The Game

off; it was about being accepted.
    Mystery, in the meantime, had gone through his own metamorphosis during our travels. He had developed a radical new form of peacocking. It was no longer enough to wear just one item to catch the attention of the opposite sex. Now, all his items were larger-than-life, turning Mystery into a mobile sideshow. He wore six-inch platform boots and a bright red tigerstriped cowboy hat, which combined to make him seven feet tall. He added skintight black PVC pants, futuristic goggles, a plastic-spiked backpack, a mesh see-through shirt, black eyeliner, white eye shadow, and as many as seven watches on his wrists. Every head turned as he walked down the street.
    He didn’t need openers. The women opened him. Girls followed him for blocks. Some grabbed his ass; one older woman even bit his crotch. And all he had to do if he was interested was perform a few magic tricks, which seemed to justify his outlandishness.
    His new look also served as a great litmus test for women. It repelled the type of girl he wasn’t interested in and attracted the type he was. “I’m dressing for the outrageous club girls, the hot slutty girls, the ones I could never get,” he explained one night when I accused him of looking like a clown. “They’re playing groupie, so I gotta play rock star.”
    Mystery constantly encouraged me to dress as outlandishly as he did. Though I buckled one afternoon and bought a purple fur vest in a Montreal lingerie shop, I didn’t get off on the constant gawking and attention. Besides, I was doing well enough without it.
    My reputation stemmed largely from the Miami workshop, where in a period of thirty minutes I put my previous six weeks of hypnosis, training, and guru-chasing into action. It was a night that would go down in the annals of community history. It was seduction not as wrestling but as ballet: a perfect example of form. It was the night of my official graduation from AFC to PUA.

It was the perfect sarge.
    When they walked into the VIP area of Miami’s Crobar, everyone noticed. They were both platinum blondes with well-tanned fake breasts and identical outfits—tight white tank tops and tight white pants. How could anyone not notice? They were what the PUAs would call perfect 10’s, and they were dressed to turn men into beasts. This was South Beach, where testosterone levels run high, and the pair had been whistled and hollered at all night. The girls seemed to enjoy the attention almost as much as they savored shooting down the men who gave it to them.
    I knew what to do—and that was to do what everyone else wasn’t doing. A pickup artist must be the exception to the rule. I had to suppress every evolutionary instinct inside me and pay them no attention whatsoever.
    With me were Mystery and two of our students, Outbreak and the Matador of Love. The rest of our pupils were sarging on the perimeter of the dancefloor downstairs.
    Outbreak went in first, complimenting the platinum twins on their outfits. They brushed him off like a gnat. Next, the Matador of Love moved in with the Maury Povich opener. He too crashed and burned.
    Now it was my turn. This was going to take every bit of confidence and self-esteem that Steve P. and Rasputin had hypnotized into me. If I showed even a flicker of weakness or doubt, they’d eat me alive.
    “That tall one isn’t a 10,” Mystery leaned in and whispered to me. “She’s an 11. This is going to take some hardcore negging.”
    The girls strolled to the bar, where they began talking to a transvestite in a black tutu. I moved in, not even glancing at them, and greeted the transvestite as if I knew him. I asked if he worked at the club, and he said no. It didn’t really matter what I said to him: I was just maneuvering into position, pawning him for the two-set.
    Now that I was in range, it was time to neg. “That girl over there is biting your style,” I said to the 10, the shorter of the two. “Look at her.” I pointed to another platinum blonde in a white outfit.
    “She’s just got the same hair,” the 10 replied, dismissively.
    “No, look at her outfit,” I persisted. “It’s almost the exact same.”
    They looked over, and here was the make-or-break moment. If I didn’t come up with something good to follow, I’d lose their interest and be branded just another weirdo. So I continued with the negging. “You know what?” I told them. “You both look like strange little snowflakes.”
    It was a