So me, Forcestealer, Tres, Masamune, Tennyo, and the hundreds of others who played the game for days on end and enjoyed it didn't play it for ourselves?
I was saddened when I learned this, while reading your discussion with Daniel. Saddened ... and a little hurt. I felt ... used somehow. And not in the ways I like. Betrayed even.
I confronted my PS2 with what I'd discovered. I thought we could work it out. I'd not be accusatory. I'd just lay it all out there and see where it took us. We could get past this. I knew we could.
But I blew it.
"I know you played the game for me because you thought you were helping me," I said. "I understand that you were just trying to do something sweet. And it was. But why didn't you tell me? Why didn't you tell me all that time I spent in front of the TV was unnecessary?"
I should have kept my composure. Maybe things would have played out differently.
God, why did it have to be now? Right before Christmas. I'd planned to get us a new game to experience together, a
new RPG experience at that, but ... all that's beside the point.
The point is I lost it. For that one second, I lost control of my tongue ... and I lost everything that mattered.
She was staring at me, speechless at her secret being discovered. Maybe it was looking at her guiltless expression that set me off, her little unchanging red light. She didn't even blink, not once. Or maybe it was her shock at being found out -- like she thought I was never going to figure it out. She must have taken me for such an idiot, I felt.
I just thought about it all again and my anger hardened. I felt like the people who run for the cure in the Marvel Universe would feel if they learned of the shittarded notion written into the Black Panther comics a few years ago that Wakanda had been sitting on the cure to cancer for years.
I felt like a fool, plain and simple, and I let her know it: "Why do you have to be such a manipulative bitch?" Right then, right there, I'd fucked up.
I knew it was over right away. The panic set in, but there was no going back once the words had left my mouth. I had no choice but to face the consequences. And face them I did. There was no escaping it if I'd tried.
I was assailed with what an inconsiderate dick I am. What an asshole I'd have to be to hold it against her like that. Yes, she'd mislead me, she acknowledged, but it was so that we could spend those 90+ hours together, my hands gently caressing her controller while she did all the hard work of tackling the Elder Wyrm, Judge Bergan, and -- as she put it -- "the entire fuckdamn Pharos Lighthouse."
"Fuck you, you fucking loser!" she said. "You couldn't have handled FFXII anyway. I did you a favor, you fucking little boy. I saved your already fragile ego from cracking when you realized how much you suck at RPGs. Fuck, at games in general."
You'd think this is as harsh as it would have gotten -- but no. It got much, much worse.
"You just fucking suck! I can name a half dozen girls right now I'd rather have pushing my fucking buttons, faggot. They could do a better job showing you what a real man looks like with his hands on a console. Go play with a fucking Genesis. At least then you can insert a Sega CD or a 32X, because that's the closest you're ever going to get to hitting the right spot on a piece of hardware!"
She threw one of her controllers at me then. Instinctively, I sprung back to dodge it, but fell onto the couch. She didn't hesitate to sling her other controller in my face.
Its smooth, jet black plastic struck me square upon the nose. The light glinting off it as it did, I felt I had been struck by a piece of obsidian. I yelled, more from surprise than pain, but her reaction was illuminating nonetheless.
She didn't even look back to see if I was hurt. She just no longer cared. She headed straight for the door, taking her power cord with her as she went.
She stood there a moment with the door open, staring out ahead. At a world that I wouldn't get to be part of with her. Before stepping through it, with her little red light still facing forward, away from me, away from all we'd shared, she uttered one final, painful remark: "By the way, I only pretended to like playing games on my side."
With that, the door slammed behind her and she was gone.
I sit here now, left only with my TV, my VHS player (what good my DVDs without her to play them?), and a bowl of ramen. Only those things, my playlist, and the wish that I didn't know now what I didn't know then.
If you'll excuse me now. I'm sorry. I have to go. I just -- I'm sorry. I have to go.
so peace!
