The Game

myself.
    “What should I do?” I asked Mystery.
    “Invite yourself over. Just say, ‘I’m coming over.’ Don’t give them any option.”
    “Then what happens when I’m in this weird hotel room with them? How do I get things started?”
    “Do what I always do. As soon as you walk in, run yourself a bath. Thentake off your clothes, get in, call the girls in to scrub your back, and take it from there.”
    “Wow. That’s pretty ballsy.”
    “Trust me,” he said.
    So I called the twins back that evening and told them I was coming over.
    “We’re just lying around in our sweats watching TV,” they warned.
    “No problem. I haven’t showered or shaved in a month.”
    “Are you serious?”
    “No.”
    So far, everything was going according to plan.
    I drove to the hotel, rehearsing every move in my head. When I walked in the room, they were lying on adjacent twin beds watching The Simpsons.
    “I need to take a bath,” I told them. “My hot water at home isn’t working.”
    It’s not lying; it’s flirting.
    I made small talk while the water ran. Then I turned the corner into the bathroom, left the door open, removed my clothes, and sat in the tub.
    I didn’t want to use soap yet because it would make the water dirty. So I sat naked in the bathwater, trying to work up the courage to call the girls in. I felt so vulnerable sitting there pale, skinny, and naked. I needed to take Mystery’s advice and start working out.
    A minute passed. Five minutes. Ten minutes. I could still hear The Simpsons coming from the television set. The girls probably thought I’d drowned by now.
    I had to make my move. I’d hate myself if I didn’t. I sat there for five more minutes until I finally mustered the courage to stutter: “Hey, can you help me sort of wash my back?”
    One of the girls yelled something. There was silence, then whispering. I sat in the bathtub panicking, worried they wouldn’t even come in. What a dumb thing to say. The only thing more embarrassing would be if they actually came in, and saw me sitting here naked with my dick floating in the water like a lily pad. I thought of my favorite line from Ulysses, when sexually frustrated Leopold Bloom imagines his impotent manhood in the bathwater and calls it the limp father of thousands. And then I thought, if I was smart enough to quote James Joyce in the bathtub, why did I feel so stupid in front of these girls?
    Finally, one of the twins walked in. I’d been hoping for both, but beggars can’t be choosers. With my back to her, I reached over the side ofthe tub and handed her the soap. I was too embarrassed to look her in the eye.
    I straightened my spine so it didn’t look too much like the dinosaur scales of Mr. Burns. She rubbed the soap in circles on my back. It wasn’t erotic; it was workmanlike. I knew she wasn’t turned on, and I hoped she wasn’t grossed out. Then she wet the washcloth in the tub and wiped the soap off. My back was clean.
    Now what?
    I thought sex was supposed to automatically happen afterward. But she was just kneeling there, doing nothing. Mystery hadn’t told me what I was supposed to do after asking them to wash my back. He’d just said take it from there, so I assumed the whole sex thing would unfold organically. He hadn’t told me how to transition from a back scrub to a hand job. And I had no idea. The last woman to wash my back was my mother, and that was when I was small enough to fit in the sink.
    But now was the moment. Something had to be done.
    “Um, thanks,” I told her.
    She walked out of the bathroom.
    Fuck. I’d blown it.
    I finished washing myself, climbed out of the bath, toweled off, and put my dirty clothes back on. I sat on the edge of the bed of the girl who had washed me, and we talked. I decided to try to adapt the evolution phase-shift pattern to a party of two. I told the other sister to sit on the bed with us.
    “Mmm, you both smell so good,” I began. Then I pulled their hair simultaneously and bit each of their necks. But it still didn’t get anything going. They were both so passive.
    I had them each massage one of my hands as we talked about their stage show. I wasn’t going to leave the room a failure.
    “You know what’s funny,” one of them said. “We get all our physicality out on stage. We never even touch or hug each other in real life. We’re probably more distant than most sisters.”
    I left their hotel room, a failure. On the way home, I stopped by