Rules of the Game

by Neil Strauss

  “Okay, okay,” he blurted, barreling into our conversation. “From where do you reside?”

  “The States,” I replied curtly.

  “It is beautiful for spacious skies,” he said earnestly, as if he had just spoken magic words that would win him the approval of any American. “And may I ask as to whether you are male friend and female friend?”

  “We actually just got engaged tonight,” I said, hoping that would extinguish any hope he had of hitting on Veronika.

  “That is blessed news.” He smiled sloppily. Most people in Reykjavík were nearly fluent in conversational English, but he spoke as if he’d learned the language from technical manuals, greeting cards, and parliamentary papers. “For what measure of time do you date?”

  “Seven years,” Veronika told him, playing along. “Can you believe it took him this long to step up? He’s scared of commitment.” Definitely a keeper.

  “That’s because she’s always nagging me about the trash and the cigar smoking and my checkered past.”

  “I can help,” the guy said. “I can help. My surname is Thor. And I will marry you in holy wedlock.”

  “That would be great,” I told him. It seemed like the perfect opportunity to make a connection with Veronika.

  “Okay, okay, I need ring for ceremony,” Thor said. He swung his backpack under his shoulder and began digging through it. “You are sure?”

  “It’s my dream come true,” Veronika said, sighing.

  “Okay,” Thor prattled on. “This will be okay.” He scooped a bottle of vodka out of his backpack, unscrewed the cap, and worked furiously to remove the metal ring around the neck. It snapped apart.

  “Wait, wait.” Undeterred, he produced a cell phone from the bag and slid off a metal loop that appeared to be an empty key ring.

  He seemed so intent, so determined, so excited. We enjoyed watching the show. It was as if he’d been sent by a higher power to keep us entertained and prevent the awkwardness that usually occurs when two people who like each other hang out for the first time.

  He said something in Icelandic to two guys in line behind him and they moved into position on either side of him. Then he cleared his throat and began:

  “Dearly beloved, we gather today under God and witnesses to join pleasing couple in bonds of holy matrimony, okay, okay. Pleasing couple, I forecast your happiness for infinity. Your love is like sun shining in morning. It makes light of world.”

  At first, I thought he was simply playing the clown to amuse us. But as he went on, he seemed to be struggling, with all the soberness and poetry he could muster, to make the moment meaningful.

  After five more minutes of grandiloquent speech, he furtively pressed the key ring into my hands, then addressed me: “Do you take this woman to be your wife in holy wedlock? Do you guarantee to love, honor, and protect her until death parts you apart? Do you guarantee to love her and only her in wellness and in health, okay, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “Do you take this man to be your husband in marriage? Do you guarantee to do all the things I just speeched to him, okay, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “I now pronounce you man and wife,” he intoned loudly. “You may kiss on the bride.”

  As Veronika and I made out, I welled up with gratitude to Thor, who was already busy pulling something else out of his backpack.

  “I insist on pleasure of gifting you with first wedding gift, okay, okay,” he said. He then handed us each a small crescent of chocolate wrapped in blue-and-silver foil and made another rambling, romantic speech full of okays.

  We thanked him for the passion he had put into the ceremony. And he beamed, proud of himself, then reached again into his backpack and pulled out a pen and a notepad.

  “Please give to me your mail address, okay, okay,” he said.

  We both complied, figuring that he wanted pen pals.

  “Make sure you spell full names with correctness.”

  He folded the piece of paper and put it in his pocket, then nodded happily and announced: “I will send certificate of marriage in mail, okay, okay.”

  I blanched for a moment, then realized he probably just meant a greeting card. He’d definitely gotten carried away with the whole charade. “What do you mean?” I asked, just to make sure.

  “I am priest, of course,” he said, as if it had been obvious the whole time. “I have certification with church. It is okay. We accept all religions.”

  Veronika and I both looked at each other, the same thought running through our minds: What have we just done?

  Yet, oddly, neither of us told him not to prepare the certificates. He was so proud of himself, like a child who’s taken his first shit on a grown-up toilet, that we didn’t want to disappoint him. If he really was a priest, which he kept insisting, then it was too late anyway.

  Once inside the club, we bought our priest a beer in exchange for his services, then snuck away to make out in the upstairs lounge. It was the most romantic first date of my life—and hopefully not the last first date.

  There was little point in hanging out at the club, since we had no interest in talking to anyone else, so we left to find more adventure.

  When we turned the corner, we saw Veronika’s friends still standing on the sidewalk, exactly where we’d left them. We talked to them for a few minutes, but the conversation was awkward. They’d been standing there, doing nothing, while we’d been through so much. Our lives had, quite possibly, completely changed. So, once more, we slipped away.

  She placed her hand softly in mine and we walked to the Hotel Borg like a couple on honeymoon. Upstairs, we collapsed onto the bed. It seemed obvious where this all was leading.

  So obvious that, for the first time all night, Veronika began to get nervous.

  “I’ve had the best time,” she said between kisses.

  My heart raced. I felt the same way. She continued: “This night is just too perfect. It can’t be real.”

  We kissed again. Then: “I have to go.”

  And then: “This is too much.”

  Finally: “I knew you were going to try to do this.”

  It was clear what was going on. The specter of sex had cast gender roles on us. I was a man, moving toward pleasure, and she was a woman, moving away from pain. The same fear men have of approaching women, most women have of going past the point of sexual no return with men.

  And this is not just because of the biological repercussions—pregnancy, labor, childbirth, nursing—but because most women have at some point been hurt by a man. So, before they risk giving themselves over to powerful emotions they have little control over, they want to make sure they’re with someone who is being honest with them, respects them, and can reciprocate what they have to give—whether for a night or a lifetime. What many women secretly want is to throw themselves into the fire when they feel love without getting burned, scarred, or hurt. However, until scientists invent an emotional condom, it is typically the role of the man to reassure her before, during, and after that she’s making the right choice. Not with logic, but with feeling.

  “Before you leave,” I told Veronika, “I’d like to tell you a story.”

  The story is not my own. It is about a man and a woman who randomly pass each other on the street one day. Both immediately get the intuition that the other is the one-hundred-percent perfect person for them. And, through some miracle, they work up the courage to speak to each other.

  They walk and talk for hours, and get along perfectly. But, gradually, a sliver of doubt creeps into their hearts. It seems too good to be true. So, to make sure they’re really supposed to be together, they decide to part without exchanging contact information and let fate decide. If they run into each other again, then they will truly know that they are each other’s one-hundred-percent perfect love and will marry on the spot.

  A day passes, a week passes, a month passes, years pass—and they don’t see each other. Eventually, they each date other people, who are
not their true love. Many years later, they finally pass on the street again, but too much time has gone by and they don’t recognize each other.

  “You see,” I told Veronika afterward, “the lovers were lucky that fate allowed them to find each other once. When they doubted their feelings, it was like tearing up a winning lottery ticket and waiting for another one just to make sure they were really meant to win.”

  Afterward, there was silence. The metaphor had sunk in. We spent the night together talking about nothing but enjoying every word, fooling around but not having actual sex. Now I was not only indebted to Thor for the marriage, I was indebted to the Japanese writer Haruki Murakami for the honeymoon.

  In the morning, as I lay in a state of semiconsciousness, Veronika kissed me good-bye. Reykjavík is a small city and we were both attending the same concerts, so we promised to find each other the next night. I spent the afternoon daydreaming about her and about our unexpected connection.

  That night, we went to Gaukar a Stong, one of Iceland’s oldest pubs. As seemed to happen every night here, the strong alcohol, the hallucinatory music, the clear air, and the winsome populace seized hold of me, and I gave myself over to the adventure the city had in store for me.

  It began as I was ordering another Egil beer. A woman’s voice to my right asked, “Are you American?”

  I turned around to see a lightly freckled girl with short platinum hair dressed in combat boots, torn stockings, and a black sweatshirt emblazoned with a silver lightning bolt.

  The conversation quickly turned to stories of sexual adventures, and she began talking about an orgy she had recently experienced. It soon became clear that the intent of the story was not just to share but to arouse.

  It worked.

  As we made out at the bar, a woman tapped her on the shoulder. I pulled back to see Veronika standing there.

  “I’m leaving the club now,” she told the girl coldly. “You coming with?”

  “Yes,” the girl said, grabbing her purse off the counter. Then, to me: “My friend’s usually not this rude. Sorry. Nice meeting you.”

  It all happened so fast and unexpectedly that I didn’t have time to explain myself to Veronika. I had no idea she’d been in the bar the whole time, just as she had no idea I was there—until she saw me making out with her friend. I suppose there was nothing I could say to her anyway, other than she was right when she said that meeting me was too good to be true. I’d already hurt her.

  And now I’m sitting on the flight from Reykjavík to Los Angeles, replaying every moment in my head. I have no idea how to find her—or if I’m actually married to her. All I have to remember her by is the blue-and-silver foil chocolate in the pocket of my jacket.

  Days pass, weeks pass, months pass, and I never hear from her again. Yet I can’t get her out of my mind. My allegory has backfired on me and I’ve somehow convinced myself that we’re the living embodiment of the Haruki Murakami story.

  I try to find her on MySpace, but there are too many Veronikas without profile pictures in New York. I track down the photographer who introduced us, but he doesn’t know how to get in touch with her. And the promised marriage certificates never arrive, which is actually more a relief than a disappointment.

  I keep the chocolate on my desk as a reminder of my guilt, of my susceptibility to my lower impulses, of the fact that it was I and not she who so recklessly tore up the lottery ticket we’d been given.

  Then, one night a year later, on a trip to New York, I see her—my one-hundred-percent perfect girl. She is at Barramundi on the Lower East Side, sitting at a table and drinking with friends.

  The words “It’s my wife” burst out of my mouth. The conversation at the table stops and everyone wheels around to face me.

  “Hubby,” she shouts, a wide smile breaking over her face.

  I join them, and the hours pass. Eventually, it’s just the two of us again.

  I’ve dated many girls since meeting her. And she tells me she’s in a serious relationship. Yet we still get along perfectly.

  “I’m sorry,” I finally say, “about, you know, making out with your friend. That was really stupid of me. I’ve regretted it every day since.”

  “You’re just a man.” She sighs.

  “Does that mean my behavior is excusable because of my gender, or you’re disappointed because I acted like a typical guy?”

  “I guess both.” I watch her lips sip her cranberry and vodka. “I should tell you that I had a boyfriend when we met.”

  “Is that the person you’re seeing now?”

  “Yes. But it’s not perfect love.”

  “Then why do you stay with him?”

  “I guess—” she pauses, reflects, decides “—because it’s convenient love.”

  An hour later, we find ourselves at the apartment where I’m crashing. I show her the dead pet goldfish my host, Jen, keeps wrapped in Saran Wrap in her freezer, and then, tired and tipsy, we fall asleep on the sofa bed.

  In the morning, we have sex for the first time. It is perfect. We fall back asleep afterward in each other’s arms.

  When I wake up, she is gone. I search the living room, kitchen, and bathroom for a note. There is none. Once again, I have no way to reach her. And I have a feeling that’s the way she wants it.

  The problem with one-hundred-percent perfect love is that sometimes it’s inconvenient.

  Back in Los Angeles a month later, I give in to temptation. I’ve been working all night and there’s nothing to eat in the house. I peel the blue-and-silver foil off the wedding present Thor gave us. Small discolored flakes of chocolate drop to the ground. The candy has turned brittle from age, lost its shape, and faded from brown to inedible gray. There is no point in keeping it anymore. It will only attract bugs.

  RULE 9

  LOVE IS A WAVE, TRUST IS THE WATER

  “I’m throwing up.”

  “Did you eat anything shady last night?” I ask her.

  “No, I had what you did. How do you feel?”

  “Fine, I guess.”

  “So.”

  This is where it begins to dawn on me that this is not a call for coddling. It is every unmarried man’s nightmare—and many a married man’s nightmare.

  “Do you think you have food poisoning?” I ask. It’s hard to just come out with the words. Their impact is too much to take.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Would you like me to get you some Emetrol?” I’m fishing now.

  “Could you? Thanks.” Pause. Wait for it. “And could you get a pregnancy test, too?”

  When you know a slap across the face is coming, it actually hurts more.

  I hang up the phone, brush my teeth, splash water on my face (an ex-girlfriend convinced me one morning that it’s bad for the skin to use soap twice a day), and grab the car keys.

  It is the worst trip a man has to make.

  At the drugstore, I pick up crackers, ginger ale, and Emetrol antinausea medicine. Then I study the shelf of pregnancy tests. The E.P.T. Pregnancy Test seems the simplest: Pee on the white rod, then wait to see whether it displays a minus sign (indicating freedom) or a plus sign (indicating indentured servitude). I choose the kit with two test sticks. I may need a second opinion.

  At the register, it is all too obvious what my errand is. This is far more embarrassing than buying condoms, though I imagine there are more humiliating things to buy. Like Preparation H. Or Valtrex. Or Vaseline and a plastic billy club.

  They’ve probably seen it all.

  I rush to Kathy’s house. She answers the door wearing just a green T-shirt, her small face blanched, her blonde hair uncombed, her slender body beaded with perspiration. She looks great. No joke.

  I unpack the groceries. The first thing she goes for is the ginger ale.

  I carefully watch the pregnancy test to see if she’s ready, but she just brings it into the bathroom with the medicine. Probably wants to wait. Too much to handle right now.

  She doesn’t men
tion it. Neither do I. She’s already told me many times that she could never get an abortion. So there’s no point in talking about it. Either we’re screwed or we’re not.

  As she wanders around the house cleaning, I wonder how we’re supposed to administer the test. The best thing would probably be to go into the bathroom together, as a unit. I’ll stand by her side, politely averting my head while she pees on the stick. Then we’ll lay it on the countertop and wait. We can run through what-if scenarios together then.

  I suppose I could marry her. When we first started dating, I thought she was the one. People say you just know, and for the first time I did: I remember making out with her on the couch on our second date and thinking, I love this girl, and knowing I’d have to wait at least a month before I could actually tell her. I remember watching her sleep, and realizing that I would always love her, no matter how old and wrinkly she gets.

  But lately she’s been jealous. She doesn’t like it when I talk to other women at parties, even though I make it plain to them she’s my girlfriend. She doesn’t like it when I answer my cell phone when I’m with her, even if it’s the middle of a weekday, we’ve been together seventy-two hours straight, and it’s a work call. And when we’re lying together and she’s looking into my eyes and, for a second, I remember that I have to take my clothes out of the dryer, there’s hell to pay for thinking of anything that’s not her. I can’t live for the rest of my life with the thought police.

  This test better be negative.

  She shuffles to the TV and puts in a DVD of Sex and the City, season three. She’s seen every episode at least a dozen times. Refers to them often.

  She always tells me that she will love me forever, but how can love exist without trust?

  The anxiety affects my bladder like beer and I head to the bathroom. While washing my hands afterward, I notice the pregnancy stick lying on the counter-top. She’s got it just sitting there, ready to go. That’s kind of sweet.