The Art of Conversation

Banter. You’ve heard the term thrown around the pick up community, but exactly what is it? Some describe it as a crucial step in the pick up process. Mess up during the banter stage, you might as well stop talking, turn around, and go find another girl, because you just blew it with the current target. You may have also heard that it’s a form of flirting, or keeping a playful mood. While technically that statement is true, banter is so much more. Banter is a total interaction. According to Webster’s, banter means to speak or act playfully or witty. Banter is something you do, and continue doing. It is not a phase of the pick up, it encompasses the entire interaction with the target. Banter is more of an art than a science. Having a good time, flirting with a girl, all the while building sexual chemistry between you and the target, this is banter.

When first talking to a target, most guys will proceed with the twenty questions routine, otherwise known as a pick up interview or Q&A, which we will touch on in a bit. They will ask the most common basic questions, “What’s your name? Where are you from? Where do you work?” You know what they are. We are all victims of doing this, but what does this do for us? Absolutely nothing! Most of the time when you ask questions you are focusing more on what you are going to say next than what she is actually saying, which is what's important. Not only are you not creating any sexual chemistry but you are also boring the target and ruining any chance you may have had. Besides, by now you are about the tenth guy of the night to ask her the same questions. The goal is to make yourself stand out from other guys, not be one of them. You have no interest in her job, friends, or hobbies. If the target is cute enough for you to talk to, does it matter if she works for a fortunate 500 company, or down the street at the local coffee shop. Sure, maybe in the long run when you are ready to settle down, but you need to be able to make it to the third or fourth date before making that determination. If you continue to use the interview pick up, you better be taking notes. If you somehow manage to keep the target’s interest long enough throughout the night she will start quizzing you, “What’s my name, where do I work?” Even if she doesn’t, you run into the risk of repeating questions and then she will know what a dick you are because you can’t even remember what you talked about an hour ago.

So what is banter? Banter is playful interaction or flirting, but it is more than just that, it is the total interaction. A better question to ask is what is playful flirting? Flirting is nothing more then a conversation between two people in which they drop subtle hints that they are attracted to each other. A conversation is fluid in nature, meaning it flows back and forth. If you are role playing, what are you doing? You are creating a fantasy land for you and the target to enter where you can both have fun, escape reality, get to know each other, and build sexual chemistry. If you are using push/pull comments, or negs, you are exchanging ideas and emotions while at the same time flirting and building sexual chemistry. That is banter, the total fluid interaction, combining role playing and story telling, minor Q&A, and dropping negs at the appropriate time.

Role Playing

Not something to be kept only in the bedroom, role playing is a very powerful technique used to break down barriers and keep the mood playful. When you first meet a girl, her defenses are on alert and she is not about to let you penetrate them. Sure, we could continue talking to her and slowly gain her trust over an extended period of time, but there are many more women out there and the bars aren’t open all night. So how do we get them to drop their guard and let us in?

You ever notice how different you feel while dressed up on Halloween? You act and feel different. You have taken on the personality of your costume. At that moment you are no longer tied down to whatever perceived notions your friends and family have about you. Maybe you get this feeling when you put on sunglasses. When I am wearing sunglasses I feel like I have on an unpenetrable mask. I do and say things that I would not necessarily do or say. I feel like I can do any thing. This same idea is applied with role playing. It lets the woman escape into a fantasy world where she can let down her guard, and let you in!

The first chance that arrives, you can start to role play. It can be brought up anywhere. For example, upon meeting a girl for the first time, shake her hand. Regardless of the grip she used to shake your hand with, pull your hand back and shake it out like you were in pain. Tell her, “Ouch, that’s quite a grip you got there, what do you work construction or something?” Remember you are having fun with her not insulting her, so say it in a playful manner with a smile on your face. Now that you have her in a predefined role, you can play that role with her, off and on, all night long. Continue with, “I’m going to be building a fire pit in my backyard this weekend, you should come help. You can wear a little jean skirt and flannel top, you know, and tie it up top. We’ll put a hard hat on you, and a tool belt. I think you’d look pretty cute. It might even catch on as a fashion statement."

I used this same routine on the phone the other day with a girl I knew from back home. We were talking about the new house Nick and I bought and how we were going to be doing a lot of work in the back yard. I went right into a role play, "I'll get you out here to do all the hard work, all the digging and paving, and I'll supervise and work on my tan. We can go get you some cute work clothes like a short jean skirt, and a small bikini top, something to show off your tits. Maybe some boots, some sexy boots though, I've got to have something to look at while I tan." She of course went right along with it, talking about what she could wear. It's fun conversation for both of you. The more crazy the story the better.

A lot of times I’ll use the girlfriend role play. I’ll tell the girl, “I like you, you’re cute. I’m going to make you my girlfriend.” Now that you have her playing the role of your girlfriend, you can start acting on it for the rest of the night. Be creative, tell everyone that the two of you are out celebrating your six month anniversary. If you’re believable enough you might even be able to get a few drinks bought for you by other couples, happy for your success. If she starts acting catty to you, tell everyone that you are experiencing your first fight. Come up with elaborate stories. Tell everyone about the time the two of you went to Vegas and almost got married. When you woke up in the morning, neither of you could remember a thing, but on the nightstand was a marriage certificate. The two of you started to freak out, until she noticed that the marriage certificate was not signed, but upon further search you found a wedding picture showing that you were married by a 400 pound, balding, drunken Elvis.

The girlfriend play is also great for getting past the touch barrier. How does a couple act? They hold hands, put their arms around each other, they kiss. That’s what you will do. Hold her hands, put your arm around her, have her give you a massage. You should probably refrain from kissing her, at least until you know it’s wanted, but there will definitely be the opportunity. Anything a normal couple would do, so should you. Just don’t overdo it. It is important to make every move playful and non threatening. If she wants more, she will let you know.

The girlfriend role play is my number one choice. It gets the target in the right mindset. The more you put her in that role, the more comfortable she will be with that idea. By the end of the night she might even believe that she is your girlfriend. Taylor and I used to use this approach quite often. Taylor was growing out his hair and it looked terrible, it was all over the place. He would always wear a hat when we went out. We used this routine where I would take off his hat and ask a group of girls, "What do you guys think of his hair, looks pretty awful huh?" Taylor would look embarrassed, and when his target answered he would go right into this girlfriend role play. If she said she liked it, he would say, "You know, you're the only girl who has ever said that, you are my new girlfriend. Wait can you cook? That doesn’t’ matter, you think I'm sexy, you are my new girlfriend." He would play off what she said. If the girl agreed that his hair looked bad, he would say "Damn that was mean." She would smile and try and get out of trouble but Taylor would keep right on with the routine "You know, you’re the first person who cared enough to tell me the truth. You're awesome, you're going be my new girlfriend." See it doesn’t’ matter what she says. The point is to put her into a role, and play it out.

If you do not want to be so forward take it back a step and make her your sister. Tell her, “You're kind of a brat, you’re just like my little sister!” Treat her just like you would a sister. Put her in a headlock, tease her with names like brat, kido, and sparky. If you are in a group tell a story about a family trip you took, back when the two of you were seven and eight. Make up an embarrassing story about her, how she was eating a chocolate ice cream cone not paying attention to where she was walking and tripped and fell. Somehow her ice cream cone landed underneath her and when she stood up the ice cream was all over her butt. It looked like she had crapped her pants. She cried all the way back to the hotel room and would not leave the room the rest of the trip. Or when she was older, about fifteen, she had a guy over she really liked, to watch a couple of movies. As she was getting up to change to the next movie she accidentally farted in the boys face. Let’s just say the guy never came back over.

Role playing is very open ended and has no boundaries. You can say you are forming a group like a bowling team. You have designated the target to be its newest member and she is the ringer that will lead you to the league championship; or the two of you are going to run away to Mexico and open up your own bar, complete with a mariachi band and an hourly wet t-shirt contest. Whatever role you choose for her, include yourself in it. The more she can picture the two of you together in her head, the closer to reality that idea will become. It will make her laugh and give you something to talk about when you run out of things to say. Girls are drawn to guys with potential. As long as you can keep her dreaming and show her a life beyond what she currently has, she will eat up every word, and play right into your hands

Are you starting to see how easy this is? You are taking the target out of her mundane every day life and adding excitement to it, transporting her to a place where she can be someone else and break out of her shell. She is now having a fun conversation with a guy she just met and she is intrigued by you. You have created interest and shown her that you are different than the other guys. You are worth getting to know. Most importantly you have started to build sexual chemistry. Another thing you are doing, is putting the idea in her head of the two of you being together. This is very important in terms of her letting her guard down immediately. If you create this fantasy land in which she sees herself with you, she is instantly feeling comfortable with you. This is just another way we will build sexual chemistry. This idea is powerful enough to turn a wholesome, church going girl to a sexy, leather clad, dominatrix. Again, role playing is easy. Anyone can do this, just be creative and have fun with it, she will too.

Story Telling

Story telling is another way to get to know someone. A lot of guys approach a girl and use some kind of opener and then go into Q&A. If you tell stories you can accomplishing the same thing as you would with Q&A, but without asking the same old questions she hears from every guy that approaches her. What kind of stories do you want to tell? Any story is fine but tell one that gives her information about you, something real. Here is something I would say. Maybe the girl says something about her dad selling insurance or her working at an insurance office. I used to own an insurance agency so I will tell her that. In me telling her about owning and running an insurance agency she picks up certain information about me. Not only have I given her information about me, but I have given her an opening to tell me about what she does. Now she knows what I do or what I used to do, and now I know what she does, all without boring her with common and uninteresting questions. Maybe we get to talking about family vacations or spring break. She tells me stories about her vacations and I tell her about when I went to Mexico or on a cruise in the Bahamas. You get to know about each other and each others experiences by telling stories. The important thing with story telling is that you give and get the same information you would asking questions, but you do it in a way that is not boring to her. The key to story telling is not doing all the talking. You want it to be 50/50. You tell a story and then let her tell one. Don’t just ramble on and on and then interrupt her when she is talking. Remember, you are telling stories in an effort to find out information about her, and to make her feel comfortable with you and lower her guard.

Another good thing about story telling is that by telling stories you will continually have chances to jump into a role playing situation. Many of the stories you or your target tell will spark ideas to dive into a role play. Let’s say she tells you a story about snorkeling when on a family vacation. You can jump right into a role play and say something like, "Oh you’re a snorkeler? We could move to Mexico and open a snorkeling operation. I will finance the operation but you have to walk around the beach dressed up in snorkeling gear." You can get as involved in the role play as you want.

I refer to this next technique as advanced because if done incorrectly it can have drastic negative effects. Implanting future visualizations is a technique where you describe a possible future between you and the target. The idea behind this is to get her thinking about the two of you in a more comfortable and intimate way. If done correctly she will feel so comfortable with you that her guard will be down and you will be able to go home with her tonight.

Tell her a likely event involving the two of you that could happen in the next three to six months. What this does is it gets the target to visualize a relationship with you. The more and more she sees herself with you, the more open and comfortable she feels being around you. The target starts to feel as though she actually has known you for six months, and she is comfortable with the acts of intimacy that normal couples are experienced with after six months of dating. It is best to tell stories with a great amount of detail. The more detail you provide the easier it will be for her to see the story in her head. The better the picture, the better chance you will have of her believing your story. We also want to include stories of the two of you becoming successful and wealthy. It does not matter what your current situation is. Even if you have $5 to your name and the only car you drive is the city bus, it is not relevant. Women judge you on your potential. If you make her believe that one day you will own your own business, and be worth millions, all with her by your side. She will see you as a great investment, and a man of quality.

Now herein lies the danger. A story that is to far fetched, or telling too many stories, can turn the girl off and looking for a quick exit. We can’t start talking about marriage and kids after knowing her for a few hours. We want to tell fun and exciting stories.

Story telling is just another tool in our arsenal. An important thing to note here, is that role playing is not story telling. In a role play you make up a fantasy land for the two of you to get lost in. The more creative, the better the role play and the more sexual chemistry you build. When story telling, you tell true stories about yourself as a way to get to know each other.

Q&A

Question and answer is the worst kind of conversation you can have with a girl. We see a lot of Q&A when we go out. There is nothing wrong with Q&A, but it’s boring as hell. It’s the same thing every other guy does. “What’s your name, where are you from, what do you do, what school do you go to?” The problem with Q&A is that it feels scripted, and it comes off that way. A lot of times you get caught up in the questions you are asking and busy thinking about what you’re going ask next, that you aren’t listening to what she is saying. Plus if you ask too many questions it sounds a lot like a job interview and she will get bored with you and lose interest. We like to ask only one question, maybe two, just to get the ball rolling and give us something to play off of and go into story telling or role play. We basically use it just to get started or if we are transitioning from one story to the next. If you do find yourself asking a lot of questions, pay attention. Tilt your head to one side to show interest. Q&A should only be used as a backup for when you run out of things to say, not an opener.

Negs

Negative comments are very powerful, if used correctly. They are comments directed at a target that appear nice enough on the surface, but mean spirited in their meaning. For example, tell a girl she reminds you of your baby sister. We have all heard the saying before, “You’re like a brother to me.” We all know how much that line sucks to hear. Turn the tables on her instead. Telling the target she reminds us of our baby sister is essentially telling her that she is immature, we are not attracted to her, and she is a pain in our ass. She does not have any value. I know we said earlier that you can use the sister line as a role play. You can, it all depends on how you come across when you say it. If you come across in a fun, joking matter, you are role playing. If you come across saying she reminds you of a sister, therefore you are not attracted to her, it is a neg.

Negs take girls out of their element. Women are so use to guys kissing their ass all night long that when they don’t hear a flattering comment about them, they are taken aback. It takes them off that pedestal that the other guys have placed them on and snaps them back to reality. Now you hold the power, she will want to prove herself to you, rather than the other way around. You are calling the shots. She will do everything she can to gain the upper hand, but now it is too late, you have already positioned yourself as her equal and you have effectively broken down her barriers. You are no longer another random guy, you are someone of interest.

A favorite neg of ours is to tell the girl is, “You are a really attractive girl, you're just not really the type of girl I date.” The reaction you will get is incredible. She will take it as a challenge. Here is a girl who has been receiving compliments all night long by every guy in the bar, and you are the asshole that tells her she's not your type! Instantly you have separated yourself from every other guy. The only way she can redeem herself is for you to find her attractive. By the time she has done so, you have already established sexual chemistry with her, broken down her barrier, and are well on your way to closing.

The bad thing with using negs is that if you use them incorrectly, you just come off as a prick. In the pick up community, negs are used just as described above. You make a woman insecure about something, and then she does whatever it takes to change your mind. The problem is, for the most part negs only work on really insecure women. So you are basically tearing down an already insecure person and making them feel worse about themselves. Granted, they will react in a way to make you change your mind and this does work, but do you really want to be that guy that gets women into bed by making them feel bad about themselves. You can get them into bed many other ways without tearing them apart.

Our Approach

We have said a few times that the conversation must be fluid. That just means that a conversation can't be scripted. You can't plan what you’re going to say and then anticipate what the girl will say in response. A real conversation is fluid. A lot of what you say is determined by what she says. There is no stage of the conversation that you have to stay in for a certain amount of time before you move onto the next. The best way to approach a girl is to do it with the intent of having a genuine interaction. You can't go up to a girl and think in your head, "I'm going to ask her a question then tell her a story, and then I’m going to jump into a role play." That’s just not how it works.

I will approach a woman and introduce myself. From there I play off what she does. If she sits there all quiet, I might ask her a question to get things going. Her answer should allow me to move into a free flowing conversation without having to ask anymore direct questions. If she says something funny to me from the start, I might throw a joke right back her way and go from there. In almost every case no matter what a girl says to me it almost always evokes some life experience that I have had that I can relate to her. Relating to her means I am building sexual chemistry. It's hard to say exactly what I would do because every conversation is different and new. However, one thing that always remains the same is that at some point in the interaction I will use each of the techniques discussed in this chapter.