Playa Gotta Play

Composed on the 9th of February in the year 2011, at 11:48 AM. It was Wednesday.

This isn’t so much about me, but it relates to the current theme.

I’ve written about my sad failure as a UMassian; my stint as a UMainiac wasn’t much better, but sex and dates did occasionally happen. Mostly, I was attempting to play out of my league. I’m fond of saying man game league is in your head, but you do have to practice. League isn’t even a good word. I’d make an analogy to Dungeons & Dragons right now but I doubt I’d make the saving throw and I would drop a few levels.

Leagues. I meant Leagues. With big dudes hitting things. Anyway, while I was pining after the russian exchange students who were pining after the rich, green card bearing kids, there was a guy next door who I’d worked with briefly at the local Friendly’s, so we hung out.

This kid was a player. Not a man whore: I’ve been a man whore in my day, and we consider ourselves morally superior to players, since man whores don’t lie or play, 1[1] we just make ourselves available and clear about our intentions.2[2],3[3],4[4]

This kid was a player on a scale I haven’t personally witnessed before or since. He had contests with his friends about getting phone numbers. He went camping with four girls, knowing he was going to sleep with all of them. He had multiple girls invade his dorm room to leave him booty post-its. Oh, and it wasn’t his dorm room, since he didn’t even go to school there. It was just some girl’s room he managed to get into, without even having the decency to sleep with her. Yes, he banged a lot of what I will politely refer to as skanks, but within his demographic, girls would probably beat each other to death for his attention while he watched and laughed and then got them make out for his pleasure while some other girl blew him. It was like watching the story intro to hardcore porn.

I was, and still am, in complete awe of this man. I wouldn’t do what he did to women, though I believed he loved women in his way, and I wouldn’t have slept with 80% of the women he slept with, but I was impressed. To this day, I don’t completely understand his power.

So when I came back to my dorm one day and two girls and a guy were at his door, I wasn’t surprised. I mean, it was college, so no conglomeration of persons was especially surprising, but angry girls at my neighbor’s door was especially unsurprising.

BlondeGirl: “Hey do you know Player?”5[5]

Me: “Yeah. Why?”

BlondeGirl: “Is he home?”

Me: “I dunno.”

BlondeGirl: “Well, we need to-”

Me: “Good luck.”

Slam.

I liked my neighbor. But I didn’t like him enough to deal with his runoff.

Or did I?

I sit in my room for about ten minutes before I get a call on the landline.6[6]

Player: “Hey, Pete.”

Me: “Yeah?”

Player: “Are there a couple of girls and a dude outside my door?”

Me: “Yeah.”

Player: “Can you distract them?”

Me: “What?”

Player: “Just, uh, get them away from the door.”

Me: “Dude, what the fuck did you do?”

Player: “It’s not my fault!”

Me: “You’re an ass.”

Player: “Just get them away from the door.”

Me: “Fine. You owe me.”

Click.

So I go out and invite them in to my dorm. I didn’t have a roommate, so this was easy, if stupid. Weak men are the slaves of men who don’t care about weak and strong.

The trio I bring into my room is kind of a freak show, and I mean that in the most demeaning way. The guy is clearly gay and out, but attempting to suppress it, probably because his friends are an equally out and repressed lesbian and a rural ghetto BlondeGirl who won’t stop talking about bein’ a playa.

Honestly, I would have preferred to talk to repressed gay kids, but BlondeGirl had a terminal case of not being able to shut the fuck up. This whole situation lasted about two hours, and it was a five minute repeat that inevitably ended with “you can’t play a playa” interspersed with the various ways she and her boys or bros were going to fuck up my friend. I didn’t care all that much; he was my friend, but he usually deserved this and rarely got it.

She was apparently a playa. And she couldn’t be played. And she had to remind everybody of this every five minutes. Except she and her friends had already been played by Player and his friends. This is what I discovered later: BlondeGirl and friends had given forty bucks to Player’s friend, call him Jackass, in the hopes that Jackass and Player would hook them up with forty dollars worth of weed. Jackass just saw a shot at forty bucks, so he said he’d hook them up, walked off and got drunk to the tune of ten free drinks. How they traced this back to Player’s apartment I’ll never know, but they did, and they were pissed.

It was obvious that Player was just hiding in his room, and it was only because they were stupid that they were still debating the possibility. Player eventually calls me, which was dumb, but a relief since it meant the situation was at least moving toward its conclusion. They know he’s there and calling me, so I tell him jig’s up in so many words.

Player: “Huh. Aright. Uh, send the blonde one over.”

Me: “What?”

Player: “Yeah, just the blonde.”

Me, to BlondeGirl: “He says he’ll talk to you.”

So BlondeGirl goes outside and to his room and I wait with the much more interesting gay kids. We actually have a good conversation for about forty-five minutes, at which point we wonder what the hell is going on with the players’ ball next door.

Finally we get up to check on them. We come out to her writing on his whiteboard in the hall. She writing, “Sorry sweetie, you’re the best, talk to you soon xox.” We all blink at this a little bit. She takes her friends by the arms and walks away, telling them everything’s chill, it’s all sorted out, they’ll get everything in a couple of hours, they should go have a drink.

I watch them leave, then knock on Player’s door. He opens it, glances down the hall, and waves me in.

Me: “Dude, what just happened?”

Player: “I fucked her.”

Me: “What?”

Player: (shrug)

Me: “Are you getting them their stuff?”

Player: “Fuck no. I’m going to Boston. Wanna come?”

Me: “No thanks.”

Player: “Cool, man. Thanks for helping out.”

And that was it. No real explanation beyond that; it seemed completely logical to him. I went to another friend’s dorm across the hall for the rest of the night in case the trio came back angrier than before, though I don’t think they ever did. My friend and I got stoned and marveled at Player’s powers, and that was that.

Lesson: You can, in fact, play a playa.

1 Most of the time.

2 Most of the time.

3 Enough of the time to claim moral superiority.

4 I’m going to Hell.

5 Note: Player was not his real name.

6 Yep. We had landlines. Come to think of it, I’m not sure I had a cell phone back then. I’m old.

Ladies and gentlemen, please!


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