The Game

cliché even for me.
    Tammy took her pants off, and I reached into my jeans pocket and put a condom on. But after having sex with her for a minute, I stopped. The boys were there. They were watching, or maybe they were trying not to watch. I had no idea; I was too scared to look at them. I’ve never had sex with other guys in the room, let alone PUAs.
    Tammy didn’t seem to have any qualms about it. I admired her for that. Nonetheless, I picked her up, brought her into the shower, and turned on the water. I pressed her against the shower door, smashing her breasts against the glass, and took her from behind. After five minutes of thrusting, the bathroom door burst open and a flash went off. Mystery, Tyler Durden, and Stacy were standing there, taking photos.
    All I could think was, “They have dirt on me now.” I didn’t realize until later that to them it was just a souvenir of good times in Las Vegas. Just as with the New York Times article, I was the only one worried about being exposed. Everyone else was simply having fun at a friend’s expense. I had to get it through my head that these guys didn’t care about the writer Neil Strauss. They were so entrenched in the community that nothing outside of it mattered or seemed real. Newspapers only came across their radar if they happened to run a science article about animal mating habits. If a disaster struck somewhere in the world, it was just material for a pattern about taking advantage of the moment because you never know what will happen tomorrow.
    Afterward, the girls invited us to their place for breakfast. We packed our bags, drove to their apartment, and ate the best bacon and eggs of our lives. Tyler Durden and Mystery sat on the couch and talked openly about their pickup business: I could see they were squaring off. Mystery kept calling him a former student; Tyler Durden felt like he had surpassed his master and was offering an entirely new and original method of seduction.
    The sun was up, and I didn’t feel like talking about pickup when I had a real live girl I could be sleeping with. So Tammy took me to her room and gave me a blow job, and then I slept for two hours before my flight home.
    There was something about her bed—the way it filled the room, the immaculate whiteness, the softness of the sheets, the thickness of the comforter, the tightness of the tucked-in bedding—that was intoxicating. I’ve always loved women’s bedrooms: They’re soft and sweet-smelling, like heaven must be.

Mystery and Tyler Durden weren’t leaving Vegas until the evening, so they stayed with the girls and I took a cab to the airport alone. On the flight home, I had a dream:
    I pick up a woman and go back to her house. She takes me to her room, and I struggle with last minute resistance for hours. All night long, it’s pushpull, submit-resist. Finally, I give up and go to sleep.
    In the morning, I’m sitting on a couch in her living room. Her roommate, a Latin woman with bright red lipstick, saunters up to me and says, “I’m sorry my roommate isn’t putting out, but you can be with me instead if you want.”
    She sits on the couch and spreads her legs in the air. She isn’t wearing anything below the waist. She repeats her offer. I accept.
    Her lipstick smears across my face as we make out. But when it comes time to have sex, though my dick looks hard, it isn’t rigid. I feel like I’m trying to stuff a Twinkie inside her.
    Afterward, my original target walks in. That’s what I call her in my dream: my target. I try to hide my lipstick-stained mouth as we talk. I can hear her roommate laughing from somewhere behind me. And I know I’ve just failed a planned test by cheating on the girl who brought me home. Now she’ll never like me, because she knows what I’m really like.
    That night, the girls have a party. Mystery is hitting on my target. He gives her a garage-door opener as a gift. When no one is looking, I grab it and walk outside. I keep pressing it, figuring that a door will open somewhere with a spectacular present for her.
    While I am investigating, Mystery comes outside, looking for the girl. It turns out that the gift was part of a routine—a way to get her outside in private. By pressing the button, I had paged him. I run down the street at top speed, but within seconds Mystery catches up to me. His legs are so long it isn’t even a challenge for him.
    “I’m pissed at you for hitting on my target,” I say.
    “You had your