They played on into the night. Fighting, making discoveries, gathering treasure, uncovering secrets. All in all, having a blast. Each successful roll of the dice was a badge of honor. Every failure, a slap of shame. For Jon, this was all about the triumph, about his character becoming the best. When his guy was doing well, it made him feel good, as if he was doing good in life as well. Perhaps it was a poor substitute for actual achievement, but Jon didn’t care.
With the others, things were slightly different. Michael enjoyed controlling the world, being the man in charge. Louis . . . well he just liked to hit things. The idea of his over-muscled warrior decapitating some monster thrilled him. And Kathy— he didn’t know exactly why she played, but considering how violent her character, Black Leaf, acted, she must be burning off some sort of frustration.
“Why the hell is there an Iron Golem down here?”
“Two of them,” Michael corrected.
“Two, Christ. And we got this here gas comin’ out of the treasure chest . . . ”
“Maybe we should run?” offered Kathy.
Louis lifted his character sheet and said with utter seriousness, “Big Jim Umbrage, he don’t run from nobody, no how.” He nudged Jon, “You ready to rock?”
“Fuck yeah!”
“Cast giant form on me.”
They played up in the midget room for the atmosphere mostly. The place had a sense of complete isolation, a leftover box of a dead generation. The walls and ceiling were well over a hundred years old and in that ruined building it seemed easier for them to slip into their mythological fantasy realm.
Michael had found it after the group was run out of Louis’s place by his strict and loud Anabaptist parents. They had listened to some half-baked tele-preacher rattle on about the evils of D&D and were convinced it was a tool of the devil. Of course, they also believed that about most music, TV, films, toys—He-Man in particular for some reason—and popular video games, like Pac Man and Donkey Kong. Hell, even Root Beer Tapper gave them pause.
For obvious reasons, Jon and Michael’s homes were out. Kathy gave only vague reasons, but they got the impression she was ashamed of her parents. So they used the midget room, which turned out to be an ideal place. There they didn’t need to be polite or watch their language.
“Goddamn son of a bitch, hit that fucker with a fucking lightnin’ bolt before he knocks the shit out of us.”
Or clean up after themselves. The room was littered with crushed cola cans and candy bar wrappers. Or respect the property. The building was practically a ghost in any case.
They gamed on and on, well past the witching hour, until their first yawns indicated that they might have to stop. It was easy to lose track of time while in the game.
“Alright, I guess we better pack it in,” Michael concluded. “We all got school tomorrow.”
“You mean today.”
He laughed, “Yeah.”
“And ah got practice.”
“Have fun with that.”
“Whatever. Just ‘cause you all couldn’t make the cut—”
They carefully exited the head house. Michael almost slipped on some rickety stairs, but he grabbed the holes in the wall and steadied himself. Jon felt joy slip away. Back to the grind of life. Back to the family bullshit. Every time the group started up, he wished they would keep going until they all passed out, then wake up and start over.
Once out, Kathy tugged Jon’s sleeve. “Can you ride with me home? It’s later than usual.”
“Sure.”
“Oooh-la-la,” joked Michael and rode off. Louis followed, pulling huge yawns that stretched out his face.
“Oh, whatever,” she called after Michael. “It’s not even like that.”
Of course not. Not even the rotund girls with pizza faces, like Kathy, wanted Jon. And forget about the ones he actually lusted after, the Playboy bunnies and Sears underwear models. They haunted his dreams and stoked his loins, leading to many a sticky night. Jon had spent too much time watching the idiot box and believing that the big lie would come true. That just around the corner the magical supermodel would beckon towards him, lusting for his body. All he wanted was one incredibly hot woman to have sex with all the time. Him and the rest of the male population. He despaired of ever getting sexual pleasure from anything other than his right hand.
Jon had run across some abstinence literature once that described his virginity as a “noble choice” and one of the “greatest gifts he had to give.” What a load of horseshit. It was a millstone. A giant obstacle he needed to knock over if he was really going to start living his life. At that moment, he would happily let some toothless crack-whore gum his cock into an explosion just to get it all over with. So he could finally feel like a man and stop lying about being a virgin.
They rode on through the chilly streets. An occasional neighborhood bar would flash by, the local drunks all clustered together yelling about the game or whatever, but otherwise the roads were dead. Everyone was tucked away somewhere warm, away from the night air, where Jon should have been.
It took a while to get to her house and Jon was near exhausted when they finally zipped up to a two-story townhouse done in a neo-colonial style. It was on the cusp of a much more affluent neighborhood, where the houses were wider, the bars almost nonexistent, and the corner groceries didn’t universally proclaim, “We Accept Food Stamps.” It was the sort of neighborhood Jon felt he belonged in.
“What do your parents do again?”
“My dad’s the director of the Museum of History and mom teaches archeology at Buff State.”
“Nice place.”
“Yeah, it’s okay,” she replied and walked over to him, eyes nervously looking at her fingers. “Thanks for the escort.”
“Oh, no problem.”
She gave him a quick peck on the cheek and walked away. That caught him off guard, even though it shouldn’t have. The signs had been there. He had just missed them. There was his opportunity for sexual exploration, but Jon shrugged it off. He was getting too tired to care about anything. Jon watched her walk down the path to her house and enter. Then he cycled away into the night, yawning all the while.
CHAPTER 3
What Rough Beast
Father found him on the way back from Kathy’s house.
A town car, freshly minted and fully loaded, pulled up to Jon on an empty street. It sparkled under the streetlights and the yellow eyes of its driver sparkled along with it. Jon’s father stepped out. Well-muscled and trim, he was always perfectly dressed with neat crisp lines. He never seemed to sweat or get dirty. He always knew what to say and how to act, to get what he wanted. Perfection clung naturally to him. From that perfection came a confidence Jon could never hope for.
Punishment was looming. Mother found the problems. Father corrected them. He towered over Jon like a giant. The teen shrank under his shadow. The elder fixed him with his eyes, seeming to drink in Jon’s every weakness before saying, “So you didn’t do as you were ordered.”
He let that dangle like a viper between them.
“What do you have to say for yourself?”
Jon’s head hung down, his ball cap shading all but the lower jut of his chin. He felt anger at having to be in this spot. What the hell does it matter if I went off with some friends? Then shame at having failed in other’s eyes. It was my job. I was told to do it. Then acceptance that he needed to be punished. Better take it then. Sooner it begins, sooner it’s over.