of other women. Guys compare themselves to other guys as well. Except Brad Pitt could walk in the door and we’d still mutter under our breath, “Douche.”

  There are many varieties of douchebag, none of whom recognize their fatal flaws. Listen, guys, wearing only a V-neck undershirt to a bar is just not acceptable. Neither is sporting a blazer over said undershirt, unless you’re going for the “just went to the dry cleaners but only half my order was ready” look. Also, if you’re about to go out but can’t remember if you put cologne on, don’t give yourself a precautionary spritz. Too much is worse than none. Your cologne should not linger in the elevator any longer than you do. Oh, and if you’re actually using water from the sink in the bar bathroom to restyle your hair, you should have never even bothered going out in the first place.

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  GLOSSARY

  THE BAD BASKETBALL GAME THEORY

  My old roommate Brian conceived the argument that bad basketball games are a great place to pick up chicks. His thinking is that when two bad teams are playing, dads who have season tickets give their seats away, not to their sons, who presumably know the game will suck, but rather to their hot daughters. Ipso facto, bad basketball games are often filled with hot chicks.

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  One arena where I’m admittedly deficient when compared to other guys is performing in “nontraditional” situations. Friday and Saturday night is business time, and I dress the part. But even though I’m aware that there are plenty of opportunities to meet women during the week, like on the subway or in the grocery store, my civilian attire is totally lacking. I hate guys who wear nice clothes on Sunday afternoon even if they’re not going anywhere. When I look around, dudes are wearing dress shoes, khakis, and polo shirts. Why? It’s Sunday. Afternoon. I’m not even wearing socks, let alone something with a collar. But the fact is, they are prepared for chance encounters. Generally speaking, I know I’m not suited to kick game to a beautiful woman when I walk into my apartment building and the doorman mistakes me for a deliveryman.

  Shortly after I moved to LA, I had a meeting at MTV’s offices in Santa Monica. In the lobby with me were thirty of the hottest fucking chicks I’ve ever seen, all waiting for an audition. Tens as far as the eye could see—and no male competition in sight. After I stopped my hands from shaking, I called my buddies in New York to apprise them of the situation. They urged me to hit on everything that moved, but before I could gather up the nerve, I got called into my meeting. By the time I got out, the girls were gone. In a way, I’m glad—it would’ve been a Duck Hunt anyway.

  GAME ON

  When we’re taking the elevator down to the lobby after getting ready to go out for the night, I’m always amazed at how chivalrous my friends and I are. We’re holding the door for girls, we’re making sure they all get out first, we’re generally being polite and friendly. Then we get to the bar and immediately lose all sense of tact and discretion as we vainly make passes at any chick above a six. I really believe that guys would be much better off if we never left the elevator. That option notwithstanding, after I’ve assessed my options, scouted the competition, and made my approach, the game is officially on.

  First things first: there is no such thing as a pick-up line. The kind of guys who use pick-up lines that actually work are the kind of guys who don’t need them in the first place (i.e., they’ve won an Oscar or are Derek Jeter). I’ve only used two successful lines in my entire life: “I’m in this fraternity; wanna go upstairs?” and “I’m the guy you just saw onstage; wanna go upstairs?” I mean, let’s face it, if I ever move to a first-floor apartment, I’m fucked.

  Guys should, however, be encouraged to leverage (and embellish) their particular situation for the purposes of game. The most effective scenario is if you’ve just moved to a new city. “I just moved here” is a trusty icebreaker and conversation-prolonger. It also invites an element of pity that cannot be underestimated. If the new-in-town theme seems to be working, guys will often try the “Let’s go back to my place—you can be the first person to see my apartment!” tack. Women should be wary, though, that there is no set statute of limitations. You are most likely not the first girl to have seen this dude’s apartment. Hell, I moved to Los Angeles years ago and I still break that puppy out every once in a while.

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  LITERARY ANALYSIS

  New York Times bestseller The Game by Neil Strauss popularized the concept of “negging.” A neg is a comment made to a woman that does not directly insult her, but instead subtly prods her, ostensibly piquing her interest in turn. While negging is indeed an integral part of flirting that most guys utilized prior to The Game, it is still a difficult art to master. Here are two examples from my own experience.

  CORRECT: LEAVES WOMAN OFF-BALANCE AND SELF-CONSCIOUS

  CUTE CHICK I RAN INTO ON THE STREET: Hey Karo!

  ME: Did you just come from the gym?

  CUTE CHICK: What? No.

  INCORRECT: LEAVES WOMAN INSULTED AND SEARCHING FOR MACE

  ME: I’m looking for a shirt for my sister but I have no idea what size.

  CUTE SALESGIRL: Well, what does she look like?

  ME: A lot skinnier than you.

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  One thing that most guys have been blessed with is the ability to sound interested. No matter how dull her job, inane her jokes, or boring her banter, if I’m attempting to get into a girl’s pants, I can feign curiosity about whatever the fuck she’s talking about. Guys do this because we’ve found that walking away glassy-eyed in mid-conversation ensures we won’t get laid. If you’re a girl who majored in communications or likes to show off her iPhone, please be aware that every male you’ve ever spoken to in your entire life was faking it. Just a heads up.

  There is a stark difference, however, between embellishing how long ago you moved or faking like you’re paying attention to a girl, and flat-out lying to her. This is an issue that bachelors are evenly divided on. Some get off on it. The bolder the lie, the greater the challenge. Some guys lie because their real life sucks. Others, like me, reject lying as uncool, unfair, and unnecessary. Also, I’m not a very good liar. Besides, it’s too easy to go too far. I’ll never forget when my buddy Shermdog excitedly told me he’d just met two hot European blondes at the bar and told them we were from Quebec. I said, “Good work, Sherm. But next time you lie and say we’re Canadian, I’d avoid the one French-speaking province.”

  PLAN OF ATTACK

  Once a guy has acquired a target and sees potential, he is then faced with maintaining a difficult balance: trying not to smother the girl or appear too interested, while at the same time not losing her either. One of the worst feelings is turning around and realizing the amazing girl I’ve just met, whose name I can actually remember, is now missing in action. Because drunk chicks are like pinballs: they’ll bounce around the bar like ding!—ding!—ding ding!—ding!—ding! and then just go home with the last guy they bump into. So I always try to keep a safe distance while never letting the girl out of my sight. If I lose her, I’m then forced to do a full sweep of the bar because the time and energy consumed establishing rapport with a new girl will be far greater than that required to locate my original mark. Guys must also always be vigilant of “kissing whores”—women who will make out
with you on the dance floor and then run over to their friends, giggle, order lemon drops, and hide. You will never see her again, unless you resort to just waiting outside the women’s bathroom all night on the off chance that she comes out of hiding or drunkenly knocks into you.

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  GAME AROUND THE WORLD

  One of my favorite places to visit is Japan. Mainly because 90 percent of the chicks in Tokyo are thin, have perfect skin, dress well, and are hot. The downside? They usually don’t speak a lick of English. The biggest stumbling block to hooking up in Japan, however, is that they don’t have one-night stands there. And when I say they don’t have one-night stands, I mean it’s just not part of their culture; they don’t even understand what a one-night stand is. Whenever I found an attractive girl who spoke passable English, I would of course move in for the kill. The conversation usually went something like this.