The Game Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Arttists
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Neil Strauss (Style) - The Game (complete e-book)
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of the Flies.
Something had to be done to resolve this. My faith in these guy—and this community—was hanging by a thread. STEP 11 MANAGE EXPECTATIONS N O T T H A T I T WAS B E A U T I F U L , B I T T H A T , I N T H E E N D , T H E R E WAS A C E R T A I N S E N S E O F O R D E R T H E R E ; S O M E T H I N G W O R T H L E A R N I N G I N T H A T N A R R O W D I A R Y O F M Y MIND. — ANNE SEXTON, "For John, Who Begs Me Not To Enquire Further" Mystery and Herbal sac facing each other on opposite couches, their arms folded across their chests. It was not only a defensive position, but also a stubborn one. Between them stood Mystery's Krav Maga instructor and Roadking, a PUA who worked as a bodyguard. Herbal had refused to set foot in the house without someone there to protect him from Mystery. The other permanent residents—Papa, Xaneus, Playboy, and me—sat on a third couch perpendicular to them. Tyler Durden didn't attend because he claimed to be a guest, although he'd been living in Papa's closet for months now. We had called a house meeting to resolve the dispute between Mystery and Herbal once and for all. We allowed each to present his side of the story without interrup- tion. Mystery said he would not allow his ex-girlfriend to set foot in the house again. And Herbal said he would move out if his girlfriend couldn't come over. It took each of them half an hour to convey these simple points. "Now, normally, I would just say that Herbal should move out if he wants to be with Mystery's ex-girlfriend that badly," I said, trying to play the role of peacemaker that had been foisted on me. "However, Mystery, you've damaged house property and threatened a tenant's well-being. You have neither apologized for your actions nor repaired the damages." Herbal's door was still lying on the floor, the dents were still in his wall, and his room still looked like a tornado had hit it. "And it makes us very reluctant to re- ward bad behavior by letting you get your way." "I purposely left Herbal's room like that as a demonstration of what I will do if I see Katya in this house again," Mystery said sullenly. "It was a perfectly acceptable means of showing that I was willing to enforce my rules." One of the problems with the PUA community was that it presented in- flexible standards of behavior that men were supposed to follow in order to win a woman. And chief among them was the idea of being an alpha male. 390 The result was a bunch of men who'd been kicked around most of their lives trying to act like their former bullies, leading to immature behavior such as Mystery's. "If I may say something?" Roadking interjected. "Herbal here broke an important rule." "And what's that?" Herbal asked. There was no anger or resentment in his voice; only the red rings around his eyes betrayed the emotion he felt. "It's the rule of bros before hos," Roadking said. "No," Mystery said. "I'd like to agree, but sometimes it's hos before bros." Herbal cracked a smile for the first time that afternoon: He and Mys- tery actually saw eye to eye on something. Strip away the community bond and the seduction business interests that united us, and what was left? Six guys chasing after a limited subset of available women. Wars have been fought, world leaders shot, and tragedies wrought by males claiming territorial rights over the opposite sex. Perhaps we'd just been too blind to see that Project Hollywood was doomed from the start by the very pursuit that had brought it together. After three hours of go-nowhere debate—during which Papa, oddly, didn't speak once—we asked Mystery and Herbal to give us some privacy to talk amongst ourselves and come to a house decision. They both agreed to accept whatever we decided. When we entered Papa's room, there was a flurry of activity. Several fig- ures darted into his bathroom and shut the door. I hadn't seen his room in nearly a month. The carpet was barely visible beneath six convertible black foam chairs that had been unfolded into beds. On top of each was a pillow and bedding. Where were the people who slept here? Who were they? We folded the beds back into chairs, sat down, and prepared to reach a conclusion. That was when Papa spoke for the first time. "I will not live in the same house as that guy," he said. "Who?" I asked. "Mystery!" Papa's hands trembled from either hatred or nervousness. He was a dif- ficult person to read. He hadn't been sarging in months, and much of the progress he'd made after working so hard to improve himself had disap- 391 peared. He was the same blank, introverted shell I had first met in Toronto. His passion was no longer pickup; it was Real Social Dynamics. Instead of going to seminars on meeting women, he spent most of his time flying around the country to marketing and business seminars. "Mystery disrupts my workshops," Papa continued. His voice was dis- tant and monotone, echoing from somewhere deep inside his head. "He damages the house. And I'm worried he's going to harm me." "What are you talking about? He wouldn't do anything to you." "I have nightmares that Mystery is coming into my room with a knife. I'm getting locks put on my doors because I'm scared he'll break in." "That's ridiculous," I said. "He's not going to hurt you. That's your own issue: You need to learn how to deal with aggression and confrontation rather than just avoiding everyone and trying to kick them out of the house." But no matter what I said to dissuade Papa, he kept repeating the same sentence—"I will not live in the same house as that guy"—in a robotic voice, as if he'd been programmed to say it. "Have you ever stopped to think," Playboy finally asked me, "that the only reason you're defending Mystery is because he's your friend?" Perhaps Playboy was right. I was giving Mystery special-circumstances treatment, because he had brought me into the community and because the house had been his idea. None of us would have been here without him. But he had screwed up. He had made his bed. I needed to consider what was best for the house. "But," I said. "I'd still like to find a way to solve this without anyone having to leave the house." "We'll trust whatever you decide," Papa said. "You're the house leader. Everyone looks up to you." I found it strange that Papa, who was so adamant about having Mys- tery leave, was putting the decision in my hands. For the next two and a half hours, we discussed possible compromises. The more we talked about it, the more complex the dilemma seemed. There was no solution that was go- ing to satisfy everyone: Papa wouldn't live in the house with Mystery. Mystery wouldn't live in the house with Katya. And Herbal wouldn't live in the house without Katya. Someone had to go. 392 "All the problems in this house can be traced back to one source," Play- boy said firmly, "and that source is Mystery." I looked at Xaneus. "Do you agree with Playboy and Papa?" I asked him. "I do," he said. He too seemed to speak from somewhere deep in his skull, as if he weren't really present. He was turning as robotic as the rest of them. "I think Mystery needs to go." We called Mystery and Herbal into the room to give them our decision. They sat on the edge of the step leading up to Papa's bed. Having come up with the only possible compromise for a complicated dilemma, I was proud of myself—mistakenly, it would turn out—for exercising my newfound lead- ership skills in a Solomon-like manner. "Herbal," I began. "Katya will not be allowed in the house for two months. After that, if you're still dating her, she may return to the house." Herbal nodded. "Mystery, you have two months to get over Katya and find yourself a new girlfriend. In addition, there will be a zero-tolerance policy for violence in this house. If you threaten anyone's life, attack anyone, or damage prop- erty, you will be asked to leave the house immediately." Mystery didn't nod. "So basically you're saying you want me out of the house and that bitch gets to replace me," he snarled. "Well," Playboy said. "There's always the chance Herbal and Katya will break up in that time." "I don't see that happening," Herbal said. Mystery threw his arms into the air. "Well, then you guys are kicking me out." "No," I said. "We're giving you two months to come to grips with your emotions." I was trying to help him. But he refused to be helped. "If you give me at least two weeks notice before you leave," Papa said, "I'll refund your full deposit and find someone to fill the room." Papa was happy. He was getting his way. Mystery's forehead creased; his head twitched involuntarily. "You real- ize," he said, "that Papa is trying to get me out of the house because he's in competition with me. This is not about Mystery versus Herbal. It's about Mystery Method versus Real Social Dynamics. I gave Papa his entire busi- ness model. I told him to harness his sex drive and become a businessman. 394 He's even charging fifteen hundred dollars now for boot camps where he teaches my material." Mystery glared at Papa; Papa stared right through Mystery. "And now that he doesn't need me anymore, he wants to move me out and turn my room into a twelve-person dorm." At the time, I thought Mystery was in denial, that he was still refusing to take responsibility for his actions. "It didn't have to turn out like this," I told him. "Every step of the way, you've made bad decisions, and now you have to live with them. We're not even kicking you out. You're deciding to leave." Mystery folded his arms across his chest and looked at us disdainfully. "Can't you see that the actions you think are alpha-male ways to solve a problem actually prevented you from getting the outcome you wanted?" I continued. "It was a tactic designed to keep Katya out of the house, and it worked," he maintained. "She hasn't been back since." I lost my cool. It was time for him to wake up and take a good look at himself. "You need some tough love," I said, raising my voice for the first time all meeting. "You're the best illusionist I've ever seen, yet you haven't taken a single step toward your ninety-minute show—or any show, for that matter—since I've met you. Your pickup business is a mess, and your former students are raking in all the money that should be yours. As for your love life, ever since Katya, you've driven away every girl you've slept with. I would not recommend a girl ever dating you. You are a financial, mental, and emo- tional mess." With each sentence I felt like a weight was being lifted off my chest. "You have nothing: no health, no wealth, and no relationships. And you have no one to blame but yourself." Mystery dropped his head into his hands. His shoulders started shak- ing. Big Mystery tears rolled out of his eyes. "I'm a broken man," he cried. "I'm broken." The wall of sophistry and self-deception that had been propping him up came tumbling down. "What should I do?" He looked at me. "Tell me what to do." Tears began leaking out of my eyes. I couldn't help it. I turned and faced the wall so Herbal and Papa wouldn't see. The tears ran faster. Despite all of Mystery's flaws, I still cared about the guy. After two years in the se- duction community, I still didn't have a girlfriend, but for some reason I 395 had bonded with this big blubbering genius. Perhaps it was really shared emotion and experience that creates relationships, not seven hours of rou- tines followed by two hours of sex. "You need therapy," I said. "You need treatment or counseling or some- thing. You can't just keep doing this to yourself." "I know," he said. His eyes filled with tears as viscous as mercury. He balled his hand into a fist and hit his head self-castigatingly. "I know. I fucked up." I walked out of Papa's room and left the house. I had a headache. It had been a long day. As I started down the hill to grab a burrito at Poquito Mas, a black Mer- cedes convertible whipped around the corner and began climbing the hill. Inside were two blondes. The car screeched to a halt in front of me, and a voice yelled my name from the driver's seat. It was Lisa. My heart skipped a beat. She wore a red Diesel jacket with a wide rainbow collar that made her look like a cross between a supermodel and a racecar driver. I was unshaven, wearing sweatpants, and frazzled from debating with my roommates all day. I felt so many emotions at once: embarrassment, excitement, resent- ment, fear, joy. I didn't think I was ever going to see her again. "We're going to get a drink," Lisa yelled. "Do you want to join us?" "What are you doing here?" I tried to keep my cool and appear unfazed by her sudden reappearance. "Going to the Whiskey Bar." "Didn't you just pass it?" "Yeah. I came by to ask you to go with us. Do you have a problem with that?" A touch of attitude. I still liked her. She was a challenge. She didn't let any sarcasm, neg, or cocky funny get past her without a verbal smackdown. "Let me change," I said, "and I'll meet you there." I slipped on a pair of Levi's Red jeans with fake cat scratches down the front and a military-collared button-down shirt I'd bought in Australia, and ran down the hill to join them. I was anxious to talk to Lisa and find out why she'd disappeared after Atlanta. But when I arrived, Lisa and Sam were at a table with two stocky, heavily tattooed rockers. They were the type of guys I had imagined Lisa dating. I sat between them, dwarfed by ink and hair dye. As they gossiped about local rock scenesters I neither knew nor cared about, an overwhelming anxiety took hold of my body. I didn't want to MANAGE EXPECTATIONS 397 make small talk or pretend to enjoy it. I wanted to be alone with Lisa. I wanted to connect with her. When the first drip of sweat rolled down my forehead, I jumped up. I couldn't take it. "I'll be right back," I said. I needed to sarge—not because I wanted to pick up women, but because I wanted to get into a positive state and talka- tive mood. Otherwise I was going to just crack sitting there so awkwardly. As I ordered a drink at the bar, I smelled lilacs behind me. I turned around to see two women in black evening dresses. "Hey guys, let me get your opinion on something," I began, with a little less enthusiasm than usual. "Let me guess," one of the women said. "You have a friend whose girl- friend is jealous because he still talks to his ex from college." "Like, every guy keeps asking us that," her friend said. "What's the deal?" I grabbed my Jack and Coke and shuffled out to the smoking patio— the site of my pickup battle with Heidi Fleiss. With some trepidation, I de- livered the spells opener to a two-set sitting on a bench. Fortunately, they hadn't heard it. "Hey," I said afterward. I really wasn't feeling it, but I wanted to push myself to be talkative. "How long have you guys known each other?" "About ten years," one of the girls said. "I could tell. I have to give you guys the best friends test." "Oh, we know that one already," she said politely. It had finally happened: The Sunset Strip was sarged out. The community had grown large and reckless; too many competing businesses were teaching the same material. And we had saturated more than just Los Angeles. PUAs in San Diego, Montreal, New York, San Fran- cisco, and Toronto had been reporting the same problem lately: They were running out of fresh girls to sarge. I walked back to Lisa and her friends. "I'm wiped out," I told Lisa. "I'm going to head home. But I'm driving to Malibu tomorrow to surf. You and Sam should join me. It'll be fun." She looked up at me, and we connected for the first time all evening. For three extraordinary seconds, the rest of the club disappeared. "Yeah, all right," she said. "Sounds cool." "Great. Meet me at the house at noon." Connection over. 338 When I returned home from the Whiskey Bar, Isabel was waiting for me. I was never going to get any sleep. "Didn't I tell you to call first before dropping by?" I asked. "I left you a message." There was nothing wrong with Isabel. Five years ago, I would have given up writing for a year just to sleep with a girl like that once. But she of- fered nothing. She was all holes: ears to listen to me, a mouth to talk at me, and a vagina to squeeze orgasms out of me. We weren't a team; we were just a distraction for each other, a way to feel less lonely for a few hours in a big, uncaring world. We never had conversations; we had conversations, where we just filled empty space with words. At least, that's what I thought. But sometimes, simply through the act of having sex with a man, especially if that man is a little more emotionally distant than she'd like him to be, a woman can develop feelings. She can start wanting more. "Are you still seeing other girls?" Isabel asked in the morning, rolling on top of me and looking aggressively into my eyes. It was a loaded question with only one right answer. I gave her the wrong one—the honest one. "Well, I met a girl named Lisa, who I'm devel- oping feelings for." "Well, you're going to have to choose between her and me." In the past, I used to fall for ultimatums. But I'd since learned that ulti- matums are expressions of powerlessness, empty threats designed to try to influence a situation someone has no control over. "Just by asking me to make that choice," I said, "you're setting yourself up to be the loser." She dropped her head onto my shoulder and cried. I felt bad for her. But that's all I felt. An hour after she left, Sam and Lisa arrived. Mystery sat at the com- puter, typing furiously. He looked up at Lisa, who was wearing a Juicy Cou- ture linen pullover with the hood over her head, and tried to neg her. "What kind of get-up is that?" he asked. It was the only way he knew how to relate to a beautiful woman. Lisa slowly scanned Mystery's get-up. He was wearing a robe, boxer shorts, black toenail polish, and slippers. She gave him a withering look and sneered, deadpan, "Right back at ya, babe." Lisa was neg-proof. Next to her, other girls seemed like incomplete hu- man beings. For most of their childhood, females are conditioned to act 399 subservient to male authority figures. Once they grow up, a certain subset of them—many of whom end up in Los Angeles—move through the world psychologically stunted, constantly dumbing themselves down in the pres- ence of the opposite sex. They believe that the techniques they used to ma- nipulate their fathers will work just as well on the rest of the world, and often they're right. But Lisa wasn't a doormat designed by the expectations and desires of the men in her life. She lived the advice that most women hypocritically give to men; She wasn't afraid to be herself. Mystery was silent for once. He cleared his throat; announced, a little too loudly, "I'm busy"; then turned away to continue typing. I was sure he was posting in Mystery's Lounge, letting off steam after the previous day's house meeting. Before we left for the beach, I showed Sam and Lisa the photos I had taken the first night Lisa slept over, when we had played dress-up with the wigs. "Look at that," Sam said when she saw the photo of Lisa and me star- ing into each other's eyes, just before we didn't kiss. "I've never seen Lisa look so happy." "Yeah," Lisa said, her lips spreading into a toothy smile. "I guess you're right." Sam ran upstairs to use my bathroom while Lisa and I loaded the surf- boards into the back of the limousine, which doubled as my surf car. As we drove to Malibu, I noticed Sam leaning over the seat divider to whisper something to Lisa, which wiped the smile off her face in an instant. "What is it?" I asked. They looked at each other hesitantly. "What?" I persisted. I really wanted to know. I was sure it was about me, and I was sure it wasn't positive. "It's not important," Sam said. "Just girl talk." "Urn, okay." When I surfed in the past, I usually hung out close to the shore, riding the smaller waves while the more experienced surfers paddled further out for the big ones. I thought I was better than them because I got more waves. But after helping Sam and Lisa get comfortable on their boards, I paddled out with the expert surfers to try and catch a big wave. As I waited, I looked on with envy as the surfers on the inside—closer to shore—caught wave after wave. After twenty minutes, the water finally swelled 400 behind me and I began to paddle. As a wall of blue grew in my peripheral vi- sion, my body tensed: I wondered if I could handle a wave this big. It grabbed my board with a crack, like pealing thunder, and I leapt to my feet. The blue stretched far overhead. I cut through the open face all the way to the top of the wave and maneuvered to shore. I felt alive, exhilarated, ecstatic. I didn't know I could do it before: I didn't think I had the knowledge and the skill to take a wave like that. For the first time since junior high, I felt like writing poetry. As I triumphantly carried my board to the beach, I realized it was time, with girls, to take the big waves and stop messing with the mushy little in- side ones, to go for the best rather than the most. I deserved it. When we returned home, I pulled Lisa aside. "I'd like to take you out for sushi on Saturday," I said. It was so AFC of me. I was asking her out on a date. She hesitated for a moment, as if she were deciding the best way to let me down easy. She pursed her lips and squinted. Then, finally, she spoke. "Okay, I guess." "You guess?" I couldn't remember the last time I'd asked a girl on a date, and she was giving me attitude about it? "No, it's just that " She stopped herself. "Never mind. Yeah, I'd love to go. I was wondering when you were finally going to ask." "That's better. I'll pick you up at eight." The girls left, and I went to the kitchen to saute a chicken breast. The remains of countless meals made by scores of guests had congealed into a black crust that coated the stovetop. As I waited for my food to cook, Tyler Durden came in through the patio door, wearing running shoes and a Walkman. He lifted up his T-shirt, examined a roll of baby fat on his belly, and took his Walkman headphones off. "Hey, man, I heard what happened with Mystery," he said. "I'm really sorry about how things turned out. Let me know if I can do anything to help convince him to stay in the house." "He's very stubborn. I doubt there's anything you can do." "If he leaves, there's no Project Hollywood anymore," he went on. "I guess it would sort of become the RSD mansion." "I guess so." I scooped the chicken onto a plate and grabbed a fork and knife. "By the way. I bought a Style shirt on Melrose today. It looks just like something you would wear. I have to show it to you." 401 "That's great, but kind of weird." There was something I'd been mean- ing to discuss with Tyler Durden for a while now. "I'd like to talk to you about paying a small rent or part of the utilities. You've been living here for months now, and we made a rule the day we moved in that long-term guests should contribute to the house." "Sure, man," he said. "Just bring it up with Papa." His words were agreeable, but not his body language. He shifted his head uncomfortably while he spoke, as if he didn't know where to look, then wheeled around and left. He always seemed to go unnaturally out of his way to make sure he wasn't actively involved in any house issue, drama, or meeting. Behind his smile I sensed something—not unlike what I'd felt when I'd kissed his girl in Las Vegas. By asking him to pay rent, I'd become a threat to him. I took my food to the office area of the house, turned on my computer, and checked Mystery's Lounge. I wanted to read the masterpiece Mystery had been so furiously working on that afternoon. |
