It’s funny how many things I learn about the world just by following back-links to my blog in the WordPress admin dashboard. Three weeks ago I saw a couple of hits from a blog called streetstories. What’s this? I ask myself. That sounds an awful lot like daygame. So I clicked it. I had a little perusal and yes, it’s another player’s journey blog. I seemed to vaguely recognise the guy who writes it, Alex.

Isn’t he that British guy living in Warsaw? Yep, I remember now. What’s that? He has a memoir out? Well, well, well. How interesting. I’m writing volume three of my memoir so I’m pretty interested in that kind of thing right now. I ordered a copy of Too Late, Mate? [1] and it arrived yesterday. I just got to page 42 (of 322) so here’s my impressions so far.

First thing that’s immediately apparent is that Alex cares about the book. It’s a big weighty tome that has been carefully written and clearly gone through planning, editing and multiple rewrites. It’s a real book. The first 42 pages flew by with very few clunky moments to break the narrative immersion. It flows nicely, and I’m a harsh judge of such things. But lets get to the content.

The main hook of the book is that Alex began his journey aged 46 after a fifteen year dry spell. Yes, I shit you not. That’s getting his last lay at 31 and then suffering grinding celibacy for as long as the New Labour government’s run in power. As you’d expect his pre-game story is one of grinding failure perhaps even exceeding Bodi’s in Death By A Thousand Sluts. It gives the book a self-effacing and genial tone as Alex writes in the same affable lovable-loser tone that characterised his early adult life.

Some of his recollections show serious psychological issues. Technically, the big one is his complete lack of sexual threat. He’d been brought up sackless and thus never escalated girls. Several times girls give him a chance only to eventually give up in disgust having endured months of intent-free gentlemanly dating. This comes down to a central identity problem – he wanted to be a gentleman. Consider:

“I reminded myself that I was a 46-year old lawyer with a strong social circle and a certain status, and a part of me, the old fashioned Victorian-era gentleman Dr. Watson, said, Mm! This is all a bit sketchy. These [PUAs] are not respectable individuals… Yad, for instance, seems like some unusual street animal” (page 41)

This is a similar issue I had, expressed in Balls Deep:

“Yes, I messed it up. Again, I just couldn’t find it within myself to escalate. All of my existing beliefs about myself, about women’s sexuality, about what is possible in dating were hamstringing me. There was a little voice telling me she was in a serious relationship and it would be rude for me to push towards sex. Perhaps even immoral. So she stood at the bar in hot pants and tight top, gazing into my eyes over the top of her drink while she got some “plausible deniability” alcohol into her system… and I just chatted. Didn’t even try to kiss her. She was doing everything she could to make me fuck her, and I just wouldn’t take control. This was the second chance she’d given me. Poor girl. And she was a stunner too. I was so frustrated with myself.” (page 127)

It’s easy to puff yourself up that you are “not that kind of man” and to hang on to your self-perceived high status as a man of respectability. In my case it was my academics and finance job, in Alex’s case his spirituality and lawyer job. It’s a front, part of a superiority complex, and neither of us really believed it. You can’t escalate girls if your identity believes you’re too gentlemanly to do that kind of thing.

There’s a refreshingly candid tone to Alex’s book. I can tell you from experience that it’s really tough to open yourself up in print and write humiliating stories of your own cringe-worthy behaviours. Most game memoirs are victory laps, trying to get the reader to agree that the author is awesome [2]. Like Bodi before him, Alex wants to tell the story as it happened and give you a window into what he really thought. I admire that.

Believe me, Alex was as gamma as they come. That makes this kind of thoughtful and unflattering self-reflection particularly difficult [3]. Here’s an example:

“[I] deliberately failed my A-Levels by sheer intellectual arrogance; being unwilling to allow the examiners to judge me on my favourite topics of Art, History, and English, I did not write a word on one of the exams.” (page 10)

Holy fuck, the smug delusional gamma arrogance of that teenager! Now imagine what another thirty years of intellectual and professional success would do to that mind while starved of female sexual access. That’s what Alex had stored up while heading into his first bootcamp in 2014. I’m amazed he didn’t top himself, and interested to see how he dragged himself through his first thousand sets of hell.

So far the book is good. It takes a leisurely pace in setting the context for discovering daygame and patiently lays the groundwork. There are some choice words for navel-gazing self-help charlatans and like me he thinks Kezia Noble’s PUA business is just escorting without the sex. He’s foreshadowed talking about the hapless Johnny Cassell so I can’t wait for that story.

You can buy the book here. Bear in mind this is just my impressions based on first 15% of it and I don’t think I’ve ever even spoken to Alex never mind offered to promote his book.

[1] Yes, even though he’s on Team Torero

[2] The memoir is itself an attempt to draw narcissistic supply from readers in order to puff up the writer’s own false idealised self
[3] And, therefore, critically important in making progress