Posted on by Matt Thomas

On the Pre-Game: A Response to Neil Strauss’ The Game

Note: This piece overlaps with my three essays in the Week with Elodie series, though it approaches that week from a somewhat different direction. Where those pieces follow the arc, this one lingers on the moment before it resolves—the pre-game, as I’ve come to understand it.

It is also a direct response to Neil Strauss’ book The Game. I don’t intend to rebut Strauss so much as to correct what I see as a fundamental weakness in the subculture he dissects. The reader will judge whether or not I succeed.

Epigraphs:

Someone had to play that tune. I guess it was up to me.

— Bob Dylan, “Up to Me”

It all made some sense if you know what to play

– J Mascis, Elastic Days

I. Ippei

At around eleven one night, I was at Zaza, the nightclub on Kiyamachi in Kyoto, when a Japanese man of about fifty-five approached me. Let’s call him Ippei.

He had a proposition. Would I help him pick up two women? All I had to do was pretend to be an old friend from California, someone he hadn’t seen in twenty years.

He did this every night, he told me. The night before, he’d had a threesome.

We went over to the women. Ippei launched into a conversation in Japanese, working his story. I went upstairs to smoke. Twenty minutes later, I came back down. Ippei was still going strong, telling the same story to the same women.

I watched him for a moment.

He didn’t need me. He just needed me to play a role.

His story had landed. Reality was accepted. It was all on.

II. Neil Strauss’ The Game

I’ve read Neil Strauss’ The Game twice. I respect Strauss as an investigator of subcultures, and I think the book is serious reportage. He went inside a world, learned its language, followed its characters, and documented what he found.

My problem isn’t with Strauss as a reporter. It’s with the worldview at the center of the subculture he describes.

The premise is that attraction can be engineered. Learn the right language, the right sequence, the right signals. Find the moves that will break down a woman’s resistance and get you into bed.

It’s a kind of linguistic technology, NLP at its worst.

The system scripts what should be alive. It turns a conversation into a sequence of maneuvers, an encounter into a problem to be solved. Everything becomes instrumental. The point of the interaction is no longer the interaction itself. It’s the outcome.

There’s no room for romance in that equation. No room for the unexpected moment that changes the direction of an evening, or a life. The system is designed to get you somewhere, but it can’t tell you whether that somewhere is worth going.

Look at the group house, with Mystery, Strauss, and Courtney Love, for whatever Courtney Love-related reasons. It’s a sausage fest. And it is simply not cool.

The Gamers may have mastered the game. But somewhere along the way, they’ve stepped outside life itself. They’ve become incel-adjacent: men who have devoted themselves to understanding women while losing sight of the possibility of actually connecting with one.

I’m not interested in rebutting Strauss point by point. Instead, it’s a response.

And for me, that’s where I part ways.

III. The Game Itself

I’ve gone all the way with about a dozen women. The precise number is under strict NDA. I’ve made out with more.

Until this past summer, I wasn’t sexually active by the standards of the pickup community. But I’ve flirted with, connected with, and crushed on dozens of women.

And the truth is, I enjoy crushing on women.

I enjoy the tension, the ambiguity, the possibility. The spark that might become something, or might not. The moment when you can feel something happening but don’t yet know what it is.

For most men, the pre-game is a means to an end. It’s the part you get through on the way to the thing you really want.

For me, it’s the end itself.

However, I’m a highly specific kind of action junkie.

Wittgenstein was said to have manufactured his own oxygen. I manufacture my own action.

I don’t chase it blindly. I don’t optimize for it. I don’t try to force it into existence through systems or scripts.

I generate it. Selectively. Intentionally. And in moments where it actually might mean something.

IV. Luna

I was at Umineko in downtown Kyoto with Mr. Editor. It was around six in the evening when I saw her.

She was stunning.

I have to go talk to her.

So I did.

We spoke in Japanese. The conversation flowed. There was a spark. At some point, I asked for her Instagram. She gave it to me.

I was on Cloud Nine.

The next afternoon, I sent her a message. She didn’t respond.

Was that a failure?

Not for a pre-gamer.

I got the moment. I got the spark. I approached a woman I wanted to meet, and we had a brief, electric encounter. For a little while, there was the possibility of something.

That was the action.

That was the point.

For the Strauss guys, the night ends when the text goes unanswered. The interaction has failed to produce the desired outcome. The system hasn’t delivered.

For me, the night ended at the bar.

With Ippei, the action was more or less scripted. With Strauss, it was systematized. With Luna, it was self-contained.

This is where the epigraph from Dylan starts to carry real weight.

The pre-game isn’t simply a technique for getting what you want. It’s the moment before the outcome, when the possibilities are still open. It’s the point at which you have to decide what to do without knowing what will happen.

You can follow a script. You can learn the system. You can spend years studying the game.

Or you can pay attention.

A script can tell you what to say. A system can tell you what to do next. Neither can tell you what a particular moment means, or what it might become.

And that’s the difference.

The pre-game is not about controlling the outcome. It’s about recognizing the possibility in front of you and deciding whether to act.

No script. No system. No Ippei handing you a premise.

There is only the moment as it actually exists, and your ability to see it clearly.

And then the second part.

It was up to me.

Not to escalate. Not to optimize. But to decide.

The game ends when something happens. The pre-game ends when you decide it should. That is all.

Dedication:

For pre-gamers everywhere. May you get a little action tonight, baby.

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On Craig Finn’s “A Bathtub in the Kitchen”

I. Opening Notes

This is my third piece dealing with the songwriter Craig Finn. I wrote at length about his song “It’s Never Been a Fair Fight,” and a little more in my piece on Katie Park and The Bad Moves. Although my primary allegiance will always be to Dylan, if I am totally honest Finn is my favorite songwriter. Dylan is a transcendent force, world-historical, and therefore also sort of unapproachable. Finn is down-to-earth—I can imagine having a drink or three with Finn, whereas Dylan would probably have his hoodie up.

So, for the record: my favorite band is Luna, my favorite songwriter is Craig Finn, and the greatest is Dylan. My three favorite Finn songs are “It’s Never Been a Fair Fight,” “A Bathtub in the Kitchen,” and “Killer Parties.” This post takes a close look at “A Bathtub in the Kitchen,” with the aim of explicating both the song and Finn’s delivery.

II. Premise and Setup

“A Bathtub in the Kitchen” is track three on Craig Finn’s 2019 album I Need a New War, released by Partisan Records. For my money, it is not only the standout track on the record, but one of the three greatest songs of my all-time favorite songwriter. The song is ostensibly about an old friend of the narrator (I will refer to him as C.) called Francis, but it’s also about trying to make it in the big city, and about moving on from the past. Making it—or not making it—in the big city is a classic Finn theme.

III. Verse One — The Accident and the Past

The song opens with a report of an accident. The nature of the event is unspecified, but my best guess is an overdose.

The lightning clarity typical of Finn is all over these four lines. We learn that C. and Francis have a relationship shaded by deception, that they still move in overlapping circles, and that both originally came from somewhere else. The final line delivers one of those Finn-isms that cut both ways: city transplants trying to recreate a tiny town, while C. himself is still entangled in the very past he’s trying to escape.

IV. Verse Two — Money, Health, and Elegance

By the second part of the verse it seems Francis has recovered somewhat, and C. has met with him again.

Finn’s concision is astonishing. In eight lines we understand the dynamic completely: C. has money he could give, but knows it’s probably enabling; Francis is perhaps an addict, though neither man states it. We also glimpse Francis in better days—The Parkside, elegant companions, a life C. once aspired toward. And already C. is trying, gently, to pass responsibility to someone else.

This touches something universal: the friend who needs more than we can sustainably give. Or the times we’ve been that friend ourselves.

V. The Chorus — Youth, Longing, and New York

The chorus arrives, one of Finn’s most moving and beautiful. His voice rises on I was drinking, I was dancing, packed with emotion.

This is a flashback to young C. in New York—broke, naive, crashing on Francis’s couch. Finn underlines C.’s passivity three times: waiting, hoping, desperate for New York to ask me out. That phrasing is brilliant. It captures the essential vulnerability of arriving in New York with dreams, no plan, and a subway map.

The memory sends me to my own first visit to New York. Stepping out of the station at 42nd Street into the noise, I felt the shock of sensation—an energy I still feel every time I return. I’ve been to many great cities—Tokyo, London, Singapore, Amsterdam, Melbourne, Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur—but there is nowhere like New York.

And in a city like that, it can be nearly impossible to get your footing. Everyone is already in motion. Finn evokes that perfectly.

VI. Verse Three — Present-Day Francis

Back to the present:

Francis has been in New York for twenty-three years, and C. nearly as long, since he knows the number by heart. The “bathtub in the kitchen” signals the classic New York starter apartment—a detail so iconic it becomes the song’s title. Francis still goes to the roof for better reception. Phones get disconnected. Life is fraying. C. registers all of this without overt judgment, but with distance. A sense of “there but for the grace of God go I.”

VII. Chorus Reprise — Guilt and Gratitude

The chorus returns with slight changes—“doing things I shouldn’t”—and doubled gratitude: Francis let me crash out on his couch. Repetition becomes confession.

My father read my “Fair Fight” draft and, not knowing anything about Craig Finn, immediately said he sensed a strong midwestern Catholic vibe. He was spot-on. Finn grew up Catholic in Minnesota; guilt, forgiveness, and redemption run through almost everything he writes.

There is also a phenomenal YouTube video of Finn performing this at the Murmrr Theatre, and during the post-chorus especially the performance takes on a spiritual intensity you can’t miss.

VIII. Post-Chorus — The Confession

The lines:

I can’t keep saying thank you, Francis…

These cut two ways. C. is saying:

  1. The couch surfing was long ago, and he has done what he can.
  2. And simultaneously: I’m not the person who can save you.

The confession is directed at Francis—but maybe just as much at himself.

IX. Verse Four — The Old Ropes and the New Distance

The final verse returns briefly to the past: Francis teaching C. how to navigate New York nightlife—befriend bartenders, tip big on the first round. These are the rules of the game. C. remembers them vividly.

Then we snap to the present: Francis’s job rumors, his terrible landlord, the $200 that will “help him breathe a bit easy.” And the repeated question: Francis, do you even have a plan? C. has given him money, but not much, and not with much faith. The trust between them has frayed into obligation.

X. Outro — The Spiritual Release

The outro repeats the confession. Again, it’s worth watching the Murmrr Theatre live version to feel how Finn leans into this. It becomes a kind of secular prayer, a release and a resignation all at once.

XI. Closing Thoughts

“A Bathtub in the Kitchen” is about youth and aging, about friendship and how it lasts and decays, about guilt and human selfishness in the face of real need. More than anything, it captures what it feels like to try to survive in New York.

I think this song, like “It’s Never Been a Fair Fight,” is more personal for Finn than some of his strictly narrative pieces. The narrator here has “made it.” Finn himself is an immigrant to New York, from Minnesota, and has sampled deeply from the nightlife he writes about. Few songwriters have chronicled nightlife with more range, consistency, or compassion.

Even if C. can’t keep saying thank you, I can. This song moves me in ways I’ve tried to describe here but still can’t fully encompass.