Last year I found airline tickets to Chicago for around 50 bucks. At the time I was dating Rapunzel, who falls prey to cabin fever without regular travel, and despite the frigid weather in early December I had a good time (once I'd fought off my nascent cold). Cable and I have a friend, Isaac, who moved into the Chicago suburbs last year; we've talked about visiting him several times, and this time the lure of seeing Isaac, hitting the Chicago bars, and testing my game on new terrain was irresistible. I booked the tickets shortly before Thanksgiving, for Nov 30 - Dec 2 and Cable and I touched down at 9:00 Friday night at O'Hare.
It was left entirely to me to arrange the evening festivities. Isaac doesn't have a wide social circle in the area - he is hamstrung by sheer virtue of where he lives, a 40 minute drive into Chicago with no traffic, beyond the reach of the city trains. I reconnected with an old high school and college friend, though I hadn't spoke to her or seen her in years. There was a party Friday night, and she extended the three of us an invitation.
Running game in Chicago excited me for another reason - Sue is a brilliant wing for me. Our styles dovetail, sometimes so much that it surprises us in the field. We are always on the same page. It is because of this that I was glad he hadn't come. This weekend was going to force me to fly solo, and best of all it was going to force me to do so in unknown terrain.
There was some pressure on me too. The Wednesday before Thanksgiving I engineered a sizable get-together at what was quickly becoming our (Sue and I) regular bar. Isaac was there, and he saw Sue and I start talking to the girls next to us, conversations that culminated in a number close by yours truly. The table was surprised, including Cable and Isaac - despite they all had heard stories about this (and Cable had seen it, while playing wing no less) seeing it in person opened a lot of eyes. I knew this pick-up (as well as the other stories I'd told them) was on Isaac and Cable's minds when I told them I had a party for us Friday night. If nothing else, running game is entertaining to watch. But, oddly enough, like the weekend before, I enjoyed the pressure - it was exactly what I needed to keep me sharp and on the edge of my seat.
The trouble was that the party provided only one target, my old friend Jane. When we finally found her waiting outside the duplex for us, she gave me a friendly hug. In the immortal words of Wayne Campbell "Game On!"
I played it soft at first, very friendly. I made sure to make the requisite beer runs, to duck out of the room when people started smoking, and even negged her gently on some politics - this is hard to do if you're not careful.
Jane and I share at least one obsession - the roaring twenties. She told me that if she'd been around back then that "there never would have been a Zelda Fitzgerald." I do take issue with her rankings for F. Scott, as I hold The Great Gatsby in higher esteem and any other book I've read. This, I admit, I negged her on too, though we were really only debating the merits of Gatsby and This Side of Paradise.
After an hour or so, the party split into two groups. In the living room, there was a group playing Rock Band, and in the kitchen a group was drinking and talking. I floated between the two for awhile, but when it was clear that Jane was sticking in the kitchen, I did the same.
She was sitting on a radiator and there was just enough room for someone to sit down next to her. I asked if she minded if I sat next to her as I was already doing so - she said yes. We talked about some real stuff, her family, my family, her ex-fiance who had serious issues. It was nice because we were really talking, it wasn't 'fluff' I was trying to get through to tell a story to EV or DHV. But I did make damn sure I was working in enough kino to set myself up right. I'd taken pictures of her, and Cable had taken pictures of us earlier; Jane wanted to review them. I slid next to her, put my left hand on the small of her back / around her waist and showed her the pictures. After we'd run through all of mine, she jumped up to get her iPod. For a second I was worried that I'd pushed too hard, but she sat right back down next to me, set it in my hands and started showing me pictures.
Perhaps my best lines of the night:
"You should really give me a call when you move back."
"Well, I'm not really sure if or when I'm coming back. I don't really have it planned out."
"Jane, I've been talking to you all night, and I don't buy that. I've heard you say three times tonight 'when I move back to town.' Maybe you're not planning it right now, but that's how you talk about the city. That's where you see yourself because that's how you talk about your future. I'm just saying, when you do, call me."
It clearly wasn't something she was used to people noticing, and it worked quite well.
I had no illusions of grandeur with Jane; she lived in Chicago, had no immediate plans to come back, and the two of us diverged on a number of critical issues (politics to name but one). Still, I had a huge crush on her in high school, and even a little residual when I met her again in college. I just wanted to have fun with her, flirt, and see where it could go.
She'd mentioned that a guy she was dating was coming to the party. Honestly, the most amusing part of my night was when she got the text from him that he'd arrived and she shot across the room to open the door. As you can imagine, dear reader, this was the end of kino for poor Indy. But I'd had fun, and this development made Cable and Isaac both very happy; they'd been ready to leave for an hour.
When we left, Jane made sure to say her goodbyes to us, and was especially warm towards me. I fully intend to call her the next time I'm in Chicago.
Now, I could have tried to push her, BF destroy, or to AMOG the guy - I know the basic principles. However, I feel that if you actually like a girl and she's with a decent guy, then breaking them up just so you can close her is evil. Darth-Vader-George-W-Bush-Snidely-Whiplash evil. When she'd talked about her ex-fiancee and the things he'd done to her, I felt for her, and when she told me that the guy she was dating was treating her right (shortly before he arrived), I was happy for her. She'd found a decent guy (though not bright enough for her) who treated her well, and that was better for her than one weekend with me.
Cable and Isaac both congratulated me on what I'd managed to get, and I promised them both that I would make sure not to take over the situation the same way on Saturday. I promised them I would find them a target rich environment. I promised I would wing first and pick-up second. I promised excitement, adventure, intrigue, liquor, women and the moon to boot. I would deliver all these things Saturday night.
