Contrary to popular chick belief, bachelor parties are lousy last-hurrah pickup opportunities. Nothing screams “ain’t getting laid tonight” louder than a roomful of bob evans dropping $20s on lapdances from strippers who get paid to flirt and make a guy think he’s Casanova for the time it takes him to slip a buck in her garter. Trust me, bachelorettes, your guy has got no shot. You should send a thank you card to all those working strippers who reminded your future husband how hard-up he’d be without your steady supply of pussy. That’s what marriage is — a safety school, a plan B, for guys who wouldn’t know what to do with the new leads.
So when I’m at bachelor parties I know the best way to make the night worthwhile is to come with two goals in mind. Goal one is for my buddies. We pound shots, we eat a zoo’s worth of meat at Churrascaria, we stumble into Scores and rate the strippers until we find the perfect half-Thai, half-Norwegian beauty for the man of honor and give her a couple hundred to grind her ass into him for 3 minutes. When they’re tapped out, they plead with some strippers to join us, after their shifts, at the next stop, a trendy upper east side lounge. “Sure, handsome, sounds fun, but how ’bout another private dance?”
Goal two is to wipe the stink of lameness off me after having spent good money for the privilege of looking at, but not touching, naked girls. I’m glad my buddies will have fond memories of empty wallets and killer hangovers, but I demand more of myself. A bachelor party to me is another night out to pickup women and wing for my single friends. Unfortunately for them and for the women who secretly want to be seduced, they have zero game. Drunken assertiveness is not a winning formula.
We arrived at the bar/lounge where one guy’s brother bartends, and revved up the drinking once again. I paced myself because I need my wits to run proper game. They were disappointed the strippers didn’t show up. The ratio was not good, so when a cute, late 20s woman walked in at 1AM and sat at the bar alone it was like tossing chum to circling sharks. A phalanx of my friends seven deep approached this girl and opened her in unison. Now that’s attractive. 
She didn’t seem to mind, though, and I watched from a comfortable vantage point as the scene escalated into an embarrassing spectacle of seven guys sitting in a semi-circle all facing one girl peppering her with questions and meandering slice-of-life stories. Every time she was about to speak, the whole posse leaned in like she was EF Hutton. It was as if they took everything a guy should know about basic game and did the opposite. One quick glance at her eyes told the tale — there wasn’t a hint of attraction. It was the indulgent look of a dog lover watching puppies climb her leg. This went on for almost an hour. Occasionally, one of the guys would peel off and walk back to me with a progress report.
“hey man, check this out, I think I can get this chick’s number.”
“yo, dude, waddaya think? she’s giving me the signals, eh!”
More useless chitchat. By now, the guys were throwing everything at her. There were bottles of beer and full shots all over the bar behind her; they were buying her drinks faster than she could drink them.
“I’m in, man. don’t tell my girlfriend! this is in the vault, right? right?!?”
“she’s hot. I’m gonna get her alone and work my magic.”
“I know this is XXXXX’s night, but this chick is into me! He won’t mind if I take off with her.”
Once in a while, one of the married guys in our crew would join the fray and throw down with his rusty wingman skills. Let me tell you, there is no worse wingman in the world than a married guy. They mosey in, totally at ease because, you see, they’re spoken for and don’t feel any pressure to impress girls anymore, and completely monopolize the conversation with boring Adventures from Married Life. They are like Venom’s black suit, leeching into every conversational crevice and taking hold, bonding with their hostage over recipe-swapping stories, until all sex appeal is drained out of everyone in a ten block radius. And the best part is they think they are helping their buddies get laid!
The besieged girl finally had had enough and began closing off her body language. Crossed legs to the side, arms folded, eyes wandering around the bar.
The guys got the hint and slowly, one by one, aborted the mission. I think they had violated, in the course of an hour, every single rule of the Game. It was quite an achievement. On their way back, they bitched to me about her attitude and wished me good luck in taking a crack at her. My attention turned to the girl, who was now sitting alone again. I suspected she was either just out of a bad relationship or a foreigner new to the city. How else to explain her infinite patience and good natured smiling during this debacle? I waited 15 minutes to give her a breather before moving into position next to her at the bar.
“Do you always do this?”
“Do what?”
“Break seven guys’ hearts at once.”
“Oh really, is that what you think I did?”
[accent. she’s foreign. one suspicion confirmed.]
“It takes a cold person to pull that off. I almost didn’t want to talk to you because you’re so mean.”
“Well, you don’t have to, one of those guys still wants to talk with me.”
[motioning to the other side of the room] “He’s pissed at your meanness. I’ll do my best to fill in and prove to him that you’re really a nice girl on the inside.”
We talked for an hour, then moved to another room and sat down on a couch. My other suspicions were confirmed when she told me she’d only been in New York 6 months and had recently broke it off with her boyfriend. She was practically on her own with few friends, nervous about the future, and needing someone to confide in. More than once in our conversation she cried a little. Her Finnish homeland was far away. My hapless buddies had primed her to soak up even minimal game like a sponge. Everything was in place. It was the perfect pickup storm. Ironically, it’s situations like these when I back off on running my tightest game and prefer to connect in a very laissez-faire, casual fashion. When a girl is not shit testing me or putting up hoops for me to jump through, when she’s genuinely vulnerable, I respond in kind. But I never abandon the fundamentals — seven guys proved to me again what happens when female psychology is ignored in favor of being yourself.
So with a mix of game and sincere interest I learned more about this girl in a night than most husbands bother to know about their wives after years of marriage. 2 hours 45 minutes later we were in her bed. It was the fastest non-inebriated, non-dancing meet to lay time I have ever recorded. It helped that her place was across the street.
The next day, the guys gave me some shit about what had happened. There weren’t any hard feelings, but there were complaints along the lines of “oh, man, I warmed her up for you” and “i do the dirty work and you come in to mop up”. This illustrates one of those guy code issues that skirts a gray area. No guy can claim dibs on a girl just because he talked to her or bought her a drink she didn’t want, but at the same time a good friend won’t move in on the girl or her girlfriends when his buddy’s failed pickup attempt is still fresh. I empathize, so when something like this happens I wait until the guy(s) who opened the girl takes all the time he needs. Usually, I simply leave them and go find a richer target environment.
Which leads me to guy code number two. If a buddy doesn’t have game, he shouldn’t expect me to put my game on hold for him so that we can commiserate together Iron John-style over tear-stained beers. If he doesn’t know that opening a girl with six swinging dicks in tow is an exercise in futility then I am not going to accommodate his bruised ego by letting golden opportunities slip by. Bros before hos except at the close.
A month later I heard from the guy who was getting married that after he told his fiancee about my night he caught flak from her for associating with me as a friend. The news put a smile on my face. When engaged women think I’m a bad influence on their beloveds I know I’m doing something right.
