From Slate: Reviews of The Game were haughty and dismissive, pointing out how inane PUAs’ routines are, accusing them of puerility and alienation, and noting, accurately, that these Lotharios seem far more wrapped up in one another and their “community” than they do in the women they pursue. None of this would be news to Strauss, however; the shortcomings of the PUA scene are in fact one of the themes of his book, which opens with Strauss hauling Mystery off to a psych ward before his mood-disordered mentor makes good on threats to kill himself. By the end, Strauss and Mystery have been forced out of Project Hollywood, and Strauss has paired up with a woman, the guitarist for Love’s band. She is impervious to PUA tricks, most notably the “neg”—a backhanded compliment intended to communicate that the player is not intimidated by his target’s beauty. Strauss moves on, abandoning a closet full of paraphernalia used in the Game, because “real life beckoned.”
He didn’t make it that time around. As Strauss relates in his new book, The Truth: An Uncomfortable Book About Relationships—also available in a faux leather edition—after he split up with the guitarist, he also blew it with a subsequent girlfriend, Ingrid. He could not rein in his compulsive womanizing, even after finding someone he deeply loved and with whom he wanted to start a family. The breakup precipitates a soul-searching quest, recounted in The Truth, ranging from sex-addiction rehab to experiments in polyamory, swinging, and other nonmonogamous relationships. “This is the story,” he announces in the first chapter, “of discovering that every truth I’ve desperately clung to, fought for, fucked for and even loved for is wrong.”
I’m aware that I’m supposed to scorn The Game, but in fact I loved it. As the sentences I’ve quoted thus far indicate, Strauss’ years writing celebrity profiles and co-writing celebrity memoirs (including Jenna Jameson’s best-selling How to Make Love Like a Porn Star) have honed his ability to squeeze the maximum amount of cheesy drama out of every situation. He really knows how to set a scene and sketch a character. The villain of the first bit of The Truth, a puritanical counselor at the rehab center he checks into when Ingrid leaves him, “raises her head like a cobra about to strike” whenever someone in his group therapy session uses the word girl. Strauss is also smart, with a well-developed sense of irony. When a counselor asks his group to calculate how much money they’ve squandered in chasing fleeting sexual encounters over the years, right down to the last condom, he silently totes up the opposite: “My sex addiction pays for my phone, rent, and health insurance. It pays for breakfast, lunch and dinner; for movies, books and the computer I’m writing on; for socks, underwear, and shoes. Fuck, I couldn’t afford to be here getting treatment without it.”
Despite the indignation The Game once provoked, taking a moral position on that book hardly seems urgent. It’s set in an alternate, nightclub-rich universe of perpetual recreation. Surgically enhanced women visit it when they want a bit of adventure, and yet, sadly, it is populated by a vast sea of indistinguishably dull, thirsty guys, each equipped with khakis and a cable package stocked with every variant of ESPN. As depicted by Strauss, PUA tactics—from their flamboyant “peacocking” wardrobes to their prefab patter based on questions promised to reveal the respondent’s personality—are meant to make the player stand out in this crowd. Imagine, if you can, a milieu so boring that the approach of a guy wearing a furry top hat and offering to do magic tricks and give Cosmo quizzes would be a welcome relief.
