Night Out #28: Getting Replaced

I make significant progress, but I also find myself in possibly the most frustrating interaction of The Quest thus far

Welcome to The Nerd's Quest, my journey of learning how to meet and date women as a computer nerd on the autism spectrum.

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This Week’s Mission

This is a continuation of the same mission from the previous night out.

This week’s mission (a part of the course I'm taking) was about evaluation. Basically, what evaluation means in this context is the idea that I should be evaluating the girl and deciding whether or not I like her rather than blindly chasing her no matter what.

This serves dual purposes: screening for girls who I’d actually be compatible with and also making the girl work harder to win me over. If she has to work harder to win me over, she’s more likely to feel like it’s an accomplishment. She’s more likely to feel like I’m a prize worth pursuing and not just some dude who is trying to sleep with anything that moves. It’s related to the idea that people tend to value something that they had to work for more than something they were just given for free.

The mission itself had two parts two it:

1. Come up with five non-physical traits that you value in a girl.

2. Once you’re in an interaction that is going well, your job is now to find out if she meets the criteria you came up with.

We were told a mantra to remember: the goal is not to make her like you. The goal is to find out whether you like her.

Here are the five traits I came up with:

1. Kind-hearted

2. Very accepting of nerds, if not nerdy herself

3. Intelligent, rational, logical, okay with that kind of literal, matter-of-fact communication style

4. Open-minded (including sexually, but also in general), not super judgmental, especially about unimportant things

5. I have fun while around her, being around her is easy, it’s not hard to keep the interaction going, etc.

Night Out #28: Sunday, March 27th, 2022

Before I talk about how the night went, I need to mention that I had an aborted launch the previous night (Saturday). I didn’t manage to get out until it was pretty late. I had been planning on checking out a venue named Backstage Bar & Billiards in Downtown Las Vegas, but when I got there, it turned out they were having some kind of concert inside. I had passed by it many times before, and I figured it was some kind of pool hall, but apparently they also have (very loud) live music there. So once I found this out, I had to come up with another plan for the night.

I ended up wandering around downtown for less than two hours before going home. I didn’t do any approaches or anything. It just wasn’t a good night for me. I had a headache, I was tired, and I generally didn’t want to be out. When I’m in a poor state like that, it’s hard for me to get myself to actually put forth a serious effort into social interactions. So I called it off and went home. To make up for it, I decided I would go out again the next night, which is why I ended up going out on a Sunday.

Getting into Omnia

I decided to try out Omnia, which is the nightclub in Caesar’s Palace. It’s one of the fancier nightclubs on the Las Vegas Strip. They have a pretty strict dress code, so in order for me to make sure I could get in, I did a little bit of shopping over the weekend. I bought a white dress shirt, khaki pants, and some white shoes.

I arrived at Omnia just a few minutes before it opened at 10:30 PM. I was able to get in line immediately, and one of the employees handed me a little coupon to give the door people when I got in. There were only a few people in line ahead of me. I’m not sure how this whole coupon thing worked, e.g. do they give them out to anyone who gets there early? Were they handing them out only because it was a Sunday night? I don’t know, but it allowed me to get in for free.

This was my first time ever going to one of the fancy, high-end nightclubs on the Las Vegas Strip, so it was a novel experience for me. I was nervous. I wasn’t sure if I would even get inside, as I had heard that places like this can be hard to get into for solo men. As I waited in line, it reminded me of the feeling of waiting in line for a rollercoaster. It's a mixture of fear and excitement. Part of you can't wait, part of you wishes you weren't there at all.

Something weird happened as I was getting into the club. So right before you get in, a security guard pats you down and checks you for weapons/contraband/etc. After I was patted down, it looked like the guard gestured for me to go through a door that was off to my left. There was another line of people getting checked by a different security guard who were going through that door. As I went over, I had to sidestep past the other security guard (who didn’t even notice me), and I suddenly became worried that I had actually gone through the wrong door. Was this door only for people in that other security line? I was worried that it looked like I was trying to sneak inside or something.

I’m probably not doing a very good job of explaining this, but the point is that I was paranoid that I did something that could get me kicked out or banned from the club. Nothing actually happened, and no one tried to stop me as I walked through the door, but still, I was hit by a sudden wave of paranoia as I walked inside. Maybe I was supposed to go through that door, maybe I was supposed to go through a different door that was off to the right. I don’t know.

The place was almost entirely empty when I got in, which makes sense given that it literally just opened and there weren’t that many people ahead of me in line. I did a loop of the venue and found out that the only part of the club that was open was the outdoor balcony area. The room with the big dance floor was closed, which I am guessing was because they decided it wasn’t worth opening it for the smaller crowd on a Sunday night. This was fine, as the balcony area was itself pretty large and had its own bar and DJ.

I ordered an overpriced drink from the bar (something like $21 for a rum and coke) and found a place to stand around and sip my drink as the club filled up.

Getting Asked to Pose for a Photo

My first real interaction of the night was unexpected. As I was standing around sipping my drink, an Asian woman who looked in her mid-forties came over to me and asked me if I wanted to take a picture. She was with a group with three other women, two of whom were also were also Asian women who looked in their mid-forties, and then a third who looked like she was in her late twenties or early thirties. My first reaction was to think that she was asking me to take a picture of her group, but then she gestured for me to go stand with them. She was actually asking me to pose with them in the photo. I thought this was amusing and flattering. They wanted to have a picture with me, a stranger they knew nothing about.

Then after we took a picture together, I took a few pictures of the other members of the group on a couple of their phones.

We kept chatting after the photo session was complete. I found out that the three Asian women had traveled together, while the younger one was not actually a part of their travel group but had just met them at the club.

I ended up in a one-on-one conversation with the younger one. We ended up going through a lot of the typical generic small talk topics. We talked about our jobs, where we lived, our families etc. There were some awkward silences here and there, but at least we were both participating about equally in the conversation. I found out that she was about my age and was already married. She was visiting from out of state and had never been to a nightclub like this before and wanted to see what it was like while she was still in town.

Once I found out she was married I figured that it was probably best to give up on the idea of trying to make it anything more than a platonic interaction. The vibe I got from her was that she was pretty socially conservative and wasn’t really the type to go crazy in Las Vegas. Still, I brought up the topic of dancing and asked her if she wanted to teach me. She made up an excuse about how she didn’t know how. At this point I knew for sure that the interaction would not progress beyond anything platonic.

We ended up dancing a little as a group with the three Asian women, but there was no physical contact or anything. Eventually I said that I wanted to go grab another drink, so I said my farewell and left the interaction.

This was actually a really good interaction for me to get into, because it allowed me to kill some time as the club filled up around us. Rather than just awkwardly standing around and looking like a loner, this gave me the opportunity to socialize and get out of my own head for a while. So I’m actually really glad that this ended up happening.

The Most Frustrating Set Ever?

My first real approach was a girl sitting by herself on a small ledge over by the bar. I opened by asking her where her friends were (which is not a good opener), and she pointed at some dude at the bar who was picking up a drink and bringing it over. I said “oh okay, have fun” and left.

My second approach is where things got interesting. It was somewhere around midnight by now. I saw a girl sitting by herself at the end of the bar. She wasn’t currently talking to anyone, and it didn’t look like she was a part of anyone’s group.

I opened with something along the lines of "so did you friends abandon you here?"

She told me that she came alone. Her friends didn’t want to go out that night. We started chatting, and she immediately became very engaged in the interaction. It was like an instant hook.

We joked about her being a party animal who has friends who are lame. I used a few more of the teasing lines I learned, and they were well received. She had a huge drink, and she ended up offering to share it with me. I was going to sip from the side of the cup, but when she saw me do this she told me to just suck on the straw she was using. Naughty.

As the conversation continued, I found out that she was a single mother in her mid-twenties. At one point we started talking about what we both did for a living. When it was my turn, I mentioned that I wrote code for a living. I used this as an opportunity to get some evaluation in with the “please don’t tell me you hate nerds” line.

She started qualifying hard. She started insisting that she loved nerds, and she explained that she used to be a nerd herself in high school. She was trying very hard to convince me of all this, which is like the best possible response to an evaluation line. Things were going very well so far!

I wasn’t sure about how to evaluate her on all of the traits I came up with for my mission, but by now I at least knew that she was very accepting of nerds and easy to get along with. I figured I would just keep an eye out for the other traits and opportunities to evaluate her on them as the interaction progressed.

Before long, we exchanged phone numbers and she also added me on a snapchat that I barely use. I only have one for situations like this with girls, the same goes for Instagram. I am not a fan of most of the big social media platforms, but I’ve been told that they can be useful for keeping in contact with girls you meet. Some guys even use them to try to impress girls. I don’t know if I’ll ever take it that far, but I’m slowly getting myself established on these platforms.

She was very inquisitive about my logistics, asking me about where I was staying, what my plans were for the next day, etc. She was here on vacation, and she mentioned that her flight out was leaving the following night. Given that it would be Monday tomorrow, I would have to work, but we still discussed the potential of meeting up again after I finished working. I suggested that I could stop working early if needed to give us more time to meet up again, and looking back on it I worry that I might have come off as overly eager at this moment, but it wasn’t a big deal either way.

After we finished her drink, she came up with the idea of having two more rounds of drinks and then leaving the club together to go eat somewhere afterwards. We would take turns on who was paying. This was all her idea, and I went along with it eagerly.

Once we got the next drink, we moved from the bar area and went to go hang out right next to the glass wall along the edge of the balcony. As we moved through the club, I noticed just how packed it had gotten. I was so engaged with the interaction that I hadn’t even noticed how much the club had filled up around us while the two of us were at the bar.

We hung out by the glass wall for a while, taking turns sipping the drink and dancing together a bit. I did some very gradual physical escalation throughout, stuff like placing my hand on her back or waist while we danced, brushing my cheek against hers when I’d lean in to talk into her ear (which was often necessary given how loud the club was), etc. I was still not far enough along in my course to have learned about escalation yet, as that is one of the last topics covered, but I had still picked up some little bits of information about it here and there as my instructor answered questions during the Q&A seminars, so I wasn’t totally clueless about it.

At one point she wanted to take a little video of the two of us for her snapchat, and I used this as an opportunity to put my arm around her as we posed together.

After we finished the second drink, we went back to the bar to buy the third round. This time it was my turn to pay. As we made our way towards the bar, she grabbed my hand and pulled me through the crowd so we wouldn’t get separated. This was a very good sign, as it meant that she was totally bought in and adamant about not wanting the interaction to end. There was a long line at the bar and it took us a while to get another drink, but once we got it we went back to our spot by the glass wall.

Everything seemed like it was going well. I’m not sure how long the interaction had been going for at this point, but I’m guessing it was somewhere around an hour and a half. We were dancing together and having a good time. There were a few moments where we were facing each other and I thought about going in for a kiss. At one point I even started to lean forward a bit, building up towards it, but I didn’t end up going through with it. I didn’t know how to properly build up to a kiss in a situation like this. That part of my course comes later. I’m not sure if she noticed that I had been sort of trying to move towards a kiss, but I think she picked up on my nervous body language at the very least.

As we continued chilling over by the glass wall and finishing that third drink, she seemed to start to be getting a bit bored. It felt the vibe of the interaction had moved into not-so-good territory, and I wasn’t sure what to do in order to get things back on the right track.

She started randomly talking to this other guy who was sitting on a little ledge right next to us. I’m pretty sure she was the one who initiated the conversation with him. She kept talking with him, and before long he had fully joined the interaction. So the set was no longer just me and the girl, it was now a group of three: me, the girl, and this other random guy. We’ll call him Dan.

The three of us were standing in a little circle and making small talk. Dan mentioned that he was there alone too. He was also in town on vacation, and he was staying at a nearby hotel on The Strip. I wasn’t sure about what to do about this new situation. I figured the best thing to do would just be to play it cool, act normally, and hope that the guy would eventually leave or that the girl and I would leave on our own without him tagging along.

Before long, Dan offered to buy the three of us another round of drinks. I declined on another drink for myself as I had already had two on my own plus three shared with the girl, which is a lot more than I usually drink when I’m out. So the three of us headed over to the bar, picked up the drinks, and went back to our spot by the glass wall.

We continued to hang out and dance a little. The girl was still paying attention to me and touching me a bit here and there, but Dan was receiving a little more attention from her than I was. He wasn’t even doing anything to elicit this attention from her. He was just passively present and she was doing all the initiation and keeping the interaction going with him. At one point she started grinding on him, which was a bad sign given that me and her hadn’t actually grinded at all. Had she decided that she actually liked Dan more than she liked me?

I said that I had to go piss, and the girl strongly insisted that I come back to our spot by the glass wall after I was done. She was demanding that I come back and was quite determined about it. I figured that this was a sign that she was still into me, because why would she be demanding that I come back if she actually preferred Dan? Wouldn’t she be trying to get rid of me if that were the case? Anyways, I went to go piss and then returned to our spot after I finished.

Things continued going in the wrong direction after I returned. The girl ended up inviting Dan to come get food with us, and so after they finished their drinks, we left the club to find some food.

As we were walking outside, the girl announced multiple times that she wanted to go back to Dan’s hotel room later. He hadn’t actually offered or anything. In fact, he mentioned that his room was super messy when the girl brought up the idea, but the she kept insisting anyways. He didn’t put up any more objections. She mentioned that she would first have to go grab her luggage from her hotel room, but then after that she wanted to go to Dan’s hotel room. She wasn’t subtle about it either. She also starting discussing the possibility of meeting up the next day with Dan and pointed out that it would work out well because neither of them had to work or anything.

I knew that the situation was rapidly deteriorating for me, but I thought there still might be some small chance of things turning around. After all, why had she been so keen on me sticking around just a short while earlier when I went to the bathroom at the club?

We ended up going to the food court at The Flamingo. Dan generously offered to pay for everything, and so I ended up with a basically-free meal. All I contributed was a $1 bill to help them make change.

So there we were, the three of us sitting at a small table and eating our burgers and fries. I don’t remember exactly what time it was, but I think it was around 3 AM. I ended up finishing my meal before the other two. I decided that given the girl was still clearly set on going to Dan’s hotel room afterwards, I was better off just getting up and leaving at this point. I had already wasted an enormous amount of time, and at this point the best thing I could do with regards to my own progress was to leave and try to do more approaches with whatever time I still had left.

I said something along the lines of “okay well since you're going to Dan's room I'm gonna take off now..." and started to stand up.

The girl’s response didn’t make a whole lot of sense to me. She was irritated if not downright angry, and her response was something like: “Did I tell you to go? No! Now sit back down!” She was being very demanding.

I sat back down, confused. Why did she still want me around?

I made a joke about how it would be pretty awkward if I came back to Dan’s hotel room with them. Dan sheepishly smiled, but didn’t say anything.

Things got even weirder. The girl must have felt that in order to keep me around that I needed to keep eating, so she started force feeding me Dan’s chili fries. She asked neither of us for permission to do this. She just grabbed her fork, plunged it into Dan’s chili fries, and then demanded that I open my mouth. She then shoved the fries directly into my mouth. She repeated this several times, and for some reason I just obediently went along with it. She ended up getting some of the chili sauce on my shirt, at which point even Dan spoke up about how I shouldn’t be letting her do this.

If I really wanted to, I could have shut this down, got up, and left. It’s not like I was being physically restrained or anything. I didn’t know what I should do. The girl clearly wanted to keep me around for some reason, but I didn’t understand why. This was definitely not how I expected my night to go. When I first approached this girl, I would have never imagined that she would end up force feeding me another man’s chili fries. What in the actual fuck was going on?

Maybe she had snapped back into single mom mode? Her kid (or kids) must have been young. Maybe that’s why she was acting this way. This is just a hunch I have, but could it be that she has become so accustomed to bossing around a young kid back at home, and now that the night is late and she’s had her fair share of alcohol, she is falling back into that familiar behavior pattern? I have no way of knowing, but that’s my best guess.

Before long her and Dan finished eating, and we got up to leave. She had to go to the bathroom, and so for a couple minutes it was just Dan and myself waiting around. We made a little small talk about gambling. He didn’t really say anything about the awkwardness of the situation we were in, but he asked where I was parked. I told him my car was all the way down at the Tropicana, which was a long walk away from where we were currently at, and also in the opposite direction of the girl’s hotel, which is where we were heading next.

When the girl came out of the bathroom, the three of us started heading towards her hotel. We first had to walk through a few more casinos to get there. I was getting suspicious about why she still wanted me to keep hanging around. The reason we were heading back towards her hotel was so that she could pick up some of her luggage. I think her plan was to maybe grab a bag for the night and then leave the rest of her bags down at the front desk so that she didn’t have to worry about getting them out before her checkout time in the morning.

I cannot say for certain why she didn’t want me to leave at this point, but what I was afraid of was that she wanted to use me to help carry her bags down, after which she would then finally ditch me. Why else would she be deliberately trying to keep me around after having already decided that she was going to go to the other guy’s hotel room? I could not imagine a more humiliating end to the night than that. I wasn’t going to allow that to happen. I wasn’t sure what would happen if I stuck with them, but I wasn’t going to take the risk.

After we walked through another casino and made it back outside, I decided it was time to bail. I just suddenly stopped walking with them and said “okay guys, I’m gonna head home now, nice meeting you.” We said our goodbyes. I don’t remember if the girl hugged me or shook my hand or what, but I remember fist bumping Dan and then turning around and walking in the other direction.

And that is how the longest set in The Quest thus far came to a close. I don’t have an exact time, but I think the set was around three hours long, maybe even a little longer. It was longer than the roughly two hour instant date I had with the girl on Night Out #12, which had previously been the longest set up to this point I’m pretty sure.

So What the Hell Happened?

So how did things end up going this way? How was it that an interaction that seemed to be going so well for me would fall apart like this?

I have nothing against Dan because he didn't even really do anything. He just went along with the girl's suggestions the whole time. She was the one who approached him. He wasn’t trying to “steal” her away or anything. He was just a passive recipient of her advances. He was also very polite and respectful. He had offered to buy me a drink and paid for my meal (except the $1 I contributed). So I can't really blame him for anything that he did.

He didn't even really talk that much, and he didn't seem to be doing anything resembling game. He wasn't even escalating on her either. I don't really understand why I got replaced other than that his logistics were better. His room was closer, and he didn't work the next day, unlike myself. Maybe she was more physically attracted to him? Did I end up coming off as too desperate and needy? Or was it something else entirely? Who knows why it all unfolded the way it did. There’s no way for me to find out for certain.

Making My Way Back Down The Strip

I wasn't frustrated as this was all unfolding, as in set I'm almost always in the zone and not experiencing strong emotions of any kind. But once I got out of the set I started to feel frustrated and flustered.

It wasn't 4 AM yet. I still had some time before I would be throwing in the towel and calling it a night. I wanted to make something happen that would take my mind off of what had just transpired. I wanted to end the night on a positive note.

Since I had to get back to The Tropicana where my car was parked, I decided I would try to do some approaches on the way as I walked down The Strip. I ended up doing three.

The first was a girl who was walking around by herself. She was wearing a cute and unique outfit. I don’t remember what opener I used, but she quickly revealed to me that she was actually a sex worker. She didn’t really look like one, but I’ve come to learn that there is a lot of diversity (in every sense) in that line of work. We actually crossed paths again a little later at another point further down The Strip, and we both exchanged friendly nods.

My next approach was with two girls who were wearing sexy outfits and standing by one of the escalators to one of the pedestrian bridges that crisscross The Strip. They were engaged in an argument of some kind. I decided that I would use the “on a scale of 1-10, how important is this conversation?” opener, but right as I walked over and stood with them, one of them turned towards me. She started to go on a drunken spiel about how I couldn’t understand what she was going through or something to that effect. Her tone was very scolding. I hadn’t even said anything yet!

As she was speaking, another girl walked over. I don’t think she was a part of their group, but I could be wrong. This other girl immediately started chastising me. She was like “dude, you should stop bothering them and let them work out their problems and leave them alone!”

I put up my hands in a gesture of surrender and said something along the lines of “I literally have not said a single word, but okay” and walked away.

Wow, in the span of less than thirty seconds I was chastised by two different women before I even said a single word! But in retrospect, the random third girl was at least right in the sense that given that the two girls were clearly engaged in some kind of legitimate argument and not just playful banter, I should have just left them alone to handle their business. Lesson learned. I’ll keep that in mind going forward.

My final approach of the night was in New York, New York. I saw a pair of girls walking together on the casino floor. They were laughing a lot and seemed to be having a good time. I opened by saying that it looked like the two of them were having more fun than anyone else combined. Almost immediately one of the girls started trying to get me to buy them drinks.

I used a line about how my mother told me not to drink with strangers, which is something that my instructor recommended we use in situations like this. Ideally you follow that up by saying something about how you might be willing to buy them a drink in a little while if the conversation is interesting, though I don’t believe I followed it up properly this time. Basically, rather than explicitly answering “yes” or “no”, you want to give them a “maybe” that you can then use as an excuse to keep the interaction going for a while and suss out whether or not the girl is just trying to use you for drinks.

Anyways, after I used the line, the girl said that I didn’t have to get a drink myself and that I could just buy drinks for her and her friend. It was pretty clear to me that they were just trying to use me for drinks, and so the interaction ended quickly.

By now it was after 4 AM, and I decided to call it a night and head home. I was still flustered, but at least I was handling it fairly well. I smacked my steering wheel in frustration as I got back into my car, but then immediately calmed myself down and composed myself. Not today, Satan.

Final Thoughts

Even though the night didn’t go the way I wanted it to go, there were several things for me to be proud of.

First of all, this was definitely a record for the percentage of a Night Out that was actually spent in set, and there isn’t a close second. In other words, of the total amount of time I spent out that night, I spent a very high percentage of it engaged in social interactions as opposed to standing or wandering around and looking for approach opportunities. That’s progress.

Secondly, this was a great learning opportunity for me. My mission was related to evaluation, and I made it past the evaluation phase and beyond. In fact, I made it so far into the interaction that I surpassed what I’ve learned in my course thus far. For example, I haven’t gotten to the section on physical escalation yet, like I mentioned earlier, yet I keep getting far enough along in sets where it’s something that I need to do. So I’m clearly keeping up with the progress I’m supposed to be making in my course.

Still, in spite of all these things to be proud of, there were several things that kept frustrating me as I reflected back on the night.

I was frustrated with myself regarding what happened when I was first trying to enter the club and might have gone through the wrong door. As I’ve mentioned before, I can get pretty paranoid around security types, and on top of that I get nervous about the whole dynamic of getting into a high-end nightclub. I am afraid that I will accidentally do something that will get me kicked out or even banned. This is a totally irrational fear, but it can be hard for me to shake sometimes. I just need to keep exposing myself to these places so that I become accustomed to how they operate. Progressive desensitization is the solution to many of my hang ups.

I was also, not surprisingly, frustrated about how that three hour set ended. It’s hard not to take it personally when you get straight up replaced like that, when someone just drops you for someone else. Then on top of the pain of being replaced, I wasted the bulk of my night with her and left the club with her. Knowing what I know now, I would have been much better off just staying at Omnia than leaving to go get food with her and Dan. Leaving the club dramatically reduced my ability to get into any decent sets for the rest of the night. Yet given all of the mixed messages I was getting at the time from the girl, it makes sense that I thought it would be better to continue the interaction. Ugh.

I want to get back out there. I actually can’t wait until my next Night Out. I am a little worried about how quickly costs add up in these high-end clubs. Even though I got into Omnia for free, I ended up spending around $100 on drinks. I’ve also been thinking about my logistics and whether it would be worth investing in a hotel room on The Strip when I go out sometimes. I can’t really afford that right now on top of everything else, but hopefully I can change that soon. I think that, generally speaking, girls will be much more receptive to the idea of coming to my hotel room on The Strip than to a random apartment complex 15 to 20 minutes away.

It is worth pointing out that there was literally nothing different about the first girl I approached whose male companion was just a few seconds away grabbing a drink at the bar versus the girl in the main set. There was no information indicating that the first would go nowhere and the second would lead to a three hour set. I just had to find out for myself. This is something for me to keep in mind going forward.

Approach anxiety is the world’s most pointless emotion. How can I ever have approach anxiety again after all of this? Especially when it comes to girls by themselves. I need to think about all the opportunities I am passing up that could lead into something great if only I had the courage to put myself out there.

I can’t wait to learn escalation. I’m still about two weeks away from that section of my course. Tonight wasn’t the first night where my lack of escalation know-how led to a girl getting bored of me and ditching me for another dude. Again, the fact that I’m getting to a point in some sets where I am progressing beyond the scope of what my course has covered so far is a good thing, but it’s still a bit frustrating at times.

I feel more motivated now to put all of my heart and soul into this. I want to truly give it my all and make sure I leave nothing on the table. No half-measures. No regrets.

On a different note, it felt great to be back out on The Strip. I’ve been spending so much time in Downtown Las Vegas lately instead, and I’ve missed the energy and excitement of The Strip. I feel at home there in a strange way, nostalgic even. I still have a lot to learn about it, but it has become a place of emotional if not spiritual significance for me.

Finally, I am a little worried that the memories of tonight will end up bouncing around in my head for far too long. I hope to simply learn from it and move on, rather than dwell on it in a way that is counterproductive or unhealthy.

Things I did well:

• Finally having the courage and preparation to go to one of the high-end nightclubs on The Strip.

• Evaluation. When it came to the three hour set, at least I was able to get her to qualify really hard early on. She was eagerly trying to prove herself to me. That’s progress.

• Getting really far in set, getting to the “late game”, and surpassing the scope of what I’ve learned in my course so far. I have to give myself props for even getting this far!

Things to improve on:

• Leading. During the main set of the night, the girl was doing all of the leading. She was the one making plans and calling the shots for how the rest of the night would go. This was a mistake. I needed to do at least some of the leading, as that would have made it much less likely that things would have gotten derailed the way they did.

• What to do when an interaction starts going in the wrong direction. Like during the main set of the night when she first started talking with Dan and I realized it wasn’t just going to be a quick little 30 second thing or whatever. What could I have done differently to have kept the interaction on track?

• I should probably at least mention escalation, but to be fair, I haven’t even gotten to that yet in my course. So I can’t be too hard on myself for not knowing what I’m doing here.