The Game

thought you were spontaneous. I thought you did what you wanted.”
    He spread out in his chair like a melting shard of Swiss cheese and informed us: “The only lies I’ll ever tell are: ‘I won’t come in your mouth’ and ‘I’ll just rub it around your ass.’ “ It wasn’t a pretty visual.
    His philosophy was in direct contrast to what I had learned from Mystery, and he let me know it—all through dinner. He was evidence of Cliff’s big mouth theory, a natural alpha male.
    “The best thing is,” he boasted, “there are guys like me and guys like you and Mystery out there. While you’re still in the bar doing magic tricks, I’m coming back for seconds.”
    It was an interesting dinner, and I learned a lot of little pieces of game I would go on to use scores of times. But by the time brunch was over, I’d realized something: I didn’t need to meet any more gurus.
    I had every piece of information I needed to become the greatest pickup artist in the world.
    I had hundreds of openers, routines, cocky funny comments, ways to demonstrate value, and powerful sexual techniques. And I’d been hypnotized to Valhalla and back. It wasn’t necessary to learn anything else, unless it was for my own fun and interest. I just needed to be in the field constantly—approaching, calibrating, fine-tuning, and working through sticking points. I was ready for Miami, and all the workshops to follow.
    As Cliff drove me home, I made a promise to myself: If I ever met a guru again, it would be not as a student but as an equal.

IT IS UNFAIR TO TEAR SOMEBODY
APART WHEN HER HEALTH AND
EXUBERANCE THREATEN YOU.

    —J ENNY H OLZER ,
Benches

As Mystery and I traveled the world doing workshops, meeting all the players in the game, the seduction community became more than just a bunch of anonymous screen names. It became a flesh-and-blood family. Maddash was no longer seven letters of type but a funny, Jeremy Piven-like entrepreneur from Chicago; Stripped was an uptight book editor from Amsterdam with male-model looks; Nightlight9 was a lovable nerd who worked for Microsoft.
    Over time, the posers and keyboard jockeys were outed, and the superstars were given their due. And Mystery and I were the superstars because we delivered: Miami, Los Angeles, New York, Toronto, Montreal, San Francisco, and Chicago. Every workshop made us better, stronger, more driven. All the other gurus I had met clung to the safety of the seminar room. They had never been forced to prove their teachings in the field city after city, night after night, woman after woman.
    Every time we left a city, a lair sprung up if one didn’t exist already, bringing together students eager to practice their new skills. Through word of mouth, the lairs soon doubled, tripled, and quadrupled in size. And all these guys worshipped Mystery and Style: We were living the life they wanted, or so they thought.
    Each workshop generated more online reviews praising my newly acquired game. Each field report I posted triggered a flood of e-mails from students wanting to be my wing. The list of sargers in my phone book was actually starting to surpass the number of girls I’d met.
    Most of the time when my phone rang, it was a guy asking for Style. And, dispensing with introductions, he’d ask, “When you call a girl, should you block your number or not?” or “I was in a three-set, and the obstacle ended up liking me and giving me her phone number. Do I still have a chance with the target?”
    The game was consuming my old life. But it was worth it, because it was part of the process of becoming that guy in the club—the one I’d always envied, the one in the corner making out with a girl he’d just met. The Dustin.
    Before I discovered the community, the only time I’d ever made out with a girl I met in a club was when I first arrived in Los Angeles. But inthe middle of kissing, she pulled away and said, “Everyone must think you’re a producer or something.” The subtext was that she was otherwise too hot to be making out with a slob like me. It shattered me for months. I was too insecure to handle what was, in retrospect, her own form of neg.
    But now, when I walked into a club, I felt a rush of power, wondering which woman would have her tongue down my throat within a half hour. For all the self-improvement books I had read, I still wasn’t above shallow validation-seeking. None of us were. That’s why we were in the game. Sex wasn’t about getting our rocks