The Game

average male down in front of anything halfway intriguing and explain to him that it has a system of rankings that he can get better at over time, he’ll become obsessed. Hence the popularity of video games, martial arts, Dungeons and Dragons, and the seduction community.
    I asked the bull-wrangler to set the machine to eleven, gave him a fivedollar tip to make sure he went easy on me, then climbed through the gate and mounted the bull. I was wearing leather pants—not to peacock, but to help me stick to the sides of the machine. The first time I rode it, my thighs were black-and-blue the next day, and I could hardly walk. I understood then what a woman must feel like after sex with a three-hundred-pound guy.
    I pressed my crotch firmly against the front of the saddle, clamped mylegs against the flank of the bull, and raised my hand to signal I was ready. In an instant the machine shuddered to life, vibrating me so quickly that my eyes lost focus. I remember feeling my brain about to fall out of my skull, my hips rocking faster than they’d ever moved before, my legs losing their grip, and my crotch jackhammering into the saddle handle in time with the bull. But just as I was about to slide off the side, the bull stopped. I had lasted seven seconds.
    At first, I was elated. I felt like I had accomplished something—even though it was really nothing. It wouldn’t change my life, or the life of anyone around me in the least. I began to wonder why I had cared so much. Within minutes, I already had buyer’s remorse.
    Afterward, Min said she was tired and asked me to walk her back to Project Hollywood.
    I understood the subtext.
    As we ambled back to the mansion arm-in-arm, she talked about her older brothers and their difficulty learning the game. “They’re real protective and get mad when I go on dates,” she said. “But I think they’re jealous because they’re not going on dates themselves.”
    When we returned to Project Hollywood, I brought her to the Jacuzzi.
    “My last boyfriend was the sweetest guy, and he did everything for me,” she went on. “But I didn’t like him. He got on my nerves. After I started reading my brothers’ pickup stuff, I understood why I wasn’t attracted to him or any of the other guys at school. They’re all so boring. They don’t understand cocky funny.”
    I stripped down to my boxers and jumped in the water, soothing my bull-bucked wounds. She joined me in her bra and panties. She was thin and delicate, like a marionette. I took her hands and pulled her toward me. She straddled my legs, and we began making out. I took her bra off and put her gumdrops in my mouth. Then I carried her naked and dripping to my bedroom, put on a condom, and slowly entered her. There was no LMR. By looking up to me so much, her brothers had driven her into my arms.
    She was my first groupie. And she would not be my last. This whole PUA thing was getting too big. With so many new competing seduction businesses aggressively marketing their services online, the community was growing exponentially, especially in Southern California, where the Sunset Strip was transforming before our eyes.
    No woman was safe. Workshops of fifteen people wandered the streetlike gangs. Bands of former students patrolled every club—the Standard, Dublin’s, the Saddle Ranch, Miyagi’s. When the bars closed at 2:00 A.M ., they’d invade Mel’s, walking up and down the aisles, seating themselves at any table with a female. They carted women into the house by the truckload.
    And they were all using my material. They were running around Stylemogging and delivering the best-friends test like they were Spanish flys. In every club, I saw their shaven heads, their diabolical goatees, their shoes that looked like the pair I’d bought in the Beverly Center a week before. Mini-mes were everywhere. And there was nothing I could do about it.

MSN GROUP: Mystery’s Lounge
    SUBJECT: My Approach Schedule
    AUTHOR: Adonis

    After getting fired from my job (too much time in the lounge, lol), I moved to L.A. last week to devote myself full-time to getting this game handled. I’ve always felt like the odd guy out here because I’m still a virgin and kind of a keyboard jockey, so I have locked off Saturday and decided to do a hundred approaches in a single day. I am going to start out on Melrose between La Brea and Fairfax in the afternoon. I figure I can do ten approaches per hour for five hours, yielding fifty approaches.