When In Doubt Call It Out

I’m sitting next to her in the bar, we’re on our second beer. This girl really likes me. And I like her.

We’re connecting, bantering. She’s laughing, looking at me with those eyes, those eyes that tell me she feels awesome.

I’m escalating kino (touching). It started with light touching on the arm. My hands are in her lap now.

“Oooh, I just got my haircut,” she tells me. I reach up and pull her hair back behind her ear.

She flinches.

I back off.

Touching her hair is an important part of escalation for me. And it’s a great indicator. If she’ll let me touch her hair, it means that she’s into me, that I could probably kiss her.

Sometimes a girl will flinch if I haven’t built up enough attraction or comfort. But for some reason, I didn’t think that was the case with this girl.

We continue to talk. I build more attraction. More comfort. More kino. A lot of kino.

A while later: “My best friend is a stylist,” I tell her. “He has his own salon in Chelsea…” I continue to talk as I touch her hair again.

She flinches again.

This time, I call it out.

“You don’t like me touching your hair,” I say. I’m thinking maybe she did something special with her hair and doesn’t like it touched.

“No, it’s just that I’m… ticklish,” she tells me with an embarrassed smile.

Getting used to calling things out is one of the most important things you can learn.

In this particular case, it was a minor thing. And it provided some useful information. She’s ticklish. And she turned out to be ticklish in a lot of other places as well.

Good to know.

But this tool goes much much farther than getting some useful information.

In fact, you could probably even use this tool as your single most important tactic and get pretty far.

A while ago when I was with Lance Mason, we were talking about getting waivers for filming girls being picked up on video. Some girls would get freaked out by that.

Lance was explaining that the best tactic that he used to get these girls to sign legal waivers was to call out what emotions they were going through.

“Wow you’re kinda stand-offish.” “Oh, that’s cute, you’re warming up to me.” “Oh my god, you like me!” etc.

This worked brilliantly. He said that he believed you could get far using this as your only tactic.

It’s so important for a number of reasons.

Firstly, it puts you in the God seat. It makes you the narrator of the entire situation. It’s a very confident thing to do and displays leadership. You are describing what’s happening in the situation.

I try to be the first person to do it in every single interaction, whether it’s calling her out on one of her responses “Oh my god, you don’t look fine. You had a rough weekend, didn’t you?” Or just narrating the situation “I can’t believe I just walked up to you like this and now we’re talking. Do you talk to strange guys all the time?”

It puts the girl at ease because it shows you can talk about ANYTHING. Do this a lot and it makes banter easier because nothing she does is off limits to bust on.

Secondly, it shows you can read her emotions. If something happens, she’s not going to be in this awkward situation of having to TELL YOU what’s going on. She knows that you know.

A while back I was with a girl on my roof, I went to make out with her and she wasn’t into it. I said “Oh my god, I can’t believe we almost made out. God, I’m not a piece of meat, you know.” It took away the awkwardness and we were able to have fun again.

There is almost no situation where you can’t call it out. At high points having fun, including getting into bed, or at low points, like if you creep the girl out.

Note though, that this isn’t the same thing as being a total wussbag who is constantly oversensitive to what the girl is doing. It’s a line you need to be careful with.

“You seem lost in thought.” “You don’t look happy to be here.” etc.

What’s happening is that you are calling it out FOR YOURSELF. And most of the time you are bantering with her about it. You’re making fun of her and busting on her. You’re not using it because you need her to contribute to the interaction, you are calling it out because IT AMUSES YOU.

I have a little game where I try to be the first person to call things out in an interaction. If the girl does it first, I realize I’ve lost the call-it-out-game. She’s broken the seal. It doesn’t mean the interaction is lost, but I know I’ve missed an opportunity.

And it’s usually the more confident girls that call it out first. They aren’t worried about losing the interaction. They’ll say something that indicates they are framing the situation themselves. And they’re not afraid to tell you.

Try this game yourself. Incorporate this into your interactions and you’ll get a lot more comfortable talking about anything and everything.

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posted in Attraction, Banter