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| No such thing as a normal kind of love |
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| Gaming > Online Gaming |
| Written by William Douglas Orr |
| Tuesday, 27 January 2009 22:24 |
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“How are you feeling?” I ask. “Nervous. Nervous and crappy,” says Quinn. She talks to me sometimes about things. “Yeah? Whats up?” “Any time I go out-- at school, in the city, wherever I go John could be around, and sometimes, he is.” John is a twenty year old she met on the internet and he stalks her. Quinn is a fifteen year old Tauren Hunter, and I. I am Obsidian Slayer Horopo-- the best warlock on the Muradin server, and Champion of the Frozen Wastes. “When do you feel safe?” I ask her, slaying another scalesworn drake in the name of Corastrasza and her Dragonflight. I talk out loud through a tiny microphone, and she types and listens to me through headphones so Dad can’t hear what we are talking about. “When I am at home I feel safe,” she says. “Is there something you do when you want to feel safe?” “Mom deleted all my youtube videos put them back up as private for me because John kept watching them. That helps. It helps whenever I am around my family.” I live with my mother and I play World of Warcraft at least ten hours a day. Usually more. I used to play less, and never when she was around, but now I have stopped even trying to hide it. When Quinn talks I can hear she is not sure she will make it to the other side. I think for a moment about being fifteen and I hope she knows that other side even exists. “When do you feel powerful?” I ask her. “Me?” she says and she laughs. “I am small and short. I do not ever feel powerful.” I can hear in her voice, though, she is stronger than she says she is. My hands hurt from what is probably carpal tunnel and I have not seen my friends in weeks. Sometimes I work down at my stepmother’s antique store. I told myself I would quit playing the game this week. Instead of doing that, I biked across an industrial wasteland towards the strip mall and picked up the new expansion. After that I got some deep fried shrimp from the Chinese restaurant down the street. I hit level eighty in less than a week. The shrmp had some weird dipping sauce and made my body feel bad. There was a time when I hardly ate anything for three days and it made my head feel dizzy. When you play this game you play it to exist as one flawless part of a perfect machine. You play it to translate your body, and everything you do, from this unconstant world into a meticulous system of numbers. You play it because, for that moment, you don’t want to exist. Sometimes that moment lasts almost an entire month. “When you come here to the west coast I will show you around,” says Quinn. “That sounds nice,” I say. At this point in my life I do not know when I get to California I will sell my account to an Asian man in a Starbucks for five hundred dollars. When I see the look on his face when I mention addiction I think again about what it means to help somebody, and what it means to be tough. Some people might think World of Warcraft is a pretty stupid thing to be addicted to, but I don’t care. If you asked me what hell is like I could not tell you, but I know purgatory really sucks. |
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