- Joined
- Nov 14, 2017
- Messages
- 306
[[ In a hurry? The approach starts at #3, and #4 is after the hook. ]]
1. What A Coincidence!! (Backstory)
My child, at least one of them, wants to be half Nilotic. After Tuesday's remarkable coincidence, I'm convinced of it completely.
It started in the few days leading up to Tuesday. I had been unusually and remarkably preoccupied with the impact of various life decisions, some of which are immediately in my face, on my odds of ever knocking up a beautiful Upper Nile Valley woman...
(you can skip this ramble... Skill aside, would I ever be able to seduce a Nyakim Gatwech (pic & pic) or Yaya Déng (pic & pic) or Nykhor Paul (pic & pic) whilst living in a country where running into a South Sudanese girl is like finding a needle in a freighter full of hay? I had literally seen only one all year, in a city of 3 million. Would I have to take my chances in Juba, or would Kampala or Nairobi be close enough? (I've been thinking to move to east Africa anyway, because I don't approach enough girls here due to my only feeling to hit on black girls in general.) English isn't that common in Juba, but I don't feel like learning the lingua franca, Arabic, because it's only the language of their non-black ex-oppressors. I'd love to learn Dinka, but how long would it take, and what fraction of Juba's population understands it? It's mutually intelligible with Nuer, but what about the other sixty-some-odd tribes? Are there classes in my city? Might that help me find more South Sudanese girls here? How dangerous is it in Juba? The peace deal Kiir and Machar just signed, are they going to stick to it this time? There are other Western countries with Sudanese diasporas; are those places worth looking at? Would on-line help? What if the slightly reckless mental hack I am using to overcome asexuality results in knocking up some other kind of girl here? What are the chances of that? My probability modelling puts it anywhere from 1:14 to 1:1,040 depending on what value of ρ - the uncertainty resolution bias - is used in the calculations. If it happened, could I still find a beautiful Nilotic girl to co-parent with, without abandoning the first child? How long would I have to stay abroad? Would that force me to break my principles in order to get the Nilotic child's mother back here, because I couldn't just live in Africa while having a kid back here? Should I just scrap that brain hack because it poses too much risk to the Nilotic child's existence? Will I still be able to kick the asexuality in any reasonable time without that powerful hack???)
Ahem. So.
Indeed, on the very morning of Tuesday, I wound up reading a study on my country's Sudanese diaspora. They may be as little as 0.1% of my city, and that counts many who aren't even Nilotic!
Come noon, I was on a date with a Guyanese girl I'd met while she was shopping in a big box store a couple weeks before. The date started in the food court of my closest mall. As fate would have it, the lineup at the coffee store was a mile long, so, really thirsty, I wandered into the fast food chain.
I initially paid utterly no attention to who took my order; I was only seeing this person through the dense fog of an auto-pilot that was filling in while the rest of my brain was trying to calculate getting the cute Afro-Guyanese girl home. After the transaction was done, I started to think this person I had conducted it with might be female. Either that, or kinda gay! That and something else even more interesting started bothering me. I had to steal an actual look at this person, not the "fast food employee" placeholder the ship's computer was going off.
That's when I found myself looking at....... a South Sudanese girl . .. . ...
Taller than me. Quite slender. Very dark skin, way darker than typical black people here. Nilotic features. Head practically shaved. (I'd prefer natural hair grown out a little, but hey, at least it's not straightened.) Small breasts. (I prefer medium, but it's ok.) All typical of this type, although the latter two points are more variable. This particular one had a rather large ass.
Mental noted!
On the short walk home after the Guyanese girl had to return to her school, I was thinking about the Nilotic girl as much as I was thinking about the date! The last time I knew where a South Sudanese girl worked, I decided to save her for when I had a little better game. Since they're so rare. And then one day her store closed down. I decided not to make that mistake again. I knew this one was here today so I decided to meet her today. So I turned around.
And now the date itself has been so eclipsed that, unusually, I'm posting this secondary record about the Nilotic girl without having even started my primary record of the date itself!!
2. What Stupid Concerns (Pre-Approach Contemplations)
I almost went in, until I realized I had no idea how I was going to run this. And she's only the second South Sudanese I've seen in over 11 months of checking for girls on the regular, so I needed a plan first.
She looked kinda young, so I had to cover my ass. My usual go-to, not wanting to mention age, is to ask if she's a student and what's her major. High school students don't have majors.
I really wanted to give this girl some kind of compliment involving the word "beautiful". I don't usually. What was I going to tell her? "You have beautiful eyes?" Maybe. Or features. No hair to speak of so that's out.
Hm, well it's a bit of a risk but I really want to know how it would go down, for future reference, and this girl could be too young anyway, in which case the data point came at no real cost, so how about, "bla bla \ Are you South Sudanese? \ Yes \ You have such a beautiful complexion!"
However. That particular fast food chain hires minors in a major way. Throw in the wiry build and small breasts, and, despite those being common in adult Nilotic women, it made for a Phoenix really afraid he was about to hit on a 15 year old!
So I started getting really concerned that I had to go for the student question before demonstrating sexual intent. But now it seemed like an interview.... are you this, are you that, are you the other. Psh. But what else was I going to do??? Get kicked out of the only mall a short walk from me forever and ever and have a forced "PERV" tattoo on my forehead and be put on the sex offenders list because I told a 15 year old she's beautiful?!?
By the way, fear, what would a high-schooler be doing at work at 12:45pm through 2:45pm in mid-September?
Go away fear, just go away. You fucked this up, a little. At least I didn't let you stop me from even talking to her. Cuz I really want you to go fuck yourself. And she wasn't 15, you fucking liar.
3. What A Lady
So, in I went. First leaned against a partition looking at the menu displays well above their heads, not prepared to enter the line just yet.
Just then, the girl, still working, walked out from behind the counter with a tray of food and passed by me within a foot or two. I made a point to not look closely. She looked around, and then passed back, still holding the food. Her mannerisms had a certain liveliness. But with her doing this errand, I was for a moment worried someone else would take my order.
In past I'd have been relieved at being off the hook. But I've made progress against fear, and today I was relieved not when she left, but when she came back.
I was still a wee bit nervous walking up to the counter, but she defused that with a manner that was both feminine and friendly, whilst also having a certain flair that was confident yet free of pretension. Actually, her mannerisms were in some little ways not entirely typical of locals, and subtly reminded me of some of the more candid video I've seen of South Sudanese models.
Possibly all of the South Sudanese girls I'd seen up close had, to this point, been either models or otherwise ones a photographer had thought to shoot. By that high standard, she wasn't the cutest I'd ever seen, but at once I wasn't disappointed. And cameras had not quite prepared me for the reality of one in front of me.
Something about her height, vocal timbre, and mannerisms conveyed a certain robustness in spite of the slender build. At once she had a certain femininity that became more greatly apparent as the shock of her unusual characteristics subsided.
She did have braces, which I caught myself looking at, but at this point her teeth are lined up pretty well.
Her greeting and the brief pleasantries we exchanged were not in business form, but more just as two friendly people meeting socially. In fact, it was, comparatively speaking, quite a ways into the conversation before we said anything in customer/server mode. This was quite good, and it's not something I had to force, it just happened. Indeed, she had kind of helped it along with her friendly non-business greetings.
I almost wonder if my reallllllly liking Nilotic girls was having some kind of "mirror neuron" effect as cited by Hector and others, making her more open. I would find this encouraging! Or maybe she's just like that all the time.
I continue after the "hi"s and "how are you"s, not wasting any time to ask the burning question:
"Are you South Sudanese?"
"No..."
I'm just slightly taken aback. I would've sworn up and down in front of a grand jury that she was. I just looked at her as I was trying to figure out, what now, but she made it easier on me:
"I'm Sudanese!"
Phew. So, I basically still nailed this. Because the line between South Sudan and the north is, as is usual for Africa, fairly arbitrary - indeed under much turmoil! The South Kordofan province of Sudan has some of the same Nilotic tribes as the new southern nation. (It was all just Sudan until 2011.)
I made some idle digestive statement, [ok, that didn't come across right but it's too funny to delete], and she followed with a really upbeat:
"How did you know I'm Sudanese?"
I love guessing what part of Africa a girl is from. I think a lot of white people see Africans homogeneously (or worse - I've heard people refer to Somalis using an offensive term for Pakistanis), so they really notice it when one shows a more nuanced awareness. Guessing where a girl's from is, as someone in here noted, a risk, but for me, it's a big score when you get it right! Almost always opens them up.
I gave her a good look, in a kind of flirty off-angle manner, and then declared, "the look."
4. A Mutual Effort
"Have you been to Africa?", she queried.
This is the second time I've gotten this recently, and I really need to fix the answer here, because I feel like a bit of an idiot knowing as much as I do about somewhere I've never been! I am gonna fix that soon, but I want to live there a while; a short trip just will not cut it for me.
"No, not yet, but I have friends."
"You have Sudanese friends?"
Oh, God, she has nearly caught me...
"No, but from a few different places... Ethiopia... Kenya... Tanzania..."
(It's worth noting here that, apart from border regions like Gambela, most Ethiopians, Kenyans, and Tanzanians look nothing like Sudanese Nilotes like this girl.)
"You're very cosmopolitan!"
"Yes!"
At some point, I ordered myself a snack and she asked a LOB question and rung it up. This was mid-conversation, and notably it was me who initially brought up the transaction, not her. I actually did this so artfully that I can't even remember at what point in the conversation it occurred! I seamlessly inserted it as a side matter while the conversation proceeded in parallel. Actually, when she gave me the total, I put the bank note in my hand and just held it in front of her for a few moments as we continued to chat, which bought a few more moments. This is how I want to always hit on cashiers in future!
"Are you a student?"
"Yes, I go to [local college]."
She then asked if I'm a student. Fuck I have some good genes!
"No", I answer, and state what I do. Being an unusual type of production, the format has no well-defined term. I used one of several tentative terms I'll typically use, but she interpreted it in an unintended manner.
"That sounds technical."
I was obviously still somewhat in my head, as the clearly-thinking me would have taken some exception to this assessment and emphasized the creative and artistic elements over the technical ones. However, I strangely just said something like "yeah" and changed the subject.
"What are you studying," I asked.
"Fashion," she says with a flirty smile and playful voice.
Another strange coincidence! Cuz the real reason I knew she was Sudanese was that her corner of the world is prodigiously producing fashion models who totally outdid my prior "tall and dark" archetype of female beauty.
She queries, "And you?"
I repeat what I do in the same terse and vague manner I had the first time. (Maybe this is where her "sounds technical" answer was, instead; I can't remember.)
"Tell me your name." (I love asking this way, and by now I've gotten it so hard-wired that the rest of the interaction can be burning to the ground and I still do this right.)
"Ranique." (I was slightly disappointed; I was kind of expecting a Nyakim or Yaya or Ajak or Nyajouk.)
I put out my hand, above the register's monitor, at some point giving my name. It took her a moment but she ultimately presented her hand, which I took in the usual manner, her fingers between mine and thumb. Alas, I didn't get that to linger the way I did with Tanika. In fact, that was many months ago, and still Tanika's the only time I actually did it - without even thinking about it, for that matter!
5. What An Odd Close
At some point around here, Ranique looked to the customer behind me, who I hadn't really been aware of. I had known I didn't have long, but at once had wanted to vibe a bit before trying to just randomly close the girl. So, this inevitable point kind of threw me off.
I didn't want to completely rush nor hold up the line, so what I elected to do was step aside for a moment and deal with my snack, which I think a different employee gave me at an adjacent part of the counter. I lingered a bit because of course I wanted to try closing Ranique, and there were only 2 or 3 people for her to ring up so it looked feasible to wait. In the interim, I wandered away to grab napkins, and took my time, and then came back.
Before long, the first two people behind me had ordered, and a lone third was just leaning against the partition looking at the menu. The Law of Least Effort would not allow me to stay there indefinitely if more customers showed up after this third person finally decided to order, so I just went in while he was undecided. But his being there made me rush.
In retrospect, I probably should have either (i) not been afraid to hold the line up a little, and closed while I was initially with the girl, or (ii) sat down with my snack (rather than carrying it away per my auto-pilot plan) so as to be able to pick a time when nobody would be behind me. If a good chance did not arise, I ought to have just left and come back another day - the option I ended up stuck with anyway.
I re-opened the girl simply with, "We should grab a coffee."
Simultaneous to saying this, I was presenting her with my phone on which I had a contact sheet, aware that I had little time. She didn't really even look at it.
Her answer was kind of bizarre. It took her a moment, and then she queried, "For who?"
Now that I have my head on straight again, I kinda wish I'd have answered, "Donald Trump, of course!"
Well, strange questions deserve strange answers. But I was a little bit in my head and not entirely clever on the spot, so I just answered in a pedestrian fashion. "You and I", I declared while gesticulating a line between us with the hand that still had my phone in it.
["My memory of what happened next is not exactly robust," say my voice notes from the next afternoon.]
She smiled, possibly even with a little chuckle, and said, "no". But her manner was not at all consistent with the usual, "I'm so sorry but I have to reject you" vibe. By her non-verbals, she was not negative. I'm actually having a lot of trouble understanding what her intentions were, here, and I feel like there was some miscommunication.
As I just looked at her, she added, "I'm always here." I'm not 100% sure what she meant by that (there are at least two interpretations).
I suspected the customer behind me may have been ready to order, and my brain had reached the limits beyond which a blue screen would become inevitable, so, considering I knew where to find her again, I just hit the panic button before I did any more damage.
I turned to leave, and as I did so, I addressed her, "Ranique, right?"
She said "yes," and then in a friendly tone greeted me by name.
We trade a pleasant look and then I'm gone.
6. Wow. What Now?
Actually, I'm really encouraged! This was my first time meeting a girl from my "unicorn" ethnicity, and far from royally fucking it up out of nervousness induced by extreme scarcity, I actually wasn't that nervous at all, and it was one of my better approaches even though I screwed up the close. I could probably re-open her fruitfully. I'm sure the practice I've had helped, even though I still need a lot more. And she was consistent with other African women, who have for the most part been really easy to talk to.
I think it's a good decision to not avoid Nilotic women just because my game isn't tight enough; inexperience is not a guarantee of failure, nor is ever seeing her again guaranteed.
Their numerical scarcity here is, of course, still a serious concern. But viewed globally, there are more of them than I could ever meet in my lifetime.
I plan to talk with her again, because I really got the feeling that this came really close to working out. She was quite friendly, reciprocated most of my questions, and even called me by name - something I never have happen during an initial approach.
At that rate I'm not even really sure why she refused the close, although I can identify some things I did do wrong:
- I didn't sexualize enough or make my intent clear. No sexual or chase framing. Other than attire, I probably didn't have all that strong of a sexy vibe. I so far almost never manage to handle these things, yet still get some closes; but normally I do at least give a physical compliment so at least I don't look totally scared to show sexual intent. I did not give her a compliment, initially because of the stupid age concern, and then forgetting (because I was already past the usual point where I'd have done it).
- I didn't go for the close on a high point. In fact, the interaction had been cut off first. That was basically just my overestimating the amount of time I had; these days, it's more common for me to hit on customers (which used to be much more frightening), and in those cases there's not as inflexible of a time constraint.
- The close attempt itself was a little awkward. For instance, passing the phone at the same time as the date proposal instead of first getting her to agree; come to think of it, I don't recall ever getting a close that way.
My plan, more or less, starts with find her again, greet her by name, ask how's classes, and what made her interested in fashion. I think it's worth trying to get her to open up about that, because her non-verbal character when mentioning it gave me the impression that she has some passion towards it.
I want to compliment her genome somewhere in there. Only thing is, I usually do that, just once, within the first minute, and from that perspective, it feels a little out of place doing it in a whole subsequent interaction, especially where it's something I could've mentioned the first time!
I'm also a little undecided just what feature to praise. To be honest, I'm really tempted to compliment her gorgeous, even, dark skin tone, which I sincerely love. That, however, is a can of worms, discussed here.
And I'm not completely sure how best to close, but I'm thinking of trying to schedule a meet directly after her work. Perhaps if she opens up a little on a topic, ask, "I'd like to hear more [...], what time do you get off?"
On one hand, that seems like a stronger approach, a future date close having failed. I'm just worried she might have classes, a ride, or some other obligation immediately after work.
I could ask for just 10 or 15 mins. after her work, which might give me a chance to either stretch it or at least get another meet. On one hand it seems a bit weak, but it's better than having her refuse a separate date again.
I'm really curious about her background. However, I probably should tread lightly, because there have been many atrocities towards Nilotic peoples in the Sudan and I would not want to bring up painful memories. Mind you, based on her English, I suspect she either left very young or was born here. Parents probably fled the 2nd civil war with the south.
A lot to figure out. I wish Nilotic women were a bit less rare here, because I feel like being particularly attracted to her type actually helped me in a way, but with so few, there's not as much opportunity to experiment with different approaches.
Thank you for reading! Any sort of feedback welcome!
