The Game

mist of my eyes. I felt like I was losing a piece of myself. For a moment, I couldn’t figure out which of us was the bigger fool.
    Within a week, Katya had moved into Herbal’s room and Papa had moved two PUAs into Mystery’s old room. One of them was Dreamweaver, a former student of mine; the other one I’d never met before. Papa planned to move a third PUA into Mystery’s closet. With the influx of new, younger residents, Project Hollywood looked more like a frat house every day, though most frat houses were cleaner.
    Without Mystery sitting in the living room, ready and willing to share the details of his latest drama with whoever passed by, the lack of communication in the house became even more uncomfortable. Whenever I walked through the living room, I’d find new roommates lying on their bellies on the carpet, playing video games. They never looked up or said a word, even when I greeted them. They weren’t PUAs; they were vegetables. If someone had told me two years ago that this was the lifestyle I had to look forward to, I would never have joined the community. I would have realized that those who live by the joystick are doomed to die by the joystick.
    At Papa’s twenty-fourth birthday party, not a single woman showed up—let alone Paris Hilton, who, needless to say, had never come to party at Project Hollywood as Papa had hoped. His only friends were PUAs. And, for some reason, they all ignored me. I couldn’t understand it.
    In the week that followed, Tyler Durden, who’d never been directly hostile to me, started writing posts attacking me online. I decided it was time to have a talk with him about everyone’s strange behavior in the house. I navigated through the overflowing trash bags in the kitchen; walked through the backyard, where just a small puddle of sludge lay at the bottom of the hot tub; and knocked on Papa’s back door.
    I found Tyler Durden sitting at a computer, posting on the seduction boards.
    “I want to talk to you about what’s been going on lately,” I said. “Everyone in the house is acting weird—even weirder than usual. And you seem to have a chip on your shoulder. Are people pissed because I’ve been hanging out with Lisa too much and not going out sarging?”
    “That’s part of it,” he said. “But a bigger part of it is that no one in this house likes you. Everybody thinks that you’re a snob and that you’re responsible for a lot of trouble in this house, because you talk about people behind their backs.” Though these were strong words coming from Tyler Durden, who had never said a cross word to my face before, his voice wasn’t venomous. He spoke almost obsequiously, as if he were trying to give me constructive advice from one PUA to another. “I’m just saying this because I’m your friend, and I don’t want to see what happened to Mystery happen to you.”
    I didn’t know how to respond because I was so taken aback. I had no idea the other guys in the house felt that way.
    “Yeah,” he went on. “Did you notice how Extramask used to be your friend, but then he started avoiding you? Well, that’s because he didn’t trust you. Dreamweaver told me he hates your guts. Maverick hates you too.”
    I thought about what he was saying. Maybe he was right. The enthusiasm I had brought to my first encounters with fellow sargers had dissipated as I saw routines sold instead of shared and perfectly normal men turn into creepy social parasites. So, though I was always friendly to everyone, maybe they were picking up on the fact that I was growing disillusioned with the community.
    On the other hand, as Juggler had always pointed out, people tended to feel comfortable around me. I’d always been friendly and easy to get along with, even before I’d joined the community. I had no enemies, or so I thought.
    When I left the room after another hour of talk, my head was spinning. I couldn’t understand why these guys, who I’d spent the better part of two years getting to know, hated my guts. What had I done?
    The answer, I soon found out, was nothing.

When I saw Playboy in the living room packing his books into boxes, I asked the usual: “What’s going on?”
    “I’m moving out.”
    First Extramask, then Mystery, then Sickboy, and now Playboy. I was on a sinking ship.
    “Do you have a few minutes?” he asked. “I want to get something off my chest before I leave.”
    Playboy brought me into his room and shut the door.
    “They’re trying to