The Game

long. If you have any theories, please send them to: [email protected] .
    After watching Marko sit uselessly next to Goca for an hour, I cracked. I grabbed my camera and ran Mystery’s digital photo routine on the pair. I asked them to take a picture smiling, then one looking serious, and finally a passionate picture—kissing, for example. Marko stuck his neck out toward her, chicken-like, and pecked.
    “No, a real kiss,” I insisted, concluding the routine as the two wouldbe betrothed’s lips bumped in what was the clumsiest first kiss I had ever witnessed.
    After dinner, Mystery and I terrorized the two-room restaurant, dancing with the old men, performing magic tricks for the waiters, and flirting indiscriminately with the married women. When we returned to the table glowing, Goca’s eyes met mine; for a moment they seemed to sparkle, as if searching for something in my gaze. I could swear it was an IOI.
    That night, I was awoken by a warm body climbing under the covers. It was my turn to share the bed with Marko, but this wasn’t Marko. It was a woman’s body. I felt a pair of warm hands caress my newly shaven skull.
    “Goca?!”
    “Shh,” she said, and sucked my upper lip into her mouth.
    I pulled loose. “But what about Marko?”
    “He’s in the shower,” she said.
    “Did you and he…?”
    “No,” she said with a contempt that surprised me.
    Goca and I had hit it off that night; so had Goca and Mystery. She hadmade a pass at Mystery earlier, and he’d pretended not to notice. But it was harder not to notice her when she was in my bed, in my nostrils, in my mouth. Sure, she’d had a few drinks, but alcohol has never caused anyone to do something they didn’t want to. It only enables them to do what they’ve always wanted but repressed. And right now it looked like Goca wanted to be with a man who possessed all six of the five characteristics of an alpha male.
    Logically, it’s easy to say that it’s wrong to sleep with a girl your friend is pursuing. But when her body is pressed against yours so submissively, and you can smell the conditioner in her hair (strawberry), and that storm cloud of passion created by her desire has begun gathering around the two of you, try saying no. It’s just too…right there.
    I ran my hands beneath her hair and slowly dragged my fingernails upward along her scalp. A shiver of pleasure ran through her body. Our lips met, our tongues met, our chests met.
    I couldn’t do this. “I can’t do this.”
    “Why?”
    “Because of Marko.”
    “Marko?” she asked, as if she’d never heard the name before. “He’s sweet, but he’s just a friend.”
    “Listen,” I said. “You should go. Marko will probably be out of the shower soon.”
    Fifty minutes later, Marko was out of the shower. I heard him and Goca arguing in Serbian in the hallway. A door slammed.
    Marko walked wearily into the room and collapsed onto his half of the bed.
    “Well?” I asked. He was never one to show much emotion.
    “Well, I want to take Mystery’s next workshop.”

I couldn’t bridge the fucking gap. There she was, my Bo Derek blonde with an MBA, sitting next to me on a couch at a café. Her thigh was grazing mine. She was playing with her hair. And I was wussing out.
    The great Style, the apprentice PUA whose magnetism was so strong that it made Marko look like an AFC to his own true love, was still too scared to kiss a girl.
    I had great opening game, but no follow through. I should have taken care of the problem before Belgrade. But it was too late. I was blowing it. I was scared of rejection, and of feeling uncomfortable afterward.
    Mystery, in the meantime, was getting along just fine with Natalija, who was thirteen years his junior. They had nothing in common, not even a language. But there they were, sitting together. His legs were crossed and he was leaning back, letting her work to get his attention. She was leaning into him, with her hand on his knee.
    I walked my date back to her house after coffee. Her parents weren’t even home. All I had to say was, “Can I use the bathroom?,” and I could have been upstairs. But my mouth wouldn’t speak the words. Countless successful approaches had helped reduce my fear of social rejection and made me seem like a promising pickup artist to others, but inside I knew I was just an approach artist. To become a PUA, there was a far-more-devastating mental obstacle I still needed to overcome: my fear of sexual