The Game

gleam of madness in Mystery’s eyes—and in a fight the insane generally have a competitive edge. “You don’t have to kick doors down and shit,” he said, backing off. “All I want is the dog, man. Katya sent me to get her dog.”
    The guy scooped Lily into his arms, and Mystery paused and looked at him. The threat was gone. The cortisol, the adrenaline, the testosterone—all those hormones that were rushing through his body—began to ebb. His brain returned to logical mode. “Why didn’t you say that in the first place instead of threatening me in my own home?”
    The guy stood next to the door, befuddled, with Lily cradled in his arms.
    “Do you need food for Lily?” Mystery asked.
    “Um, yes. I guess.”
    Mystery walked to the kitchen, grabbed Lily’s bag of dry food and several cans of wet food, and gave them to his would-be attacker.
    On the way out, the guy dropped some cans on the steps. Mystery bent down, picked them up, handed them to him, and then patted him on the back.
    “Respect,” he told Katya’s friend, using the line we’d appropriated from Ali G to use in the field.
    I walked upstairs, collapsed on my bed, and stared at the ceiling.
    Why was I here? It wasn’t just about my envy of Dustin anymore. Along the way, I had gotten caught up in the social network and bonding rituals of the community—in the idea that we were the supermen of the future, the smoothest who would inherit the earth from the strong, the sole owners of the skeleton key to the female mind. I had moved in with these guys because I thought we had all the answers. I imagined working together to bring all the other areas of our lives up to a newplateau, beyond just women. I hoped we would be greater than the sum of our parts.
    But rather than creating a mutual support system, we had created Lord of the Flies.
    Something had to be done to resolve this. My faith in these guys—and this community—was hanging by a thread.

NOT THAT IT WAS BEAUTIFUL ,
B UT THAT, IN THE END, THERE WAS
A CERTAIN SENSE OF ORDER THERE ;
S OMETHING WORTH LEARNING
I N THAT NARROW DIARY OF MY
MIND .

    —A NNE S EXTON ,
“For John, Who Begs Me Not to Enquire Further”

Mystery and Herbal sat facing each other on opposite couches, their arms folded across their chests. It was not only a defensive position, but also a stubborn one. Between them stood Mystery’s Krav Maga instructor and Roadking, a PUA who worked as a bodyguard. Herbal had refused to set foot in the house without someone there to protect him from Mystery.
    The other permanent residents—Papa, Xaneus, Playboy, and me—sat on a third couch perpendicular to them. Tyler Durden didn’t attend because he claimed to be a guest, although he’d been living in Papa’s closet for months now.
    We had called a house meeting to resolve the dispute between Mystery and Herbal once and for all.
    We allowed each to present his side of the story without interruption. Mystery said he would not allow his ex-girlfriend to set foot in the house again. And Herbal said he would move out if his girlfriend couldn’t come over. It took each of them half an hour to convey these simple points.
    “Now, normally, I would just say that Herbal should move out if he wants to be with Mystery’s ex-girlfriend that badly,” I said, trying to play the role of peacemaker that had been foisted on me. “However, Mystery, you’ve damaged house property and threatened a tenant’s well-being. You have neither apologized for your actions nor repaired the damages.” Herbal’s door was still lying on the floor, the dents were still in his wall, and his room still looked like a tornado had hit it. “And it makes us very reluctant to reward bad behavior by letting you get your way.”
    “I purposely left Herbal’s room like that as a demonstration of what I will do if I see Katya in this house again,” Mystery said sullenly. “It was a perfectly acceptable means of showing that I was willing to enforce my rules.”
    One of the problems with the PUA community was that it presented inflexible standards of behavior that men were supposed to follow in order to win a woman. And chief among them was the idea of being an alpha male.The result was a bunch of men who’d been kicked around most of their lives trying to act like their former bullies, leading to immature behavior such as Mystery’s.
    “If I may say something?” Roadking interjected. “Herbal here broke an important rule.”
    “And what’s