My name is Josh and I'm a gamer. My wife Patricia and I have been married for nearly nine years now. That's nine whole years of happiness, sadness, anger, sleepless nights, terror, anxiety, and bliss. She can be a real handful at times— a real hothead—but we always make up in the end and that's why I love her so much.
Anyway, there was one point in our marriage when things were rough. Like, really rough. It was about seven years ago. At the time, we had no kids, and so the only thing keeping us together was dedication, trust, and the prohibitive expenses involved in getting a divorce.
So let me tell you something about myself: I'm a big gamehead. I've loved games ever since my mother let me out of her belly. I have issues with my mother; that's not really integral to the story, though. Ever since I wrapped my tiny diaper-wrapped thighs to the seat of Super Hang-On, I've been hooked. I've owned more consoles than I can count over the years: Coleco, Nintendo, Sega, Commodore, you name it. But there was a lacuna in my gaming history as I entered my late twenties and then my thirties, as modern gaming just really didn't grasp me. I would say WoW was the last game to really capture my interest for any substantial amount of time.
Now back to the story. It was seven years ago, and at the time, console gaming was dead (feel free to prove me wrong). So any gaming I did was on the PC. I mostly played emulators, or picked up some random things in the Steam sales. As I've said, my wife and I were going through a rough patch. We had gone from an argument every week to several arguments a day. We'd argue over the most trivial things: whose turn is it to wash the dishes, why isn't there any toilet paper, there's crumbs in the bed, what is this floating in the bathtub, etc. I could see our relationship really heading for the edge of a cliff. So I suggested we try some couple's activities; she said yes.
After trying out a few nighttime activities such as pottery, ice skating, and even, yes, the arcade! (she doesn't really like videogames, though), we finally settled on something we could both enjoy: dancing. Now I've been a big fan of dancing ever since "Dance Dance Revolution: EXTREME" (which contains my favorite DDR track of all time: "PARANOiA Survivor"), and so I was happy to go with her to couple's dance night. Little did I know that this would cause more harm than good to our relationship...
The problem with me is that I'm a little timid when it comes to social occasions. As a boy, I was often shoved into garbage cans at school whenever I was caught by my arch nemesis: Bob "Stiffy" Clifford, a large boy, nay, man, who reached a towering six foot two and well over 180lbs by the age of seventeen. This did not bode well for me, who at the time had barely made it into the triple digits, weight wise. I remember those long periods spent trying to unbend myself and break free from the can's cloying grip, my nostrils filling with the scent of rotting banana peels and room temperature Capri-Sun. Eventually the janitor would find me and let me out; he would ask, "Why jou let that boy pusha you around, eh?", to which I would reply, "Maybe I fricking like it in there, ever think of that? Huh? Did ya?" It didn't make much sense as a retort, but you try thinking of something witty after being bent into a horseshoe and shoved into schooltime snack detritus for forty to eighty minutes. The janitor would smile wistfully and push his mop silently into the dead school halls, and I would return home to more scoldings by Mother, who was convinced I was having a sordid affair with "one of those strumpets from over the tracks." I tried reassuring her that my existence was invisible to almost all my schoolmates, strumpet or otherwise, but she wasn't having any of it, rest her overprotective soul.
So as you can see, I had good reason not to be the life of the party, when that party eventually did arise. The dance party. With me, and my wife, in the story to which I now return. We entered the hall—it was a ballroom, really. Big enough to hold a good hundred or so people. There were twenty to thirty couples there that I could see, running the gamut from twin-BMW-driving uptown snoots to garbage-picking walking biohazards; my wife and I ranked somewhere in the middle. In the first half of class, we would learn a simple dance routine, and in the second half we would trade off with other couples and practice the steps with strangers, before finally coming back to our S.O.s to close the night off with a full rendition of the dance.
At first it was stupendously fun: they played a variety of classic hits, ranging from Gloria Estefan to Michael Jackson. None of that new garbage without any lyrics that's all heavy bass. The only problem started to arise around the fifth or sixth week, when I noticed my wife getting somewhat overly familiar with one of the other husbands—he had come over to take first dance with her three times in a row at this point, and I was starting to become irate. He was about the same height as seventeen-year-old Stiffy Clifford, and had tight curly red hair with those alien facial features that gingers tend to have. The guy gave me the creeps like none other. I, on the other hand, was always lumped with short, fat Consuelas whose idea of 'dance steps' consisted of shifting their fat, cloven hoofs just enough to stand on my toes. I was determined to end this blatant effrontery and show this ginger dunce just what was what.
"Excuse me," I said.
The ginger continued to stare at my wife, smiling that idiotic grin of his.
"EXCUSE. ME."
"Huh?"
"Listen, pal. This is the fourth time you have invited my wife to dance. Don't you think you should give someone else a chance?"
"But we dance great together. Don't we, Trish?"
Trish? She didn't let anyone call her Trish. Patricia, Pat, Pash if you're lucky. Never Trish.
She was smiling sweetly back at him. Back
up
at him.
