The Game Read Online Free PDF Page B

cat begs for physical affection. People are the same way: We need touch. But we’re so sexually screwed up and obsessed that we get nervous and uncomfortable whenever another person touches us. And, unfortunately, I am no exception. As I spoke to her, my hand felt wrong on her shoulder. It was just resting there like some disembodied limb, and I imagined her wondering what exactly it was doing there and how she could gracefully extricate herself from under it. So I did her the favor of removing it myself.
    “Isolate her,” Sin said.
    I suggested sitting down, and we walked to a bench. Sin followed and sat behind us. As I’d been taught, I asked her to tell me the qualities she finds attractive in guys. She said humor and ass.
    Fortunately, I have one of those qualities.
    Suddenly, I felt Sin’s breath on my ear. “Sniff her hair,” he was instructing.
    I smelled her hair, although I wasn’t exactly sure what the point was. I figured Sin wanted me to neg her. So I said, “It smells like smoke.”
    “Nooooo!” Sin hissed in my ear. I guess I wasn’t supposed to neg.
    She seemed offended. So, to recover, I took another whiff. “But underneath that, there’s a very intoxicating smell.”
    She cocked her head to one side, furrowed her brow ever so slightly, scanned me up and down, and said, “You’re weird.” I was blowing it.
    Fortunately, Mystery soon arrived.
    “This place is dead,” he said. “We’re going somewhere more target rich.” 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.
    I bid my new friend good-bye as Sin had taught me, pointing to mycheek and saying, “Kiss good-bye.” She actually pecked me. I felt very alpha.
    On the way out, as I stopped to use the bathroom, I found Extramask standing there, twirling an unwashed lock of hair in his fingers. “Are you waiting for the toilet?” I asked.
    “Sort of,” he replied nervously. “Go ahead.”
    I gave him a quizzical look. “Can I tell you something?” he asked.
    “Sure.”
    “I have a lot of trouble peeing beside guys in urinals. When there’s another guy standing there, I can’t fucking pee. Even if I’m peeing already and a guy walks up, I stop. And then I just stand there all nervous and shit.”
    “No one’s judging you.”
    “Yeah,” he said. “I remember about a year ago, a guy and I were trying to piss in these urinals that were right next to each other, but we both just ended up standing there. We stood there for around two minutes, recognizing each other’s pee-shyness, until I zipped up and went to another bathroom.”
    He paused. “The guy never thanked me for changing bathrooms that day.”
    I nodded, walked to the urinal, and discharged my duties with a distinct lack of self-consciousness. Compared to Extramask, I was going to be an easy student.
    As I left the bathroom, he was still standing there. “I always liked urinal dividers,” he said. “But you only seem to find them at the classy places.”

I was in high spirits in the limo to the next bar. “Do you think I could have kissed her?” I asked Mystery.
    “If you think you could have, then you could have,” he said. “As soon as you ask yourself whether you should or shouldn’t, that means you should. And what you do is, you phase-shift. Imagine a giant gear thudding down in your head, and then go for it. Start hitting on her. Tell her you just noticed she has beautiful skin, and start massaging her shoulders.”
    “But how do you know it’s okay?”
    “What I do is, I look for IOIs. An IOI is an