The Game

disappears to some extent.
And what about those people who don’t get rid of their sense of inadequacy?
    They become obsessed with sleeping with more and more women. And that’s a problem.
    Then there are the kinds of guys who need to be in therapy sessions. I can’t tell you how many people I’ve seen in bad clothes say, in a nasal voice, “Eric, I can’t seem to pick up girls.” I tell them, “You need new clothes, better posture, and a speech therapist.” All these things are evidence of deep inner psychological wounds.
The phone rings. He answers it, speaks for a few minutes, then hangs up.
    That was a girl I picked up thirty-eight and a half years ago—my wife. I was actually researching the book right around the time I met her and used a line on her. She walked past me in a bar and I said, “You’re much too pretty to let get away.” I thought this tough New York chick would be mad. But she said, “You think so.” I couldn’t get rid of her after that.
So how did you actually conceive of the book?
    I had a friend who was a copy trainee with me at Benton and Bowles. One day we both looked through the window of the El Al office next door and noticed a girl working there. She was Mediterranean and gorgeous, like a Botticelli. The next day, he saw me and said that during his lunch break he’d followed her to a deli, where she got a sandwich, and then sat down in the park, talked with her, and made a date to have dinner that Friday.
    The next week, he came in and said that she was a virgin. He had to run out and find a tin of Vaseline because she was so tight. That’s what gave me the idea of doing a book on picking up girls. I got interested in his brazenness and his ability to turn talking to strangers into a comfortable, everyday thing. I was very shy and unconfident growing up. I wrote about pickup because I couldn’t do it, and I really, really wanted to be good at it.
Was there any precedent for it at the time?
    In the mid-sixties, life was changing radically in America. Women had just started taking the pill; the Stones and the Beatles had hit; Bob Dylan wasbecoming popular. A whole counterculture was taking shape. Life was very suddenly wildly erotic.
    In the forties and fifties, if you grew up in your hometown, you met people at church socials or were introduced by an aunt. But in the sixties, all these people were moving out of their parents’ homes into their own apartments in the city. They lived alone without the conventional means of meeting. So singles bars became popular. And people needed new tools to meet strangers.
What do you think is the difference between naturals and guys like us who need to learn analytically?
    I think that naturals have the psychological power to do it. Toward the end of my singlehood, I found a boldness that was shocking. I developed the courage to tell a woman after a glass of wine, “I’d like to fuck you.” There are some women looking for you to be bold and a leader. It took me a long time to learn that.

    Something strange happened to Eric Weber when the conversation veered toward naturals and tales from the field. He came to life. The spark in his eyes brightened. For a half hour, we swapped stories and theories about the game. For all his talk of marriage and happily ever after, beneath the surface still seethed that awkward guy who was envious of his friends’ success with women.
    After we talked, he showed me a scene from the movie he was editing. It was about a pale, bald, unemployed middle-aged man shopping a terrible screenplay and sponging off his ex-wife, who was now married to a handsome, successful man.
    “Is that screenwriter in the movie the way you really see yourself?” I asked as we walked out of the building together.
    “That’s the inner me,” he admitted. “Inside I sometimes feel pathetic, awkward, and unloved.”
    “Even after all the confidence you acquired as a pickup artist, a husband, and a father?”
    “Well,” he said, opening the door to his car, “all you can do is put on an appearance of confidence sometimes. And after a while, others will start to believe it.” He grabbed the door handle to pull it closed. “And then you die.”
    Slam.

At 2:00 A.M ., Lisa burst into the house, making her nightly drunken entrance. She stomped up my stairs, shedding her purse and clothing on the way, and leaped onto my bed wearing nothing but a beer bottle.
    “I’m attracted to you in every way,” she