The Game Read Online Free PDF

asked.
    “Twenty-seven.”
    “That’s not old. That’s perfect.”
    He was in.
    Mystery called me over and whispered in my ear. He wanted me to talk to Baio and his friend, to keep them occupied while he hit on the girl. This was my first experience as a wing—a term Mystery had taken from Top Gun, along with words like target and obstacle.
    I struggled to make small talk with them. But Baio, looking nervously at Mystery and his date, cut me off. “Tell me this is all an illusion,” he said, “and he’s not actually stealing my girlfriend.”
    Ten long minutes later, Mystery stood up, put his arm around me, and we left the club. Outside, he pulled a cocktail napkin from his jacket pocket. It contained her phone number. “Did you get a good look at her?” Mystery asked. “That is what I’m in the game for. Everything I’ve learned I used tonight. It’s all led up to this moment. And it worked.” He beamed with selfsatisfaction. “How’s that for a demonstration?”
    That was all it took. Stealing a girl right from under a celebrity’s nose has-been or not—was a feat even Dustin couldn’t have accomplished. Mystery was the real deal.
    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.
    The moment we walked into the Key Club, Mystery put the threesecond rule into action. Striding up to a group of women, he held out his hands and asked, “What’s your first impression of these? Not the big hands, the black nails.”
    As the girls gathered around him, Sin pulled me aside and suggested wandering the club and attempting my first approach. A group of women walked by and I tried to say something. But the word “hi” just barely squeaked out of my throat, not even loud enough for them to hear. As they continued past, I followed and grabbed one of the girls on the shoulder from behind. She turned around, startled, and gave me the withering what-a-creep look that was the whole reason I was too scared to talk to women in the first place.
    “Never,” Sin admonished me in his adenoidal voice, “approach a woman from behind. Always come in from the front, but at a slight angle so it’s not too direct and confrontational. You should speak to her over your shoulder, so it looks like you might walk away at any minute. Ever see Robert Redford in The Horse Whisperer? It’s kind of like that.”
    A few minutes later, I spotted a young, tipsy-looking woman with long, tangled blonde curls and a puffy pink vest standing alone. I decided that approaching her would be an easy way to redeem myself. I circled around until I was in the ten o’clock position in front of her and walked in, imagining myself approaching a horse I didn’t want to frighten.
    “Oh my God,” I said to her. “Did you see those two girls fighting outside?”
    “No,” she said. “What happened?”
    She was interested. She was talking to me. It was working.
    “Um, two girls were fighting over this little guy who was half their size. It was pretty brutal. He was just standing there laughing as the police came and arrested the girls.”
    She giggled. We started talking about the club and the band playing there. She was very friendly and actually seemed grateful for the conversation. I had no idea that approaching a woman could be this easy.
    Sin sidled up to me and whispered in my ear, “Go kino.”
    “What’s kino?” I asked.
    “Kino?” the girl replied.
    Sin reached behind me, picked up my arm, and placed it on her shoulder. “Kino is when you touch a girl,” he whispered. I felt the heat of her body and was reminded of how much I love human contact. Pets like to be petted. It isn’t sexual when a dog or a