Among my friends we call it The Game. Among my generation it doesn't feel much like a game. In truth it can be fun like all games can, but when I scrutinize a little more it seems more like a prison built out of bars made of alcohol and scripted lines.  Vagueness aside, by the Game I mean little more than just picking up girls sleeping with them and then promptly letting their number decay in my phone for a few weeks or months when it's time to play again.  The way I described it makes it all seem like a male chauvinist ritual. And maybe it is, but the structure of the system is in place so girls have a voice and an understanding of the rules. A lot of times there is no sex at the end and all parties leave the game happily.

The problem as I see it though, is the game is plastic and addicting and I don't want to play anymore. I don't want to talk to you about your hometown and your proposed major and what you did this summer. I don't care much that we have a mutual friend in Tim. Do I remember all those Nickolodean shows we would watch as kids? Yes I do remember and I've talked to a million other girls about them too. It's all a very self-aware mating dance and my feet are tired. The game is played weekly at parties which are really just lifesize gameboards. With cell phones and facebook the board has become virtual and now we have the luxury of playing all the time. The parties are the worst. At first the alcohol removed the fear of talking to the strange other sex. Now the alcohol is a means to an end and lets me step back from the game and comment above the action in a conscious subversion of the rules. At the beginning of the party I'll run the scripts like a good contestant, at the end I'll draw your attention to how little we care about what is spewing from our mouths.

At first thought I'd say the game is  a manifestation of our sexually liberated (is it though?) times, but no, it's a societal truth that has always been and always will be. Fitzgerald loved writing about the game in early 20th century in America, Dickens and Austen were onto it too. As long as our parts are different you can count on playing. Maybe though, when it doesn't feel like a game with someone in particular I'll know the girl is right. Or maybe the right one will force me to up my own game. Either way right now I'm tired of it all, I'm tired of running scripts and not caring where they lead and not caring who is there in my bed the next morning, only wanting them out so I can sprawl.

Why did we build society like this? Why can't our mating system evolve out of societal games and into something better, something more real?