The Game

degraded, and exploited women. I thought only about my pleasure. I despised the good instincts within me and within others, and attempted to corrupt anyone I met.”
    As he spoke, I couldn’t help thinking that all these things he was apologizing for were the very reasons I had befriended him in the first place.
    “I promoted and dragged you into this whole pickup thing, as if what I was doing were the highest ideal a person could live for,” he went on. “So, to whatever extent I am guilty of affecting the natural goodness of your soul, I am deeply sorry.”
    It all made sense intellectually. But I’ve never trusted extremes, whether it be drug addiction, religious fanaticism, or zero-carb diets. There was something odd about Dustin, or Avisha. He had a hole he was trying to fill—first with women, now with religion. I listened to him, but I had a different opinion.
    “I accept your apology,” I told him, “but with the caveat that you have nothing to apologize for.”
    He looked at me softly but didn’t say anything. I could see why he was so seductive: It was those eyes that glistened like the surface of a mountain lake, that intense power of focus, that way of making you believe that nothing else existed for him except what you were saying at that very moment.
    “Think about it,” I continued. “If a guy wants to improve his odds of meeting women, he’s going to have to make some changes to himself. And it just so happens that all the qualities women look for in guys are good things. I mean, I’ve become more confident. I started working out and eating healthier. I’m getting in touch with my emotions and learning more about spirituality. I’ve become a more fun, positive person.”
    He looked at me, listening patiently.
    “And I’m not just more successful with women now, I’m more successful in every other human interaction, from dealing with my landlord to handling credit card overcharges.”
    Still looking.
    “So I guess what I’m trying to say is that I’m learning how to pick up women, sure, but in the process, I’m becoming a better human being.”
    His mouth began to move. He was going to speak. “Well,” he said.
    Yes? What?
    “I am eternally here for you as a true friend, and also to make up for what I did.”
    He wasn’t convinced. Fuck him. I was going to take a nap.
    “Mind if I stay over for a couple of days?” he asked.
    “No problem, but I’m leaving for Australia on Wednesday.”
    “Do you have an alarm clock I can borrow? I need to pray with the sunrise.”
    After I found him a small travel clock, he reached into his bag and pulled out a book. “Here,” he said. “I brought this for you.”
    It was a small hardcover edition of an eighteenth century book called The Path of the Just with a note he had written for me inscribed on the title page. It quoted the Talmud:
Whoever destroys a single life is as guilty as though he had destroyed the entire world; and whoever rescues a single life earns as much merit as though he had rescued the entire world.
    So he was trying to save me. Why? I was having fun.

Mystery and I were on another road trip. The sun was blazing, the map was accurate, and there was a surfboard strapped to the top of a brand-new rental car. We had five workshops sold out in three cities in Australia. Life was good, at least for me.
    Mystery, however, was in low spirits. I made a mental note to never go on a road trip with him again. Before he left Toronto, his girlfriend, Patricia, had given him an ultimatum: marriage and children, or good-bye.
    “I haven’t been laid in five days because of this bullshit,” Mystery said as we drove up the coast of Queensland. “But I’ve been jerking it mercilessly to lesbian porn. I guess I’ve been sort of depressed a bit.”
    After four years of dating, their goals were diverging. Mystery wanted to travel the world as an illusionist with two loving bisexual girlfriends; Patricia wanted to settle down in Toronto with one man and no bonus woman. Celebrity and alternative lifestyle be damned.
    “I do not understand women,” he complained. “I mean, I know exactly what to do to attract them. But I still don’t understand them.”
    We’d come to Australia because Sweater, the older Australian student from Mystery’s first workshop, had invited us to stay with him for a week in Brisbane. After four months of sarging, he had finally met the woman he wanted to marry.
    “I’m like a smitten teenager,”