Pick-up updates - the August Bank Holiday Fayre edition

Today was the annual August Bank Holiday fayre in town and I always go along to pick up some second-hand books, possibly a gadget or two, and some bric-a-brac. This year, with my project of exploring whether there's an ethical form of PUA that will work for me with my feminist views and my more relationship-oriented sexuality, I reasoned that it was probably one of the most likely events and locations where I might be able to try out my "day game".

I set myself the target of talking to 5 women during the 90-120 minutes I was likely to spend there, and of course I never reached that target. I am starting to wonder if my town is bereft of single women - I know there must be a few (some of them are on match.com, and log in fairly frequently (or at least, that was the case the last time I was checking that site frequently myself), but it seems almost every woman I see out and about either has a man in close company, or else is trailed by a bunch of their kids. That's proof only of her having had sex at some point in the past, but given social constructions of family, it implies that there's a higher probability that she has a partner who contributed genetic material to the process. Yes, single mothers do exist, and Britain has quite a high proportion of them relative to other countries, but I kind of feel the last thing a single mum needs is another big kid to look after (not that I see myself that way, but anyway).

Okay, pointless whining done!

Here's the good bit: I may not have made 5 approaches, but I did at least make one, and it went well. I feel like I am gradually getting more of a portfolio of positive experiences built up, because when I actually manage an approach it seems to go pleasantly and not OMG crash-and-burn horrible.

Situation: I've already just about spent up, but returning from seeing the ice cream van queue stretching out into infinity (only a slight exaggeration!) and thinking about heading home, I walk back past the second-hand book stand on my way to the exit. There, I espy a gorgeous woman, she's reading the back cover of a battered copy of "Gone With The Wind", and holding in her other hand a copy of something by Hemingway (I couldn't see the title).

It's like a gift - the approach line is perfect and blazingly obvious to me. Bold as brass, I walk up on the opposite side of the rack, just as she puts GWTW back down, I pipe up, "A taste for the classics, I see? Hemingway and 'Gone With The Wind!'"

She smiles. She replies, and we talk about books and what we like, how much time to read we get. She picks up a handful of the old Penguin books, back when they just had coloured bands to denote the genre, and we talk about how cool those simple, plain covers were. She's grabbed some Sherlock Holmes and an Agatha Christie, so we talk about that, and I mention i've read all the Holmes and now am collecting Christie (all true). We chat a bit more, then she says, "I think I will get these."

So I reply, "So, you're not going to let me have the Agatha Christie, then?" Effectively, this was a test of her willingness to let me take charge, and signalling what is sometimes called "surgency" or "assertiveness", which is supposed to be an attractive quality, according to regular PUA. I have a conscience, though, so when she surrenders the book in question, I smiled and said I hadn't any money left in my wallet to buy it, she should keep it after all. She said, "If you change your mind, you know where to come!" - which now I think of it feels like it might have been a subtle "Indicator of Interest". However, if so, it was too subtle for me to feel at all confident about that, and if it was I totally missed it at the time.

I never quite figured out how to work my own "Statement of Intent"** into it (on the way home, I pondered whether mentioning that I view intelligence and being well-read as sexy would have been a good way to go) and the conversation shortly afterwards came to a natural close instead.

For all I know, she's right now blogging about the weird fatso who talked to her about books and acted strange about Agatha Christie, but from where I am now, I chalk this up as a really big step in the right direction, another positive experience to reinforce the idea that I can actually do this and can talk to women out of the blue.

It also reveals again that approach anxiety is not the problem, the problem is just having some lines to say that will get things started (usually, I feel like I need an opening line and a follower, and then I can probably wing it from there). My brain just goes too slowly in general to cope.

Here's what seems to happen:

• Trundling along by myself
• See attractive woman who isn't showing any evidence of being attached
• Brain changes gear to "pick-up mode"
• Okay, what can I say?
• No, not that - that would just sound creepy
• Nor that - that just sounds waaaay too cheesy
• That sounds good, okay let's go for it
• ...
• Oh, she's already gone :-(

I don't know if canned openers can possibly be the answer (see above, "that just sounds cheesy" thought process) but I definitely need some way of getting to the "that sounds good" stage a great deal faster than I do at the moment. Part of this is also trying to visualise what happens next. I feel, it's no good having a great opener, if when you do get a positive response, your next line is, "Ummm... errrr... Thank you for talking to me!" So I often feel like I need to visualise her response and how I deal with that response, before I'm ready to go for it. Like I said, I feel like I can improvise once I've got the opening exchanges and have a feel for how things are going. It worked pretty well today, after all. It's just giving myself enough material to work from to understand the territory, means I need something to get me that far.

** SOI, or Statement of Intent, is the PUA term for the point at which you make it clear either by explicit statement or by implication, that your intention is to chat up the woman you're talking to and/or get her into bed with you.