Because a capital management company is closing TAY, I’m moving my blog posts from there to here. Not that tumblr is a particularly trustworthy company, but hey. At least they’ll be available here.
Starting about a year and a half ago, my friend John and I made a series of recordings. John would come to my apartment in Koreatown, Los Angeles with a large plastic tub full of audio recording equipment– microphones, a Zoom multitrack recorder, wind screens, miniature tripods. We had a shared google doc with topics and ideas that we could work out in advance, mostly while he was at his office job. The idea was to start a podcast. Well, kind of. The idea was to talk about games and make recordings, and then see about a podcast.
Part one went well. Any next parts are just next parts, for now phantasmagorical. But, as I’m the kind of idiot that can’t enjoy something without analyzing it, I continue to play games with analysis in mind. I’m not a game designer, but I am a sociologist. And so while I play I look for cultural significance and narratives in game design and my experience of play.
I play a lot of games. I can’t tell yet if I play more or less now that I’m finished writing a doctoral dissertation, but I think that I’ve been enjoying games more lately. Writing might be the same, but I haven’t been doing much for myself.
There’s good work going on in video game criticism, design, and scholarship these days. I’d like to contribute to it, although I don’t plan on making particularly serious contributions. A lot of what John and I recorded was bullshit, two white guys talking about videogames at a kitchen table. We talked about reskinning a game according to an album (I suggested Deus Ex: Mankind Divided reskinned for David Bowie’s Low); about how much we enjoyed The Witness even though Jonathan Blow has awful opinions; about the sound design for the DLC for The Evil Within. We talked about some retro games, riffing on the terror of Kirby’s Adventure and the animal to human to animal transformations of Ninja Spirit (the Turbografix game). And mostly we digressed and chatted and occasionally hit on a good idea for two or three minutes.
I like the idea of placing some words, video, images, or stream somewhere. This seems as likely a spot as any, together with the associated accounts on twitter and twitch. So next time, instead of putting up a set of tweets about the thrilling and manipulative simplicity of Excitebike, Out Run, and Hang-On, I’ll put something a little more considered up here. I’d also like to invite some friends from near and far to have some conversations with me about what they’ve played and what they’re playing, and those conversations can find a home here, too.
And now, in a bout of seasonal celebration, a very special scary story from Optional Objectives.
Cluster
Opening up my calendar, I could see that the next session was going to be a snooze. An intake for family counseling. Two parents, one kid. Marital strife, behavioral problems. A mom and dad looking for phrases like “dysfunction” and “attention deficit” and most of all “medication.” If that makes me sound burnt out or uncaring, fine. Let’s see you handle social services for more than a month. For more than a decade. Let’s see you get scolded as a hypocrite for needing a cigarette a few times a day while you ask about other people’s bad habits. Or vomited on by nervous children whose real issue is having asshole parents. Or getting vomited on by anxious parents with asshole children. I’m here to help, and everyone needs to vent, including me. At least I had a minute to look at my phone, vape in my office (with a fan and an open window, I’m not inconsiderate), and lean back before the next family in crisis walked through my door.
The Brandts. Matthew, Kate, and Nic. I greeted them, passed out some forms, asked if Nic needed help filling his out. The kid was 12, but I don’t want to presume too much about literacy or anything like that. Without raising his head, Nic mumbled, “It’s fine,” and started filling in bubbles and writing short answers. All of them were sitting as far apart as possible. Me, on a chair in front of my desk, Matthew on the side of the couch closest to the door, Kate leaning on the opposite armrest of the couch, and Nic in a chair closer to me. I could see him marking down a string of “not at all likely” bubbles next to listed symptoms and behaviors. No smoking. No vaping. No drinking. Not sexually active. No problems. Fuck off. He had wisps of sandy blond hair sticking out from under a Chicago Blackhawks hat that was pulled comically low over his face.
I leaned over, and Nic rapidly recoiled, saying, “Hey, I’m still filling this out.” His eyes admonished mine, surrounded by a face exploding with acne. Poor kid. Then, to his Mom, “Did you smell that when we walked in? And who opens their window when it’s cold and raining?”
“Nic, honey, it’s okay.” Then, turning to me with some apprehension, “Doctor Nakrani, these forms are confidential, right? Who has access to these forms?”
She had a pale, freckled face, large, mousey brown eyes, and a forehead crinkling with worry.
“That’s right,” I replied, “They’re subject to the confidentiality of this office. Myself, our records division, and the other clinicians are the only ones with access, unless there’s a very serious legal intervention. It’s not doctor, by the way, and just Greg is fine.”
Matthew leaned forward, with his gut pressing up against an old but very comfortable looking flannel shirt. “Okay, fine, Greg. So listen.” He held my eyes with his, two slate gray orbs with a yellowed tinge. “I know this is just a public assistance kind of thing, and that Nic’s school counselor recommended that we come in, but still, I think we’re open to it. Right?” He looked over at Kate, who nodded and shrugged at the same time. “Just, you know, we’re not all about that touchy-feely stuff.”
“Yeah,” piped in Nic, “no touching.”
“Okay,” I replied, “well, this is more of a talk therapy kind of thing, so it’s not like there’s going to be trust falls or an obstacle course or anything like that.” I smiled, but nobody mirrored the sentiment. “Heh, alright. Well, let me just take those forms and we’ll put them on file.” Nic handed his over, while Matthew leaned over to take Kate’s, brushing her hand. Then he bent far forward to hand them to me. Did I say his eyes were slate gray? No, he had the watery brown ones. I looked up, and it was Kate with the slate grey ones. And they were more bloodshot than yellowed. This crowd was really into some uncomfortable eye contact, except, of course, Nic.
“You’re not even going to look at them?” Nic snapped. “Mom, he’s just going to stick them in some folder. It’s not like the questions were important, anyway.”
Matthew kept leaning forward, his elbows on his knees, sighing. “Nicky, that stuff is important, maybe Greg is going to look at it along with what we talk about and help us with some things.”
“Whatever.” Nic slouched further in his chair, legs straight in front of him.
“That’s right, Matthew. I use these forms when I write up notes about sessions to see if there are things that we can figure out together. So,” I stood up, stepped over to my desk, and lifted my laptop, bringing it back to my seat with me. “So, I see that you’ve had trouble at school, Nic.”
“Yeah. Other kids won’t stay away from me.”
“Do you want them to stay away from you?”
“Obviously.”
“What’s that about?”
“Nothing.”
I arched an eyebrow at the adults on the couch. Kate shrugged, “oh, you know, middle school is just hard.”
“It’s not hard, Mom, it’s stupid. Everyone there is stupid and they don’t know how to just leave someone alone, even when you ask.”
“Nic, you can still talk to your friends,” Matthew said. “You’ve been going to that school for years.”
“Yeah, and nobody listens to me! They all think it’s like it was last year, but it’s not.”
“What isn’t like last year?” I asked.
Nic looked up, red in the face. He waved his hand in a broad circle around it. “THIS. God.”
I looked calmly at him. It was bad, sure, but not the worst that I’d seen. A visit or two to a dermatologist and he’d probably be fine. Maybe the medication wasn’t going to be adderall, after all. Maybe all the kid needed was some aquaphor. To Nic, I said, “Alright. I’m sure you’ve already heard about how these kinds of things happen, but they don’t have to be forever.”
“What do you know about it?” Nic slouched back down, sliding further in his chair. “Just some idiot normie.”
“Nicky! Come on,” Matthew interjected, “we said we were going to give this a chance, right?”
Kate leaned over and put her hand on Matthew’s shoulder, sweeping her straight brown hair over her shoulder. “That’s right, we’re together in this.” I looked over at Nic, who didn’t respond, and then back at Kate. Wait, now she had something more like a copper brown perm. And Matthew had long, straight, copper brown hair instead of close, dark curls. I paused. A little too long, apparently.
“So... do we just wait now, Greg? Hello?” Matthew raised his eyes, which were somewhere around light brown and bloodshot. Kate’s were matching. I realized I was staring, and kept staring. Greg’s belly receded, his flannel getting baggier, and Kate’s blouse started too look a little tight. What the hell?
“Uh, excuse me, I just, um. Can you give me and Nic a moment to talk, just to feel things out?”
“Oh!” Kate replied, sitting up. “Oh, of course. That makes sense, he might be too embarrassed about the whole puberty thing with his parents.” Nic shot a glare in her direction. “We’ll just sit in the hall for a minute?”
“Yeah, sure. There’s, uh, coffee or water or tea out there if you ask Jenna at reception. I’ll just...” I rubbed my eyes. Kate’s hair was back to blond, and Matthew had the dark, short ringlets he had walked in with.
“Oh, sure, alright Greg, just let us know when we should come back in.”
“Yeah, it should just be a couple minutes. Thanks,” I said, holding a thin smile. Had I switched in a weird cartridge? But I hadn’t switched anything, I was still vaping sweet melon. Nicotine. Maybe I should just cancel the session and plead illness for the rest of the day.
The door clicked shut quietly.
“See? It’s like that,” Nic said, from under his hat.
“What, your parents?”
“Yeah. They touch each other and, like, become the same person. That’s what it’s like for them.”
“Excuse me?”
“I saw you staring. They act like it’s no big deal, like they don’t even notice.”
I leaned back in my chair, “I mean, having two parents who are in agreement isn’t exactly the worst thing...”
“NO. You know what you saw. Their hair. Their bodies. It’s gross.”
“Uh, Nic, um.” I paused. On the one hand, I was distressed by the whole hallucinatory moment. On the other, it was worse that this kid seemed to be saying it was no hallucination. Should I stick with a standard, “Oh well, adults can get pretty close,” line, and keep ignoring the whole thing? Or do I go with the kid?
“Okay Nic. That was a little weird.”
He perked up, arresting his slide onto the floor. “What was weird?”
“Your, uh, your parents. Did their, uh,” I lowered my voice, “did their hair change color for a second there?”
“Not just that! Didn’t you see the whole thing? It’s nasty!”
“Uh, well, I wouldn’t say ‘nasty’...”
Nic snorted. “Of course you wouldn’t.”
“... but yeah,” I concluded, “that was weird.”
“Yeah, and now the same thing is happening to me!”
I blinked. “With your parents? Does that happen if they touch you?”
“Ugh, no! With everyone!”
Nic leaned over, and, holding my gaze, whipped out a hand and grabbed my wrist. It felt like my arm was falling asleep, pinpricks and fuzz. Staring at Nic’s hand, grasping tightly, I could see hairs sprout on his knuckles. Looking at mine, they had suddenly become sandy blond. His messy sprouts of hair were increasingly salt-and-pepper, gray and black.
I shouted, “What the hell?!” and fell backwards out of my chair. Nic kept an iron grip on my wrist, screeching, “This is what it’s like! People just won’t listen to me!” My face itched. Nic’s was sprouting a beard. Mine felt dry, greasy, and suddenly hot in patches. Nic was more mature by the second, pimples clearing and being covered over by graying curls.
I grabbed his hand, prying at his fingers. Less immediately shocked, I remembered he was just a twelve year-old, and a skinny one, too. But I was also getting skinnier, and Nic was filling out his baggy, rumpled hoodie and jeans. “Fuck you, old bitch!” Voice cracking up and then down into my tenor. He was grasping at my hands as I tried to pry him loose, now on top of me, wrestling me, equaling my strength but with a better position and shock on his side.
My office slammed open, with Matthew and Kate spilling into the room. “Nic! Let Dr. Nakrani go this instant!” Kate shouted, to little effect. I could feel his/my hands on my throat. My/Nic’s face leering down at me, a 12 year-old skull with 43 years worth of crow’s feet and tobacco-yellowed teeth. He kept pressing on my throat with both hands, and Matthew and Kate ran over and pulled him by the shoulders. “Nic! Let. Him. Go!”
Everything was blending together in my blurred vision. My skin was roiling, tremors shooting through my body as my bones stretched and muscles fluctuated. I felt Nic’s hands, more hands, my hands, their hands, our hands grasping my neck, grasping one another. All at once three pairs let go, Matthew and Kate falling backwards, finally pulling Nic away with them. I gasped, my vision slowly widening from a pinprick, exposing the amalgamation of the three of them, bodies becoming more distinct from my own, if not each other.
“Nic, what did you do? What did you do?” Matthew hollered, in a pitch far higher than his previous baritone. Kate was also yelling in an identical pitch, panicking. She swiped the folder from my desk, she and Matthew mostly distinguishable only by their clothes. As a cluster they bundled Nic out of my office, barreling through the waiting area and out into the rainy Chicago evening. I braced myself on my chair, gasping, burning, feeling my beard thicken and watching my waistline return.
That was a year ago. Today, I was shaving my beard down. It’s time to change up my look, maybe work with just a mustache. But under the hair on my cheeks, I noticed something new. A pink acne scar, badly healed.
