The Game

Papa, he immediately came to life. He took the sunglasses off his head and put them on Laurie—a move Mystery had taught him in Toronto when he asked how to keep the target from wandering off while being ignored. He then started running my valuedemonstrating routine about C-shaped smiles versus U-shaped smiles.
    I liked watching Papa’s progress. Arbiters of cool like to say that some people have it and other people don’t. And you can tell in an instant, just from looking at someone, whether they have it. I’d thought my whole life that it was something one was born with. However, the whole community was predicated on the idea that it was something people could learn. Though there was still something mechanical about Papa, he was starting to get it. He was like an it robot.
    While Papa entertained the girls, Tyler Durden and I went to the other room to watch Hillary dance. She was in a birdcage, waving two massive feathered fans in front of her body. A glimpse of shoulder here. A glimpse of leg there. She had a spectacular body. Too bad I’d never sleep with her again.
    “Why didn’t you say anything to Laurie and her friends?” I asked Tyler.
    “I didn’t know what routines you had used on them,” he replied. “I didn’t want to repeat anything.”
    “Dude, don’t you have a personality of your own that you can use?”
    Hillary was wearing just feathered pasties and matching panties now. She had such soft skin. Her nose looked like a beak, though. The last time I saw her, she told me she’d had a herpes outbreak. I couldn’t bring myself to have sex with her.
    “Let’s go somewhere else?” Tyler nudged me.
    “Why? There are plenty of girls here.”
    She had done the right thing by telling me she had herpes. It’s better than keeping it a secret and letting me catch it. I couldn’t punish her for honesty. But now I was too paranoid to sleep with her.
    “I want to see you work in a place where you don’t know anyone,” Tyler prodded.
    She covered her body with a feather, reached under her legs, and threw her panties into the audience. A flying herpes rag. A hipster with muttonchop sideburns caught it. He crumpled it in his fist and thrust it into the air excitedly. His little venereal prize.
    A hand clapped my shoulder. It was Grimble, in his lucky pickup shirt.
    “So what’s up, man?” he asked
    “Nothing much. How do you feel about accompanying Tyler Durden here to the Saddle Ranch?”
    “You’re not coming?” Tyler Durden asked. “I really wanted to see your game.”
    “I’m tired, man.”
    “If you come, I’ll do my Mystery-talking-about-how-much-he-misses-his-soul-mate-Style imitation for you. It’s a real crowd pleaser.”
    Thanks but no thanks.
    I walked to a booth and grabbed a seat opposite Hillary.
    “Who are those losers you’re with?” she asked.
    “They’re pickup artists.”
    “Could have fooled me.”
    “Well, they’re young. And they’re still learning. Give them time.”
    She pinched her left eyelash and slowly peeled it off. “Want to go to El Carmen?” she asked. Then her right eyelash.
    If I went, I’d have to sleep with her. That was part of the contract. “No. I should really go home.”
    I wanted to get myself tested for everything. I was too neurotic to be so promiscuous.

Despite everything, I wanted to like Tyler Durden. Everyone else seemed to.
    As he and Papa traveled the country winging workshops with Mystery, the reports of his skills were stellar. Perhaps he’d just been nervous around me. Or maybe he’d improved after being forced to perform for so many students, as I had. I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt.
    There were trends in the community. Ross Jeffries and Speed Seduction had ruled the seduction boards when I arrived over a year ago. Then Mystery Method took over, followed by David DeAngelo and cocky funny. Now, Tyler Durden and Papa were on the rise.
    The funny thing was that although the methods kept changing, women weren’t. The community was still so underground that few women, if any, knew what we were up to. These were trends that had nothing to do with females and everything to do with male ego.
    And one of the biggest egos of them all, Ross Jeffries, was getting left behind. Though Speed Seduction still had a lot to offer, it seemed as archaic to the new generation of community members as buying a girl flowers and sharing a malt at the soda shop. And Ross wasn’t happy about it. He wasn’t happy about