The Game

blurted.
    “Really?”
    “Do you know what all the ways are?”
    “Um, maybe.”
    “Do you want me to name them?”
    “Sure.”
    “Emotionally, physically, and mentally.”
    “That’s a lot of ways.”
    “I can elaborate.”
    “Okay. Let’s start with the physical.” That’s probably the area where I still needed the most reassurance.
    “I love your teeth, and your mouth especially.” I listened for hesitation or doubt. There was none. “I love how broad your shoulders are and how narrow your hips are. I love the hair placement on your body. I love the color of your eyes, because they’re the same as mine. I love the shape of your nose. I love the indents on the side of your head.”
    “Oh my God.” I flipped on top of her and grabbed her shoulders. “No one has ever complimented me on my head indentations before. I love them too.”
    I laughed, a little too loudly, at the ridiculousness of what I’d just said. And then I confessed everything to her. I told her about the last two years of meeting players and learning about the game. I told her about the AFCs and PUAs, the FBs and MLTRs, the IOIs and AMOGs.
    “I would love to have you dress super-hot one day,” I said, caught up in the excitement of the game I had helped invent, “and then go to a bar. And I’ll practice AMOGing all the guys who try to hit on you.”
    She rolled me off her, so that we were facing each other on our sides, our faces an inch apart. “You don’t need to take their advice,” she said, herbreath intoxicating and intoxicated. “Everything I like about you, and everything that makes me think you’re rad, is all the stuff you already had before you met those PUA guys. I don’t want you wearing dumbass jewelry and Pee-wee Herman shoes. I would have liked you before all that selfimprovement shit.”
    From outside, we heard the sounds of men climbing the hill, flush with the excitement of another night out almost getting laid. “All the things you learned from the PUAs almost made us not come together,” Lisa continued. “I want you to just be Neil: balding, nerdy, glasses, and all.”
    Maybe she was right. Perhaps she would have liked the real me. But she never would have had the opportunity to meet him if I hadn’t spent the last two years learning how to put my best foot forward. Without all that training, I never would have had the confidence to talk to and handle a girl like Lisa, who was a constant challenge.
    I needed Mystery, Ross Jeffries, David DeAngelo, David X, Juggler, Steve P., Rasputin, and all those other pseudonyms. I needed them to discover what was me to begin with. And now that I had found that person, brought him out of his shell, and learned to accept him, perhaps I had outgrown them.
    Lisa sat up and took a sip from the bottle of beer she had brought upstairs. “Everyone was hitting on me tonight,” she giggled. Modesty was never her strong suit. “I hope you realize that you are dating the most fabulous girl in L.A.”
    In response, I wordlessly pulled open my bottom dresser drawer, grabbed two large manila envelopes from inside, and brought them to the bed. I turned the first envelope upside down and dumped its contents onto the comforter. Hundreds of paper scraps, matchbooks, business cards, cocktail napkins, and torn receipts spilled out. Each one contained the handwriting of a different girl. Then I emptied the second envelope onto the bed—full of more of the same—until there was a small mountain of paper scraps. They were all phone numbers I’d collected since taking that first fateful workshop with Mystery.
    “I know you are,” I finally answered her. “I’ve spent two years meeting every girl in L.A. And out of them all, I chose you.”
    It was the most beautiful thing I’d said in a long time. And, after I spoke it, I realized it wasn’t entirely accurate. If there was anything I’d learned, it’s that the man never chooses the woman. All he can do is give her an opportunity to choose him.

Herbal was the next to go.
    I saw him from my bedroom window, stuffing his robot vacuum cleaner into a U-Haul van.
    “I’m going back to Austin,” he said with a wan smile when I ran out to talk to him.
    He was the last person I expected to abandon the house. “Why? After all you went through with Mystery, you’re going to leave?”
    “I just feel like the house has been a failure,” he said. “No one hangs out anymore. The RSD guys stopped talking to me when I started