Warsaw daygamers are no doubt familiar with my buddy Mr R. About a month ago, I sent a copy of Girl Junkie to him and asked for a review.  Here it is in its unedited entirety. Thanks, boss.

Girl Junkie is the story of the year after Krauser reached what he considered his peak (as detailed in Adventure Sex). Once you’ve reached the top of the daygame world, can you continue to maintain your position, or will you crash back down to earth like a priapic Icarus? The latest entry in the ever-expanding long-form Krauser memoirs is here to detail the titular man’s struggle against the elements. If the previous year was the most successful for his exploits, this is the year where he truly gets to live his life as “Krauser”.

Every active daygamer knows the thrill of the chase and the emotional rollercoaster of running down your leads, and by spending the entire year travelling, Krauser is constantly faced with time limits and the need to push everything forward hard and fast. Have you ever met a daygamer who’s 100% ‘normal’? We can all be daygamers but there are some who have the right combination of issues to allow them to handle the grind much better than most. A steady stream of numbers from younger, hotter, tighter, all filtered through the funnel of love, turn into a string of dates, sex, and anal deflowerings.

The ancient Greeks believed that a man who excessively chased women was ruled entirely by his desires, and became ‘womanly’ in all the wrong ways. As Krauser continues his endless loop of his favourite euro-jaunt locations, he becomes sulky, withdrawn, and prone to wild mood swings. So, basically a teenage girl with a boner. Appropriately then, he continues to stick his boner into teenage girls throughout the book.

The structure of the book is straightforwardly chronological, with each chapter covering either a change in location or a change in Nick’s circumstances. This makes it hard to review in detail as it’s mostly slice of life vignettes, but there are several main narratives running throughout the book. The first narrative is Nick’s growing realisation that not everyone in the daygame scene is as honest as he is, and that shady marketing pays better than actual results. He’s not shy about naming names, but it generally never comes across as a malicious attack on a competitor, more like he feels outrage that scammers are ripping people off.

The second theme is the mental and physical changes he observes in himself. Mentally, he’s losing touch with regular life, so going to a beautiful holiday destination with an adoring young girl quickly bores him, compared to repeatedly walking up and down a shopping street and using the same lines over and over again while chatting up birds. The constant adrenaline and dopamine-spiked eurojaunts have rewired his brain to seek quick reward over delayed gratification, and no amount of trips back to hibernate in his parent’s conservatory can bring him back. You can feel the frustration as he questions what he’s doing with his life. On the physical side, he’s coming face to face with his own mortality. His feet hurt, his belly is growing, and he fears he’s losing his legendary good looks. Is this the end of the line for our plucky hero? Or is he simply at step 7 of the hero’s journey, the moment of despair? Well, since Krauser is still going and has dedicated himself to fitness, I’ll let you guess.

The writing is consistently good throughout the book, there is a dip in pace towards the middle, accurately reflecting Nick’s state of mind through the year. Many guys I know in real life make guest appearances as characters Krauser meets on his eurotour, and while the characterisations are all accurate, the conversations can sometimes feel a little artificial, like they’ve been added in to demonstrate a point Nick wants to expound upon. This is not just a memoir after all, there are nuggets of advice and guidance secreted within like hidden treasure.

Should you read this book? [1] I certainly enjoyed it, and if you’ve been following Nick’s journey then the next stage is always interesting. As a stand-alone volume it’s less effective, so read the earlier entries first if you want to get to this one with the right frame of mind.

Ambitious daygamers eager to move their game forwards will be irresistibly drawn towards Amazon for the hardcover and paperback full-colour editions of Girl Junkie. Using your local Amazon may be a little quicker for some of you.

1 – Yes, you should [K.]