Date #2

So I texted the girl I met the other week off gumtree on Friday night. I left it right up to the very last minute as I still couldn’t decide whether to pursue her or not. In the end I thought why take the easy option again? So went ahead and texted. I didn’t feel any strong compulsion to though. In fact quite the opposite. I guess I just don’t fancy her at all.

Anyway, it took her till the following day to reply. I guess she must have gone to bed last night. So I received a reply back while I was in the middle of meeting the jazz guy at the band. I texted something back to say we should meet in town later in the afternoon.

So sure enough, after the band I headed back home to move my car, quickly freshen up then head back into town. I’d heard there was a Banksy exhibition in town and it was free. So that sounded like something worth doing. So I organised to meet her nearby so that we could go there. I wasn’t sure what we’d do after that I was just going to play it by ear.

I felt decidedly unprepared this time around. I hadn’t read any PUA material for a couple of weeks and I didn’t really have my “game” firmly in hand. I’ll talk more about that at the end.

Anyway, so we finally met up after some logistical errors at the tube station and headed off to the exhibition. I was feeling really weak actually as I’d only got a few hours kip last night and only eaten a small sandwich for lunch. I soldiered on anyway and tried not to show my discomfort even though I felt like collapsing or running to Greg’s to stuff my face with 20 pies. When we were walking down the street I was aware of a really bad vomit smell coming from somewhere. I thought at first it was coming from the street, but it just kept lingering. I thought, oh god, did she vomit herself or is that her god damn perfume mingling with street stink???! Confusing and off-putting.

So the exhibition was alright. It was a bit of a squeeze though. We just kind of joined a queue and had to shuffle around two small little living room-sized galleries. Most of the stuff I’d seen already on the internet and it wasn’t much to look at. Just poppy throw-away art really. I didn’t really know what to say to her and I felt too self-conscious in case others overheard me sounding like a cretin, so I just kept silent mostly and saved my opinions for later. I felt I should have been demonstrating more personality here.

When we got out I decided to take her to a local “traditional” pub as we kind of had a running joke about both liking unpretentious establishments with hygiene issues. Damn it was a bit busy in there. No seats. I felt I was going to faint so I ordered a couple of drinks which she paid for (she owed me apparently… I wasn’t going to complain – anti-wuss that I am) and got some nuts which I tried to eat slowly in an attempt to conceal my starvation.

The conversation was going badly in the pub to start with. I felt so faint, tired, and hungry and I didn’t really know what to say. So I just kept eating nuts and apologised saying this was my breakfast brunch and lunch.

We spoke a little in there. Lots of silence, awkward from my point of view, but maybe that’s just me. Then I decided we should really move on. So I suggested dinner in china town as that’s the only place I know really.

She agreed so we headed down that way. I explained where we were and took her down the main street telling her it wasn’t much of a “town”. There always seems to be a lot of whining and negativity in our interactions. I was aware of this, but still I kept seeming to go down that route conversationally. Agh.

Anyway, so we found this place and got seats right away so all was good. I ordered duck same as her. Mistake really as this showed I was influenced by her choice and secondly because the duck was full of bones which I had to keep spitting out every 2 minutes. There were bones all over the place. I don’t know how she ate hers so successfully. There didn’t appear to be any bones left on the table on her side!

So the conversation was a bit stale again. I felt I was asking a lot of questions and then making statements myself, but not rewarding her for good statements, not keno escalating or anything and I felt it was all a bit one-sided – she didn’t ask me anything!

So we stuck around there for a while and then decided to head to one other pub where we had two or three pints more. We managed to find this Irish place which was actually really good as the music level was low and it wasn’t super busy – although we couldn’t find any seats for a while and just ended up bar propping.

Again boring conversation. I was struggling for material. But I thought maybe getting her a bit pissed would aid the situation and possibly also aid my situation. After an hour or so I went for a piss and when I came we managed to get a seat. At this point she finally started asking me questions about interesting stuff. “How many women are throwing themselves at you at the moment then?”

I must have been doing something right for her to think this. I perked up a bit and tried to banter back with her a little. I tried to play it coy like I wasn’t going to say. She smiled but didn’t press me. Then I changed the subject to her. It turned out she had met two other blokes off gumtree but she was keen to point out it was purely platonic.

Then she revealed the thing about the vomit smell that had been accompanying us all night. Apparently it was her handbag that she’d bought at some market in Saudi or somewhere. It had “assumed” the stink of the market somehow but she loved it anyway. She said “this was a point of discussion all morning” or something along those lines. “I couldn’t decide whether to bring it, but my flatmate said I should as it would be a benchmark – if I still contacted you after tonight with the stinking bag then I was definitely IN THERE.”

Well, this was telling. Whether she had done this on purpose or by mistake I don’t know. But I took it to mean that she had worried about what I would think of her enough to discuss it with her flatmate and friends and that she waned to get “in there” with me.

So anyway, I ballsed up again and didn’t follow this up. I don’t know where the conversation went after this, but I ended up trying to finish my drink quickly and she started to tell me “no don’t rush” – another sign I thought: she wanted me to stay around with her longer even though things seemed to be going badly, at least in my mind.

So finally we headed out at midnight to get the tube. She had kept moaning since we left the restaurant about losing her train ticket, part of me wondered whether she was making this up along with trying to get me to stay out longer so that she could miss her train and have to come back with me. Well, now was make or break moment. Turned out she decided to buy a new ticket so that was the end of that.

I walked her down to her tube line and by this point I really felt some physical contact needed to take place. So as we said our goodbyes I put out my arm for a hug, and she kind of thought I was going to shake her hand, but somehow we managed to hug and I went to kiss her on the cheek. She reciprocated but instead of a one-armed hug she went for both arms and kissed me on the cheek full on. Dunno if this meant anything. Was she going for my lips? Was this the tension in her bubbling over?

Anyway after that headed home. She accidentally took my umbrella, so I texted her to tease her about stealing it. She texted something back in uncharacteristically garbled English along the lines of “it was all part of my big plan…” Another IOI???

So anyway, lots of mistakes to learn from. In summary:

1. Didn’t greet her with a kiss. So wasn’t warm. Didn’t keno escalate.
2. Wasn’t leading enough.
3. Wasn’t escalating the conversation with question/reward/statement.
4. I let things peter out. I should have stayed out for two productive hours rather than stretching it out to six unfocused hours.
5. Not enough “I” statements and stories. Too short.
6. Acting too concerned with her opinions and thoughts. She probably thought I was a mac daddy after the first meet and now suddenly I was a bit of a wuss.
7. Not nearly enough ball-breaking cocky-comedy. There was no tension and no playfulness.

So lots to learn from.

Good band(s)!

Well yesterday was probably one of the best days of recent memory! I proved myself wrong again as I very nearly sabotaged the whole thing by making negative predictions about how everything would turn out. But, thankfully, I stuck in there anyway reminding myself that my predictions might very well be wrong as they have been so often.

So I was playing with the afrobeat band a few weeks ago and one of the guys there, a really nice player, mentioned that he was playing with the national youth outfit. Apparently you could just go along and play without auditioning, and he suggested that I should go seeing as they were always asking for more trumpet players. The only problem? You have to be under 26, but so what. I can still pass for 19.

So I decided to head along there yesterday. On the way there I very nearly turned back – “oh, it’s too late”, “it’s going to be a disaster”, “everyone will be looking at me”, “I’ll look like an idiot” etc. But surprisingly I was not anxious at all in the 30 minutes leading up to arriving there. I kept wondering when the anxiety would kick in. Finally it did around 15 minutes from arriving. I popped a couple of beta blockers and soldiered on reminding myself “I have been wrong in the past, these are only predictions, it is likely not to turn out as bad as I think.” How right I was!

So when I got there, there was some kid, probably about 15, playing alto sax like a demon. Running all over the instrument like it was nothing to him. I’m sure he would have embarrassed most of the old timers I used to play with in the North. Then there was some young trumpet player practising in the corner with his mute doing something similar. I didn’t know exactly what to do when I arrived there, and I was distinctly aware of being quite a lot older than these kids. Nevertheless I stuck around. Decided to pick up my trumpet and blow a few long notes and lip flexibilities to try and warm up. God I was tense. Couldn’t do anything slow. I had to play fast runs (badly). Eventually managed to gain some composure and played some longish notes.

So everyone finally arrived. It became clear that there was a lot of doubling going on in the band – mostly the saxes were doubled up, but the trumpets were thin on the ground – just me and the jazz guy and a little girl who wasn’t really playing, just tagging along. The other trumpet player asked me if I’d help with getting the stands so I did. He was really friendly, shook my hand and introduced himself and smiled and seemed like a really humble cool guy. That instantly put me at ease – I had someone to talk to!

So they handed out the parts and me and the other guy both admitted to not being lead players “at all” which put me at ease even more – I was worried there would be a lot of high note egotism. So we decided to switch parts around. I think I played lead on the first chart which went pretty well. The trumpet player launched into a solo and it was fucking phenomenal. The guy could really get around the instrument, he had a really fat warm sound and wasn’t shy using his range and agility. The sax player soloed like a beast and so did the trombone player. At this point I thought, “shit I don’t want any solos – I’ll make an idiot out of myself.”

Anyhow one of the next numbers had a big extended trumpet solo in it. I decided to go for it and it went pretty well – must have been easy chords. I got around them okay, even though I wasn’t following them exactly. The other trumpet player seemed to dig what I, head-bobbing and so on, and the trombone player looking round to see who I was. I felt pretty good!

We kept on running through stuff. All charts of a pretty high standard – the kind of stuff the old boys in the rehearsal bands in the North would have been struggling and complaining about. But these kids just go on with it! In terms of range it was stuff going up to Ds and occasionally a little higher. The jazz guy drew the short straw it would seem and ended up playing most of the more taxing stuff, and he did a fine job. No lead player? He was doing fucking well as far as I could tell.

I really enjoyed playing with the band, even though they were just kids. The standard was high and the charts were a good challenge too. Not too difficult, but not to easy either. I was aware the second band, the higher level band, were coming in and going into the next room to start their rehearsal. I was worried about them seeing me stood next to a little 12-year-old girl and an 18-year-old on my right and wondering, “who the fuck is this guy?” I hoped whats-his-face from the North West wouldn’t see me. Thankfully he was not there.

So as it turned out the main band’s trumpet players hadn’t turned up. Well, only two had. I could hear them practising in the other room, and it sounded like some serious screaming was going on in there. Anyhow, the main bandleader came in during our break and asked three of us to go and join in to cover the main parts in the main band. So we headed in there. Frightening standard. I understood now why the other trumpet player said he wasn’t a lead player at all if he was comparing himself to the guy playing lead in the main band. Frightening player. Just peeling paint with the volume he was producing and playing up into the gods effortlessly it would seem. He even pissed on all the old timers in the North whom I used to marvel at. I’m not sure how old he was, maybe 20? As for the rest of the band. A similarly frightening standard. Sax players running crazily all over the instrument, driving rhythm, tight trombones. And the charts they were playing were insane. Black pages with tempos exceeding 200bpm. Strangely the second trumpeter in there was hardly making a noise though. Seemed very lacking in confidence. At first I thought he and the lead were playing blindingly in sync but it turned out the lead was pretty much the only trumpet player there, which was all the more frightening. This kind of player must have been the kind they expected on the ships.

So I stuck around in the main band for the next hour or so filling in the 3rd and 4th parts while screamer boy continued to peel the paint – always a bit boring. When the main band took their break we headed back into the other band and resumed playing there. Jeez, how was my lip holding up to this kind of punishment? I still felt pretty strong! And I hadn’t even played properly for the past 3/4 months.

We played a few nice charts including a Nestico arrangement of Satin Doll which I’d done before. I had a solo and was really hitting some of the changes. The other trumpet players (now two – another young guy arrived later, he was friendly too, not much of an ego, a really good reader, could play jazz okay and had a strong confident style) really seemed to dig what I played – whooping after I finished etc. That felt great! I was tense though and I never know what to do when people do that. Should I look at them and smile or what? Whatever. I was too tense to look up so just kind of looked down – they probably thought I was a miserable git. No hold on that’s mind reading. I don’t know what they thought.

We played some more charts. Eventually a funk thing was stuck in front of me with a pretty high trumpet part. Mostly going up to D and with couple of bit going up to F. I couldn’t believe it. For the first two pages (it was 5 pages) I was really riding the lead part out. I don’t know if it was the acoustic of the room or the support of the other trumpeters or what, but I was just sitting on top of the band really powerfully. But ack! I could feel my lip going after page two and by the time I got the end I had nothing left to give. Couldn’t get up about G! Oh well, I don’t think it was noticeable as the other trumpeters were blowing like crazy.

After that we went back into the main band for an extra hour – so I played in total from 10 right through to 2! Jesus! The other band again was a bit boring. Playing 3rd and 4th parts quietly and tentatively under this insane lead player. Everyone seemed to get timid in there. No one wanted to stick out and make mistakes. And i noticed people WERE making mistakes in there such as jazz boy even though he was reading good in the other band. Evidently guys like this lead shake other trumpeters up.

At the end of the rehearsal the old boy in charge said I and this other guy there needed to fill in a sheet to say who we were, give our details etc. and get a photo taken. I thought I’d rather go home and think about it before throwing myself in and making up fake dates of birth. So I decided to make a sharp exit.

Headed back home. I felt really good! Happy, bouncy! Amazing really. I wasn’t bothered about people bumping into me on the tube or whatever. I was just feeling good! When I got back, I took my car which I’d parked on the petrol station and went to Tesco to get a quick sandwich. Well, it looked like someone had disapproved of me parking on the petrol station this time as they’d put bollards all round my car! I just moved them out the way and quickly drove off.