Thursday, July 06, 2006

Cliff's Notes (Part I)

What I did expect from Cliff's Convention:

* To be surrounded by an absurd amount of pick-up artists.

* To be hit on.

* To be somewhat conspicuous as the only scheduled female speaker.

* To see very little of Montreal itself.

* To be hit on some more.

* To get very little sleep (listening to presentations all day and going out at night).

What I did not expect from Cliff's Convention:

* To have my ATM card unknowingly expire the day before the trip.

* To be driven to a foreign country in a car with a broken speedometer.

* To hear enthusiasm at the Canadian age of consent (14. I won't name names and, yeah, ew).

* To have PUA Logan be such an easygoing travel companion.

* To go the full weekend without a single alcoholic beverage.

* To meet so many intelligent, polite, and friendly men (guests and speakers alike).

Saturday

Logan and I didn't get to the Marriott until that morning, missing the first day of speakers. One of the members of the Montreal lair, T, approached us as we entered the hotel, introduced himself, and showed us to the convention room (everything you've heard about how friendly the Canadians are? Totally true.).

"How's it going in there?" I asked.

"There seems to be a more holistic approach going on," T replied, "It's a whole new wave of pickup."

I was intrigued.

We entered the gathering room outside the convention hall, where Logan and I registered.

"Are you Dolly?" An Asian man with a hip haircut asked.

(I would quickly get used to hearing that question.) "Yes."

"I'm Asian Playboy. Good to meet a fellow blogger."

We got our passes and entered the convention room.

My first reaction was surprise, at just how nice the set-up was. There were rows of banquet tables with fresh linen, on which sat pitchers of water, glasses, pads, pencils, and bowls of candy. The chairs were cushioned and comfortable, neither folding nor plastic. I settled in at a table in the back, instantly relaxed and ready to spend a full day listening to speakers. Not to mention doing my own presentation that afternoon. As soon as I had a look around and noticed the tasteful stage set and backdrop, my nervousness evaporated. I could do this. Even with the two film crews recording every minute of the proceedings.

My next surprise came at the speakers and contents of their discussions. Where I was expecting to hear variations on the Mystery Method or David D's Cocky/Funny tactic, there was a range of wisdom and advice shared, much of it deeply introspective and highly insightful. I was starting to understand what T meant about the new wave, the holistic approach.

Logan went to take a nap before my talk, so I went to the hotel bar for lunch alone. I ended up talking shop with Asian Playboy (who had also been the subject of an article, for a Dallas paper) for the duration of the meal, and also met Lance Mason (Mr. PickUp101).

"Dolly!" Lance greeted me warmly. "I feel like everyone has met you except for me."

We briefly chatted about our discussion topics and mentioned the possibility of meeting up in NYC next time he and his girlfriend were in town (I had drinks with two of his instructors, who were a blast, months earlier, so I knew anyone related to PickUp101 would be fun to hang out with).

Was everybody going to be personable and easy to talk to? Coming from New York City, it's somewhat disconcerting. Also, being a woman at a pickup convention, shouldn't I be treated with suspicion for crashing their boy's club? Would this congenial vibe continue throughout the weekend?

There wasn't time to think about that. I had to practice my speech a couple of more times before going on in front of a room full of (predominantly male) strangers and cameras. I ignored the flutter in my stomach, found a quiet corner, and took out my notecards.

Less than two hours later, I was being fitted with a microphone headset. Before I knew it, the MC was calling my name and I was walking to the stage, in a haze of dry ice and applause...

15 comments:

Bart said...

You're right about the community changing, it's been going on for some time now, I can think of multiple reasons why it has (we have), but suffice to say it's a good thing we did.

Looking forward to seeing the dvd and whatever else you have in store for us.

GB

coasta said...

dolly, love your work. shame on you for missing the first day though! :D

be interested in hearing more your thoughts on other PUAs too. Especially ones that I know well.

look forward to the rest of the report. peace.

Dolly said...

GB,
I'm looking forward to seeing the DVD, too! The guy doing the interviews did a really good speech of his own.

Coasta,
If you tell me which of the speakers you know, I could tell you which ones I met.

Sandra Dee said...

Send some of those intelligent, polite and friendly men my way! :)

The Asian Playboy said...

Ooooo, my haircut is hip. Sweet.

Anonymous said...

Hey Dolly, it was truly a pleasure meeting you at the Convention. Loved your presentation, thanks for reminding us guys that women want us to approach them. Also enjoyed your suggestion on giving day game more of a chance, and getting the female perspective on what its like to be picked up. Chatted with you briefly on the way to the bathroom and you were kind enough to give my a business card and write your email and weblink. All the best to you.

By the way, The Asian Playboy's presentation was super smooth. Great voice tone and body language (he should start giving workshops just on this part of your game). If there was a such thing as an Asian Frank Sinatra, then he is the man.

The Asian Playboy said...

Gosh, Redshirt, now you're making me blush. In truth, I've never spoken at an event like that or in that large of a setting so I was pretty damn nervous.

Anyways, thanks for the props and I hope you don't mind, but I used it in my latest post.

I'm going to speak a little bit more in detail in the post afterwards, but I'm in decompression mode and taking it easy before writing a lot.

Psyneh said...

looking forward to se the dvd's!! :D

Dolly said...

Sandra Dee,
A caveat. They're smart and attractive, but they may want you to participate in threesomes, too.

AP,
Oh boy, you're going to let that haircut and Frank Sinatra thing go to your head, aren't you... or is it too late?

Redshirt,
I talked to so many people right after my presentation, though if you were actually wearing a red shirt at the time, I think I remember you. I'm glad you enjoyed my talk. Thank you for the kind words.

Psyneh,
I can't wait to see them, either!

Anonymous said...

Asian Playboy - if you felt nervous, it certainly didn't come across while you were on stage. As for my comments, you can quote me, I stand by my words. btw, I sent you an email, the subject line is "Hello from TO". It was an honor to meet meet you and looking forward to seeing the text to your presentation, if you're not going to be posting the entire text could you email it to me?

Dolly - yes, funny enough I believe I was wearing a red t-shirt when we chatted. There were over 100 people, all of them I'm sure wanting to have a moment to speak with you, so no worries if you don't remember.

Just a comment on the 3some thing, I usually don't tell this story to people unless I really get to know them really well but I turned down a 3some once while on a Caribbean cruise, and it turned out to be a good thing I did (the girls got caught the next day trying to smuggle a couple of kilos of coke onto the ship).

Personally, I'm more about giving one girl my complete and undivided attention and making her feel special than getting my rocks off on two girls at once.

I spent some time with Steve P and Johnny Soporno and will do so again and they very much into 3somes, maybe I'm just not at that level yet where I can "handle" two girls? I don't know, I can only travel my own path and for me, one girl at a time is fine with me. That being said, Steve P and Johnny Soporno are masters at this, they talked about attracting a girl as if it was a done deal and were already working on step 10, as if steps 1 to 9 were a given. It was quite the reality shift.

Anonymous said...

Dolly, you present us with a list of things that surprised you about the convention. One of the things on your list is that there were many intelligent men in attendance. God, I love that. What a great neg. You really have been studying this stuff, haven't you.

Johnny Soporno said...

It was good talking with you, Redshirt - and don't be so hard on yourself... Orchestrating a threesome DOESN'T mean you need to double your workload!

If you are essentially a 'Tour Guide' helping bi-curious girls work out a long-held fantasy of their own, don't be surprized if, once they conquer their initial reticence, they pretty much ignore you :) - But if you give them their space, AND you remain on-hand to offer advice/facilitate communications, they'll usually repay your indulgence lovingly.

When I spoke at Cliff's, I mentioned that GENERALLY a threesome involves a COUPLE and a Third-Party. Normally, YOU will be one of the COUPLE ;) and so you need to treat your PARTNER as the 'Guest of Honour' and substantially ignore the other girl until encouraged by your partner to attend to the newcomer.


Considerations:
If either one or both of the women HAS signifigant bisexual experience, this will reduce a lot of dependency upon you...

IF YOUR PARTNER has Girl/Girl experience, you may be able to sit-back and enjoy the show, becoming involved physically WITH YOUR PARTNER exclusively at first, and letting her lead / invite you to join her in pleasuring the other girl...

IF YOUR PARTNER is inexperienced, and the OTHER girl IS experienced, be sure to comfort and reasure your own lady, once again treating her as the Guest of Honor. If you do this, your likelyhood of having future threesomes is increased from ZERO to a signifigant probability.

The Threesome situation only gets really exhausting when you have two girls who are REALLY into YOU and not into eachother; at that point, you ARE on the hotseat, and the world's smallest violin is playing for you ;)

Good luck, let me know when you've earned some Threesome braggin' rights :D

Johnny Soporno
www.WorthyPlayboy.com

Dolly said...

Johnny,

I think Redshirt made it clear he's interested in being with a girl one-on-one, so why push your threesome agenda? Obviously, it's something that enriches your life, but if he wants to go the monogamy route, let him. That can be equally fulfilling.

Johnny Soporno said...

Dolly,

I'm sorry if I appear to have an agenda here of ANY sort, as I was merely reacting to this sentence which struck me:

"...maybe I'm just not at that level yet where I can "handle" two girls?"

Redshirt does indeed state that he is comfortable enough with [serial] monogamy:

"...one girl at a time is fine with me."

Perhaps I misconstrued his message as one of equivocal resignation rather than a statement of conclusive preference... but I'm not confident of that, because the KEY WORDS which caught my attention were, in the first sentence, "yet" and in the second, "fine".

Once again, if I appeared to be 'pushing' threesomes, I didn't mean to - I intended only to address and correct Redshirt's misappraisals;

a) that HE ALONE was responsible for providing pleasure and entertainment to both women in a threesome, and

b) that providing 100% attention to a single woman in a one-on-one situation would necessarly provide greater actualization for her than would providing effectively 100% attention to his partner would have [for her] in a threesome.

I'm sorry we've had this disconnect, Dolly - I hope we're back on the same page now! :)

Johnny

Dolly said...

Johnny,

I think what irked me most was the mention of "bragging rights" which, to me, indicated using a threesome as some kind of social status symbol. While you took Redshirt's comment as one of curiosity, other comments he has made in my blog made me think he was more in a monogamous mindset. Either one is valid, of course, I just don't want him, or any man in the community, to think that having more than one woman simultaneously indicates some kind of natural progression or advanced level of manhood. But I see what you're saying. Everyone has the right to explore their curiosity.