The Game

“Sounds cool.”
    “Great. Meet me at the house at noon.” Connection over.
    When I returned home from the Whiskey Bar, Isabel was waiting for me. I was never going to get any sleep.
    “Didn’t I tell you to call first before dropping by?” I asked.
    “I left you a message.”
    There was nothing wrong with Isabel. Five years ago, I would have given up writing for a year just to sleep with a girl like that once. But she offered nothing. She was all holes: ears to listen to me, a mouth to talk at me, and a vagina to squeeze orgasms out of me. We weren’t a team; we were just a distraction for each other, a way to feel less lonely for a few hours in a big, uncaring world. We never had conversations; we had nonversations, where we just filled empty space with words. At least, that’s what I thought. But sometimes, simply through the act of having sex with a man, especially if that man is a little more emotionally distant than she’d like him to be, a woman can develop feelings. She can start wanting more.
    “Are you still seeing other girls?” Isabel asked in the morning, rolling on top of me and looking aggressively into my eyes.
    It was a loaded question with only one right answer. I gave her the wrong one—the honest one. “Well, I met a girl named Lisa, who I’m developing feelings for.”
    “Well, you’re going to have to choose between her and me.”
    In the past, I used to fall for ultimatums. But I’d since learned that ultimatums are expressions of powerlessness, empty threats designed to try to influence a situation someone has no control over.
    “Just by asking me to make that choice,” I said, “you’re setting yourself up to be the loser.”
    She dropped her head onto my shoulder and cried. I felt bad for her. But that’s all I felt.
    An hour after she left, Sam and Lisa arrived. Mystery sat at the computer, typing furiously. He looked up at Lisa, who was wearing a Juicy Couture linen pullover with the hood over her head, and tried to neg her. “What kind of get-up is that?” he asked. It was the only way he knew how to relate to a beautiful woman.
    Lisa slowly scanned Mystery’s get-up. He was wearing a robe, boxer shorts, black toenail polish, and slippers. She gave him a withering look and sneered, deadpan, “Right back at ya, babe.”
    Lisa was neg-proof. Next to her, other girls seemed like incomplete human beings. For most of their childhood, females are conditioned to actsubservient to male authority figures. Once they grow up, a certain subset of them—many of whom end up in Los Angeles—move through the world psychologically stunted, constantly dumbing themselves down in the presence of the opposite sex. They believe that the techniques they used to manipulate their fathers will work just as well on the rest of the world, and often they’re right. But Lisa wasn’t a doormat designed by the expectations and desires of the men in her life. She lived the advice that most women hypocritically give to men: She wasn’t afraid to be herself.
    Mystery was silent for once. He cleared his throat; announced, a little too loudly, “I’m busy”; then turned away to continue typing. I was sure he was posting in Mystery’s Lounge, letting off steam after the previous day’s house meeting.
    Before we left for the beach, I showed Sam and Lisa the photos I had taken the first night Lisa slept over, when we had played dress-up with the wigs.
    “Look at that,” Sam said when she saw the photo of Lisa and me staring into each other’s eyes, just before we didn’t kiss. “I’ve never seen Lisa look so happy.”
    “Yeah,” Lisa said, her lips spreading into a toothy smile. “I guess you’re right.”
    Sam ran upstairs to use my bathroom while Lisa and I loaded the surfboards into the back of the limousine, which doubled as my surf car. As we drove to Malibu, I noticed Sam leaning over the seat divider to whisper something to Lisa, which wiped the smile off her face in an instant.
    “What is it?” I asked.
    They looked at each other hesitantly.
    “What?” I persisted. I really wanted to know. I was sure it was about me, and I was sure it wasn’t positive.
    “It’s not important,” Sam said. “Just girl talk.”
    “Um, okay.”
    When I surfed in the past, I usually hung out close to the shore, riding the smaller waves while the more experienced surfers paddled further out for the big ones. I thought I was better than them because I got more waves. But after helping