The Game

That’s when I realized that being a PUA sometimes meant saying no.
    Yana was an older Russian woman with chiseled features and a great boob job. I met her at a bar in Malibu. She told me it was her birthday but wouldn’t say her age. I guessed forty-five, but not out loud. As a present, I told her I’d be her boy toy. She grabbed my butt; I told her I charged extra for that. Two nights later, we had a cocktail and adjourned to my house. She said she didn’t put out anymore, that she was looking for something deeper. We had sex that night. We role-played. I was the teacher; she was the naughty schoolgirl. It was her idea.
    She was a drunk Asian girl with large breasts, surrounded by three sober Asian girls with small breasts. I can’t remember her name. She thought I was gay. We talked for fifteen minutes, then I took her by the hand and led her to the bathroom. We gave each other oral sex and never spoke again. It was overrated.
    Jill was an Australian businesswoman a fellow pickup artist set me up with. She had spiky blonde hair, leopard-print pants, and a voracious sexual energy. When she danced—if you could call it that—every man’s head turned. We fucked in her BMW, with the top down and our legs out the door. When I asked her when she had first wanted to kiss me, she said, “As soon as I saw you.” No woman had ever said that to me before.
    Sarah was a fortysomething casting agent I met at the lounge of the Casa Del Mar hotel in Santa Monica. She looked clean and radiant, like she had stepped out of a shampoo commercial—even in the harsh light of my elevator, where, an hour after meeting, we made love. She kept asking if there were cameras. I couldn’t tell if she was afraid of being caught or excited by the possibility. Probably both.
    Hea and Randi were girls I met at the club Highlands. Hea was a teeny indie-rocker nerd with a boyfriend. Randi was a cute actress with the most mischievous smile I’d ever seen, and a boyfriend. It took a month to convince Hea to cheat on her boyfriend; it took a day to convince Randi.
    Mika was a Japanese girl I met at Jamba Juice. She was an orange dream machine with energy boost. I am an orange dream machine with protein boost. I was intrigued. When we had sex, I discovered that she didn’t believe in shaving her pubic hair. The next morning she told me, “I grow my hair out because I donate it to children with cancer.” I was astonished: “They wear your pubes on their head?” She replied that she’d been talking about the hair on her head.
    Ani was a stripper who worked out two hours a day and was addicted to plastic surgery. She had metallic red hair and lipstick tattooed on to match. After we had sex, she told me, “I have mastered the art of visualization.” When I asked her to elaborate, she told me that since men are so visual, she makes sure that everything she does in bed looks hot. But when she developed feelings for me, she discovered that she was no longer able to have sex because the emotions opened wounds from childhood abuse. The visualizations ended.
    Maya was a black-haired goth belly dancer I flirted with at one of her performances. When our paths crossed months later, she still remembered me. I invited her over the next night. Her car was in the shop, so I offered to pay for a cab. She was there in a half hour.
    Alexis was a clothing store manager who looked like she should have been in an eighties new-wave band. Susanna was a recently divorced designer who wanted to rediscover her sexuality. Doris was a married woman whose sex life had died. Nadia was a librarian who had the skills of a porn star; I guess you can learn a lot from books. All four were the result of an experiment: I tried to concoct the perfect routine for the personals. After several failures, I succeeded. The secret, I learned, was to seem like a selfish prick in the ad, and then be a fascinating, laid-back gentleman on meeting.
    Maggie and Linda were sisters; they’re no longer talking to each other. Anne was a French girl who didn’t speak a word of English. Jessica was a bookworm I met on jury duty. Faryal helped me call a tow truck when my car broke down. Stef was handing out flyers for a strip club on Sunset Boulevard. Susan was a friend’s sister. Tanya was a neighbor.
    My wish had come true. Women were no longer a challenge. They were a pleasure.
    In the months since Mystery’s breakdown, I’d turned a new corner in my game. Once I’d gotten the number