The Game

way I rationalized it, I was continuing my learning and growing process. I’ve lived and worked alone most of my life. I’ve never had a strong social circle or a tight network of friends. I’ve never joined clubs, played team sports, or been part of any real group prior to the community. Project Hollywood was bringing me out of my solipsistic shell. It was giving me the resources I needed to be a leader; it was teaching me how to walk the tightrope of group dynamics; it was helping me learn to let go of petty things like personal property, solitude, cleanliness, sanity, and sleep. It was making me, for the first time in my life, a responsible adult.
    I had to be: I was surrounded by children. Every day, someone ran up to me with a new crisis to be managed:

    GABBY: Mystery’s being a dick. He says this isn’t my house, and I’m not wanted here.
    MYSTERY: Courtney took eight hundred dollars from my room. She made it up to me by paying my rent, but her check bounced.
    COURTNEY: That guy with his pants pulled up too high is bothering me. Can you tell him to leave me alone?
    PLAYBOY: Courtney has her urine in our refrigerator. And Twyla’s crying in my bathroom and won’t come out.
    TWYLA: Mystery’s trying to mack on some chick in his room, and he told me to fuck off. And Papa won’t let me sleep in his room.
    PAPA: Cliff from Montreal has been staying in my room, and Courtney came up and took four of his books and three pairs of his underwear.

    Every problem had a solution; every dispute had a compromise; every ego had a way to be stroked. I hardly had time to sarge anymore. The only new women I was meeting were the ones who came into the house. Keeping Project Hollywood from imploding was becoming a full-time job.

I left the house for an hour to get some groceries. Only an hour. And when I returned there was a red Porsche spewing smoke in the driveway, a thirteen-year-old girl in the living room, and two pissed-off bleached blondes smoking on the patio.
    “What the hell is going on?” I asked as I kicked the door shut behind me.
    “This is Mari,” Mystery said.
    “The cleaning lady’s daughter?” We were never able to hold onto a maid. The task of cleaning a week’s accumulation of dishes, overflowing trash cans, fast-food debris, spilt alcohol, and cigarette butts from a dozen guys and countless party girls was more than most could handle. Consequently, Project Hollywood tended to stew in its own filth for a month or more between maids. The latest had set a record: two consecutive weeks.
    “The cleaning lady left the house for supplies, so I’m watching her.” He took a few strides closer to me. “She reminds me of my nieces.”
    It was nice to see Mystery acting somewhat normal again. An adolescent in the house was a calming influence on him. As for the Porsche, Courtney had it brought to the house so that Mystery could drive her to rehearsal. But Mystery had taken the car for a test run and found out the hard way that he couldn’t rely on his magical intuition to teach him how to drive a stick shift.
    “And who are they?” I asked, pointing at the blondes.
    “They’re in Courtney’s band.”
    I went out to the patio and introduced myself.
    “I’m Sam,” said a slightly tomboyish girl with a Queens accent. “I play drums with Courtney.”
    “We’ve met before,” I told her.
    “We’ve met before too,” sneered the other girl. Her Long Island accent was so sharp that it startled me. She was two inches taller than me, her hair was pushed straight back over her head like a horse’s mane, and her large brown eyes were framed with thick black mascara that reminded me of masturbating as a teenager to Susanna Hoffs in the Bangles video for “Walk Like an Egyptian.” This girl was the epitome of rock and roll.
    “Yeah,” I stammered. “I saw you briefly at The Tonight Show?”
    “Before that. At that party at the Argyle Hotel where you were talking to those twins the whole night.”
    “Oh, the Porcelain TwinZ.” I couldn’t imagine having forgotten her. She was so charismatic. Good posture is one of the things I find most attractive about a woman, and this girl’s posture screamed confidence. It also screamed, “Don’t fuck with me.”
    I went back inside and asked Mystery about her. “That’s Lisa, Courtney’s guitarist,” he said. “She’s a total bitch.”
    The girls were visiting because Courtney had planned to tape an acoustic performance at our house for a