Rules of the Game

by Neil Strauss

  When she pulled me into the bedroom and began undressing me, I imagined that her hands were Alicia’s hands; I saw Alicia’s mouth wrapped around me; I grabbed Alicia’s thick black hair.

  I had sex with Emily three times that night, and every time, I closed my eyes and imagined she was Alicia.

  It was the most passionate sex Emily and I had ever had.

  The following evening, after watching Alicia’s grandfather perform, I went backstage to pay my respects and invite Alicia to a party at the Tribeca Grand Hotel that night. Slowly, languorously, as if she’d been asked to pass the sugar at the end of a long meal, she gave her consent: “Okay, pick me up at my hotel after I take Granddad back.”

  Because it was my last night in New York, and I didn’t know whether or not Alicia would go out after the concert, I’d invited a date to the Tribeca Grand earlier that day. Her name was Roxanne. She was five foot two and one of the most sexual girls I knew.

  An hour and a half after the show ended, Alicia emerged from her hotel, wearing the tight purple dress she’d bought. The cabdriver, the students across the street, some guy riding past on a bicycle all did a double take.

  “I had to talk to my boyfriend,” she said, apologizing for her tardiness. “We haven’t spoken in like a week. He’s so boring.”

  Sleeping Beauty was mine again to wake. Suddenly, extra-large meant nothing to me.

  Roxanne was waiting for us in the lobby of the Tribeca Grand, wearing a spaghetti-strap top that exposed her little-doll back. She hugged me tightly, peering up through heavy black mascara. There was something mischievous in her eyes, her smile, her carriage that communicated she was willing to try anything anytime.

  I had met Roxanne at a concert last time I was in New York. She worked part-time as a model for illustrators and had appeared on everything from biscuit tins to sex-position guides. Her boyfriend played drums in the small local band we were watching. And she invited me to the afterparty at the singer’s apartment.

  Roxanne, her boyfriend, and I spent most of the party lying on the host’s bed, while he sat in a chair nearby. As Roxanne and I talked, her boyfriend rose to his feet, walked into the front room, and dragged a very drunk blonde onto the bed with us. Within seconds, he was making out with her. Two minutes later, he had her naked.

  Roxanne didn’t seem to mind, chiefly because she was too busy flirting with me: unnecessary touching, unsubtle innuendoes, unmistakable body language. Hesitantly, I took the bait. I looked over her shoulder as we kissed to see if her boyfriend minded. He was already fingering the drunk girl.

  This is typically a sign of an open relationship.

  I began making out with Roxanne more intensely. She grabbed me through my corduroys as her boyfriend began fucking the drunk girl. Some sort of jewelry glinted off his dick, rattling with each thrust. It was at this point that the singer left his own room.

  As we fooled around, Roxanne kept glancing over at her boyfriend. She seemed upset, not necessarily because he was having sex with someone else, but because he was being inconsiderate of her while he did it.

  She pulled down my pants and gave me an aggressive blow job. Then she grabbed a condom from her purse, slammed herself on top of me, and tried to outfuck her boyfriend. She ground herself vigorously against me, stuck a finger in her ass, and moaned loud enough to wake the whole building. This seemed to be how they fought.

  It wasn’t a good experience, but nobody ever said all experiences had to be good. Sometimes they’re just experiences.

  They broke up a few months later and, now that Roxanne was single, I was looking forward to sleeping with her under normal circumstances if things didn’t work out with Alicia. Every single man needs a sexually adventurous woman he can count on to distract him from the fact that he is unloved.

  “I brought some Ecstasy,” Roxanne said after buying the first round of drinks at the Tribeca Grand. She pulled an orange pill bottle out of her purse and dumped a white tablet into her hand.

  I’m not a fan of psychedelic drugs, mainly because they last too long. The word trip is appropriate: Like an airplane ride, there is no way to get off until you land. More important, I didn’t think hugging a speaker for six hours would improve my chances with Alicia.

  Pinching her teeny fingers together, Roxanne cracked the pill in two. One half instantly crumbled to pieces in her hand. Without even asking if I wanted it, she lifted the hand full of Ecstasy dust, clamped it over my mouth, and dumped the contents inside.

  I tried to keep my cool, but my eyes widened in horror, as if they’d just seen the devil. I needed to find a way to keep from tripping. I couldn’t just start spitting all over the club. So for the next five minutes, I kept bringing my glass of Jack and Coke to my lips and, instead of taking a sip, casually drooled the contents of my mouth into it. Then I went to the bathroom and poured the drink into the toilet. For the next hour, I was on edge, paranoid that the pill had absorbed into my bloodstream anyway.

  Then I noticed Roxanne giving Alicia a massage on a couch upstairs. She’d already gotten further than I had with Sleeping Beauty. And that was fine with me, because it meant two things: The first was that I had succeeded in expelling the Ecstasy, because she was clearly in a drug-induced, tactile state and I still felt normal. The second was that a change of plans was in order. I might not have to choose between Roxanne and Alicia after all.

  “My friend Steven has a great loft where I’m staying,” I told them when their rubdown ended. “He and his roommates usually have parties every night, so we should see what’s going on.”

  Roxanne, Alicia, and I took a cab to Steven’s house, detouring at a corner deli to buy supplies: a bottle of Cabernet, Sun Chips, and turkey sandwiches on stale bread.

  Inside the loft, the party had long since ended. Not only were Steven and his roommates sleeping, but two other guys were crashed out on couches in the living room. Unfortunately, I didn’t have my own room. I had been sleeping on a futon on the floor across from the couches.

  Roxanne and I sat on the guest futon. Alicia took a seat at a breakfast table a few feet away, unwrapped a turkey sandwich, and casually began eating it. I admired her ability to remain unaffected no matter where she went and what she saw. However, I was running out of time. There had to be some way to break the glass box in case of emergency.

  “Hey,” I whispered to Alicia, trying not to wake the two guys sleeping on the couch. “I have to show you the coolest video before you go.”

  My best wingman is my laptop.

  She walked to the futon and perched on the edge with her arms wrapped around her knees. I showed her a clip of a species of bird that actually moon-walks across tree branches. I probably oversold the video, but it served its purpose, getting her on the futon.

  It was now time to kiss Sleeping Beauty. Otherwise, she would return to the hotel and actually go to sleep.

  I told Alicia and Roxanne that I’d recently had an amazing experience where two masseuses worked on me at the same time, in perfect synchronization. This procedure was known as the dual-induction massage, and I’d used it many times to segue into a threesome.

  First, Alicia and I gave Roxanne a massage. Then I took off my shirt and they massaged me. Finally, I told Alicia to lower the top of her dress and lie on her stomach.

  Typically, during the dual-induction massage, the energy in the room begins to shift and the inevitability of a safe, fulfilling, three-way sexual experience begins to dawn on everyone.

  But this time, there was no shift in energy. Rather than relaxing into the touch and the sexual possibilities, Alicia lay there and quietly accepted the massage. Running my hands down the smooth, broad expanse of her back was as satisfying as it was frustrating, like smelling fresh bread in a locked bakery. I began to worry that she was politely waiting for her opportunity to leave, thinking we were some kind of creepy swinger couple who did this all the time.

  Afterward, Alicia rose off the futon, pulled her dress up, and went to the ba
throom. She didn’t seem happy. She didn’t seem upset. She didn’t seem much of anything.

  At least I’d tried. I was fooling myself by thinking Roxanne and I were Prince and Princess Charming anyway; we were more like the villains she needed to be rescued from.

  “What do you suppose Alicia’s thinking right now?” I asked Roxanne.

  “I have no idea.”

  “Let’s just check out her vibe when she comes back from the bathroom. And if she’s not down, we’ll put her in a cab.”

  Alicia returned from the bathroom to her perch on the edge of the futon, as if waiting to be dismissed. I’d definitely pushed her too far.

  “Well, you should get some sleep before your trip tomorrow, so let’s find you a cab.”

  She laid down next to me, hugged me good-bye, and said, “Thanks.”

  In the moment she hugged me, I sensed it was on. The energy shift I’d been waiting for had occurred.

  I raced toward her lips, worried that if I hesitated for even a second, she’d be out the door. She melted into me. I could feel the glass box heating and cracking beneath my touch, falling off her skin in large panes. Faint murmurs of pleasure bubbled up through her lips.

  Roxanne lay on the bed behind me. I turned around, pulled her close, and made out with her. Then we began massaging and licking Alicia’s breasts through her dress. Alicia lazily raised her arms, signaling that she was ready for it to be taken off.

  Alicia was not a giver, but she was a great receiver. Her back arched and her hips flexed, showing off a body so perfect that all the owner had to do was possess it to be a good lover.

  When I removed Alicia’s panties, she was drenched. I ran to my suitcase, dug for a condom, and returned to the bed. I positioned both girls on their backs and entered Alicia as I made out with Roxanne. Then I entered Roxanne and made out with Alicia.

  To my surprise, the girls didn’t hesitate once, even though there were two guys sleeping—or pretending to sleep—on couches in full view of the action. One of my friends, when he’s having sex with a beautiful woman, thinks, I deserve this. I kept thinking, I can’t believe this is happening to me. Are they blind?

  A swinger couple I know used to tell me about their threesomes and, with delight and wonder in his eyes, the man would talk about his favorite position: the triangle.

  The time had come to experience the legendary triangle. I lay on my back, and told Alicia to ride me. Then I had Roxanne sit on my face, opposite Alicia, so the two of them could make out.

  However, I never felt the cosmic sexual flow my friend used to talk about. Instead, I felt blind and smothered. Roxanne was sitting on my eyes.

  Not that I’m complaining.

  Afterward, Alicia spoke first. “That’s the first time I ever did anything like that,” she said quietly.

  “You mean a threesome, or being with a girl?” I assumed she wasn’t talking about the triangle.

  “Both,” she said.

  “How do you feel?”

  “It was …” She paused. “… good.”

  She was never much for words.

  Alicia and I stayed in touch after that. We had long phone conversations, during which her glass walls continued to fall away, exposing a goofy personality and wry sense of humor.

  “Grandad likes you,” she said one night. “He wants you to come visit us at home.”

  A week later, I flew in to spend the weekend and continue the interview in a setting few journalists ever got to see. Alicia picked me up at the airport and we drove to his home.

  “I don’t do this for just anyone,” he said in his barreling voice when I arrived.

  During the day, I watched him work in the studio. That night, Alicia snuck into my bed.

  The next morning, at 6, her grandfather burst in the room. He took a look at us cringing under the sheets, then said to her, “I knew you were black-topping Neil.”

  He let out a loud, playful laugh, then turned to me. “Come outside, I want to show you something.”

  I followed him through the house and out the door. We stood in the grass and he pointed to the dawn sky. “Right there,” he said. “What do you see?”

  “Clouds.”

  “Look closer, man. What do you see in the clouds?”

  They looked like smoke puffs, but he seemed so excited I didn’t want to let him down. “God?” I asked.

  “Yeah, God,” he said, pointing at a thick wisp of cloud extending high into the sky. “You can never tell what He has in store for you. He moves in mysterious ways.”

  “Yes,” I told him. “He definitely does.”

  RULE 8

  EMOTIONS ARE REASON ENOUGH

  I’ve made a horrible mistake.

  I got drunk and may have married someone the other night.

  And now I’m worried I’ll never see her again. Or maybe I’m worried that I will see her. I’m not sure which would be worse.

  I don’t know her age, where she lives, or her last name.

  Well, I suppose I know her last name now.

  I’m not the type to blame other people for my mistakes, but if I had to point a finger, it would be at Ragnar Kjartansson. All you need to know about him are two things: One, he’s the singer in Iceland’s only country band. Two, he’s the first male ever to graduate from Husmadraskolinn, a school for housewives.

  He is my tour guide here in Reykjavík, the capital of Iceland, and I don’t mind saying that he’s not a very good one.

  The night in question began at Tveir Fiskar, which either means Two Fish or Three Raincoats, depending on what time of day you ask Ragnar. It’s one of the only places where they serve whale steak and whale sushi in Iceland. They also serve rancid shark, which is best eaten in bite-size pieces and washed down by a shot of Black Death. The former tastes like belly-button lint, the latter like Windex.

  “We must drink,” Ragnar slurred, handing me my third shot of Black Death, “to being pathetic.”

  He had been on a bender for months, ever since his girlfriend, Disa, left him and took the TV. Without the TV to distract him, he explained, all he did was think about her.

  “I should have married her,” he went on, bobbing his head into mine. “You only get one chance at perfect love.”

  After dinner, as Ragnar struggled to pull a red wool sweater over his head, he suggested, “Let’s go drinking.”

  “Isn’t that what we’ve been doing all night?”

  “That wasn’t drinking. I’ll show you drinking, the Iceland way.”

  Evidently, drinking the Iceland way meant vomiting under a table, urinating on a bus, getting in a fight with a teenager, and passing out in a crosswalk. Because that’s exactly what Ragnar did over the course of the next three hours.

  “Get up.” I nudged him. It was October in the frozen north and he was wearing just a sweater. “You’re going to die out here.”

  “Go on without me,” he mumbled. “The bars of Reykjavík need you.”

  Even in his drunken stupor, he was trying to make me laugh. I hoisted him to his feet and brought him to the safety of the sidewalk. And that’s when I saw the girl I would marry that night.

  She was accompanied by some twenty tourists, all of whom were attending Iceland Airwaves, a music festival I was in town to write about. I recognized a photographer in the group and stopped to talk.

  He introduced me to his friends. The only word I remembered was “Veronika.”

  She reminded me of the new wave singers I used to fantasize about in the eighties. She was petite, with spiky black hair, heavy blue eye shadow, laughing eyes, and full lips parted slightly to expose a perfect row of white. As soon as I saw her, I was smitten.

  “Is he going to be okay?” she asked, gesturing to Ragnar.

  “Yes, he’s heartbroken.”

  “I wish my heartbreaks were like that.”

  “Yeah, he does look pretty happy for a guy who’s lost his perfect love.”

  “I’ve never had perfect love,” she said. “I wo
uldn’t even know how to recognize it.”

  “You don’t have to recognize it. You just know.”

  One of the things I’ve learned from traveling with rock bands—besides how to play FIFA World Cup soccer on a moving bus, survive without showering for seven days, and sleep inches away from five people who also haven’t showered for seven days—is that groups move at the speed of their slowest member. And, considering that most of Veronika’s friends were drunk, they weren’t going anywhere soon. So I suggested slipping away, finding something interesting to do, then rejoining them in a little while.

  “What about Loverboy?” she asked, gesturing to Ragnar.

  “He can be our third wheel. Every date needs one.”

  She looked at her friends, then smiled her consent. We backed away wordlessly, with Ragnar wobbling behind us.

  “It’s hard to be loved,” he began singing. “Baby, I’m unappreciative.”

  “No wonder she broke up with him.” Veronika laughed. I liked her. In order to be alone with her, however, I’d have to dismiss my hapless tour guide. I knew he’d understand—or, more likely, forget. So I flagged a taxi and stuffed him inside.

  As I closed the door, he grabbed the bottom of my jacket. “Don’t say no to love,” he slurred. “Or you will be pathetic like me.”

  “I feel bad for him,” Veronika said as he sped away.

  “Don’t feel bad for him. Being pathetic is an art form to him. He comes from a very accomplished family, so he distinguishes himself by being hopeless at everything: the worst drunk, the worst country singer, the worst boyfriend, the worse housewife.”

  “I suppose there’s a sort of dignity there,” she said.

  Downtown Reykjavík on a weekend night is a combat zone, with bottles smashing against walls, cars careening onto sidewalks, and hordes of drunk teenagers zigzagging the streets. There’s no malevolence in the air, like after a rugby game in England, just an absence of control.

  Veronika and I found refuge in a small line outside the door of an after-hours club. She was from the Czech Republic and had been living in New York City for the last year. That was all I managed to learn before a guy with an unbuttoned overcoat, spiky brown hair, and a smooth face ruddy from the cold staggered in line behind us. He had a backpack slung on one shoulder and a big alcoherent smile on his face.