"If I actually like a guy, I'm not going to drag a guy home from a bar," she says. "I'm going to call him for dinner next week."
By the time I report back to Bashev, he's already found two other women, and is expressing a clear interest in the brunette. In an effort to give them space, I sacrilegiously offer to buy her blond friend a drink inside the bar. We take our drinks over to a long couch and break into small talk. I don't even attempt fast-seduction, because I've realized by now that I would feel like a complete tool. There's no way I could tell this girl, with a straight face, about an interesting show I saw on the Discovery Channel last night. I don't even have cable.
Al Cameron
Al Cameron
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But here we are, and we aren't going anywhere, because Bashev has locked onto her friend for the remainder of the evening. Before long, they're on the couch across the coffee table from us, and she's in his lap. He and I make eye contact, and he gives me this look as if to say, See what I mean?
According to the story Bashev tells me later, he began by "busting her balls," which was okay, since she was easily an eight. He saw the pack of Marlboros in her back jeans pocket, which to Europeans is a cowboy cliché. So he told her she looked like a cowboy.
Don't say that -- I don't like that image, she said.
Bashev responded by ignoring her. I'm just looking at your ass, he said. He said this because her ass is firm, and she knows it. But it was all part of the setup.
She asked if he liked it because it's firm; that's why all the guys like to look.
I didn't say I liked it. I think you should work on it in the gym.
Disbelief: Are you saying I'm fat?
Well, honey, you're really losing it. You need to hit the gym.
"And when I said that," Bashev explains, "she was really attracted to me."
Now she was hooked. He moved her inside, where, as serendipity would have it, a horse race was on TV. He caught her watching.
I thought you weren't a cowboy.
Oh, I wasn't really looking there.
Again, he ignored her, and tried running a pattern: Imagine what it would be like to be in the stands, and to not care about the competition, and get close to each other and make out…
Suspicion: Are you saying you want us to make out?
Whoops. Went too far. Time for damage control. He directed her attention to a couple at a table a few yards away.
No, I was talking about them -- see how they look into each other's eyes? A gentle nudge to her side. What, did you think I wanted to kiss you? I don't kiss strangers right away.Bingo. He reversed the frame, used her own language on herself. Damage controlled.
They moved to the couch, where he busted out an effective gimmick: palm-reading. It works for those who've really paid attention to what the girl's been saying all evening. Earlier, she told him that she changes friends a lot. So he traced along a line and said, You seem unattached to people.
Wow…remember, I told you that I was not attached to my friends?
Oh, my God. Well, I'm getting really good at this.
While he read her palms, her fingers were gently grasping the backs of his wrists. He told her he liked how it felt. So he asked where she liked to be touched.
My knees.
"I started touching her knees," he explains later. "I think that was the turning point, right there."
He left with her number and a date for Wednesday night.
