The Tom Torero lay report book, "Below the Belt"

If you're interested in Torero and have never read his books, start with Daygame, or his textbook (I can't find the name of it now). Below The Belt is a series of lay reports and it's fine: it does what it promises for guys who jones for more lay reports. At least a few of these have appeared in other forms, including some in Daygame. It's strange for me to read them, as I've read some of Nick Krauser's books, and I know enough about the background between Krauser and Torero to find Krauser's absense notable. There seems to be some narcissism of small differences between them... they are similar in so many ways... yet some obscure-seeming beef separates them. Like Nabakov and Edmund Wilson having a falling out. I find whitewashing the past like that to be odd, regardless of what precipitated the split. I would rather learn about the tensions between them... there is a deep literature on creative partnerships,

In his book “Collaborative Circles: Friendship Dynamics and Creative Work,” from 2001, the sociologist Michael P. Farrell made a study of close creative groups—the French Impressionists, Sigmund Freud and his contemporaries. “Most of the fragile insights that laid the foundation of a new vision emerged not when the whole group was together, and not when members worked alone, but when they collaborated and responded to one another in pairs,” he wrote. It took Monet and Renoir, working side by side in the summer of 1869, to develop the style that became Impressionism; during the six-year collaboration that gave rise to Cubism, Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque would often sign only the backs of their canvases, to obscure which of them had completed each painting. (“A canvas was not finished until both of us felt it was,” Picasso later recalled.) In “Powers of Two: Finding the Essence of Innovation in Creative Pairs,” the writer Joshua Wolf Shenk quotes from a 1971 interview in which John Lennon explained that either he or Paul McCartney would “write the good bit, the part that was easy, like ‘I read the news today’ or whatever it was.” One of them would get stuck until the other arrived—then, Lennon said, “I would sing half, and he would be inspired to write the next bit and vice versa.” Everyone falls into creative ruts, but two people rarely do so at the same time.

It would seem that Torero has had several of these partnerships, with Antony (who is mentioned) and Krauser (who is not). If you want the negative take, Nash has you covered. I don't have a strong view on the issue. I'm also in a different world, as my entire life doesn't revolve around seduction or writing books and other products teaching it.

The Torero lay reports are valuable, and I don't have a lot ot add to their value. Game reports reinforce how flakey and random girls are. A girl can be DTF one night, then ghost the next. Most guys don't appreciate the randomness of girls, and more guys should.

Overall these stories seem like they match my own experiences, and that is nice. If we're all having somewhat similar outcomes, then the system mostly works, probably mostly for the reasons worked out by guys who know evolutionary biology and create game systems that incorporate the results from it.

I like this,

In this book I’ve also made a conscious decision to document the darker sides of the player lifestyle, from rejections and dry spells to runaway egos and fuck ups. If you want to be a member of the Secret Society and get lots of casual sex without the romance then there’s a price to be paid, even if it’s not initially obvious.

Some guys writing about the game are either very young (in which case their life is all about the game and banging new chicks, as it should be) or underestimate the dark sides. I think there are still darker sides than we get here. The ego protection mechanism is still at work.

I vehemently disagree with this,

A long-term PUA has to be selfish, by default. He doesn’t settle down in one place or with one girl. He goes for what he wants and perfects how to get it. Learning the pickup skill set is exactly that: improving your frame, standing up for what you want, not being the Nice Guy doormat. The same techniques that work with gaming girls (breaking rapport, qualifying, leading, dominance) spill over into all your interactions. It’s not only girls that start calling you an asshole and a jerk.

A long-term PUA does NOT have to be selfish. Good PUAs create "win-win" situations. Chicks want to be seduced and wish more guys would learn how to seduce them well. A guy who seduces a chick is not being selfish. Especially if he does not hide that he's a casual sex guy. A guy who sets the relationship frame appropriately is creating value in the world. A guy who pretends he might marry a girl and then jilts her... he is being a selfish asshole. I think chicks can sense that I have a generative spirit, despite my non-monogamous ways, and I think that helps me out. "Generative spirit" does not mean I'm a "nice guy" (I'm not), but I also try to make the world a better place. I genuinely think game does make the world better, because it teaches guys the skills chicks already wish guys had. I've been told that it's nice to be asked out in public, by a guy, in person. Even chicks who say "no" or "I have a boyfriend" have said that. There is a problem with masculinity in the United States and maybe the world in general. Game is part of the solution (a topic for another post, maybe, although it will be a rambling, philosophical one).

"A long-term PUA has to be selfish, by default" tells us about the writer, not about the world. It is true that chicks will project eventual monogamy and domesticity onto the player. I have had that happen (although some of my interests in group sex retard the chick's projections).

It is good to win and help win. If you think winning means making others lose, something is wrong with you. Something is wrong with Tom Torero, though he may not realize it... I hope he's doing the bravado thing, not sayin what he most truly feels. All of us have said some undesirable things from bravado.

"The loud, cocky confidence which attracts girls is abrasive when you’re dealing with it 24/7." Yes. I have met these guys.

She said that I was the third guy she’d ever had sex with (the first two were long term relationships) and the first guy who’d not bought her expensive shit. She also said she liked the direct way I stopped her on the street and that she knew I wanted to fuck from the start. Good feedback for a player, I’d felt my frame improving since daygaming Russians.

The thing about gifts is very similar to what Ms. Slav told me. That said, if you are trying to keep a girl around for the medium term, gifts can help a guy pass comfort tests. There are no comfort tests mentioned in this book, or if there were I missed them. A girl only loves gifts if she's earned them. If she hasn't earned them, a gift is a demonstration of lower value. Guys mistakenly see chicks go ape shit for gifts in movies and TV shows but forget that movies and TV shows are fiction, often catering to women who love the idea of an already high value guy giving them gifts.

If you ask a chick, "Do you like gifts from guys?" they say, "YES," because they are imagining it coming from a hot, high-value guy. In which case a gift is very good. From a low-value guy, it can be okay but kind of icky.

After the lay we reclined on the bed and I asked her my typical post-sex questions (you’ve got a short window after the notch to get a girl to spit some truth from her hindbrain before her forebrain guards take over again).

I've also seen this. Right after sex is the best time to talk to chicks.

A weakness of writing books of just lay reports (like my first book in particular) is that once you work out how to have casual sex, the infield reports start to sound robotic as you get less and less learning points and levelling up in each one. The puzzle’s been solved, the hustle has become consistent, so why keep writing? Is sex just sex at the end of the day?

I have been thinking about more stories from my past, but many of them are not that interesting. Particularly the girls I've met online.

Some chicks are also attracted to players:

Finally she found out about my double life and my Tom Torero brand (I’m not sure how, but who cares). After a little bit of coldness she was increasingly turned on by the idea of me fucking lots of other girls for my job.

In a later story, Torero talks about dating a woman for a year and breaking up with her because she wanted a deeper relationship and perhaps a family. I would've liked to hear more about this. That may fit my own pattern of a larger number of short and medium term relationships, as opposed to a large number of one-night stands and ultra-causal encounters. If I like a chick, I try to keep her on rotation (non-monogamy can help with that). A guy who loves the one-night stand ought to do the one-night stands, and some girls want ultra-casual sex or decide they don't like the guy after he takes her for a ride.

In my experience, it's also rare for the first-time sex to be the best sex, so there is that aspect for me. Usually it takes three to five sessions to hit the peaks. Many guys who Yohami would call "bottom guys" think of consensual non-monogamy as a beta move that allows the girl to get strange dick while the guy sits at home playing video games. For guys with options, and guys who like a chick to stick around, the big problem can be retaining her in the medium term.

Should you read it? I dunno. If you want more lay reports, then sure. If you've already read a bunch of them, as I have, then I don't know if it's that useful. They do get repetitive, and that sense of repetition may be part of what's making me thinking about the next part of my life. I have a kind of sense of having seen it, done it, it's not as satisfying as it was, what's next?