The Game I

One night, we went out with one of his childhood friends for drinks downtown at Kaffibarinn. I got the impression that his friend was a very lonely guy. He’d never had a girlfriend, and it seemed like he couldn’t speak to women without making some sort of horrible blunder. He had recently gotten into a book called The Game about pickup artists who use a variety of tricks and techniques to bait women into hooking up. In the book, men are encouraged to toy with women’s insecurities. If the player is interested in a woman and she’s got a friend, for example, he’s supposed to shower her friend with praise and give the target the cold shoulder.

His childhood friend invites him out all the time to act as wingman because it can help, apparently, to have an attractive friend with you. This evening, I was going with them, to help his friend meet girls, and I thought it would show what a good girlfriend I’d make.

I met a girl at the bar and chatted with her a bit. She’d lost her friends, and I thought it was a golden opportunity to invite her to join us, so I introduced her to the boys. We were all standing around a high table, joking about the bright summer nights, and they seemed to hit it off. The friend had finally gotten his chance. But then he said out of nowhere, “Lilja thinks you’re ugly, but I don’t think that at all.”

The girl looked at me in bewilderment, and embarrassed, I mumbled, “I never said that. I think you’re awesome.”

But she disappeared into the crowd before I could get another word in. The friend said he didn’t understand why she was being so dramatic. She must be crazy.

As we walked home, just the two of us, I asked if his friend was on the spectrum. He shrugged his shoulders and said that that’s just the game.