Revenge of the Gamer

In my last post I mentioned that I was heading down to San Diego to marry my mother.  Makes me sound like a hillbilly doesn’t it?  I went down to perform the ceremony at her wedding and it ended up classy and beautiful.  I was nervous the whole time leading up to it, but when it came time to perform all the nervousness fell away and I really felt like I did it justice.

I was given a lot of compliments from the guests, and my mother was moved to tears.  This being the second marriage I’ve performed you’d think I’d have been less nervous, but I had good reason to worry about making a mistake.

Why?  The wedding was on Saturday night.  I woke up Saturday morning feeling like I was going to die.  I’d had a few beers the night before, but nothing to justify how I was feeling when I woke up.  I didn’t have a headache, but I couldn’t keep anything down and spent a good hour laying on the bathroom floor shivering after I got out of the shower.  It felt a lot more like food poisoning than a hang over.

I’d gotten up at about 8am and had planned to meet one of my oldest friends and his wife for breakfast.  I don’t get a lot of chances to see Trevor, and was pretty annoyed that I had to cancel breakfast just because I was sick.  The problem was every time I stood up I felt dizzy and more often than not sprinted back into the bathroom to be sick again.

I spent all day trying to nap and feel better, and by the time the ceremony started I was at least able to stand without being sick.  That was about the extent of it though.  I felt like death warmed over during the ceremony which was why I was terrified I’d mess up.  To add insult to injury while I was being sick I popped a blood vessel in my right eye, and now look like something out of a Wes Craven movie.  It’s healing, but it was bright red for the wedding.  Fortunately, no one seemed to notice.

I was able to reschedule with Trevor and Amanda and had breakfast with them Sunday morning instead.  I had a great time hanging out with my sister Alicia, and loved seeing my mother and John, but the best part of the trip was definitely breakfast with Trev.  We’ve been friends since I was a freshman in college and how we met is one of my funnier stories.

If you remember my post A Mullet and a Bloodstained Jacket I’d arrived in northern California as something of a minor celebrity.  The first girl that I dated was named Danielle, and that relationship lasted for the rest of my junior year, and over the summer leading to my senior year.  Just after school started I broke up with her, mainly because she’d decided we were going to get married and live in a little house with a dog and two kids. 

At age 17 I couldn’t think of anything more terrifying than that, especially with Danielle.  She was the clingiest woman I’d ever met and I still shudder and look over my shoulder in terror when I think about her.  But damn she was gorgeous.  Danielle was all dark curls and soft smiles, which was why I’d stuck around as long as I did.

So, I ran for the hills.  I broke up with her and enjoyed my new found freedom…for about three days.  During my junior year my friends and I had been kicked out of the library for playing Dungeons & Dragons, and we’d relocated to the bleachers as a place to hang out.  We were an accepting bunch and attracted all the freaks, misfits and geeks until there were a good twenty people hanging out there every day.

At first it was a sea of unwashed male gamer geeks, but as more guys came the girls started trickling in as well until we basically formed our own clique.  They looked to me as a sort of leader and right after breaking up with Danielle I learned one of the perks of being the alpha male.  All the girls want to date the guy in charge.  I had my pick of the girls in our little group, and ended up with a tall leggy blond named Casha.  She had a great smile and a bubbly laugh, and like Danielle she was gorgeous.

Casha and I dated for the rest of my senior year and had only two things in common.  We liked smoking weed and having sex.  Unfortunately, Casha turned out to be dumber than a bag of hammers.  I liked the physical intimacy, but we really had nothing else in common and the more I got to know her the less I liked her.  She obviously felt the same way, but neither of us wanted to break up and go through the effort of finding someone else.  So, we’d have sex every day in the bushes on the edge of campus and we’d get high whenever weed was available.

Things worsened in the relationship to the point where on Friday night’s I’d ask my father to lie for me and tell her I was grounded.  That way instead of hanging out with her I could hang with my gamer geek friends and play Dungeons & Dragons, Shadowrun, Rifts or one of the many other games we loved.  My friends were mostly single and looked at me like I was crazy of course.  Who gives up sex to hang out with his buds?  The guy who gets sex all the time and doesn’t like the woman he’s having it with.

I dated Casha until the summer after I graduated when I met the woman I’d eventually marry, Darlene.  I’ve always hated people who cheat and couldn’t do that to Casha so as soon as I realized I was falling for Darlene I broke it off with Casha.  By that time it was very mutual and we left each other on good terms as neither of us was interested in continuing the relationship.

About two years later I get a call from Darlene (now my wife) who tells me that one of her friends from work wants to come over for dinner with his new girlfriend.  The friend was a guy my age named Trevor, and apparently he liked to roleplay and watch Anime.  I’d met him once when he threw a party, but didn’t really know the guy.

While talking to Darlene I hear a very familiar voice in the background.  Sure enough it was Casha, and she was dating Trevor.  They came over for dinner which was incredibly awkward.  Her and I spent all evening trading barbs (she started it!) while poor Trevor and Darlene looked at us like we were crazy.  They pretty quickly figured out the full extent of our former relationship, and that was the last time we hung out with Trevor’s new girlfriend.

Trevor, on the other hand, was a really cool guy that I had a lot in common with.  We started gaming together on a regular basis and as I considered him a friend I proffered a warning about Casha.  After we’d broken up I’d learned that she cheated on me, and let him know he’d run the same risk.  Their relationship didn’t last too long, and after they broke up he moved in with Darlene and I. 

We were roomates for years and even after we moved apart have maintained our friendship.  Trevor is still one of my best friends and when we had breakfast it felt like no time had passed.  We were both kids again and all the years fell away.  Thanks Trev…I had a blast.