Michael Phelps has a girlfriend, a former Miss California runner-up. Is she a ten? Let’s take a look.

“I won a hundred gold medals and all I got was this 7.”

Thank god for game.

Postscript: It has come to my attention that the second picture is not Michael Phelps’ girlfriend. My bad.

My hostel in Cordoba, Argentina was full of guys who were cocky motherfuckers. It was harder to differentiate myself from the pack when our styles of game was so similar. If you liked a gringo girl there, which was rare since the natives are so much more beautiful than chubby English girls, you’d have to fight three other guys who were working on her as well. It became important that the quality of what we spit become important. Simply teasing wasn’t good enough—you had to be an accomplished tease and bring out your best material.

At the Reef bar in D.C., pick up artist central for those training in semi-underground lairs, most of the guys use the exact same game since they are learning from each other. Being “cocky and funny” is one of the first things they learn so you have a dozen of them every weekend to the Reef desensitizing the girls there to the that type of approach.

This bar is the exception. In most other places you don’t girls who have this intense shield to game, but in five or ten years I can see it becoming like this is most bars in large cities. Will game eventually become ineffective?

No, if case you were wondering. Game will always perform better than being a spineless beta male who can’t even do his manly duty to approach a cute girl he likes. Though I believe the bar will be raised. There are two ways to hedge against this outcome:

1. Continuous Improvement. Begin with a good starting point of game that works and then gradually inject your own style into it until it’s completely yours. If you’re using material that no one guy is using, and that is optimized for your personality, then you won’t get this shield that lair members are getting at the Reef (one must question why they flock there repeatedly in such large numbers).

2. Supreme Confidence. The only thing you can’t fake is supreme confidence, gained only through massive amounts of experience, failure, and most importantly, success. In ten years if every guy has a cocky vibe then the girls will select the men who they believe has the confidence to back it. It’s important to work on the words you are saying, but remember the point of those words are just to show you are a confident man. Once you get confidence, the words naturally come out of your mouth and match with the correct alpha body language. You’ll be able to read from a phone book but it won’t shake the attraction she has for you. I’m not exaggerating.

Things went back to normal after I left the hostel in Cordoba. Future hostels were full of beta males all too eager to please the girls and my D-grade lazy material would get girls staring and asking me what I was doing for dinner. The Earth realigned itself.

I was sitting down on the subway car thinking of making a play on a Turkish girl to my left. I knew she was Turkish because she was speaking Turkish with her two friends before they cheek kissed her goodbye and made a loud exit like only Turks know how. But she had a Blackberry and a slight resemblance to my wonderful Turkish mother, so I decided to inspect my fingernails instead to see if they needed trimming.

At the next stop two guys and two girls came onto the train. They paired off as they sat and all seemed like just friends. I’m not an expert on body language but at 29 I think I know if two people are fucking or not. They held my attention, partly because I was done looking at my fingernails but also because of their exceptionally clear Spanish. Their minimal use of slang and clear enunciation told me they definitely were not from dirty Mexico or Central America. Maybe they were from Colombia, I thought.

This was the last midnight train, and they were tired. Judging by their backpacks it looked like they studied at some library followed with a trip to some Washington DC forest to blaze. The girls rested their heads on their respective guy. The first guy put his arm around his girl and just let it hang there. They both closed their eyes. Go to sleep.

The second girl had her eyes closed on the second guy’s chest as well, but his eyes were opened. He was looking at the top of her head and stroking her hair, slowly and deliberately like she was a gentle flower with fine petals that easily come off. He would not take his eyes off her head. Just staring at her black hair covered skull. He did this for the next twenty minutes, stroking and touching and looking while she did not respond in any way. If I had to take a guess as to what he was thinking, it would be “If she ever leaves me I’m going to kill her and her family.” It was one of the creepiest things I’ve ever seen in my life, second only to an internet video I was tricked into watching of a grown man having sex with a horse. Actually I wasn’t tricked, I was curious, like any normal, well-balanced human being would be when presented with the opportunity to watch such an intriguing perversion of nature.

Physical affection is important in a healthy relationship, but it’s not natural to pet an unconscious girl who isn’t aware of your petting. The only exception is if the girl is in a coma and you are trying to bring her back to life. Creepy guys tend to be beta males, living absurd fantasies in their head because they can’t do it in real life until one day it comes out in a subway car and is noticed by an astute observer taking mental notes because he refuses to buy an iPod. It just didn’t add up to me that this beta male was in the position to stroke the head of a beautiful girl that I would personally get with in a heartbeat. It went against everything I have learned and experienced in the past seven years. I’ll get over it, I thought—this is just the exception and I shouldn’t change my world view just for this haunting display of affection.

Turns out that that won’t even be necessary.

When they all got up at their stop a surprise switch occurred. The girls held hands of the opposite guy as they walked off the train. Are they all just fuck buddies who swap partners like in an obese swingers farm or are they all just childhood friends? I don’t have to change shit. They’re just friends.