The Game

response was terrifying: Everybody wanted in.

ALL THE GIRLS LINE UP HERE ,
A LL THE BOYS ON THE OTHER SIDE .
I SEE YOUR RANKS ARE
ADVANCING .
    I SEE MINE ARE LEFT BEHIND .

    —A NI D I F RANCO ,
“The Story”

The first night, we all sat in the Jacuzzi from midnight until the skin hung loosely from our bodies, gazing at the palm trees of our new place and the lights of the Hollywood clubs we would soon descend upon. Mystery sang the entire soundtrack of Jesus Christ Superstar to the night sky. Papa told us about his plan to use the house for A-list Hollywood parties. And Herbal served watermelon drinks from his blender. There were no girls, and we didn’t need any to validate us. Tonight, it was just the boys. We had done it. Project Hollywood was not just a fantasy anymore.
    “We’ll make the house famous with our public exploits,” Mystery predicted as we all sat there with smiles plastered to our faces. “People will drive by and say, ‘This was the home of the Hollywood celebrities Style, Mystery, Papa, and Herbal. They built their careers here and had parties that were the envy of the world.’”
    Herbal was our fourth roommate. He was a tall, pale, even-tempered twenty-two-year-old PUA from Austin who peacocked by painting his nails silver and wearing all-white clothing. Like the rest of us, he was a reformed geek. But he owned a house in Texas, a Mercedes Benz S600, a Rolex, an office on Sunset Boulevard that he never went to, and a robot vacuum cleaner. They were impressive holdings for someone his age. He had earned them in some kind of shady casino operation, in which he hired others to gamble for him. In his spare time—which was basically all his time—he explored caves, recorded extremely catchy rap songs, and surfed the Internet for unusual items to buy and then never use.
    Mystery insisted that everyone in the home have an identity—so we had a magician, a writer, a gambler, and a businessman. It was a combination that would prove more dramatic than the most sensationalist reality show.
    A few days later, Papa moved a fifth roommate, Playboy, into the maid’s room. Playboy was a party promoter from New York who earned my admiration when he told me he’d worked for the Merce Cunningham Dance Company. He was genetically good-looking—tall and slender with thick black hair—but he had a bad habit of wearing long artsy scarves and pantspulled up to his belly button. He had quit his job to move in with us, so Papa hired him to work for Real Social Dynamics in exchange for rent.
    Then there was Xaneus. He lived in a tent in the backyard.
    Xaneus was a short, stocky, fresh-faced college soccer player from Colorado who had begged to live in the house. He said he’d sleep anywhere and do anything. So Papa pitched a tent for him, asked him to pay for utilities and house cleaning, and brought him into the Real Social Dynamics fold as an intern.
    For the first two weeks, all we did was marvel at the house. We’d done it; we had beaten the system. We had the most desirable location in West Hollywood. And we had lucked out with our roommates. Herbal had already scheduled a Pickup Artist Summit—the first annual—to take place in our house in a month.
    At our initial house meeting, we established a structure for Project Hollywood, putting Papa in charge of social activities and Herbal in charge of finances. Then we laid down the rules: No unapproved houseguests for more than a month; anyone conducting a seminar in the living room has to give the house fund a ten percent kickback; and no sarging women another PUA has brought into the house. All these rules would soon be broken.
    I initially enjoyed living with roommates, leaving my introverted writer’s world and being part of a whole that was greater than the sum of its parts. Every morning, I’d wake up and see Herbal and Mystery pitching quarters into an ice bucket in the middle of the living room or jumping off a stepladder into a pile of pillows. They were like two kids in search of a playground.
    “I have a feeling that you and I are going to become great friends,” Mystery told Herbal one morning.
    When Playboy threw our first house party, five hundred people showed up. We were setting a great example—maybe not to the neighbors, but at least to the community. Within a month, we had franchised.
    A group of PUAs moved into Herbal’s old house and christened it Project Austin.
    Some of our former students in San Francisco rented a