The Game

through. “How good of a kisser are you, on a scale of one to ten?”
    “I’m a ten,” she said. “I like soft, slow, teasing kisses. I hate it when someone rams their tongue down my throat.”
    “Yeah, I had a girlfriend who did that. It was like making out with a cow.”
    “I give amazing blow jobs,” she said.
    “Respect.”
    That one-word answer had taken me months to figure out. Some women like to make extremely sexual comments after meeting a man. It is a shit test. If the guy becomes uncomfortable, he fails; however, if he takes the bait and gets excited or says something sexual in response, he also fails. After watching the British television character Ali G, I discovered the solution: Just look her in the eye, nod approvingly, and, with a slight smile creeping across your face, say, “Respect,” in a smart-ass tone. I had responses now for nearly every challenge a woman could throw my way. But this was hardly a challenge—it was fool’s mate. My job was simply to not do anything wrong.
    I fell silent and did what the PUAs call triangular gazing, looking slowly from her left eye to her right eye and then to her lips to create suggestive sexual tension.
    She threw herself against me. The next thing she did was ram her tongue down my throat, like a cow. Then she pulled away. “Talking about kissing got me excited,” she said.
    “Let’s get out of here,” I replied, peeling myself off the wall.
    We took the elevator downstairs and hailed a cab. She gave the driver an address in the East Village. I guess we were going to her place.
    She straddled me in the back seat and pulled a heavy breast out of her tank top. I guess I was supposed to suck it.
    We arrived at her house and climbed the stairs to her apartment. She turned on a lamp, which cast a dull brown glow over the room, and slipped the Rolling Stones’ Goats Head Soup into her stereo.
    “I’m just going to put my pearl on,” she told me.
    “I can’t wait,” I said. And I couldn’t.
    As I lay there, I realized I’d forgotten to say good-bye to my friends. In fact, I’d ignored them all night. Sarging had dropped a polyester curtain between me and my past. But when my new friend emerged in her pearl, I decided, in the heat of the moment, that it was worth it. The pearl wasn’t anal beads at all. It was a pair of panties with an exposed crotch and a chain of small metal balls connecting the front side to the back, running over her pussy.
    She’d probably left the house that night hoping to find someone to take home to show it off to. Obliging, I rubbed the balls gently against her labia and her clit. I figured that was what it was for, though I wasn’t really sure because, a minute later, the chain of balls snapped off the underwear. It dangled between her legs like a tampon string.
    So much for her new pearl.
    “I’m going to change,” she said. She didn’t seem upset. Inhaling an eight ball of cocaine will do that to someone.
    She re-emerged in knee-high black leather boots, lay down on the bed, and took another Dustbuster snort from a burgundy vial of coke. Then she lifted the vial over her chest and tapped a small pile of powder onto the crest of her left breast.
    I’m not a fan of drugs. Part of being a PUA is learning to control your own state, so you don’t need alcohol or drugs to have a good time. But if I were ever going to do cocaine, now would be the time.
    Every woman is different in bed. Each has her own tastes and quirks and fantasies. And someone’s surface appearance never accurately indicatesthe raging storm or dead calm that lies beneath. Reaching that moment of passionate truth—of surrender, honesty, revelation—was my favorite part of the game. I loved seeing what new person emerged in bed, and then talking with that new person after our mutual orgasms. I guess I just like people.
    I leaned over her breast and plugged my left nostril. I was really dreading this: I didn’t want to be up all night, and I had a feeling that coke wasn’t good for a gentleman’s staying power.
    Not that I was a gentleman.
    And then the phone rang. My phone.
    “I have to get this,” I told her. I jumped up, spilling fairy dust all over the sheets, and grabbed my cell phone. I had a feeling I knew who was calling.
    “Hey, can you come over?” It was Courtney Love. “See if you can get some acupuncture needles in Chinatown—the big ones that hurt the most. And get some alcohol and cotton swabs.”

“This one’s