I am still coaching. In fact, I just got back to Boston today from Minneapolis. The trip went great. The first night, both my student and I pulled and the second night we had a group of girls invite us out for some naked hot tubbing at 3AM. For now, I’m just doing one on one’s and phone consults. But if you’re interested, check out my coaching page.

I totally agree with you that being physically imposing can be a big drawback once it comes to kino’ing. Being 6′, 220 lbs. at only 5% bodyfat, I get lots of looks and compliments from girls, and well honestly, gay guys and bisexuals too, on how I dress or how I look, but I have trouble escalating on sets that I open myself (as opposed to the ones who come to me) for the reasons you described. Do you have any tips on how to escalate as someone whose advantages are always getting in his way?

- Anonymous

OK, everyone all together now, “Aww, you’re too good looking, YOU POOR MOTHERFUCKER!”

There, now that we got that out of the way. The answer to your question is easy, based on the rules of passive/active attraction (which I lay out in the “Personalizing Pickup” series).

You’re overvalued. You’re trying to build attraction and get sexual when your look is already attractive and sexual. Therefore you come across as if you’re compensating for something.

What I recommend is to run 90% comfort game. Compliment girls more. Tell them you find them sexy. They’re assuming that you hook up with girls constantly, so they need to feel special or unique before they fuck you (or at least most of them will).

Hey Entropy,

I’m having a problem attracting women that I don’t find attractive. I’m in my late 30’s, pretty good-looking for my age and very successful. The women I attract tend to also be in their thirty’s and honestly, they’ve kind of let themselves go. What should I do?

- Jason

Date younger women. If you don’t want a committed relationship and want women who are in great shape, why the hell are you dating women in their 30’s? My guess is you have some sort of limiting belief concerning your age. I have a friend who is 49 and dates women in their mid to late 20’s. It should be no problem for you if what you say is true.

Time to ditch the hotel bars and hit the night clubs.

Is 5 supposed to represent the median girl, or the average one? Because the ugliest girls are far ugly than the hottest ones are hot. So that would mean the median girl must be significantly hotter than the average.

- Aaron

This is what I never understood about the 1-10 scale. For the vast majority it breaks down like this: 10 = ungodly hot, 9 = really hot, 8 = I’d do her, 7 = I’d do her, but I wouldn’t be proud, 6 = only if I’m really drunk and desparate, 5 and below = ugly with varying degrees.

This never made sense to me. This is another reason I recommend guys raising their standards, to have 2/3 of the scale dedicated to girls you’re not interested in seems silly. What ends up happening is you get guys debating with themselves whether she’s an 8.5 or an 8.75.

Here’s my scale:
10 = doesn’t exist except for on magazine covers and in Photoshop.
9 = A model.
8 = Super hot, the hottest girl in a nice club on any given Friday night.
7 = Hot, hottest girl in a regular bar on any given Friday night.
6 = Attractive, but not going to cause any car accidents just by walking down the street. You’ll see maybe a dozen of these on any given Friday night out.
5 = Cute, but nothing you’d be too proud of.
4 = Have to be really drunk.
3 = Ugly-but-has-potential
2 = Ugly-but-no-potential
1 = Vomit-inducing

And a side-note for all the self-righteous “You shouldn’t rate girls” assholes. I don’t care if you have a binary scale, a 1-4 scale, or a 1-52 scale, it’s all arbitrary. Answer the following question: are some women more physically attractive than others? YES! Then whether we distinguish that with a 10-point scale or a 2-point scale is completely arbitrary and not even worth arguing.

And no, just because we rate women’s attractiveness (something that every man on the planet has been doing since adolescence) doesn’t mean we’re “de-valuing” her in some way. My girlfriend is a 6.5 on my scale (8.5 on most guys’ scales) but that doesn’t mean I treat her as a 6.5. Some of the hottest girls I’ve ever gotten with were shitty people. Were they still 9’s? Hell yeah, they were.

OK, end rant.

Hey Entropy,

Can you escalate too quickly if your goal is an LTR?

- Skulder

Great question! I teach in my relationship management seminars that you ideally want to have sex with a woman AS SOON AS POSSIBLE because it gives you the widest available options as far as where to take the relationship. So you would assume the answer is “no.”

Well, surprisingly, the answer is “yes,” but to escalate too quickly you have to escalate at lightning fucking speed.

If I had to estimate, having sex with a girl in under an hour of meeting her will nix you from her “long-term” potential. Anything under 30 minutes, no question. I don’t know what it is, but when you hook up with a girl exceedingly fast, it’s like she almost doesn’t even feel like you’re real. I noticed this last year when I was getting a bunch of 30-second make-outs, the kissing would end and then there’d just be this awkward moment where the girl felt like she was in a dream or something and we had nothing to say to each other. It’s the same for fast bathroom pulls… afterward is just a horribly awkward experience.

I suppose theoretically it’s possible, but in general, the slower you escalate, the more you sub-communicate LTR expectations, the faster you escalate the less you do. In my experience, the cut off would be around an 30-60 minutes.

Like most of my game my answer to this “common sense game.” But for it to be common sense you have understand one key thing–

Women do not want to be seen as sluts!

They don’t want to be seen as sluts by their friends, coworkers, the bartender, etc.

Knowing this, the common sense thing to do is to not escalate when her friends can see or hear you. But I’ll take it a step further and really break it down.

Verbal Escalation

Verbal escalation is basically anything you say to escalate the interaction. It can be qualification questions, comfort stories, compliments, games like strawberry fields, or directly talking about sex.

You can’t really talk about these things in front of a girl’s friends because she’s gonna know they’re listening to what she says and judging her.

But as soon as her friends can no longer hear what you’re saying you can start escalating verbally. Obviously it takes some calibration as far as what to say and when but that’s not something I can teach you in writing.

But it’s a safe bet that as soon as you’re out of earshot of her friends you can start qualifying her and build off of that into comfort and sexual topics.

Physical Escalation

Kissing, playing with her hair, hand on her thigh, etc.

You’re usually safe to do this stuff once her friends can no longer see you. No one watching = No one thinking she’s a slut.

I usually don’t kiss girls I have one night stands with until we’ve let the venue and are either walking down the street or in a taxi.

Pretty simple but I’m always surprised at the number of guys who try to make out with girls in front of her friends and then get pissed at her or themselves because they got turned down for the kiss.

The last few times we’ve gone out, my girlfriend has told me that she wants to see me pick up girls. Even the couple times where I kind of wanted to do it, I haven’t done anything. I can’t really explain it, but when I’m with my girlfriend, I’m a completely different headspace than when I’m out sarging. I couldn’t even muster up the desire or interest to go open another girl.

Last night, a new friend of my girlfriend’s came out with us and we were all getting drunk. This girl was supposed to be a threesome candidate, but I vetoed her for not being hot enough. She was cool and fun regardless. They both started getting into wanting to see me “sarge” and whatnot.

We had gone to see a concert and bounced to a divey bar afterwards. The logistics here were like the worst imaginable. About fifty people and only five girls.

Immediately my girlfriend gets opened by two drunk frat-boy type guys. I don’t bother saving her or AMOG’ing the guys. I’m an extremely unjealous person, and honestly, if a guy was capable of taking my girlfriend off me, I’d want to meet this guy, because I can’t imagine the level of game that would take.

So I’m sitting there by myself at the bar, and two girls come up next to me to order a drink. I overhear one say this: “Yeah, I like him, I guess. I don’t know. He just doesn’t do it for me. He’s too nice.” The other one replies, “That’s what you say about all of the guys. What is it exactly you want?”

Without really even thinking about it, I blurt out, “She wants him to take charge, to take control.”

They both stare at me intently, with an unspoken, “…and?”

So I go on: “You seem like an aggressive girl. You’re probably very upfront and direct with guys. You take what you want and I imagine rarely have trouble doing so. You’re never happy because these guys are too weak. They don’t challenge you. You want a guy who does what he wants with you, who won’t always defer to you. You want a guy who you’re not always sure if he’s going to call back the next day. And I bet you probably like to be batted around a bit in the sack too.”

These girls give me the deer-in-headlights stare for another couple seconds. I should note, this was NOT a contrived opener, and the cold-read was completely off-the-cuff. Over the last year, a lot of girls have asked for dating advice from me, and without fail it’s girls who are frustrated because they date nothing but pussies. I got a vibe from this girl, heard her complain and off I went.

The other thing that thing that should be noted, so you guys don’t copy this shit down word-for-word and go try it, is that it was said with complete conviction by some tipsy at a guy who obviously didn’t give two rats’ asses if these girls hung around or not. Thus, they were intrigued.

Finally, the main girl let’s out a slow, “Oh my God… How do you know that?”

Continuing to press my luck, I say half-mockingly, “Because I’m a pickup artist.”

“A what?”
“Have you seen the movie ‘Hitch?’”
“Yeah.”
“That’s what I do. I’m Hitch.”
“NO FUCKING WAY.”

These two chicks flip the fuck out. They run and grab their other two friends and start barraging me with questions about my job. Here’s the crazy thing I’ve noticed after coaching for a year. Guys are always freaking out about girls “finding out” about the community or whatever. Without fail, girls LOVE MY JOB. They think it’s the goddamn coolest thing since the “Take On Me” music video.

I used to make up elaborate and boring answers to the, “What do you do?” question about internet marketing and website design. But when I just answer straight, “I teach guys how to get laid and how to get girlfriends,” it’s as big of a DHV as telling them I sing in a rock band or something.

I give these girls the inside scoop. The funny thing is, all of them said they had been opened by opinion openers before. But as this is going on, the initial girl definitely has an ulterior motive. She keeps interrupting, “Wait, where can I find a guy like that?” I non-chalantly tell her, “Oh, I know plenty.” She tells me she wants to meet them and hang out with them.

There’s an interesting sub-text going on here. I was being literal when I said I know plenty of them. The guys I hang out with here in Boston are all pretty damn good with women. But there’s also an implication that *I’M* one of them. Granted, I just read this girl’s entire sexual history like a book before she even said a word to me. She was laying it on thick with the kino.

It was about this time my girlfriend came back from outside with her friend. As she described it, “It was fucking ridiculous. Five girls in the entire bar and four of them are talking to you, one of them giving you her number and telling you to call her soon.”

I tried to introduce my girlfriend, but the main girl immediately cut her off and out of the conversation. I suppose you could say she AMOG’d my girlfriend.

Again, I’ll make a point that I didn’t do anything because this was not a big deal. My girlfriend isn’t a jealous girl at all and she actually asked to see this. In the end, she and I both know I’m going home with her, so whatever happens in this set is inconsequential.

So I start saying my goodbyes, but the first girl STILL won’t let me go. She brings up when she’s going to get to meet, “a guy like that.” I tell her soon. I totally realize what she’s implying, but whatever. My girlfriend apparently does too, as she, for the first time, becomes visibly peeved. The girl asks again, “When are you going to call me?” My girlfriend hits her limit, grabs me and says, “Maybe when we break up,” and drags me out.

We go home and have sex and are laying around a little buzzed ready to pass out. My phone rings.

“Five bucks says it’s that girl from the bar.”
“No fucking way. You talked to her for like 10 minutes.”

Sure enough, it was. Was kind of painful to pass up an SNL as this girl was pretty cute, but there was never a doubt in my mind that I was passing her up for my girlfriend. The trick now is integrating my girlfriend into those sets for cold approach threesomes. Hmm…

Lessons learned:
- Being a pickup artist is a DHV.
- Cold-reading a girl’s entire sex life and being right will pretty much make her want to fuck you on the spot.
- An opener like that only works when you 100% own it and really don’t care what reaction you get.
- My girlfriend never wants to see me sarge in front of her again. Haha!

But the night life was a pleasant surprise. It actually reminded me a lot of Austin’s — an array of bars and clubs all on the same street right next to each other. There were two main streets, the nicer, posh one and then the one with more of the bars.

But here’s the weird thing about Orlando that seemed to be a running theme with all of the instructors at the convention: the girls were EASY to pull, but would FREAK THE FUCK OUT later.

Everyone seemed to have a story like this by the end of the week. I know Doc already wrote about his (which is fucked up… running up to our room to interrupt him and tell him the chick’s friends were crying rape downstairs to security is pretty intense). Sinn and I had our own little escapade.

He covered most of it on his blog. But I guess I’ll give a mini-FR about what happened from my perspective.

It was our first night out there, Doc’s 21st birthday, and Sinn and I were on a mission to get him plastered out of his fucking mind. We kept shoving shots of Jager in front of him and opening fat girls and forcing him to talk to them. It was a great time.

After Doc puked, I started hanging out with some of the students of the convention. I was chilling with some guys I had hung out with that evening at dinner when I told him I’d do a set with him. So I drag him and his brother to the dance floor and just grab the first girl I see. I don’t even remember what I opened with, just that it was very direct, probably something vague like, “hey, come over here, you need to dance with me.”

She complied. Introduced her to the student but then just started dancing with her. Typical Entropy style, it was like a two minute makeout. So we grind and shit on the dance floor. I meet her friends, one is being kind of sassy to me, but the other one seems cool. Sinn comes flying in and I introduce her to the cool one. Within 30 minutes, we’re both outside hooking up with our chicks, and the third (bitchy) girl is out there hooking up with some random chode.

Sinn and his girl bounce to his hotel, and I ask the bitchy girl to drive my girl and I to my hotel (in hindsight, I should have gone for the cab ride). Either way, we hop in her car and are going. In the car is where shit starts to go awry.

This girl driving starts GRILLING me. “I don’t even know you, if you treat my friend bad, I’m going to kick your ass.” Blah, blah, blah. Girls say shit like this a lot, and it’s pretty easy to acknowledge it and move on. But this girl would not shut the fuck up.

Then it got really fucking weird. She’s asking me all about myself, when she looks at me in the rearview mirror and asks, “Do you have any kids?” I say no. She says, “You know, I used to have one night stands — you know, go home with random guys from the club, and now I have a kid. Do you think you’re ready to be a father?”

WHAT THE FUCK?!

As you can imagine, my girl is silent and buying temperature is plummeting. The girl starts disqualifying me as too immature, too young, not-trustworthy, etc. right in front of my girl. I can’t be an asshole because it’s her friend. I qualify myself in vain, but I can FEEL my value dropping every time I do it. And I’m stuck in the goddamn car with her. Meanwhile, chodey dude is just going along with whatever the chick says. Throw me a goddamn bone, brother.

Now that my shit’s fucked up, I suppose the bitch decided to fuck up Sinn’s shit too because she started freaking out about where her other friend was and what the fuck was she doing with Sinn. Literally a block from my hotel, she turns around and heads to Sinn’s hotel. I’m calling Sinn but he’s not answering. I text him to try to warn him. We get to the hotel and I call up to his room telling him we’re here, we’re coming up and shit’s hit the fan. He replies, “Dude, it can’t get any worse than my night’s already been,” and we go up.

We start heading to his room. My girl is suddenly silent. The bitch is ranting about how Sinn’s girl is a slut and should know better. The douchebag has just stood by all night and watched all of this happen. Thanks for the help, faggot.

When I walk in, the first thing I see is Sinn’s girl in tears in the bathroom. I look at Sinn and he just throws his hands up like, “Fuck it, I give up.” Bitchy girl runs into the room and starts screaming, “WHAT DID YOU DO TO HER? OH MY GOD!”

I hit my limit. I tell them to get out. They all look at me confused. I say, “This shit isn’t worth it. Go home.” Then MY GIRL bursts into tears and runs out of the room.

Turns out that she just got dumped by her boyfriend and is really sensitive. Whoopdie-fucking-do… now get out.

They all leave. Sinn’s girl makes an attempt at an apology, but his patience has run out too. We talk about how Orlando girls are fucking nutcases and go to bed.

I woke up really tired and a bit hungover to give a lair talk. Saffron and I presented the new material I’ve been working on for months. I was a bit anxious due to the fact that the material is all original and my own, but I was still confident it’d go over well.

The turn-out was the highest ever for a lair meeting here and the reception was even greater. I had guys telling me afterward that it was one of the most insightful presentations they had ever seen and that their entire thinking became re-oriented — the kind of response you can only dream about when you’re slaving away writing this shit.

Afterwards, I had great conversations with some usual suspects after the lair meetings. I really have to say, I hear that some lairs suck in other cities, but the quality of people — not just PUA’s, but PEOPLE up here in the Boston lair is great. From the senior guys on down to the newbies, former students, old guys and young guys — there’s just a ton of awesome dudes and I really enjoy chilling with them.

So I rush home and take a nap because I had a one on one that night. This guy flew all the way up from Texas and is an interesting case in that he reminds me of myself a couple years ago. I kind of felt like I knew what he’d have to work on before we even stepped foot in a venue. So we go out, and at first I was feeling a bit out of it from such a long week. I really could have been pushing him harder in the beginning. But things were going well. He had little AA and was hooking most of everything.

I quickly noticed what I suspected: my student had a strong foundation and is pretty good-looking, he just doesn’t realize how far he can go and how fast he can get there. So I start trying to push him to be more aggressive and escalate faster and faster. Just about every set he opened, the girls were immediately attracted, so I kept pushing it: more dominance, more physical, more aggression, more dominance, more physical, more aggression.

He was getting a bit frustrated, because in his mind, he was being dominant and aggressive but I kept saying, “Dude, you can get away with so much more… these girls fucking want you.” So he asks me to show him with one set what I’m talking about. We re-open this two-set from earlier. It had been two French-Canadian girls who were into us, but the set had stalled out. I swoop in, grab the girls and basically caveman the shit out of my girl dragging her ass to the dance floor all in about 30 seconds. As if that’s all it took, next thing I know, within 3 minutes my student’s over making out with his girl. I move my girl to the bar and make out with her there.

Even though things were going well with my girl, it quickly becomes apparent that my student’s girl SERIOUSLY wants some cock. I go into full logistics mode. Both these girls were visiting from out of town and going back the next day. My student was in from out of town. I’ll spare everybody the details, but the logistics were FUCKED! It was a rough situation, and honestly, I kind of mishandled some shit. But luckily his girl’s buying temperature was through the roof that she really only wanted one thing. I tell him to just follow my lead and don’t fuck it up.

Long story short, we end up in a cramped hotel room and it’s apparent that only one of us is getting laid tonight. So I drag my girl out the door and occupy her by wandering around Chinatown with her at 2AM. Yeah, that’s kind of fucked up. But you got to love how no matter how much girls question you, if you just keep leading they’ll just keep following.

Later, she and I were laying around on the couches together in the hotel lobby, I said in passing “It was apparent that not all four of us could use the hotel room.” She smiles, looks up at me and says, “You’re a really good friend,” (referring to the fact that I let him use the room with his girl). More than ANYTHING, I wanted to tell her, “Baby, I get paid NOT to get laid!” Hahaha! Welcome to the life of a pick-up coach.

Anyway, I drop my girl off and say goodbye and pick up my student. It’s official! Practical Pickup had it’s first successful student pull.

It was funny, because I seemed to be more excited about it than he was. Like I said, he’s got a solid foundation, so he’s had a handful of lays. This wasn’t like some huge deal to him. But as a coach, these are the fucking nights we work for. It’s just as gratifying as if I had pulled myself, if not moreso.

Wrecked and tired, we came back to my place. He’s heading out for day game with Doc tomorrow. The sun’s coming up and I almost don’t even want to go to sleep.

I met with Entropy for the “Bathroom Lays: Beds are for Losers” 1-on-1 course. I also got to hang out a bit with his crew Saffron and Doc Holliday.

Full disclosure: Entropy offered me a 20-minute phone consultation if I write this review. (It’d be longer for students in the normal course, but since I was on the BL course, he limits the phone time to 20 minutes. In his wise words, “why talk to some dude on the phone for longer than it should take to lay a chick?”).

My PU sticking point has been BLs (bathroom lays). Like every newbie chode AFC, I’ve been taught by society to think that sex happens in bed. And that you have to “get to the know the girl” first. It’s embarrassing to admit, but almost all of my lays have been in bed. In years of going out, I only managed to bathroom lay 2 girls in my whole life. And even those times took 1 to 2 hours from meet to lay.

Entropy really opened my eyes to another world. I don’t want to reveal too much of his new BLESSS method (Bathroom Lays: Entropy Speed Sex in Stalls), but it’s breakthrough stuff. No other guru has this technology.

Entropy showed me that it should never take longer than 20 minutes to fclose a girl, max 30 min if logistics are difficult (bathroom occupied, stalls in different part of venue, etc). He also taught me that type of venue doesn’t matter: club, airport, library, subway, whatever… as long as there’s a bathroom handy, you’re only 20 minutes away from sex. It’s always on.

Entropy has mapped out the entire interaction to the second:
- Through advanced EEM (Entropy Eye Movement), you set the sexual frame 10 seconds after meet.
- By 20 seconds, you’ve blocked out all unwanted distractions (cockblocking friends, her loser husband sitting next to her, the baby she’s breast-feeding, etc) using Saffron’s ignore-them-then-overwhelm-with-advanced-vocab-words AMOG destroyers.
- Tongue her down hard within 2 minutes. Always have mints.
- Sit her down and remove her shoes within 5 minutes. Important: make sure you know where you put the shoes, you don’t want to waste valuable time later looking for them when you bounce her to the bathroom (Entropy said in his experience, most girls wuss out about going barefoot into the stalls in clubs).
- Whip it out by the 10-minute mark using DocHolliday’s “lemme show you my cock, little girl” routine.

Entropy also taught me to remain calm and focused during the fuck in the stall. Bouncers start beating on the door and yelling at you to get out? Ignore them, they’re not going to break their own door down just to get you out. People pounding outside and screaming that they need the bathroom? Ignore them, they’re probably just cokeheads, it’s more important that you blow your load than that they snort their blow.

The seminar portion of BLESSS theory was really interesting. And then Entropy threw me out into the field. Most PU gurus take you to crowded bars with lots of girls, but not Entropy. He really knows how to set a challenge. He cleverly took me to a club where there was only one girl. A true PUA doesn’t need multiple targets. Sniper, baby, sniper. Bathroom-lay that one or die trying.

Just rolling in to the club with Entropy and Saffron, it was amazing, their alpha male energy was so high that everyone noticed us (being the only straight guys in the club might have set us a bit apart as well).

When I saw the one and only target, I almost died from nerves. I start thinking, I’m just a newb afc chode who’s only BL’d 2 chicks in his life, I can’t do this, there are 50 guys here and only one girl. But Entropy’s words rang in my head, I followed the BLESSS method, and guys… it worked!!!

I approach HBBuxomBlond, steal her away from the dudes making out with each other on either side of her, and start working the Entropy magic. For example, every time she tried to fluff, I used the INDIFFERENCE and REFRAMING techniques Entropy taught me:

HB: Where are you from?
Me: [Show INDIFFERENCE to question. Tongue her down. As Entropy says, the more you tongue her, the less she can fluff]
HB: [pulling away after 30 seconds in order to breathe] “But wait, just at least tell me where you’re from!”
Me: [show zen-like INDIFFERENCE and REFRAME; it's important to be subtle to avoid triggering her ASD] “Irrelevant. Your only question to me should be ‘Which stall should we fuck in tonight, the upstairs bathroom or the downstairs one?’”

I BL’d her in 41 minutes. Not great, but a decent start for a total newbie chode AFC like me. After I BLd her, I threw her out and immediately got some great feedback from Entropy on the phone while I took my well-deserved shit in privacy.

Entropy isn’t just a mPUA, he really cares about his students and keeps pushing them even after the 1-on-1 is done. Try getting Tyler Durden and his inner Nimbus to do that for you! Like, for example, my 1-on-1 was Friday, and the very next night on Saturday I was out with friends trying to put my skills to use. Using BLESSS, I got my first BL of the night around 1am. I texted Entropy that I’d meet-to-lay’d the girl in 30 minutes. Other gurus believe in feel-good, wishy-washy praise. Not Entropy, he really keeps pushing you. His response: “fucking ridiculous, u took too long u chode, next time make it 20 minutes.”

He was right, so I tried again and got my second BL of the night. This girl kept talking, I couldn’t shut her up, so it took me 45 minutes from meet to lay. And when I texted Entropy the result, he subtly showed his disappointment by ignoring my message. I’m sorry, Entropy, she just wouldn’t stop fluffing and I had horrible frame control. I’ll keep trying to get better and make you proud.

For me, the true benefit of my 1-on-1 with Entropy is not the bathroom lay that night, or the 2 that I got the next night, but how it’s changed my perception of the world. Before, I used to have sexual anxiety issues and not be able to lay girls quicker than a few hours; now I realize that every woman is willing and waiting for me to pound her in 20 minutes. As Entropy taught me, comfort is for chodes. Why waste time “getting to know her” when there are so many other women to BL in a single night. Efficacy, guys, efficacy.

If you’re like me, and hate cleaning the stains from your bedsheets, take this course. You’ll never look at a bathroom stall the same way again.

Before I start getting E-Mails for my Bathroom Lays seminar, this isn’t real. Although, you’d be surprised how much he wrote actually did happen.