by Ben Maddox
Oh...God. Is the door locked? I don't feel safe here. Are you sure we're safe? Okay....WHAT WAS THAT? Just a car? Okay....God.I'm trying to be calm, OKAY? I need a drink. Have you got any scotch? No? Valium? Yeah... okay...I'll have a cup of coffee.
Where do you want me to start? From the beginning? Yeah...sounds like the right place to start...but before I begin let me say something. Pray. Go home tonight and get on your knees and pray that you never see anything as hideous as what I saw tonight. Pray that when you're dead and gone and no longer there to protect your children; pray that they never see anything as hideous as what I saw tonight. If there is a God, and I hope there is, pray to Him that this abomination will be wiped off the face of the earth.
Sure, I'd heard him talking. I didn't think anything. He was just a normal guy, y'know? Someone to have a few beers with. Talk about girls. I didn't see it. I just didn't see it.
So, yeah...he invited me. He actually invited me to that. Sent that email into my inbox! I won't use that account again. OKAY! I'LL CALM DOWN!
Well he invited me and like an idiot I agreed to go. I RSVPed yes.
Did you see the crows? No? There were definitely a lot of crows that day. I remember thinking that it was strange that there were so many crows around. On every lamppost and letter box. Standing on their blistered legs, rolling that grey skin over those black pits in their heads and calling in strangled voices to which ever manifestation of the diabolical was their master.
I'd gone through my normal routine. I'd shaved. I'd brushed the areas that needed brushing and pulled on my clothes. I turned on my music, loud. I was trying to pull myself out of a crimson funk I'd fallen into that day. I just didn't feel right in my skin. I see now that I'd realised that something was very wrong.
The sun was dipping below the horizon as I left the house, the burned hydrogen leaving a blood smear across the sky. I pushed my headphones into my ears and pounded my way to the underground.
The platform was dead. The tunnel a gaping, black anaconda waiting to swallow the train. The doors opened and it seemed that the normal passengers had been replaced by the inmates of Bedlam. The harsh white light shining on irregular clumps of hair and the brown rotting stubs of what once were teeth. I sat in the middle of this harlequinade of the damned. I turned my music up. I closed my eyes. I tried to shut out the world.
The sound of metal on metal jolted me out of my solitude. It was a beggar. Clothed in rags and smelling of stale loneliness. He rattled his tin at me. The few coins making a noise that jarred my nerves. I came to, fumbled in my pockets and dropped a two Euro in his tin.
A wide grin spread across his face, some flakes of skin fell from the ragged collection of hair around his face that I'll generously call a beard.
'Ah'
he said in a voice that could have sanded granite,
'That's just the right amount for some news.'
He placed his rancid lips close to me ear. The sour milk stink of his breath clouding my vision. He hissed,
'They use wood and plastic there.'
Then he loped off dragging his useless foot behind him and before I had collected myself enough to push him for more information he had disappeared through the automatic doors to be swallowed by the night.
I ducked into an off-license when I got off the train and drank a beer down in one gulp. It calmed my nerves a little, made the neon shine a little less harshly as I walked down his street.
There was music coming from his apartment as I approached. Good music. That and the beer had taken away my apprehension. I was calm, I felt okay. I rang the bell.
The door swung open and he stood there. His skin was wax and his eyes were glazed over and in a voice that seemed to be coming from somewhere else he said,
'Hey...Good to see you...Come. On. In.'
GOD...DON'T MAKE ME DESCRIBE IT! I FEAR FOR MY SANITY!
Okay. OKAY! I'M CALM! It's...hard to describe.
There were people. At least I think they were people. Some were wearing costumes, others in shabby, black t-shirts with pictures on them. They sat at tables and on the floor and in between them all were boards. Card boards. These boards had vile, carved pieces on them. Some in plastic and some in wood and they were all transfixed by these boards. Some sat in solemn adoration of their abominable God and others shrieked in orgiastic, heathen pleasure. And it was then I heard it. Those damnable words! Words I hope I will never hear again,
'Do you wanna play 'King of Tokyo?’ I think we're one short.'
I like my friends. That’s why they're my friends. We share similar interests, we share similar politics and we like a drink. Most of my friends aren't gamers, though. There are one or two I've met through gaming that I would call friends but mostly I have nice people I game with and then I have my friends.
I love a good proselytize. I'm mouthy and self-righteous. It's a dangerous combination. It inevitably results in me making my opinions known whether anyone wants to know them or not. I'm also a newish gamer. I have the wide eyed enthusiasm of the new convert and I just want everyone else to realise what a great time can be had playing games. I want them to know and I want them to understand.
I am not a fan of exclusivity. I hate then notion of being 'in' or 'out'. It's why I want to burn down every Business Lounge and VIP area I see. The home is the private sphere. Outside, in the world, we should mingle; meet people maybe learn how other people think. It’s much easier to hate a person if you know a little about them first.
Exclusivity is a problem with any hobby. There are those in the know and those on the outside looking in. There can be such a high barrier of entry and derision of anyone who is new or inexperienced.
I haven't seen this in board gaming. Almost everyone I've met has been welcoming, helpful and most importantly, patient. I've never seen a rolled eye; I've never heard and irritated exhalation. I sometimes get mocked for making a stupid decision but I deserve that. I'm an idiot. I made a casual entry into this world and it sucked me in. I truly adore this hobby but there are some that don't and no matter how hard I pull my proselyting boots on, never will.
I have a history of trying to pull all of the disparate strands of my life together. I have always had separate social circles, each of a different stripe. These different groups fulfill needs that a split personality like mine requires but I like them all. I find them all valuable and it is only a short step away from wanting to bring them together.
The logic runs thus: These people are very different from each other, true but they all have one common bond. Me. They all possess some personality trait that appeals to me and I clearly have some personality trait that appeals to them so it makes logical sense that they would get along. No?
No. I have tried to do this at many different times in my life and the result has always been the same. They mix, initially. They exchange pleasantries and then slowly but inexorably, like oil and water they separate to opposite ends of the room and I spend my time ferrying myself between them whilst my neurotic violin scrapes across my cerebellum telling me that I'm showing one group too much attention and the other, not enough.
So why I thought I could mix my board games friends and my civilian friends is completely beyond me.
I hold bi-monthly gaming parties where lots of people come, play games and drink too much. It’s a lot of fun.
My civilian friends started to put pressure on me. They wanted to know why they hadn't received invitations to these affairs. I was reluctant because of my past experience in bringing disparate groups together but they were asking so I thought, why not. These people were adults, they could look after themselves in social situations and they might actually get something out of it.
They arrived late when the party was in full swing. There was Space Cadets: Dice Duel in one room. The Resistance: Avalon in the kitchen and Aye, Dark Overlord! in my bedroom.
They walked through the party aghast with a faint look of disgust on their faces. They were surrounded by people they had worked hard to avoid for years. They were the minority here. It was uncomfortable. The ingrained division and sub-division of adolescence carries on into adulthood and old prejudices are very hard to shake. They are called formative years for a reason. I don't hold it against them. It's perfectly natural to fear what you don't know.
They rushed through the flat and onto the balcony for a smoke. There they were alone, they were safe but there would come a time when they would have to enter. They would have to engage.
They did eventually peel themselves away from the balcony and I tried to ease them in with some entry level classics.
We tried Skull & Roses. Then The Resistance: Avalon. Then Mascarade. Solid crowd pleasers. All to no avail. They sat, they tried, but the balcony constantly called.
After time enough to seem polite they left. It was sad. I'd tried but I still wonder if I tried hard enough.
I did some thinking over the next couple of days. I dissected the situation. Was it their intransigence? Was it my choice of distractions? I tried to apportion blame but couldn't come down satisfactorily on any side. After some time I reached a conclusion. That we all have different facets to our lives and sometimes we cannot, no matter how hard we try, make them mesh with the people we love and we should accept it and move on.
It still does leave a problem. One of self-perception. I think that , sometimes, the roles we define for ourselves, the ones we hold onto and are crucial in molding our interactions with the world can be limiting and can constrict our enjoyment of the world.
I think I'm out of the conversion game.
People rail against being pigeon-holed but the older I get, the more I realise though cramped it may be, often a pigeon hole is the place where people feel most comfortable.