The Game

right from under a celebrity’s nose has-been or not—was a feat even Dustin couldn’t have accomplished. Mystery was the real deal.
    As we took the limo to the Key Club, Mystery told us the first commandment of pickup: the three-second rule. A man has three seconds after spotting a woman to speak to her, he said. If he takes any longer, then not only is the girl likely to think he’s a creep who’s been staring at her for too long, but he will start overthinking the approach, get nervous, and probably blow it.
    The moment we walked into the Key Club, Mystery put the threesecond rule into action. Striding up to a group of women, he held out his hands and asked, “What’s your first impression of these? Not the big hands, the black nails.”
    As the girls gathered around him, Sin pulled me aside and suggested wandering the club and attempting my first approach. A group of women walked by and I tried to say something. But the word “hi” just barely squeaked out of my throat, not even loud enough for them to hear. As they continued past, I followed and grabbed one of the girls on the shoulder from behind. She turned around, startled, and gave me the withering what-a-creep look that was the whole reason I was too scared to talk to women in the first place.
    “Never,” Sin admonished me in his adenoidal voice, “approach a woman from behind. Always come in from the front, but at a slight angle so it’s not too direct and confrontational. You should speak to her over your shoulder, so it looks like you might walk away at any minute. Ever see Robert Redford in The Horse Whisperer? It’s kind of like that.”
    A few minutes later, I spotted a young, tipsy-looking woman with long, tangled blonde curls and a puffy pink vest standing alone. I decided that approaching her would be an easy way to redeem myself. I circled around until I was in the ten o’clock position in front of her and walked in, imagining myself approaching a horse I didn’t want to frighten.
    “Oh my God,” I said to her. “Did you see those two girls fighting outside?”
    “No,” she said. “What happened?”
    She was interested. She was talking to me. It was working.
    “Um, two girls were fighting over this little guy who was half their size. It was pretty brutal. He was just standing there laughing as the police came and arrested the girls.”
    She giggled. We started talking about the club and the band playing there. She was very friendly and actually seemed grateful for the conversation. I had no idea that approaching a woman could be this easy.
    Sin sidled up to me and whispered in my ear, “Go kino.”
    “What’s kino?” I asked.
    “Kino?” the girl replied.
    Sin reached behind me, picked up my arm, and placed it on her shoulder. “Kino is when you touch a girl,” he whispered. I felt the heat of her body and was reminded of how much I love human contact. Pets like to be petted. It isn’t sexual when a dog or a cat begs for physical affection. People are the same way: We need touch. But we’re so sexually screwed up and obsessed that we get nervous and uncomfortable whenever another person touches us. And, unfortunately, I am no exception. As I spoke to her, my hand felt wrong on her shoulder. It was just resting there like some disembodied limb, and I imagined her wondering what exactly it was doing there and how she could gracefully extricate herself from under it. So I did her the favor of removing it myself.
    “Isolate her,” Sin said.
    I suggested sitting down, and we walked to a bench. Sin followed and sat behind us. As I’d been taught, I asked her to tell me the qualities she finds attractive in guys. She said humor and ass.
    Fortunately, I have one of those qualities.
    Suddenly, I felt Sin’s breath on my ear. “Sniff her hair,” he was instructing.
    I smelled her hair, although I wasn’t exactly sure what the point was. I figured Sin wanted me to neg her. So I said, “It smells like smoke.”
    “Nooooo!” Sin hissed in my ear. I guess I wasn’t supposed to neg.
    She seemed offended. So, to recover, I took another whiff. “But underneath that, there’s a very intoxicating smell.”
    She cocked her head to one side, furrowed her brow ever so slightly, scanned me up and down, and said, “You’re weird.” I was blowing it.
    Fortunately, Mystery soon arrived.
    “This place is dead,” he said. “We’re going somewhere more target rich.” To Mystery and Sin, these clubs didn’t seem to be