The Game

He talked about getting a bed like a throne, a high-end home entertainment center, a bar next to the fireplace, and drapery hanging from the ceiling.
    But that’s not what his room became. When I returned from Mel’s with Tyler, Mystery was in Papa’s room, arguing.
    “You’re giving Tyler Durden more students than you’re giving me,” Mystery was saying.
    “I’m trying to make this win-win for everyone,” Papa protested. The expression seemed hollower every time he used it.
    As I looked around his room, I was appalled. There was hardly any furniture, just sleeping bags and pillows strewn across the floor. Women have one word for bedrooms like this: dealbreaker.
    “Who’s living here?” I asked.
    “Some of the RSD 11 guys.”
    “How many people?”
    “Well, right now, Tyler Durden and Sickboy are in the closets in my bathroom. And I have three boot camp students sleeping in the room.”
    “If anyone’s staying more than a month, they need to be approved, like we agreed at the house meeting. There are enough guys in the house as it is.”
    “Outstanding,” Papa said.
    “If they’re using the resources of the house, they should be paying,” Mystery said.
    Papa looked at him blankly.
    “I can’t talk to that guy,” Mystery complained to me. “He just sits there and stares at you and says, ‘Outstanding.’ He’s so fucking passive.”
    “That’s not true,” Papa said. “You think you can push me around because I was a former student.” I’d never seen Papa upset before. He didn’t get loud, like most people; instead, his voice became very stuffy. Somewhere inside, there was a living, breathing, emotional person waiting to be set free.
    After that day, Papa stopped entering the house through the front door. Instead, in order to avoid Mystery, he walked all the way around the back to the patio and climbed a staircase that led to a door in his bathroom. All his guests did the same.
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    11 An acronym for Real Social Dynamics. See glossary.

My father died when I was forty
And I couldn’t find a way to cry
Not because I didn’t love him
Not because he didn’t try
I’d cried for every lesser thing
Whiskey, pain, and beauty
But he deserved a better tear
And I was not quite ready
    The lyrics boomed through the living room. Mystery was lying in the pillow pit with his computer on his chest. He was playing the song “The Randall Knife” by Guy Clark over and over.
    He seemed to be in need of attention. So I walked over and gave him some.
    “My dad died,” he said. His voice was flat and even. It was hard to tell if he was sad or not. “It’s about time. It happened very quickly. He had another stroke, and then he died at 10:00 A.M. today.”
    I sat down next to him and listened to him talk. He was a passive observer of himself, analytically deconstructing his emotions as he felt them.
    “Even though I was ready for it, it’s strange. It’s like when Johnny Cash died. You knew it was going to happen, but it was still a shock.”
    Mystery had hated his dad his whole life and wished death on him countless times. But now that it had happened, he didn’t know how to feel. He seemed confused that he felt a little sad, despite himself.
    “The only times we ever bonded were when a hot woman came on TV,” he said. “Then he’d look at me and I’d look at him, and we’d quietly appreciate it together.”
    A few days later, we hosted the first annual Pickup Artist Summit at our house. PUAs from around the world flew in to speak, and several hundred rAFCs (recovering average frustrated chumps) gathered in our living room to hear them. Our housemates Playboy and Xaneus, who Papa andTyler Durden had been training to become instructors, opened the proceedings.
    As Playboy discussed body language, I thought back to Belgrade and the first workshop I’d taught with Mystery. I remembered too-cool Exoticoption, Sasha skipping down the street with his first e-mail-close, and Jerry’s sense of humor. I loved those guys. I cared about them. I wanted them to get laid. I e-mailed them for months afterward, checking on their progress.
    Now I looked around the living room and saw neediness and hunger and desperation. Bald guys with goatees—miniature and super-sized versions of myself—asked me to pose for photos with them. Good-looking guys who could have been models clamored for advice on hairstyles and clothes to buy, and then asked me to pose for photos with them.
    Two gangly brothers at the