Eye Games

Eye games are fun. I was talking to a girl in Yekaterinburg a few months ago. She said that when she is out-and-about, she enjoys eye games. She ‘catches’ eyes. As I sit in a cafe typing this, my fingers are bouncing but my eyes wander around the room. If somebody notices that I have looked at them, they may look my way and our eyes become locked in a mutual trance for a fleeting moment. It may be a lingering moment, but the communication is powerful. I postulate that it must be a primary communication in animals. Because we concentrate on the operation of our neocortex, we may miss the significance of this powerful communication and its influence in our subconscious. Before the smile starts, there is already a communication, even though our lips have not moved and our smile has yet to generate. When I catch someone’s eyes, I am put in a great dilemma. Do I look away instantaneously, or do I remain in a locked gaze? There is a strong impulse to look away. It can get a feeling that I have ‘violated’ their ‘space’. I am determined to refrain from looking away. I have to demonstrate strength. What I do in the milliseconds following the catching of someone’s eyes, is crucial to continued communication. On principle, I refuse to look away. I demand of myself that I do something following the catching of eyes. When I catch the eye of a girl sitting on another table in this cafe, I have an instantaneous decision to make. How do I turn this mutual meeting of eyes into some kind of respectful togetherness? A respectful nod usually works wonders. The response is needed immediately. The response is required faster than my cumbersome neocortex is capable of reacting. The eye contact communication is all over before the neocortex can give advice or make a decision. I have to rely on instinctive impulses. Logic and reason have no place in my eye contact reaction as the processing of logic is too slow. I must rely on instinct. I can train my instinctive impulse-generation. You must practice it. Go out for the day with no express purpose than to make eye contact with as many persons as possible. Be determined not to look away before the owner of the eyes averts your eye contact. Be ready for your secondary message after eye contact has been made. This morning, as I checked out of the Ekaterinberg Hotel, I crossed eyes with a nice female in her twenties. I looked down as I was on the top step of the stairs. I recognized that I had disobeyed my own rules. I glanced back at her with a look that was determined to show that eye contact was forced. Her smile increased. I looked down to my next step and looked back into her eyes as eyesight was lost as I descended. Interesting, those two seconds of my morning were easy to recollect whilst writing this paragraph, such is the power of eye communication. Thus two seconds of eye contact was one of the remembered highlights of a morning.

I was explaining this to a young Japanese-Chinese eighteen-year-old boy in the hostel in Vladivostok. He, like many others, requested assistance to improve his English speaking skills. I said: “Never look away. Never look down. It is a sign of weakness. If you look away and down, you are correctly perceived as weak.” The strongest advice I give to those requesting an English lesson from me is this: “Keep eye contact. Do not grimace. Smile to let it be known that you are enjoying the communication. Just smile and nod and the communication will continue. Just keep giving little nods and facial expressions to thank the giver of the English lesson. If you don’t, the lesson will end fairly soon.”

Yesterday, I was in a student filled cafe in the centre of Vladivostok. I was intent on writing. A trim, to the point of thinness, girl in a fine black coat sat opposite me but two seats away on this rather long table. These long tables are common in sensible cafes. They can generate communication between strangers. We crossed eyes as she sat but both looked away as if our eyes should not have crossed when they clearly had. We both obviously recognised our proximity and the neighborly nature of our seating. We both obviously recognised that we had connected with an eye crossing. The eye crossing was long enough to pose the question: “Do I reestablish communication?” There had been a sheepishness or shyness in her eyes at the time our eyes crossed. She had not rejected my eye crossing. There was no scowl. There was no derision. There was no movement in her face to indicate a welcome or a rejection of my eyes. There was no movement to suggest that further communication was welcome. This is a neocortex extended analysis of something that occurred in less than one second in the reptile subconscious. Yet this fleeting moment posed the question: “Should I further the communication?” “Would further communication be welcome?” “How do I create further communication?” I had already detected a respectful acceptance of our unneighborly arrangement. When I had entered the cafe, I had surveyed the room for an appropriate place to sit. She, also, would have surveyed the room for a suitable place to sit. If she was wanting to be alone, she would have gone somewhere where nobody could get near her. If she wanted to observe the room, she would have sat on the periphery so she could observe all action. There is every likelihood that she sat on the long table so a conversation might ensue. That is a long analysis for something such as taking a seat in a cafe, but that is how sensible humans work. Where I sit in a cafe is a significant decision. I did my usual procedure. This ‘usual’ procedure is a bit ‘naughty’. It is almost a tactic! I got on with typing for ten minutes or so paying her no attention what so ever. Note that I said: “paying her no attention what so ever”. Although I did not do it as a tactic, it is actually a tactic. She may think: “Why is he not noticing me? I put great effort into looking good!” She would not realise that us males don’t care for the time girls waste on self-beautification. I let actions and reactions happen almost instinctively. I said something to her. I did not plan what to say. I did not plan when and how I would speak to her. I let it happen spontaneously when I get a successful moment on my computer. I cannot remember what I said, however, she immediately joined me in conversation. She was a student in Vladivostok and had an ‘interview’ for a job in forty-five minutes. I explained that an ‘inter’-view was a meeting where they would check her out but also where she would be expected to check them out. That is why it is called: “inter”. They will try to see whether she is ‘good’ enough for them, but also where she checks whether they are ‘good’ enough for her. They will actually sell themselves to gain her support. I said not to be concerned like the build up to a school exam with its overture of ‘Are you good enough to pass this exam?’ It is different. They want somebody and you are very likely to be the one they want. We spent much time in conversation and the whole time our eyes were locked into each other’s eyes without any scary emotions occurring inside. The scary emotions tend to occur at the first momentary glance. Subsequent conversation was along the line of her wish to travel the world like me. She was all eyes and smiles as she devoured my approach to travel and tales of past travels. She wanted my online address to ask questions if needed. I gave her my card. She walked off with a big beaming respectful smile. Hopefully, I put her in the right frame for the interview! This fun encounter started with an uneasy non-committal crossing of eyes from two people from opposite sides of the world at different stages of life! Eye crossing is unbelievably part of our subconscious repertoire. Monitor how you use your eyes. Provoke your subconscious to create eye contact. One of my mottos: “Just do it. Don’t think about it, just do it!”

There was another girl last night. She asked if she could sit next to me to improve her English. From my time teaching English in Tehran in 1975, I learned to separate my words with a short gap and simplify my language. I sometimes say the same thing twice with different words. In between talking to others, the lesson proceeded well but not in the way she had expected. I had tapped the base of the seat next to me and said that was her spot for the evening and she need not ask again. Her English was good enough to maintain a conversation or communication. But she was missing something. Actually, she was missing a few things. When she talked to me, she shielded her mouth with her hand. I started to be tough in my conversation. Her grandmother had told her that she had horrible teeth and she should hide them otherwise nobody would like her. Things taught when very small are hard to break. I said your teeth are much nicer than mine. Mine are yellow and crooked. I held her hand down by her side to prevent her from shielding her mouth. She was happy for me to hold her hand. I guessed a father problem. I brought that up later. The next issue was the smile. She was obviously happy to communicate sitting up close to me, but she put a puzzled look when she did not understand. It took a lot of explaining that it mattered little whether she understood. A smile will cause the other person to continue in conversation even if there is no comprehension. With the smile, there is a communication of intent, a communication of interest, and even a communication of affection. She said that her upper lip was too thin to give a beautiful smile. I gave her a totally false stupidly exaggerated smile with an explanation of the fake smile generated by force of the neocortex. It is sometimes called a camera smile. I said that I chose to be sitting next to her and spend my evening helping her English because I wanted to. It was because I liked her. I explained that I would be a very happy man if my son came home with a nice girl like her. I waved my arm around the room and said that I could be sitting with anybody in the room but I chose her because I thought she was rather special. It came out that her boyfriend had called her “fat”. It also came out that she had separated parents. She had no strong father figure in her life. She was drastically self-conscious about her body. She probably allowed her boyfriend to give her an emotionally damaging ‘hit’. This hit would be like a physical punch with no physical contact. The difference is that the emotional ‘hit’ is more damaging and lasting than the physical punch. Girls have a habit of giving males an emotional ‘hit’: “Fuck off you perve!” She started to look into my eyes consistently. She had joy in her eyes. She recognized that she could influence me and get me to look after her interests with her smile. I explained that her femininity was starting to make me go like jelly inside. I wanted to teach her how to have influence over a male. She was a different girl after our conversation. I had explained how I traveled through Russia using my smile as a weapon to break down barriers. I explained how I used the smile to break barriers even with people that spoke no English. She asked me if I liked her new nails. They were long stick-on sparkly things. I said: “No. But I like your smile!” She wanted me as her surrogate father. She gave me a hug on leaving that lasted an embarrassingly long time followed by that heart shape they make with their fingers. She was now capable of using eye contact to her advantage. I had taught her how to hold a man using emotional skills. Her smile had become natural. She was no longer restricting her smile for fear of revealing her teeth and her lip that was not thin. Her smile was now wholly natural. Whist I was teaching her how to mess with my emotions, I pointed out that when she laughed, it made her boobs wiggle, which caused me to go like jelly inside. I said I was purposely trying to get her to laugh so I could see her boobs wiggle. She had no clue that she could mess with a man’s emotions in such ways. She looked into my eyes with determined fascination and purposely wiggled her boobs to see the effect that it had on me. Nobody is teaching girls how to mess with male emotions. It is an essential female skill. Mothers should be teaching their daughters. Fathers should be teaching their daughters. It is part of nature.

Some of these things may have come from past times when we walked on all fours. Males would have been interested in the girls rear end. As humans took an upright stance for upright walking, nature arranged for the breasts to become ‘full and pert’ well before the time that they are needed for milk production. We are the only animal with pert breasts before pregnancy. The cleavage often looks a bit like the backside creek. It may be why girls enjoy showing a bit of cleavage but are very careful to avoid showing nipples.

What I have observed is that girls from about eighteen to twenty-five play eye games constantly. However, middle-aged women entirely avoid eye contact. Middle-aged women often maintain a sour-face look. Somehow we know what ‘sour-face’ means. Nobody is telling girls that the psychology of an eighteen-year-old girl is entirely different to the psychology of a twenty-eight-year-old girl. Girls should be taught that their demeanor will change from eighteen to twenty-eight. Girls at eighteen glow in a manner that attracts attention. Girls at twenty-eight exude a sourness without realizing that they are doing it.

When we communicate with someone, we look into each other’s eyes. We look nowhere else, just directly at the eyes. Our eye engagement has an unwritten but strict set of rules that seem to derive from the animal kingdom rather than some human documentation. If I look for too long initially, then I am intrusive which gets the derision of ‘creepy’, ‘perve’, or whatever denouncing word they can think of. However, when communication is progressing, a whole new set of rules applies. This incudes little nods to indicate interest and permission to continue a conversation.

The cafe just closed. I rugged up as there is a bitter wind outside here in Vladivostok although it is only around freezing point. I tried to see how we cross eyes as we pass people. As a girl passes me in the street, her eyes meet mine but the look in the eyes is entirely neutral. However, we did cross eyes. We recognized each other to a greater extent than missing a lamp-post. She would recognise me if she saw me again. I would recognise her as the girl I passed earlier. Although the look is neutral, the encounter is not neutral. There is a recognition that we exist. Again, this recognition is universal in that it does not depend on the language that we were taught when young. I have to assume this recognition and eye contact predates human existence as I can detect that it occurs in other animals. As I cross eyes with someone, I get a small flutter of an emotion. I guess this is inherited from our reptile past. How I react to that minor emotion determines subsequent interaction.

Here is an example of eye contact in animals. I walked toward a ticket vending machine with a slow procedure. The lady in front had a tiny small dog in a basket which she had put on a tall chair that she had pulled up next to her. The tiddly little dog was eyeballing me as if to suggest that I had encroached on its master too closely. It did not growl but it grumbled under its breath. It was a scowl that was its attempt to tell me that I might be in peril if I approached any farther. The dog stared unflinching into my eyes in a manner that let me know that it was not happy with my presence.

I’m in another cafe wasting time before catching my overnight train to Khabarovsk.

If you are young, you need to practice this eye-contact. It is possible that your upbringing has made you self-conscious like the girl earlier whose grandmother told her that her teeth were ugly and she should not let anybody see her teeth.

I am in yet another cafe. It is dreadfully cold outside. In this cafe, there are twelve females and two males. One male is the server and the other is myself. Most are buried in their phones. Two seem to be talking about nothing of consequence.

I cannot give you a set of rules for eye-contact because it all operates from the subconscious reptile brain. The neocortex has little to do with eye-contact communication. Your neocortex does not operate quickly enough nor efficiently enough to control your subconscious reactions. I just accidently caught eyes with the male waiter behind some obstacles. I gave him a distinctive nod to demonstrate recognition and respect. This reaction took place in a flash of a second. This ‘flash of a second’ is a seriously short time to expect your neocortex to wake up. The neocortex is horribly slow. What appeared to be the owner of the cafe walked in with a large cake container. She looked like she disapproved of the amount of junk on my tiny table. We crossed eyes, but as is typical of mid-aged women, a ‘cold eye’ reply ensued, which gives the effect of ‘putting me down’ as if she believes that she is of higher status than me. If we spoke, I would have to build a status in front of her to show my worthiness as a human. These days, I refuse to play that game. However, the game still gets played, and I now mention something to demonstrate human status. It usually involves some traveling exploit. Thus, status games are played with eyes as well as words. A person that considers themselves of high-status either due to their natural beauty, wealth, or position, may use eye games to put you ‘in your place’ before any formal communication occurs. The immigration officers do this when I enter a country. I can feel my anxiety before I place myself in front of an immigration officer. I prime myself that we are all born equal. If necessary, I puzzle what the officer would look like with no clothes on! Notice that I have to play mind games on myself before an encounter. If I got the same frosty reception in a hotel, I would complain. However, it is considered normal for an agent of the state, even though they are funded by my tax payments. What is clear is that I cannot plan or make decisions at the time of making eye contact but I can give myself instructions such as: ‘Do not look away when we cross eyes.’ The waitress just walked by and we accidentally crossed eyes. I got the feeling that we both considered it ‘accidental’. I told myself: “Make sure you look away before she walks past next time.” With the caveat that I would allow my eyes to cross in some subsequent encounter. I also realise that I made sure that the two ladies on the next table might realise that I had looked in their direction a couple of times.

Back to rules for young people, particularly for self-conscious young males and self-conscious young females. This possibly means most young people! First of all, make sure that you make at least fleeting contact, even if it is so short that the recipient gets no time to respond. If you are female, you can bet that every male in the room has weighed you up. You can also bet that every female has weighed you up on some sort of bizarre hierarchy. You will have done the same to them and been careful they did not detect you doing so. If you are male, you can bet that every male has weighed you up mainly to perceive if you are a competitive or physical threat to them. The threat may be due to physical size and perceived strength but may include the likelihood of you having allies in the room, male or female. You can also be certain that the females in the room have weighed you up. Knowing that this is happens, psych yourself up for the entry. Put your mind in the right frame before entering any room. Make sure your body posture is appropriate. Enter the room in a confident and competent style. Do not make this too dramatic as you may be perceived as a threat to be taken down. If you have presence of mind, swing your eyes around the whole room as if to assess the situation. I always swing my eyes round a room. If, in doing so, I detect an appropriate person looking at me, I may return my eyes to them and put on a small smile as recognition, then look away. Ten minutes later, something may happen. Girls do this best. In one swing of the eyes, a girl can detect the entire social dynamics of a room. Males are not even aware that girls do this. Males are not even aware that a social dynamics exists. Just be aware that girls have some perceptions that are better than yours. You will have attributes that outclass them and they have attributes that outclass you.

I will continue with ‘rules’ that are more like guidelines as you cannot directly modify emotional responses to external eye contact. Be determined not to look away in a manner damaging to your status. The boy last night was an eighteen-year-old musician of mixed racial origin. People of mixed origin have a bigger battle. They are not always accepted by either of their parent’s races. This is pure observation of the behavior of races. A quick study of the Haitian Revolution, shows that the mulattos or mixed-race suffered death by black held sword. People of mixed race must win on personal character as there is less ‘in-group’ affinity.

If we look away, we signal disinterest. To look at other parts of the body is disrespectful. Too much eye contact is instinctively felt to be rude, hostile, and condescending. Too little eye contact tends to make a person appear uneasy, unprepared, or insincere. This is all done instinctively and most will get it right without conscious effort. When it comes to wooing a mate, the use of eyes becomes more intense. If a male finds a girl interesting, his gaze will linger for a few seconds. She may well play games with the attentive male. She may swing her eyes past his eyes, then come back for a second fleeting eye encounter. She is effectively saying to the male: “I caught you looking at me twice, but you will have to work a lot harder than that if you want me!” He, of course, recognizes that he was given two fleeting glances. This is better than a single glance and much better than no glance or a look of distain. Although he got no other indication such as a smile, he might as well try his luck. The game is on, fueled by eye contact.

Once I have created a recuring fleeting crossing of eyes with somebody across a room, I may play a trick and hold my hand or perhaps a menu so they cannot see my eyes. Then, I’ll peer out from behind the menu obstacle. Sometimes, the person, will march across the room as if to demand better communication. Similar eye games are great fun with children.

Even children are strong on eye contact from birth. The scientists with letters after their name tell us:

• “Eye contact is very important for a child’s brain, social, and emotional development.”
• “Newborns will be especially attracted to a few specific things, like the color red and heavy contrast.”
• “Around four months, babies start to develop more sophisticated visual perception and communication. They should be able to see colors and smile back at you when you make eye contact.”
• “Eye contact is an important step toward newborn brain development.”
•  “They start to make connections between expressions and feelings. They learn how to respond and develop the ability to engage and relate to others, to regulate their own feelings, and communicate. “
• “Within the first seven hours, newborns can have an intense interest in their mothers’ face, even mimicking facial expressions.”
• “It’s expected between nine to eleven months, babies have developed the ability to follow your eye gaze, showing they understand that eyes are meant for seeing and looking.”

In the last sentence, it is suggested that the infant can ‘follow your gaze’. I read that as looking to see what you are looking at. We all do that. If we see somebody looking out of a window, we look to see what they are looking at. There is intelligent activity happening without you consciously determining to do so. Your eyes automatically peer out of the window. We even play tricks on people to get them to look somewhere stupid. If I look up at the ceiling, perhaps with a puzzled look, others may gather round me to look at the ceiling. I did not tell anybody to look at the ceiling.

I will sometimes look at a person for approximately one second, and look away at something else, as I have learned that this will arouse their curiosity. Why did I look at them only for a one second? Why did I then gaze at something else? This is very naughty of me. I was playing emotional tricks. They are puzzled as to why something else got more attention than them. An introduction is likely to follow, initiated by them. Then I look keen that they introduced themselves. Such is my deviousness. From the stories I hear, this is nothing compared to the devious tactics used by females.