Nights Out #18 and #19: The Last of (Exclusively) Casino Floor Game
I have come to the conclusion that I need to change my venue selection
Welcome to The Nerd's Quest, my journey of learning how to meet and date women as a computer nerd on the autism spectrum.
This Week’s Mission
I was assigned a mission in the course I'm taking. This weekend was actually my third attempt at completing this mission. I had attempted it on two separate weekends (first attempt, second attempt) back in December, but I did such a poor job with it that I wouldn’t give myself credit for it. I hadn’t earned it.
Last week was all about getting myself back into shape after nearly two months off.
So this weekend was my third attempt. Third time’s the charm, right?
Anyway, the mission was to do the following:
Act like I’m the king of my city
Act like I don’t give a fuck about what anyone else thinks of me
In practice, this meant that I was supposed to go out with the assumption that everyone would like me and that I was already my most ideal self. I was supposed to filter my interactions through this frame. If someone had a negative response, I was to assume that it was because either they were nervous about interacting with the king or that they simply didn’t recognize me.
Night Out #18: Friday, February 11th, 2022
I went straight to The Strip and went back into my typical routine of focusing on casino floor approaches. I started at around 10 PM.
I actually did one of the very first approach opportunities I saw, which is a first for me. Usually I would spend most of the first hour building my confidence up and getting in state, but this time I managed to throw myself into it right from the get-go.
They were two hot girls walking together across The Excalibur. I walked up alongside them and used my stock opener1. They thanked me, I asked them what they were up to (or something along those lines), and they told me they were rushing off to grab an Uber. I wished them a good night and that was the end of it.
It was an incredibly short interaction, but still progress. I approached a pair instead of a girl by herself, and they were both very attractive. So from an approach anxiety standpoint, the fact that I even went for it can be framed as a win.
There were many more approaches during the first half of the night that followed this same kind of template. I would typically approach a hot girl or pair of hot girls, we would have a very brief interaction, they seemed to all be in some kind of rush, and I would wish them a good night and bounce. A few of these interactions lasted a little longer, enough for me to get out a few more lines, but for the most part I struggled to get most of my approaches to engage. I also approached one group of three, but it went the same way.
I also did a few head-on approaches, that is, approaches where the girl is walking towards me and I try to engage her from a head-on angle rather than walk up alongside her. With one exception towards the end of the night (more on that later), none of these went anywhere either, but again it was progress on overcoming approach anxiety. Approaching from that angle has been something that I have been struggling with, so it was good to make some progress on that.
Is Every Woman in this City a Sex Worker?
A little while later I was walking around Planet Hollywood when I saw Mona, the girl I had an instant date with the previous Saturday. We had exchanged numbers, and I texted her the following Tuesday, but I never got a response. Now suddenly there she was, walking with a female friend towards one of the casino bars. I was certain it was her, and I was fairly confident that she hadn’t seen me yet.
I had been planning on sending her one additional text to try and elicit a response, but I was going to wait until Saturday. Now that I knew she was out and about, I thought I’d just go for it right now.
I sat down at a slot machine and started crafting the text. It was an inside joke about a guy in a wheelchair who she ran into the previous weekend and had told me about.
The texting conversation went approximately like this:
Me: “[Inside joke about wheelchair guy]”
Her: “lol”
Her: “who is this?”
Me: “Chris the computer nerd”
Me: “(Your best friend, remember?)”
Her: “Oh hey, I’m at planet hollywood. Where are you at?”
Me: “Oh cool I am here too”
Her: “Want to hang out?”
Me: “Sure, where are you at?”
Her: “At the bar”
Her: “The one in the middle”
I went over to the central bar, waved at her and walked over to where she was sitting. I went for a side hug which she returned. She almost immediately told me she was expecting someone else.
Here’s a rough approximation of how this went down:
Her: “Oh, I was expecting someone else.”
Me: “Oh really? So I’m not the only computer nerd named Chris you know?”
Her: “Nope.”
Me: “Who did you think I was?”
Her: “Someone else.”
Me: “Okay… but you remember me right?”
Her: “Yeah, from last weekend at the MGM Grand”
Me: “Yup, exactly. So how’s it going?”
I was very surprised by her reaction. She thought I was someone else when we were texting? Certainly I was the only computer nerd named Chris who could have told that inside joke about the guy in the wheelchair, right? 🙄
Regardless, I tried to save the interaction and steer things into a more normal conversation from this point forward. We chatted a little about how our nights were going and what we had been doing. Mona was still acting a little flirty with me and at one point was like “where’s my hug?” despite me having already hugged her when I first got there. I introduced myself to her friend. She was sitting at the barstool next to Mona and playing video poker on a screen that was built into the bar.
After a few minutes, Mona dropped a bomb that was completely and totally unexpected on my part.
Her: “So last time we were just hanging out… but this time I need to be paid for my time.”
Me: “Oh… umm, I didn’t know that is what you do for work.”
Her: “Yeah. I thought you had gotten the message last time.”
Me: “Oh, well apparently not I guess.”
I was shocked. So it turns out she was actually a sex worker this whole time? Are you fucking kidding me? She had told me that she wasn’t the previous weekend.
I tried to ask a few clarifying questions just to make sure I fully understood the situation. She was super indirect with her answers, like she kept saying that she was a “dancer”, but she didn’t dance at a club. Instead, she “danced” for rich guys in their penthouses, and she had a few clients staying there at Planet Hollywood. Dancing… right.
She grew frustrated with my questions. “Why, are you going to pay?” she snapped at me.
I tried to steer the conversation back onto the rails. We bantered back and forth a little about random things, but she was being super bitchy with her responses. She also accused me of being angry with her once I found out that she was a sex worker. I denied it, but maybe she was reading my emotions better than I was reading my own.
I tried to include her friend in the conversation a bit more. Her friend told me that she was a personal assistant and that she lived in Vegas part time for work. Mona continued to act bitchy, and I was getting the vibe that she wanted me out of there. I decided that I would just try to grab the friend’s phone number and bounce. Might as well try, right?
I said something along the lines of “Hey I gotta run soon, but before I go, can I grab your number?” to her friend. Mona made some snide comment off to the side about me trying to get her friend’s number despite never offering her money, but I ignored her.
Her friend started to act like she was about to give me her number, but then suddenly was like
Her: “Well… am I going to be paid for my time?”
Me: “What? I’m not trying to hire a personal assistant.”
Her: “Time is money,” she said with a wink and a smile.
Me: “Oh… well I guess not then.”
Are you fucking kidding me? Her friend too? She didn’t even look anything like a sex worker. She actually did look like a personal assistant.
I gave a dumb farewell along the lines of “Well ladies I am going to take off now, good luck with raking in the benjamins, happy hunting” and turned around and left.
I don't remember feeling angry or agitated during the interaction itself, but I did feel negative emotions afterwards. Maybe I was agitated without even realizing it? Mona had accused me of being angry with her, even though I didn’t think that I was at that moment. But maybe she was right? I certainly felt frustrated and disappointed after I left.
I walked out of Planet Hollywood. “Is every woman in this city a sex worker?” I kept thinking to myself. I just wanted to stop thinking about it and get on with my night, but it took a while for the negative emotions to dissipate. I know that, literally speaking, not every woman in Las Vegas is a sex worker. I understand that. But at moments like this… it sure feels like it.
I deleted Mona’s phone number from my contacts list. Even if I was going to pay someone for their company, I’d rather it not be her after the way I felt at that moment. If only I hadn’t run into her that night, I probably would have never found out that she was actually a sex worker all along. I would have just gone on believing that she was a girl who I had an instant date with once who then ghosted me when I tried to follow up via text. Sometimes, ignorance actually is bliss.
My Favorite Approach of the Night
A little later I found myself walking through The Flamingo. I saw a hot girl walking by herself through the rows of slot machines. She wasn’t just hot. She was beautiful in a very down-to-earth kind of way. The ultimate girl next door, the one who still looks perfect when she rolls out of bed in the morning with no makeup on. She was the kind of girl I was afraid to even make eye contact with six months ago.
I caught up to her and did my approach from kind of a side angle right as she started to turn into another row of slot machines. I used my stock opener and it seemed very well received. She smiled and thanked me.
I asked her what she was up to and she told me she was looking for the right slot machine to play. She returned the question back to me, and I said that I was just hanging out and seeing what was going on or something along those lines.
I then asked her if she wanted to grab a drink. She politely declined. I nodded and said that it was fine, and then wished her a goodnight. She returned the farewell, and I left.
Even though this interaction was very short, it felt good. It felt genuine. It’s actually amazing that I am now approaching women who I previously would have been terrified of. Things are still rough for me at times, but the progress is undeniable.
An Instant Date with an Abrupt Ending
My last notable interaction of the night occurred in The Venetian. It was pretty late by this point, probably at least 3 AM from what I remember. I was walking down a corridor in an area with a bunch of closed restaurants, and she was walking towards me. I did a head-on approach with my stock opener.
Part of doing a head-on approach is that you’re supposed to walk into her trajectory from a distance of at least 5 steps and then plant your feet and engage her. If she walks around you and avoids interacting with you, you generally aren’t supposed to chase after her. The idea is to convey enough value and confidence from the get-go that she will actually stop and talk with you, and that’s exactly what she did.
We started talking, and she told me that she couldn’t find her friend. I asked if she wanted to grab a drink, she agreed, and we went to the bar in the center of the casino. It was actually pretty crowded, probably because almost all the other bars in the casino were closed by this point. She spotted her friend at the bar, but she was talking to some other dude.
She asked me to order her drink for her, but I kind of messed it up. It was some kind of foreign-sounding alcohol I had never heard of. Apparently she wanted a shot of that and a separate Sprite, but what I ordered for her ended up having the sprite mixed in with the shot. Oops. I need to learn more about alcohol.
All of the seats at the bar were full, so we sat down at some nearby slot machines, but then before long the dude sitting next to her friend got up, and she suggested we just go sit there and share his seat. She made a joke about her butt being too big to share a seat, and I teased her about it and got both her and her friend to laugh.
We randomly talked about various things, some get-to-know-you questions along with some flirting. She kept bringing up her butt and I was doing a good job of teasing her on it and keeping it a man-to-woman interaction. She was also talking to her friend quite a bit, which was kind of lame because I was sitting on the opposite side and couldn’t really hear what they were saying or participate in it.
We continued to banter back and forth for a while. I inquired about her logistics, which was good because that is something that I have failed to remember to do in the past. She took an Uber there but was going to get a ride home from her friend.
At one point her friend said to her "kiss my ass, hoe" and she thought she said "kiss my asshole" and started talking about what it would feel like to actually do that. I tried to tease and be like "what, you don't do that?" or something, but she seemed to take the tease too seriously instead of laughing like she did with all of my previous sexualized teases. Then I just shrugged and said "worth trying everything at least once" or something dumb like that. I don't think this whole back and forth was received very well by her. I should have said that I was just kidding after the initial tease was not well-received.
I don't remember how much longer the conversation lasted after this, but not much later she suddenly said her friend had to go or something and she got up and side-hugged me and left.
I failed to try to go for a quick number close. I was so caught off guard by her suddenly getting up and leaving that I didn’t react in time. Instead of simply asking “hey, before you go could I grab your number?” I hesitated and just sat there. I have no idea if it was her or her friend who wanted to leave at that particular moment, but either way I shouldn't have hesitated. That was a big mistake, and I was internally kicking myself for a while afterwards. I felt like such a dumbass.
Overall though, it was a good instant date, I did some good teasing and sexualization, possibly the asshole joke was too far, but still this way better instant date game than on any of my previous instant dates because I at least kept it a man-to-woman interaction. On my previous instant dates, the conversation would inevitably become almost completely platonic and not progressing towards sex.
This was my last significant interaction of the night. The only other thing worth mentioning was a decent approach opportunity that I saw all the way down at the MGM Grand right before I went home. There were two hot girls in the middle of what looked like an intense conversation. I thought about going up with the “on a scale of 1-10 how important is this conversation?” opener I learned from Christian Hudson (another one of these pickup coaches with a bunch of online content), but I decided to just pass it up. Which was lame given that I was supposed to be acting like the king and all, but oh well.
It was after 4 AM, not many people were still out, and I threw in the towel.
Night Out #19: Saturday, February 12th, 2022
Just like the previous night, I went straight to The Strip to do my casino floor routine. I started at about 11 PM.
Negative State Part 1: Non-Quest Related
Unfortunately, for whatever reason, I found myself thinking over and over again about some personal family drama, stuff that mostly happened back when I lived in my hometown. This stuff has absolutely no day-to-day impact on my life anymore, yet there are times when I seem to get stuck in a negative thought-loop where I just keep thinking about it over and over. I try to stop thinking about it, but I can’t. I’ve mentioned this in several previous posts and how I should probably be in therapy for this shit.
I spent the first hour or so trying to get myself in a better state. I passed up at least one really good approach opportunity during this time, which was a bummer.
Getting Some Approaches In
Finally I did my first approach of the night at around 12:30 AM in The Aria. I saw her walk out of one of the restaurants in the casino. She was wearing a very sexy and classy-looking dress. I used my stock opener, which was well received, and did some great teases on her sophisticated fashion taste and her responses to what I was saying.
She ended up being a sex worker and ended up sliding me her business card. Lame, but I wasn’t bummed out, just proud of myself as this was actually one of my best approaches purely in terms of the technical performance on my part. I stacked some good teases after the opener instead of falling back onto lame “get-to-know-you” type questions like I’ve usually been doing. That’s an improvement.
This was the moment when I realized that I was going to have to stop focusing exclusively on casino floor game. There are simply too many sex workers, and the girls who aren’t sex workers are often (but not always) in a hurry. This same thing where I end up approaching a sex worker keeps happening again and again, and you know how that saying about the definition of insanity goes. So at this moment I decided that this would be my last night of focusing exclusively on casino floor game.
Over the next hour or two I did another four approaches without any success. The only notable interaction in this chunk of the night was when I approached a girl only for her boyfriend to walk over to me and say “sup nerd?” I wonder how he knew my name? Anyway I didn’t let his “shit test” push me off balance, I simply misinterpreted it as a complement and exchanged a pleasant greeting. His girlfriend apologized to me, but I said it was fine and the three of us laughed a little and exchanged a few more words before I wished them a good night and bounced. This was the first time on The Quest that a boyfriend/husband has actually engaged with me after I approached their woman, and it wasn’t a big deal at all.
Negative State Part 2: Quest Related
I started to fall back into a negative state, except this time it was directly related to The Quest. Specifically, it was related to the negative feedback I have received from some people when I have spoken openly and honestly on Twitter about this part of my life.
I was at the receiving end of a Twitter pile-on about three months ago. It still bothers me to this day for a variety of reasons. The pile-on was started after I replied to a thread complaining about creepy men approaching women. I was trying to politely provide my point of view, and I still don’t understand why some people reacted the way that they did. I might do a full post about this someday. I can’t do it justice here. The point is, the memories of this event, the way I felt at the time, the things certain people said to me, the way my words were twisted around, the false assumptions people made about me, these were all bouncing around in my head, and I couldn’t get them out.
This all put me in a very negative state. I tried so hard to purge these thoughts from my mind, but that is something I struggle with. In fact, the struggle of getting myself out of these negative thought-loops may be the greatest challenge I am facing at this stage of my life. It’s something that keeps happening to me, not just when I’m out on The Quest, but throughout my life in general. There are a handful of different negative thought-loops that I keep finding myself stuck in. Most are related to my past personal history, but this one in particular is related to much more recent events.
I don’t like to rely on alcohol or other recreational drugs to get myself into a better state. I worry about developing a dependence on these substances. But this negative thought-loop was bothering me so much that I gave in and went to get a rum & coke from one of the bars in The Excalibur. The scary thing is that it honestly helped a lot. I need to be very careful that I don’t let myself become dependent on alcohol to pull myself out of negative states.
Back in a Decent State Again
I did six additional approaches that I can remember after this. I did two in The Excalibur that didn’t go anywhere and weren’t delivered very well. Then I walked over to The MGM Grand for the next four.
The next approach was okay, I saw a girl who was standing around by herself and laughing really hard about something, so I used that as an opportunity for a situational opener. It turns out she was laughing at her boyfriend from across the room, who then came over and hugged her once he saw me talking to her, so that one didn’t go anywhere either.
The next one was a girl who was wearing overalls. I used my stock opener and stacked a few teases on top of that, including at least one that was directly based on one of her responses. We bantered back and forth a bit, but it didn’t go anywhere. She told me she was walking to go find her boyfriend, and I know she wasn’t making this up because I saw the two of them together a few minutes afterwards. Still, this was probably my second best approach of the night in terms of my technical performance.
There were two more approaches. The first of which was an instant blowout because she was just sitting around waiting for her boyfriend, and again I did actually see the two of them together afterwards.
At one point, I saw a girl walk by who was unbelievably hot, not hot in the “ultimate girl next door” kind of way like the girl at The Flamingo from the previous night, but hot in the “sexiest girl at the nightclub” kind of way if that distinction makes any sense. I got very nervous, but started to slowly walk over and try to force my body to go through with an approach. A guy in front of me ended up approaching her first. I was actually relieved because I instantly relaxed when I realized I didn’t have to go through with it. I watched the two of them for a while. He was very persistent, possibly too much so, but I couldn’t overhear what they were saying and thus cannot say what the nature of the interaction was like.
But still… just seeing her walk by was an amazing and memorable experience in and of itself! This must be how Ash Ketchum felt when he saw a glimpse of Ho-Oh flying across the sky in the first episode of Pokémon. If I work hard enough and stay committed enough to The Quest… could I have a chance someday?
My final approach was kind of interesting. It was a woman in her mid-thirties wearing a sexy black outfit. I used my stock opener, but then almost immediately afterwards she said that she recognized me from somewhere and asked if we had met before. I remembered who she was at this moment. She had a fairly thick Eastern European accent, and I remembered approaching her at this same casino a few months before. I had seen her standing by herself looking around and joked that she looked like she was having a blast.
We had a fun little chat. This was my first time approaching the same person twice, and I was quite surprised that she remembered me from the first time. She ended up telling me that she is a sex worker. I would have never guessed, and I mean that unironically, but after this same thing happening over and over again I am no longer surprised by it. I still asked for her number for some reason, not that I am going to be spending that kind of money anytime soon.
Regardless, I both began the night and ended the night by accidentally approaching sex workers. I cannot think of a more fitting way to mark my last night of focusing exclusively on casino floor game. This is the biggest reason why I am going to need to change my venue selection.
Final Thoughts
It’s clear by now that I need to change up the way I’m doing things. My standard routine of focusing exclusively on girls walking around the casino floors is not working. I run into way too many sex workers, and of the girls who aren’t, many of them are in a hurry trying to get from point A to point B and it’s unlikely that they are going to want to change their plans suddenly to spend time with me. It has happened before, sure, but I’m making things unnecessarily hard for myself. It’s time to put more effort into experimenting with different types of venues.
I am sure that I will still be doing at least some casino floor game here and there when the opportunity presents itself, but I will no longer be heading out with the intention of making that my primary focus for the night.
I’m doing lots of approaches. I’m improving my flirting and teasing skills. On paper, things seem to be going well. But on the inside, things definitely felt worse this weekend compared to last, especially on Saturday night.
Inner game has been a big challenge for me lately. I get stuck in negative thought-loops. I care way too much about getting external validation from people on the internet who have no idea what it’s like to live in my shoes. It’s so ridiculous when I take a step back and think about it. It’s not the validation (or lack thereof) of the people who I interact with in real life when I’m out that gets to me, it’s that of people on the internet whose opinions have wormed their way into my brain. And I know these same people don’t give a flying fuck about getting my validation, yet still it is hard to purge these thoughts from my brain.
I think this inner game hurdle may actually be the biggest challenge of them all. The real battle is the one that takes place inside my own mind. Almost everything in the external world is a cakewalk by comparison.
If I can master the inner game, I can be assured that the outer game will follow suit.
Things I did well:
Getting approaches in! I did around 23-25 total approaches between these two nights combined.
Improving my teasing on people’s reactions or responses to me
Approaching groups, doing head-on approaches, and approaching hot girls without letting approach anxiety get the best of me
Things to improve on:
Stacking. I need to have more of a strategy when it comes to what I say right after the opener. Too often I hit a mental blank right after I open.
Not falling back on “get-to-know-you” type questions after the opener. These kinds of questions are boring and will often get you short and low-effort responses. I need to assume the burden of the interaction and bring more value to the table from the get-go. This is related to the above point about stacking.
Venue choice. As I’ve mentioned, I need to move on from only focusing on casino floors.
Inner game. This was my biggest sticking point on Saturday night by far. I spent way too much time stuck in negative states.
Number closing. When an interaction is about to abruptly end, I cannot hesitate. I must at least try for the number close.
My stock opener is “I just had to say that you look adorable in that outfit”, or if there are multiple girls “I just had to say that you [number of girls] look adorable together”