The Game

and rid myself of the roundshouldered curse I’d inherited from my father’s side of the family. And because no one ever understands a word I say—my voice is too fast, quiet, and mumbly—I started taking weekly private lessons in speech and singing.
    I wore stylish jackets with bright shirts and accessorized as much as I could. I bought rings, a necklace, and fake piercings. I experimented with cowboy hats, feather boas, light-up necklaces, and even sunglasses at night to see which received the most attention from women. In my heart, I knew most of these gaudy accouterments were tacky, but Mystery’s peacock theory worked. When I wore at least one item that stood out, women who were interested in meeting me had an easy way to start a conversation.
    I went out with Grimble, Two timer, and Ross Jeffries nearly every night and, chunk by chunk, learned a new way to interact. Women are sick of generic guys asking the same generic questions: “So where are you from?…What do you do for work?” With our patterns, gimmicks, and routines, we were barroom heroes, saving the female of the species from certain ennui.
    Not all women appreciated our efforts, of course. Though I was never hit, yelled at, or doused with a drink, stories of spectacular failures circled constantly in the back of my mind. There was the story of Jonah, a twenty-three-year-old virgin in the seduction community who was hit in the back of the head—twice—by a drunk girl who took his negs the wrong way. And there was Little Big Dick, a sarger from Alaska, who was sitting at a tabletalking to a girl when her boyfriend came up from behind, yanked him out of his seat, threw him to the ground, and kicked him in the head for two minutes straight, fracturing his left eye socket and leaving boot marks on his face.
    But they were the exceptions, I hoped.
    These beat-downs were foremost in my mind as I drove my car to Westwood, home to UCLA, for my first attempt at sarging during the daytime. Despite the cheat sheet of my favorite openers and routines in the back pocket of my jeans, I was petrified as I roamed the streets, trying to select someone for my first approach.
    As I walked past an Office Depot, I saw a woman with brown glasses and short blonde hair that danced on her shoulders. She was thin, with smooth, gentle curves, jeans that were just tight enough, and a beautiful complexion, like burned butter. She looked like the undiscovered treasure of the campus.
    She walked into the store, and I decided to move on. But then I saw her again through the window. She looked like a cool intellectual whose inner bombshell hadn’t blossomed yet, someone I could talk with about Tarkovsky movies and then take to a monster truck rally. Maybe this would be my Caresse. I knew that if I didn’t approach her, I’d chastise myself afterward and feel like a failure. So I decided to attempt my first daytime pickup. Besides, I told myself, she probably wasn’t that good-looking up close anyway.
    I walked into the store and found her in an aisle looking at mailing envelopes.
    “Hey, maybe you can help me settle a debate I’m having,” I told her. As I recited the Maury Povich opener, I noticed that she was even more beautiful at close range. I had stumbled across a genuine 10. And I had to follow protocol and neg her.
    “I know this is wrong to say,” I blurted, “but I grew up on Bugs Bunny cartoons as a child, and you have the most adorable Bugs Bunny overbite.”
    I was worried I’d gone too far. I’d made the neg up on the spot and was probably about to get slapped. But she actually grinned. “After all those years of braces, my mom’s going to be mad,” she replied. She was flirting back with me.
    I performed the ESP routine, and fortunately she picked seven. She was amazed. I asked her what she did for work, and she said she was a modeland hosted a show on TNN. The longer we talked, the more she seemed to enjoy the conversation. But as I noticed the material working, I became nervous. I couldn’t believe that a woman who looked like this was into me. Everyone in Office Depot was staring at us. I couldn’t go on.
    “I’m late for an appointment,” I told her. My hands were shaking from nerves. “But what steps can we take to continue this conversation?”
    This was Mystery’s number-close routine. A pickup artist never gives a girl his phone number, because she might not call. A PUA must make a woman comfortable enough to give him her number.