the game – neil strauss

the game | neil strauss

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notes:

If you are reading this, I want you to know that I wasn’t running game on you. I was being sincere. Really. You were different.

She was surprisingly cute for a clinic like this. A flicker of animation flashed across Mystery’s face, then died. “If I had met you in another time and another place,” he said, crumpling a tissue in his hands, “things would have been different.” His body, normally proud and erect, curved like soggy macaroni in his chair. He stared glumly at the floor as he spoke. “I know exactly what to say and what to do to make you attracted to me,” he continued. “It’s all in my head. Every rule. Every step. Every word. I just can’t … do it right now.” She nodded mechanically. “You should see me when I’m not like this,” he continued slowly, sniffling. “I’ve dated some of the most beautiful women in the world. Another place, another time, and I would have made you mine.” “Yes,” she said, patronizing him. “I’m sure you would have.”

So what I gathered from the conversation was that here was a guy who’s had all the sex he wanted his whole life and, at seventy-three, he’s still chasing tail. When does it stop? If Hugh Hefner isn’t over it yet, when am I going to be?

with a smug, I-just-bench-pressed-the-world smile on his face.

He looked like a computer geek who’d been bitten by a vampire and was midway through his transformation.

“All your emotions are going to try to fuck you up,” Mystery continued. “They are there to try to confuse you, so know right now that they cannot be trusted at all. You will feel shy sometimes, and self-conscious, and you must deal with it like you deal with a pebble in your shoe. It’s uncomfortable, but you ignore it. It’s not part of the equation.”

Neither compliment nor insult, a neg is something in between—an accidental insult or backhanded compliment. The purpose of a neg is to lower a woman’s self esteem while actively displaying a lack of interest in her—by telling her she has lipstick on her teeth, for example, or offering her a piece of gum after she speaks. “I don’t alienate ugly girls; I don’t alienate guys. I only alienate the girls I want to fuck,”

It’s called the Mystery Method because I’m Mystery and it’s my method.

Besides confidence and a smile, we learned, the other characteristics of an alpha male were being well-groomed, possessing a sense of humor, connecting with people, and being seen as the social center of a room. No one bothered to tell Mystery that those were actually six characteristics.

“But isn’t that lying?”
“It’s not lying,” he replied. “It’s flirting.”

The point of Mystery Method, he explained, is to come in under the radar. Don’t approach a woman with a sexual come-on. Learn about her first and let her earn the right to be hit on. “An amateur hits on a woman right away,” he decreed as he rose to leave the hotel. “A pro waits eight to ten minutes.”

As we took the limo to the Key Club, Mystery told us the first commandment of pickup: the three-second rule. A man has three seconds after spotting a woman to speak to her, he said. If he takes any longer, then not only is the girl likely to think he’s a creep who’s been staring at her for too long, but he will start overthinking the approach, get nervous, and probably blow it.

You should speak to her over your shoulder, so it looks like you might walk away at any minute.

To Mystery and Sin, these clubs didn’t seem to be reality. They had no problem whispering in students’ ears while they were talking to women, dropping pickup terminology in front of strangers, and even interrupting a student during a set and explaining, in front of his group, what he was doing wrong. They were so confident and their talk was so full of incomprehensible jargon that the women rarely even raised an eyebrow, let alone suspected they were being used to train wanna-be ladies’ men.

“But how do you kiss her?” Sweater asked.
“I just say, ‘Would you like to kiss me?’”
“And then what happens?”
“One of three things,” Mystery said. “If she says, ‘Yes,’ which is very rare, you kiss her. If she says, ‘Maybe,’ or hesitates, then you say, ‘Let’s find out,’ and kiss her. And if she says, ‘No,’ you say, ‘I didn’t say you could. It just looked like you had something on your mind.’”

“Listen. Have you ever seen a cat play with a string? Well, when the string is dangling above its head, just out of reach, the cat goes crazy trying to get it. It leaps in the air, dances around, and chases it all over the room. But as soon as you let go of the string and it drops right between the cat’s paws, it just looks at the string for a second and then walks away. It’s bored. It doesn’t want it anymore.”
“So…”
“So that girl moved away from you when you put your arm around her. And you ran right back to her like a puppy dog. You should have punished her—turned away and talked to someone else. Let her work to get your attention back. After that, she made you wait while she talked to that dork.”

Think about it: Neil Strauss, writer. That isn’t cool. Nobody wants to sleep with a writer. They’re at the bottom of the social ladder.

I heard him rustling through some papers.
“Listen,” he said. “These are my personal development goals. I want to raise the money for a touring illusion show. I want to live in posh hotels. I want a limo to and from shows. I want specials on TV with big illusions. I want to levitate over Niagara Falls. I want to travel to England and Australia. I want jewelry, games, a model airplane, a personal assistant, a stylist. And I want to act in Jesus Christ Superstar—as Jesus.” At least he knew what he wanted in life.
“What I’m really after,” he finally said, “is for people to be envious of me, for women to want me and men to want to be me.”
“You never got much love as a child, did you?”
“No,” he replied sheepishly.

Harry Crosby. He was a poet from the 1920s,

The most important of these is social proof, which is the notion that if everyone else is doing something, then it must be good. So if you are in a bar with a beautiful female friend on your arm (a pivot, as they call it in the community), it’s much easier to meet women than if you’re hanging out alone.

And Sasha, who was twenty-two, said he had been with one woman, though we suspected he was exaggerating by one. “I’m into the game because it’s like Dungeons and Dragons. When I learn a neg or a routine, it’s like getting a new spell or a staff that I can’t wait to use.”

Fear seizes hold in your chest first. It clamps gently to the top of the heart, like a vice made of rubber. Then you really feel it. Your stomach churns. Your throat closes. And you swallow, desperately trying to avoid the dryness and hoping that when you open your mouth, a confident, clear voice will emerge. Even after all my training, I was terrified.

Anyone talking to a woman while simultaneously worrying about what she thinks of him is going to fail. Anyone caught thinking about getting into a woman’s pants before she starts thinking about what’s in his pants is going to fail.

As anyone who regularly reads newspapers or true-crime books knows, a significant percentage of violent crime, from kidnappings to shooting sprees, is the result of the frustrated sexual impulses and desires of males. By socializing guys like Sasha, Mystery and I were making the world a safer place.

And the most troubling thing about this new mindset was that it seemed to be making me more successful with women.

Sexual choice, however, is one of the only areas where women are indisputably in control. It’s not until they’ve made a choice, and submitted to it, that the relationship is inverted—and the man is generally back in a position of power over her. Perhaps that is why women, to the frustration of men everywhere, are so cautious about saying yes.

And that’s when I realized the mistake I’d been making my whole life: to get a woman, you have to be willing to risk losing her.

What if she rejects me? Yeah, and what if a meteor hits your house. You asked how to tell if she’s ready. The way to tell is the other three-second rule. It works 100 percent of the time. While sitting close, just let the conversation trail off. Look her in the eye while you pause the conversation. If she looks back for a count of three seconds, she wants to kiss. The uncomfortableness you may experience is my favorite thing in the whole world—sexual tension.

Say, “Stick your tongue out.” Then suck on it. If she slaps you, good! That story would rock.

I knew this was the perfect opener, because it was clear they believed in spells—for some reason, most girls who strip or exploit their sexuality for a living do.

As we talked, I realized they were just ordinary, insecure girls. That’s why they’d been so quiet. Most men make the mistake of believing that an attractive woman who doesn’t talk to or acknowledge him is a bitch. Most of the time, however, she’s just as shy or insecure as the less attractive women he’s ignoring—if not more so.

I thought of my favorite line from Ulysses, when sexually frustrated Leopold Bloom imagines his impotent manhood in the bathwater and calls it the limp father of thousands. And then I thought, if I was smart enough to quote James Joyce in the bathtub, why did I feel so stupid in front of these girls?

In life, people tend to wait for good things to come to them. And by waiting, they miss out. Usually, what you wish for doesn’t fall in your lap; it falls somewhere nearby, and you have to recognize it, stand up, and put in the time and work it takes to get to it. This isn’t because the universe is cruel. It’s because the universe is smart. It has its own cat-string theory and knows we don’t appreciate things that fall into our laps.

He advised AFCs to overcome their shyness by trying to talk a homeless person into giving them a quarter or by calling people randomly out of the phone book to ask for movie recommendations.

Talking too fast is usually a sign of a deep lack of confidence. People who feel that others aren’t interested in what they think talk fast for fear of losing the attention of their audience. Others are so in love with perfection that they have a difficult time editing it all down and continuously speed up in hopes of getting it all in. Such people usually become writers. That was it: weirdo or writer. I hoped it was the latter.

We are never comfortable with those who have no visible flaw.

He was a cool guy. But he had a lack of confidence that made no sense, as if he felt there was something missing about himself—a piece that would make him complete. I was pretty sure he was searching for it outside when he would eventually find it inside.

Interrogation is not seduction. Seduction is the art of setting the stage for two people to choose to reveal themselves to each other.

Talking in statement form is the way old friends speak to each other. Statements are the mode of the intimate, the confident, and the giving. They invite others to share and make perfect metaphysical sense.

the price for betrayal is dark beyond measure of your mortal mind. Keep quiet and keep your promises, and I will keep opening the door.”

The word energy is the equivalent of the smell of chocolate to most women in Southern California.

“The inside of a vagina isn’t at all what I thought it would feel like,” he shouted excitedly. “It feels very organized.”

In addition to giving the girls pleasure, however, he also gave them guilt. And after a few too many confessions that involved the boy in the kitchen, Steve was fired.

And the next weekend he taught me to contain and cycle orgasmic energy, so that a woman can stack one withheld orgasm on top of another—until, as Steve P. put it, she’s “shaking like a dog shitting peach seeds.”

misogynist obscurities with titles like Seduction Begins When the Woman Says No.

David X was quite possibly the ugliest PUA I’d ever met. He made Ross Jeffries look like a Calvin Klein underwear model. He was immense, balding, and toadlike, with warts covering his face and the voice of a hundred thousand cigarette packs.

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 off; it was about being accepted.

Now I was in. It was the girls who were dumbstruck now, not me. I had entered their world, as Jeffries once put it to me, and demonstrated authority over it.

The girls leaned in toward me, thrilled by the idea of an innocuous test. Guys in the community have an expression for this phenomenon: I was giving them “chick crack.” Most women, they say, respond to routines involving tests, psychological games, fortune-telling, and cold-reading like addicts respond to free drugs.

“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.”

But who are we, really? Just a bundle of good genes and bad genes mixed with good habits and bad habits. And since there’s no gene for coolness or confidence, then being uncool and unconfident are just bad habits, which can be changed with enough guidance and will power.

When I asked her about it, she burst into tears.
“I gave it up too fast,” she sobbed. “Now I’m never going to see you again.”
They were such sweet words, because they were so honest. I slid my arm under her and placed her head on my shoulder. I told her first of all that every passionate relationship I’ve ever had began passionately. It was a line I’d learned from Mystery, but I did believe it. Second, I told her that maybe she shouldn’t have, but she wanted to and needed to. It was a line I’d learned from Ross Jeffries, but I did believe it. Third, I told her that I was more mature than a lot of the people she’d been with before, so not to judge me by her past experiences. It was a line I’d learned from David X, but I did believe it. Finally, I told her that I’d be sad if I never saw her again. It wasn’t a line.

“I’m the world’s greatest pickup artist,” he grumbled in my direction. “How come I don’t have a girlfriend?”
“Well, maybe because you’re the world’s greatest pickup artist.”

She smiled weakly, sympathetically. She didn’t know what to say. In that moment, I hated her. She just seemed so useless.

We have this idea that love is supposed to last forever. But love isn’t like that. It’s a free-flowing energy that comes and goes when it pleases. Sometimes it stays for life; other times it stays for a second, a day, a month, or a year. So don’t fear love when it comes simply because it makes you vulnerable. But don’t be surprised when it leaves, either. Just be glad you had the opportunity to experience it.

One of the reasons I became a writer is that, unlike starting a band, directing movies, or acting in a theatrical production, you can do it alone. Your success and failure depend entirely on yourself.

STYLE: Are you thinking about suicide?
MYSTERY: Yes.
STYLE: How would you do it?
MYSTERY: Drowning, because it’s what I’m most afraid of.

I saw him through the glass, the smiling blonde four-set reflected against his face.

But seduction is a dark art. Its secrets come with a price and we were all paying it, whether in sanity, school, work, time, money, health, morality, or loss of self. We may have been supermen in the club, but on the inside we were rotting.

Dad always wanted whiskey poured on his grave, so my brother said, ‘I just hope he doesn’t mind me filtering it through my bladder first.’”

the strong live off the weak and the clever live off the strong.

And even Prizer, the border-crossing hooker-fucker, put out a rambling DVD course, Seduction Made Easy, that doubled as unintentional comedy.

The problem with being a pickup artist is that there are concepts like sincerity, genuineness, trust, and connection that are important to women. And all the techniques that are so effective in beginning a relationship violate every principle necessary to maintaining one.

But I couldn’t, because as he remembered that moment, Cruise let out a laugh. And Cruise doesn’t laugh like ordinary people do. His laugh takes over a room. It comes on just fine, a regular laugh by any standards. You will be laughing too. But then, when the humor subsides, you will stop laughing. At this point, however, Cruise’s laugh will just be crescendoing. And he will be making eye contact with you. Ha ha HA HA heh heh. And you will try to laugh again, to join him, because you know you’re supposed to. But it doesn’t come out right, because it’s not natural. He will squeeze out a couple words sometimes between chuckles—“It’s not real,” in this case. And then he will stop, as suddenly as he started, and you will be relieved.

Any thinking that must be done, any turmoil that must be resolved, any issue that must be handled was solved first and foremost in a dialogue between Tom Cruise and himself.

And just as most men are attracted in a Pavlovian manner to anything that is thin, has blonde hair, and possesses large breasts, women tend to respond to status and social proof.

“The world is what you think it is.” In other words, if you believe that you need to have a harem and having a harem is normal, women will agree to it. It’s simply your reality. However, if you want a harem but secretly feel that it’s cheating and unethical, you’ll never have one.

Potential for beauty is as attractive to most men as actual beauty.

“Winning feels good,” he said, grinning to his reflection, which grinned right back at him.

He was validated. She was validated. They validated each other. They were a perfect pair, each completely unaware of the other.

I’ve always loved women’s bedrooms: They’re soft and sweet-smelling, like heaven must be.

But if you sit the average male down in front of anything halfway intriguing and explain to him that it has a system of rankings that he can get better at over time, he’ll become obsessed. Hence the popularity of video games, martial arts, Dungeons and Dragons, and the seduction community.

I can say after a thousand approaches, there are only so many ways to get rejected or ignored. It doesn’t hurt at all anymore because why should someone who’s a complete stranger have any control over your sense of self-worth?

The solution is to remember that the best way to pick up women is to have something better to do than to pick up women.

If you can make something of yourself, women will flock to you, and what you’ve learned here will prepare you to deal with them.

“This whole marriage thing,” Mystery told me while Katya was in the bathroom, “is the best routine ever. She loves me now. She gets off on calling me her husband. It’s like a time distortion.”
“Dude, it’s the worst routine ever,” I replied, “because you can only do it once.”

He clenched his bedsheet in his fist. “I feel strange and empty, like after a shit.” He rolled over and started sobbing again. “I feel shit empty.”

While staying at the house, Extramask had gotten bored and started reading Playboy’s books on eastern religion, which had unexpectedly led him down a path of spiritual self-discovery.

And out of nowhere, my heart awoke from its torpor and body-checked my chest.

It is in these moments that, as a PUA, you start to question the work you’ve done on yourself. You begin to worry that maybe she sees the real you, the one who existed before the silly nickname, the one who wrote poems about this exact situation in high school.

Because women don’t respect guys who pay for them but at the same time are turned off by guys who are cheap, I went to the Whiskey Bar ahead of time, gave the manager $100, and told him to make sure whatever we ordered was on the house.

His words were agreeable, but not his body language.

I will be more loyal to her than to you because the bros before hos ethic only applies if you think of the girl as a ho.

She seemed to have learned that the secret to surviving the stresses her husband and children had put on her was to never take anyone or anything too seriously. Life was an in-joke between her and God.

“He thinks it’s all about the girls, but it’s not. It’s about his low self-esteem.” Only a mother could reduce a person’s entire ambition and raison d’etre to the one basic insecurity fueling it all.

He was walking on quicksand with helium balloons in his hands. In that respect, he was like all of us, except the air in his balloons was escaping faster.

I had violated one of Ross Jeffries’s only ethical rule of seduction: Leave her better than you found her.

“So you got tired of picking up women?”
“Yeah, after a while it started to feel like filling a bucket with a hole in it.”

“Who says it’s cheesy?” Cruise asked, his eyes narrowing and his hands reaching out to attack me with a friendly gesture.

The words burst out of him, as if they’d been slowly forming inside like a blister.

Enjoy your girlfriend, and we will always have time to hang out together. You are the most important man in my life.” My face swelled and my eyes tingled with the first flush of tears.
“Try not to queer that up, okay?” he smiled weakly, choking back emotion himself.

“Is that screenwriter in the movie the way you really see yourself?” I asked as we walked out of the building together.
“That’s the inner me,” he admitted. “Inside I sometimes feel pathetic, awkward, and unloved.”
“Even after all the confidence you acquired as a pickup artist, a husband, and a father?”
“Well,” he said, opening the door to his car, “all you can do is put on an appearance of confidence sometimes. And after a while, others will start to believe it.” He grabbed the door handle to pull it closed. “And then you die.” Slam.

and leaped onto my bed wearing nothing but a beer bottle.

Maybe she was right. Perhaps she would have liked the real me. But she never would have had the opportunity to meet him if I hadn’t spent the last two years learning how to put my best foot forward. Without all that training, I never would have had the confidence to talk to and handle a girl like Lisa, who was a constant challenge.

I needed them to discover what was me to begin with. And now that I had found that person, brought him out of his shell, and learned to accept him, perhaps I had outgrown them.