Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists by Neil Strauss

From the Publisher

In dozens of cities around the world, men meet in underground "lairs" to discuss tactics and strategies for picking up women. Afterwards, they venture into the "field"-bars and clubs-and practice, questing after the holy grail: the perfect girl. Under a pseudonym, New York Times bestselling author Neil Strauss ventured into this bizarre subculture, traveling around the world and meeting the world's greatest seducers, men who claim to have found the combination to unlock a woman's legs-and her heart. There is Ross Jefferies, a master hypnotist on whom Tom Cruise's Magnolia character was based; Mystery, an illusionist who charms showgirls and celebrities; Rick H., a millionaire who turns straight-laced women into bisexual party girls; and Randall P., a spiritualist so powerful that women actually pay him to learn how to better pleasure him.

The Game chronicles Strauss's adventures (and misadventures) undercover in this clandestine world of men who refuse to let traditional rules of dating doom them to unfulfilled lives. Along the way, there are riveting, and often disturbing, profiles of the men who have dedicated their lives to the game-and disciples who will stop at nothing to learn from them. The Game is a journey into a world that most women fear and most men dream of.

Publishers Weekly

I never dated Neil Strauss, but I dated guys like him. Like many New York women, I have always gone for balding, pale guys because they're grateful and good in bed. But a few years ago, a distraught Strauss decided he was a loser with women and set about transforming himself into the world's greatest pick-up artist. The Game is his long, often tedious but hilarious account of how he did it. This ugly-duckling tale will affect different readers in different ways, depending on their degree of cynicism: some will be awed by Strauss's menage-a-trois snowball scene, while others will suspect it was cribbed from a third-rate porno Strauss watched in his pre-macking days. When his story begins Strauss is, well, a Neil: an unconfident, self-described AFC (average frustrated chump). He is also, it should be noted, a well-known rock critic who penned porn star Jenna Jameson's autobiography, leaving one wondering just how pathetic women really found him. After paying $500 to join a workshop for aspiring PUAs (pick-up artists) led by a magician named Mystery at Hollywood's Roosevelt Hotel, Strauss becomes addicted to pick-up technique. He trains with several PUA gurus, including Ross Jeffries, a hypnotist rumored to be the basis for the Tom Cruise character in Magnolia. With his brains and dedication, Strauss renames himself Style and soon becomes a master of the game-able to get sex from beautiful women who once would have run the other way. But The Game doesn't get really interesting until Strauss deviates from his NC-17 Horatio Alger story and tells what happens when he moves into a Sunset Strip mansion with a group of other PUAs. He starts to see the misogyny of the sport and realizes that most of its leaders had miserable childhoods. The AFC who became a PUA to understand women ultimately becomes an expert on men. As Strauss grows restless to talk about things other than number closes and phase shifts (the book's glossary is a juicy read of its own), the mansion loses its appeal and he reluctantly grows up. When he meets a tough-talking band mate of Courtney Love's named Lisa and they bond over music, we can guess where the narrative is headed. In the book's final pages, he dumps onto his bed all the phone numbers he's collected and tells Lisa, "I've spent two years meeting every girl in L.A. And out of them all, I chose you," which is like telling your mother-in-law that the Thanksgiving dinner you had last year at Applebee's was nothing compared to the one she just prepared. But for some reason, Lisa doesn't flee. I can only hope that in the inevitable 2007 movie version, starring Jack Black and Kate Hudson, Lisa throws the numbers in his face and leaves him for a guy who knows how to pay a girl a compliment. (Sept. 1) Amy Sohn is the author of My Old Man, which was just released in paperback by Simon & Schuster, and she writes the "Mating" column for New York magazine. Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

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The Game

ReganBooks

Meet Mystery

The house was a disaster.

Doors were split and smashed off their hinges; walls were dented in the shape of fists, phones, and flowerpots; Herbal was hiding in a hotel room scared for his life; and Mystery was collapsed on the living room carpet crying. He'd been crying for two days straight.

This wasn't a normal kind of crying. Ordinary tears are understandable. But Mystery was beyond understanding. He was out of control. For a week, he'd been vacillating between periods of extreme anger and violence, and jags of fitful, cathartic sobbing. And now he was threatening to kill himself.

There were five of us living in the house: Herbal, Mystery, Papa, Playboy, and me. Boys and men came from every corner of the globe to shake our hands, take photos with us, learn from us, be us. They called me Style. It was a name I had earned.

We never used our real names -- only our aliases. Even our mansion, like the others we had spawned everywhere from San Francisco to Sydney, had a nickname. It was Project Hollywood. And Project Hollywood was in shambles.

The sofas and dozens of throw pillows lining the floor of the sunken living room were fetid and discolored with the sweat ofmen and the juices of women. The white carpet had gone gray from the constant traffic of young, perfumed humanity herded in off Sunset Boulevard every night. Cigarette butts and used condoms floated grimly in the Jacuzzi. And Mystery's rampage during the last few days had left the rest of the place totaled and the residents petrified. He was six foot five and hysterical.

"I can't tell you what this feels like," he choked out between sobs. His whole body spasmed. "I don't know what I'm going to do, but it will not be rational."

He reached up from the floor and punched the stained red upholstery of the sofa as the siren-wail of his despondency grew louder, filling the room with the sound of a grown male who has lost every characteristic that separates man from infant from animal.

He wore a gold silk robe that was several sizes too small, exposing his scabbed knees. The ends of the sash just barely met to form a knot and the curtains of the robe hung half a foot apart, revealing a pale, hairless chest and, below it, saggy gray Calvin Klein boxer shorts. The only other item of clothing on his trembling body was a winter cap pulled tight over his skull.

It was June in Los Angeles.

"This living thing." He was speaking again. "It's so pointless."

He turned and looked at me through wet, red eyes. "It's Tic Tac Toe. There's no way you can win. So the best thing to do is not to play it."

There was no one else in the house. I would have to deal with this. He needed to be sedated before he snapped out of tears and back into anger. Each cycle of emotions grew worse, and this time I was afraid he'd do something that couldn't be undone.

I couldn't let Mystery die on my watch. He was more than just a friend; he was a mentor. He'd changed my life, as he had the lives of thousands of others just like me. I needed to get him Valium, Xanax, Vicodin, anything. I grabbed my phone book and scanned the pages for people most likely to have pills -- people like guys in rock bands, women who'd just had plastic surgery, former child actors. But everyone I called wasn't home, didn't have any drugs, or claimed not to have any drugs because they didn't want to share.

There was only one person left to call: the woman who had triggered Mystery's downward spiral. She was a party girl; she must have something.

Katya, a petite Russian blonde with a Smurfette voice and the energy of a Pomeranian puppy, was at the front door in ten minutes with a Xanax and a worried look on her face.

"Do not come in," I warned her. "He'll probably kill you." Not that she didn't entirely deserve it, of course. Or so I thought at the time.

I gave Mystery the pill and a glass of water, and waited until the sobs slowed to a sniffle. Then I helped him into a pair of black boots, jeans, and a gray T-shirt. He was docile now, like a big baby.

"I'm taking you to get some help," I told him.

I walked him outside to my old rusty Corvette and stuffed him into the tiny front seat. Every now and then, I'd see a tremor of anger flash across his face or tears roll out of his eyes. I hoped he'd remain calm long enough for me to help him.

"I want to learn martial arts," he said docilely, "so when I want to kill someone, I can do something about it."

I stepped on the accelerator.

Our destination was the Hollywood Mental Health Center on Vine Street. It was an ugly slab of concrete surrounded day and night by homeless men who screamed at lampposts, transvestites who lived out of shopping carts, and other remaindered human beings who set up camp where free social services could be found.

Mystery, I realized, was one of them. He just happened to have charisma and talent, which drew others to him and prevented him from ever being left alone in the world. He possessed two traits I'd noticed in nearly every rock star I'd ever interviewed: a crazy, driven gleam in his eyes and an absolute inability to do anything for himself.

I brought him into the lobby, signed him in, and together we waited for a turn with one of the counselors. He sat in a cheap black plastic chair, staring catatonically at the institutional blue walls.

An hour passed. He began to fidget.

Two hours passed. His brow furrowed; his face clouded ...

Three hours passed. The tears started ...

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Excerpted from The Game by Neil Strauss Copyright © 2006 by Neil Strauss. Excerpted by permission.
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