The Upper Hand: Creating Guilt and Gratitude; The Souvenir (Novice Level)

Alright, so here’s the idea: I come up with some random fucking advice about handling your girlfriend, you give it the ‘ol college try (of course using 1 to 13 shots of Russian liquid courage to calm the nerves), you gain the upper hand in your relationship, and then life is awesomer for you. It’s basically a foolproof plan, right? Right. Good. Moving on. What’s that? You’re sick of the repetitive introduction to each article? Are you fucking serious? It’s like two fucking sentences that are the same. I’m frustrated right now because I want to accuse you of being illiterate, but that’s just stupid because if you were illiterate then you wouldn’t have read the insult. And if you did read the insult, then you aren’t illiterate and I’m a jackass. Fuck you. What’s important here is that both the definition of “the ‘ol college try” and also your dumbshit questions change with every article. So what the hell are you complaining about? Can you fucking read or not? Shit, I said it. Whatever. I hate you right now, but onto the technique nonetheless….dipshit.

THE SOUVENIR
Novice Level

I feel that almost any technique can be adjusted to fit into any of the three difficulty levels, but this one really adapts well. For that reason, this article will be followed by two more describing the Advanced and Expert Levels. Enjoy.

Here’s the scenario: your girl is blackout drunk. Basically, that’s all you need. However, you need to KNOW that she is blackout drunk. She’s can’t be brownout drunk or just really wasted. I’ll say it again, your girlfriend needs to be fall-down, cry-for-no-reason, puking-the-rainbow, 5-Jaegerbombs, flipcup-tournament-champion, straight-up, no-joke, fucking BLACKOUT DRUNK. You have to have been dating this girl long enough to know when she’s so drunk that she will not remember ANYTHING the next day.

After your girl falls into a sleep so fucking deep that it’s two heartbeats per minute from a coma, you realize you can use “The Souvenir” technique. You look around your room for something breakable yet mostly meaningless. Unfortunately, since this is Novice Level and you haven’t prepared, you’ll probably only find the collection of empty liquor bottles on your mantle or windowsill. Pick out a few bottles. (Obviously your least favorite ones. Definitely not the Grey Goose bottle that Jimmy tried to chug, which got him wasted, which led to him making out with The Beast. Save that one, it’s got history.) Now, take those bottles and but them inside of a paper bag, and then put that paper bag inside another paper bag. Break the bottles. The double-thick paper bag is an impressively adequate containment for the broken glass, but if you’re still worried about slicing off a finger, wrap the bottles in a shitty gym towel before putting them into the bags. Put the bag out of the way where you aren’t going to step into it when you get out of bed in the morning.

Now here’s the fun part. Make sure to wake-up before your girlfriend, which won’t be difficult if she was so drunk. If you have a vacuum, get it out, turn it on, and start vacuuming the area underneath where the bottles used to reside as happy displays of boozery. She will wake up…

GF – What the fu… Honey, what are you doing? Why are you vacuuming? I’m trying to sleep.

You – Oh, you don’t remember?

GF – Remember what? What happened? Did something happen?

You – Well, you were pretty drunk last night, and when we got back here, you were stumbling all over the place and knocked over a few bottles.

GF – The bottles on the windowsill? Well you shouldn’t have had all those… (interrupted)

You – Don’t worry about it, I grabbed you really quick and picked you up so you wouldn’t fall on the broken glass and get hurt. And then I carried you to the bed where you’d be safe.

GF – Oh my gosh, thank you.

You – Your welcome, I just wanted to make sure you didn’t cut yourself. Anyway, so then I didn’t want to wake you up with the vacuum, but I also didn’t want to leave broken glass on the floor in case you woke up in the middle of the night.

GF – Oh my gosh, I could have been seriously hurt!!!

You – Exactly. So I spent like an hour cleaning up the pieces by hand and with the dustpan. And then I used a towel to get all the little tiny microscopic pieces.

GF – Oh…

You – Anyway, this morning I noticed I’d missed a few pieces and I was worried that I couldn’t get it completely safe for you without the vacuum, so that’s why I had that on kinda early. I’m sorry for waking you up.

GF – Oh my gosh, don’t be sorry. I’m so sorry, I can’t believe I made you do all that, blah blah blah….(GUILTY!!!!!!)

Well played sir. She feels absolutely terrible. In her mind, she drank too much and made a fool of herself, she broke your stuff, you saved her from hurting herself, you carefully cleaned up the mess (that she made) because you were concerned with her safety, and then she got mad at you in the morning for trying to finish the job. Was guilt manufactured? Bet your ass it was. Once again, well played sir. Well played.