The Test

CHAPTER 1 - THE EVENING WHEN THE WHOLE THING STARTED Thursday, September the 15th “Luke! Luke, come on move!” I heard the voice echoing in the stairwell while I was running to the living room. Summer was ending and I felt the cool air blowing from the open window that anticipated autumn. I got into the living room breathless, after completing an entire flight of stairs in a record time. I was dating Giulia at that time, a girl who made me crazy and I used to spend whole afternoons with her. John, my best friend, was calling me after getting into my house while I didn’t even heard the doorbell ring. I ran to him in shorts and flip-flops. We arranged to go out together that evening and he was there before the scheduled time. "Come on hurry up! ‘Something important to tell you!” "Coming, coming...chill out, dude!" I went upstairs again and immediately got dressed intrigued by what John had to say. After all, he was a very predictable guy and if he had something to tell me, it was definitely something tasty. "Where are you going?" Asked Giulia. "‘I’m going out with John, going for a drink. Do you want me to drive you home?” "Ya better, otherwise I have to ask my father." Giulia was still without a driving license and her father and me were the only means of transport she could count on. I drove her home while John, that’s what he told me, was already going to the pub where some of our friends were waiting for us. My curiosity was getting bigger and bigger: it seemed that he had gathered at least 6 people: what was going on? I got to the pub and joined the gang at the table. They already ordered their beer; I had a Guinness and sat impatiently; I really wanted to hear what John had to tell us. "Are you still dating Valentina?" One of the guys asked John. "Yeah .. now let Luke explain his idea.” I found myself completely unprepared: "What idea John?" The fact that John didn’t tell me anything and ------------------ made ​​everything even more mysterious . John immediately told me: "What you told me about last night...your crazy but brilliant. idea.” Immediately came to mind what he meant: "Oh yeah! Haha. "Meanwhile all these guys really seemed not to understand what was happening. So I started my speech: “What I'm about to say may sound a bit strange at first but please let me finish my speech. In the last weeks I have been thinking over our recent experiences and I felt the need to share all this with you all. As you know, the relationship between sexes is not easy and often misunderstandings are daily stuff. Every single weekend we try to meet some chicks but, as we well know, we keep going home every time without concluding anything. "No doubt about it! You’re right, dude!" John's friend claimed. "You got it, my friend!" I said and continued: "We often wonder why it is so difficult to even chit-chat with a girl, plus we never get to anything and we don’t even know the reason why. I know we all feel deep inside to deserve more and that the current situation does not reflect our true potential. It can happen, in best cases, we can get the girl’s cell number or facebook contact but no one goes very much further. So I thought it is time to change the approach completely. The girls expect us to make the first move and they have so many opportunities that put them in the position to choose. But all this thanks to us. What if we stopped hooking them up for a while? How would the power balance change? In other words: "If there was no sex, how would the relationship between guys and girls change?" The audience fell in deep silence, interrupted by a friend of John: "Abstinence is hard!" A big laughter filled the air. I kept going on impassive, reiterating the idea: "The girls are always waiting for the guys to make the first move and are accustomed to receiving more avanches. So they have the possibility to choose who to go out with and show the bitch shield if they feel like it. They are therefore in a stronger position towards us because we always have to struggle to achieve each result. The point then is to change, for a month, these consolidated habits: it will be a real revolution that will mess up the status quo!”. I, after all, raised a problem that was well known to us, whether we wanted to recognize it or not. The relationship between sexes was always complicated because of incompatible differences in the way guys and girls relate to each other. But this issue represented an important question that could also help us find more satisfactory answers. I continued. "After this initial consideration, this is my idea: for a period of one month we’ll quit to dedicate all our attentions to girls as we usually do. We won’t chase after chicks anymore and we will act simply as friends.” A moment of silence fell in the air. John was confused and did not know what to say. It was clear that chasing after girls didn’t give us satisfactory results and one month was not that long. Also, it could have been an interesting experiment. However, I immediately thought that in order to be effective, it was necessary that all the guys in our school joined. Simon broke the silence asking: "Are you telling me that we have to stop talking with girls for one month? "No, no...absolutely. We will keep talking to them, but only as friends, without any further purpose.” Simon then pressed me again: "What do you wish to prove trough this Test?” I was ready for this:“I honestly do not know exactly what will happen. I just think it's time to radically change our way to approach girls. We owe this to ourselves, to our potential. We all know we deserve more and if we keep acting the same things over and over, there will be no improvements, of course. If we break this chain in which girls always expect us to do the first move, we will definitely have a few more things to meditate on.” John came with a spontaneous question: "How do you think girls will react?” I answered: "I do not know...I just know that they’ll be shocked. But this will stop this negative series of failures. In fact, I feel that we are launching an unique experiment.” Then I added: "In addition, girls know at some unconscious level that our approach to them is always driven by a strong sex urge. They expect it and they take it for granted. But if we scatter this illusion, for the duration of the Test, and show total indifference, this could only be an important shock and a good answer to our questions. They will perceive us as not interested in them, and this will make them go crazy. Imagine a beautiful girl, in school or in the club, not receiving any boy’s advances...” The idea was definitely daring and courageous and I admired John for having the guts to organize this “meeting” with all of our friends. Not to mention that I had just now realized that I had shared my crazy idea without hesitation with everyone. Our school counted more than 1,000 students and could certainly represent a good sample for our experiment. We still had to interview the other guys and ask their opinion. John and I had a good reputation at school and we were very popular so I thought it all could work. The freshmen would not have not been a problem: the only ones to convince would have been the guys of our age. I then added: "My belief is that by stopping this ineffective and dysfunctional behavior, we can get some answers that will help us to improve...” The only problem was, that no matter how popular we were, such a proposal could make us look like fools. All together we thought, however, that it was worth it. Maybe after a month we would have had more useful answers. We were at the beginning of the school year and even if this experiment didn’t work out, we would have had time to go back to the old method before the school end.