FAQ
©2020 by Parker Poindexter
The knob of our garage side door thwacks the wall so hard that that even with my speakers cranked to earsplitting I can hear the 1960’s vintage glass pane shimmy in its frame twenty feet behind me. The jolt of annoyance I feel, however, melts in an instant to joy when I pick up a signature pattern of footfalls. It’s my seven-year-old baby girl Millie, whose barely audible but very cute conflation of skip, hop, and slide along the tile entry puts a big smile on my face, but it’s tinged with guilt because she’s loped in more than once to entice her daddy out of his make-believe video game world and into the street mushball game with the neighbors. How many times total now I’ve promised to come out very soon? I’ve lost count; her entrances commingle in my mind with memories of recent game scenes and visions of future ones that persist in holding me in thrall to the giant screen.
Millie’s happy steps and cajoling voice reach my ears under the music and gunfire blaring in my far corner of the garage. This area I’ve converted into a man-cave I call In Cahoots East, after a nightclub I used to go to all the time when I was at UCLA. In Cahoots was often where I could be found when I should have been elsewhere. I wasn’t there to drink; not much, anyway. It’s just the house music was great and my friends were regulars. But even with my schoolwork pushed to many an all-nighter my grades remained strong enough to land me at graduation one one-hundredth point from cum laude status. I’d have gone over the top if In Cahoots hadn’t been so seductive.
Anyway, my speakers are on the wall flanking a whopping flat screen, all a boulder’s throw from me because I moved the recliner in front of the sofa. Almost anything that’s not coming at me from that wall would get zip attention from me. But my beautiful little girl? She bops in and gets a piece of me right away.
A mere one one-hundredth percent more of a piece might very well have made a big difference.
But my prized home fricken theater system- well, it was my brand-new baby, my pride and joy, the best system on the block, no doubt. The whole neighborhood even, I would’ve bet. Eighty watts of amazing pure, clear quad stereo from mini speakers with only two-inch woofers. Continuous eargasm city. Not to mention sixty-five inches of gorgeous LCD low-glare UHD three dimensional four fricken K mind-blowing visuals. The day after I got it I and my buddies had an All-Star game party, and Sundays they started coming over for the Phillies games. I and my wife, Kendra, had just had our first date night at the movies out there, the two of us alone with that awesome picture and sound- the night just before Millie’s last dance in from the mushball game to see me. Millie’d gone to sleep over at her best friend’s and Kendra and I were right up close in the extra-wide recliner and we had one large blanket around us both, popcorn with real butter- not that cheap microwave or eight-dollar multiplex crud, I mean the really good stuff- Jolly Time organic, with fresh melted real butter- and a nice bottle of Pinot Grigio. Tell me what’s better than that: my wife cuddled up with her head on my shoulder, quality snacks, and a decent vintage? But, twenty minutes into the movie, I nodded off and my Pinot dumped out of my glass into my lap. Kendra’s combo of sweet laughter and sympathetic moan woke me, but I got to chide her because she’s the one who picked “The” fricken “Notebook”.
What I wouldn’t give to be able to watch it cuddled up with Kendra now. That or any other movie.
Anyway.
The next morning.
It’s a beautiful sunny Sunday, and I’m alone in ICE. I.C.E, that’s In Cahoots East-
My God, Millie’s only seven years old-
I’m already in my third hour in front of my beloved big screen playing Vigilante Party. Being up extra close with the recliner still in front of the sofa from the previous night for the movie, I feel like I’m right in the action and I am the MAN. The recliner back is full up, my spine is stick-straight, not even touching the chair back, and I’m in rapt concentration. For nearly three months every Sunday morning has been for practicing my new religion of Party before my sixty-five-inch altar in my very own house of worship, In Cahoots East. I’ve been showing up every other day of the week too, for at least a little bit. Today, on this most beautiful of summer Sundays, I feel ready and able to ice anyone in ICE. I remember thinking that morning if those Catholic sisters who taught me in middle school could see me in my perfect posture and dedication and accumulating wisdom before my altar- oh boy, would they be so fricken proud. They’d see their lessons had stuck and they’d earned their ticket to heaven.
Bad joke. No disrespect intended. Really. They were nice enough ladies.
Anyway, Kendra had been carping me that I only had good posture when playing my game. Everywhere else I was a sloucher, according to her. Which was hard to accept was true; I loved being with my family and felt justified denying that I slouched too much at home. I had no problem sitting straight up at work all day every day- but then again with my boss camped right across from me in her office with her floor to ceiling inside picture window- let me tell you, a neurotic shrew of a boss with a big picture window inspires you always to sit straight as well as say everything she wants to hear, same as a nun. But you still have just no chance. Everyone knows that type of boss that can’t handle people with smarts and ideas and prefers their underlings to be lackeys just like them and never a threat by having the nerve to display an ability to think. Lest it be thought I have a problem with female authority, I know there are plenty of male asswipe bosses out there. Anyway, Gloria the shrew, through her almighty picture window could see things that weren’t happening, hear things in the wrong way, too. And when I would politely try to explain the facts, she’d interrupt me with “The team needs you to be more cooperative and self-aware.” She even called me combative once, and she put all this in my performance review. So what chance did I have at a promotion, or even a decent raise? Three percent I got, cost of living only. Bosses, man, I swear. Why are they so mental?
Anyway, I’d never even wanted a first-person shooter before, but then I got a pop-up ad with the cover art featuring this one criminal in particular. It’s Gloria, my boss peeking out from behind a picture window holding an automatic rifle! Her spitting image, anyway. So I hustle right down to Tarzhay to buy the game. Who could blame me, right?
So, on this Sunday when Millie dances in over and again, I’m driving around this big city that kind of looks like Philly- another reason this game has me spellbound- but number one is I’m on the hunt for Gloria.
What Kendra had really been saying- I recognize now- was that around the family I had come to seem in highest devotional mode only when I was before the altar. Mind, body, and soul totally committed, then and only then.
Needless to say, I won’t be playing that game ever again. Nor will I ever be caught anywhere sitting any way but up straight and stiff from now on.
So- in my third hour in front of my big LCDeity, reverent good boy that I am, I’m bent on ridding the world of a piece of scum. Now, picture this- because I haven’t gotten around to putting curtains or blinds or something over the big garage window, the altar reflects the room. Not all, though, and not all the time, because in Party you travel your character around the city, where it could be daytime or night; sometimes you’re inside, sometimes out, so different parts of the screen are always changing between lighter and darker, and therefore different parts of the room reflect according to the flux of the story. When I hear Millie come in I’m already kind of tense, as always when on the hunt, and when she whomps the side door that riles me just a TINY bit more- really, that’s all- because Millie is such a good girl overall and even though I’ve told her before, quite a few times, to take it easy on doors it’s so cute the way she scoots when she’s excited. She makes perfect my Sunday morning in my plush man-cave, my game controller in my lap, my bare feet up on the recliner’s open footrest, a jumbo mug of coffee on the little side table. Millie coming in to see me always ignites a lovely glow from my chest up through my neck and face. But I continue being oh so busy manipulating a stick plus ten buttons and switches strewn about all curves and recesses of the holy controller. I’m gripping it tight with both hands like my real as well as my virtual life depend on it.
I call to Millie- loud, because of the speaker volume, but I’m polite- “Mills, little softer with the door next time, please?” I say it in a very nice way, with a real smile in my voice so she’ll know I’m no less happy that she’s approaching. But- I do not turn around to look at her. I don’t take my eyes off steering through the big parallel stupid universe.
Pretty soon I catch her reflection in the darkest part of the night scene, and finally my eyes move a whole couple of degrees- for a flash, no more, lest of course I miss catching sight of my target. It’s long enough to catch a peripheral glimpse of Millie making a hop out of her cutie patootie scoot to land by the coffee table in front of the sofa, which both stick out from beyond my chair back. It looks like she’s putting something down on the table.
I have no excuse for not turning around right when I heard the door thunk, to see her and welcome her, because of course at all times she should have been a bigger draw than the fricken game. And I damn sure should have been aware of everything she was doing the whole time in the garage. Even if it was only in a reflection, I could have seen my daughter onscreen when she first came in, because daylight comes through ICE’s side door window as well as the big window in that same wall. But, oh God, driving around in that other world to get to and kill the make-believe goons protecting Gloria and then the lady herself was OH so much more compelling. A good dad would have dropped the holy controller and headed for the door with his kid. A good dad sure wouldn’t be having to share all this with a shrink.
All right, so I’m driving along a very dark suburban street, and even though my primary focus is the hunt for Gloria I catch Mills’s reflection moving back behind the sofa a ways toward the door, and then it spins a 180 and goes right into a run toward the sofa back. I know what’s coming because I’ve seen this stunt a hundred times, but she doesn’t look like she’ll get up enough speed. I see from her hips to her feet rotating upward into a wobbly handstand on top of the sofa back, on the part the altar can’t reflect behind my chair. My right big and number two toes stranglehold my left big toe and my feet fidget harder because as many times as I’ve seen her gymnastic moves they put me on edge that she could get hurt. But do I slow down on the controller? No, because my big screen is the rear-view mirror I can track my kid with well enough, I figure. I come out with a tense, “Careful, Mills,” and go right on steering my car into an alley, my hunt for fictional enemies proceeding uninterrupted, virtual gun in hand. Poised to kill.
In a second my girl, still a little off kilter, resumes forward rotation, and she disappears behind my chair back. “Mills, you okay?” I call out, as I jam on my virtual brakes at the building where I think I’ll find the charming Gloria. I’m thinking to myself Man, is my kid something else? She is AWESOME. As soon as my car comes to a stop I look up and see Mills’s barely visible reflected hands already thrust up in victory above and behind my chair back.
My lungs start to fill to power a sigh of relief that she’s safe after plopping into a sitting position on the sofa, but I spot this punk goon who thinks he can keep me from my ultimate target and he shanghaies my breath into a gasp. My heart pounds and throat pinches as I fire out the window multiple times and down he goes. “Man, you scare me sometimes,” I shout to Mills, to make sure I’m heard over the music score, trying to make my voice friendly, with a little laugh, even, and next thing I know Mills’s chin comes to rest on my shoulder, from behind me. Gotcha, pussy I’m snickering in my head as I zoom in on the dead goon. I move my real eyes down a little to both Mills’s and my faint reflected faces. They’re broken up by the close-up graphic of the bleeding dead body; I can’t make out my daughter’s facial expression, but when she puts her hand on my other shoulder I take that to mean she’s liking what she sees. I go ahead and start the gun reload sequence, and I finally take a whole split second to turn my head to Mills and she’s looking in my eyes- not the reflection, but my real eyes- and she looks worried. I’m back on screen verifying my available shots total goes back up when a, “What’s wrong, honey?” comes out of me.
“Which guy scared you?” she wants to know. Not like she’s being tough and taking my side against the goon; she sounds genuinely sympathetic and worried for me, and I love that we’re showing mutual heartfelt concern.
“ “I meant you, honey. I was a little scared for you. I don’t know how you get in one piece through that flip, but- definite ten, as usual.”
My sweet Millie corrects me. “Daddy, it’s not always a max of ten,” she says with her sweet, gentle laugh. She’s chiding me for having made this mistake umpteen times. “That was in the olden days. Gymnastics moves have different maxes now,” she reminds me, with customary unwavering patience through my protracted effort to remember that simple concept.
In my mind, with my eyes onscreen, I believe I’m totally reciprocating with total support when I say, “I’m sorry, honey, I know that, I won’t forget again.” But my primary focus remains directing my busy hands to run my virtual self towards the building where I’m pretty sure I’ll find the dragon broad. It’s then I notice my poor, overworked fingers are getting sore and tight and so are my wrists and I know they’ll cramp up soon if I don’t give them a break. Sometimes I would worry about carpal tunnel setting in or my fingers getting permanently gnarled. But a smartass goon or moron punk or my skank with her Glock might pop into view any second, and what of more importance could I possibly have to consider? I decide it’s safe to treat my hands to a quick break from his holiness the controller and give ‘em a good shake while I keep scanning the scene on screen. Three seconds and my hands are back on the job, a little looser, but they tighten back up even worse the more I play. And my response? I concentrate on ignoring the strain and ache while my abused fingers and hands and wrists steer and shoot and manage every other function. Mind, body, heart, and soul in devotion- to Party, number one, instead of to what’s going on in my real, immediate surroundings with my little girl.
Then Mills- her arm- I feel it around my neck. “Daddy, come outside and play with us. Please?” she says. “The whole block is out there. Mr. Levinson has to leave but he’s waiting till you come out.”
My little nova’s rapid breaths are pulsing, and she’s radiating real world heat and humidity and excitement. Come play with US, she says to me. In other words, We’re more fun than those game people. As I open my mouth to offer some version of soon, she gets another wild hair, lets go of my neck, and launches into a cartwheel. Here we go again, I’m thinking, and I tense up a bit. But since she does this all the time and she’s never taken more than a minor spill I know I should keep quiet. I see her reflection better now in a larger dark patch of my screen, and I feel a real strong natural draw to turn to see my ardent little athlete do it live, but somewhere in the decrepit UHD world before me some cocksure goons with assault rifles and one gnarly bitch boss who I’ve been after for almost three months are bent on taking me down. My dominating feeling is I have reached this level of the game seven times before and seven times I have failed to take out the boss.
A “boss”, in case you don’t know, in gaming lingo, is a character you have to get past to move up to the next level. So- Boss Gloria who I was so combative with at work is now starring in Party as this burly, pear-faced chunky blob of not very bright looking lilac-haired, flabby-titted street trash. Except for the blue hair and the flabby tits, and this virtual bitch is like twenty years younger, but it’s Gloria. The same dopey, smug, condescending face. I swear, the resemblance is crazy. My mind persists in obsessing on If I do this, tomorrow I can walk into work and be able to not let Gloria get to me.
I do get that my kid is dying for attention. Through some kind of miracle, I do choose to risk my fricken precious virtual life and limb while my eyes dart leftward, followed by the rest of my head. Mills’s feet hit the concrete floor off the carpet and she’s angled a ways off her intended straight line. My heart jumps because if she falls she could get really hurt, what with ICE’s floor being concrete except for a softish Berber under the furniture. She bobbles a couple steps, but ends up solid on her feet.
I guess I should give myself proper credit. It must have taken at least a whole uninterrupted two seconds, maybe even three, to watch her do all of that. Yay for me.
So. I turn back to the altar and say with enthusiasm, calm and nice as I can, “Nice one, Mills. Try to stay on the carpet next time, though, okay? Like at the gym, when you’re always on pads. Points off for out of bounds, right?” Gymnastics is her thing, and darned if I’m not gonna support her.
She says, “Okay, Daddy. I wish you’d seen my home run. It went all the way down the block to Stacy’s house. Please will you come out now?”
My eyes widen then, as onscreen I think I spot a bit of shadow appear from around the end of a block wall. I’ve been at this particular abandoned office building many times and I know every nook and cranny of it like I know my own. I mean my own real live workplace, and, yes, the one my avatar is based at in the stupid game, too. I’m nothing if not thorough, right? As they say, God is in the details. I’m sure I know every possible place a goon could be hiding, so on this occasion, my eighth of being on the brink of success, how could I possibly fail to nail the ones protecting my fine lady, and then the lady herself? From behind the wall an arm with gun in hand pops out, which elicits a raspy grunt from way deep within me. While I’m squeezing off most of my clip I raise my voice for my daughter to hear me over the earsplitting volume of my gun. “A home run, really? Mills, my little nova, I’ll come out real soon, I promise! I just have to nail this- this- triumvirate of scum.”
I hear her utter softly “Trarumvirate?” with a sense of wonder in her voice. “TRI-UM-virate, honey,” I shout. It’s a- um-”. My effort to explain is vanquished when the rest of the goon that goes with the arm pokes around the wall. I pull the trigger three times in rapid succession, and yelp, “Yeah, baby!” with glee as he crumples. Once he’s on the ground my fourth shot wastes him for sure. My peripheral vision picks up Millie once again right next to me and when I turn to her she’s looking serious in the direction of the screen. She right away senses me looking at her, turns to me, and smiles back. I conclude She’s proud of me. Cool.
“We’re having fun outside, Daddy. Come and play? Please?”
I turn back to the altar, smile, and say, “I will, I promise. Very soon.” There’s a lot of heartfelt sympathy and longing in my voice, there really is, and I throw in a kiss to my hand which I transfer to her cheek without looking. Can there be any doubt of my sincerity? Regardless, inside my head I start to hear Kendra’s voice admonishing me for too much time spent in ICE alone with Party. I hear then my own inner voice replying Ken, it’s just a little in the evening before bed, a few hours on Saturday and Sunday. Can’t I have a hobby?
Kendra and I, we argued about this a lot, since very soon after I started playing. I kept denying I had a problem because why should I not be able to give up the game when I wanted? I’d promised Kendra that very Sunday morning, again, and I meant it, that once I got past my current level I was done. “I’m NOT addicted,” I repeated to her when she’d said that word again after breakfast. I even thought at that moment that she was being just like Gloria, seeing and hearing something that just wasn’t there. I said to her, “I’ll show you I’m not hooked. I’ll crush this level today and then I’ll throw the game in the trash.”
I hadn’t yet shared with her all the details of the character I was after. I would have, if she’d ever looked close enough at the game package or saw the boss on screen. In hindsight now, of course she’d have been justified to get furious that some dumb doppelganger was my reason for spending so much time cut off from the family.
So. I’m getting close to my goal for the eighth time, and Kendra’s voice in my head is harping on me as I skulk around inside the altar.
How much I wish I’d listened. God, I’m so worried Kendra’ll cut me off for good. I’d be helpless. I’d do anything- anything, to make up.
Anyway, I manage to shut out her voice and get back to keeping my promise to her, and the one to my child to come out and play. My next thought besides the scum I need to kill is that a nova is just a phase. Just like Party it’s a temporary phenomenon, so it isn’t apt to call my daughter that. I decide that what she is, in fact, is my Higgs boson- the building block without which my life could not be complete, and nothing would make sense. I make a mental note to toss that clever bit Kendra’s way if she rides me again about all the gaming time I’d spent. I love Mills, nothing could change that. She’s forever. And so are you. Party was just a hobby and it’s over now. Could you please be more supportive, and show the commitment to our family you thought I was lacking?
Yup, that’s what I thought. Just call me Gloria’s protégé. Why, oh my God, why could I not be aware enough to know what was happening to me, becoming as mental as my boss?
Anyway, I turn to check on my Mills, the in-the-flesh version, and she’s gone. Stretching my neck a little farther I see she’s standing by the coffee table sipping from a soda can. That’s what she had put down on the table. I catch her squinting eyes flicking all over the screen from behind her partial veil of stringy, sweaty hair. Problem is- I fail to catch another somewhat prominent detail because of my chair’s high back- the fact that Millie has been in grave danger every time she’s come to get me that morning. What I do notice is that I’m just as worked up and sweaty just from pressing ten buttons over and over in my nice air-conditioned ICE as she is from playing ball in the sun. Maybe I SHOULD get outside, and get some real exercise. My instincts, again, are no match for Party.
I will never again fail to hear the wisdom of the voices of reason in my head.
As soon as my eyes are back to the screen, Kendra’s voice cranks itself right back up, not loud enough to drown out the Party electronica, but it does have a commanding presence. I’m hearing her the time she told me the direct attention I give to Mills when I’m playing Vigilante Party could be measured in nanoseconds. My oh-so-clever response in my Carl Sagan impression: “Yeah, billions upon billions of them. Hundreds of billions.” Pretty good, huh? There I am on another gorgeous Sunday neglecting my family to play inside alone, reminding myself how glib and clever I can be, thinking why does Ken not understand that Vigilante Party is expendable? I really can quit any time I want. I squelch Kendra’s voice out of my head again to concentrate on squeezing off some more rounds, and curse as I miss.
“Sorry, Mills,” I shout. “I meant ‘shoot’.”
“I’m right here, Daddy,” she giggles from my left.
I look over for an instant and indeed she is next to me. She offers the soda can at a tilt in front of my mouth, so I need not divert a hand from my controls. “Want a sip?”
That’s my sweet kid Millie, always thoughtful, always ready to give and share. What if I had offered something of mine, like my undivided attention?
“No, but thanks,” I say. “Sorry I shouted so loud. I didn’t see you come over.” I don’t interrupt my prowling for my goons and bitch and I fire a warning shot just to remind them I’m there. I prowl, and prowl, and prowl, and finally find a second to look to my daughter and start saying that her cartwheel looks better since I last was at her gymnastics practice. I’m latched back onto the screen for the last part of the compliment.
“That was a long time ago, Daddy. I’ve practiced a lot.”
“Sheesh, that WAS a long time ago,” I say. That night I was late and missed her first unassisted back walkover on the beam because freakin’ Gloria decided five PM on Friday was the perfect time for my performance review. I feel my lips tighten and my breaths get shorter and my throat starts to throb. But if I’m gonna get this thing done and get outside to play, I gotta hold myself together. I snap back to attention. Time for another reload.
A few billion nanoseconds really were all I diverted from Vigilante Party that morning. My own mind was murmuring to me the whole time that the world in which my ebullient daughter tumbled and danced and hit home runs was the higher priority, yet the parallel universe onscreen kept dominating. It just kept mining deep within me for a mother lode of- what? Anger. Resentment. Stupidity, maybe? More like total brainlessness, the kind that only advanced technology could bring about.
Now I’ll never get to chase down one of my little slugger’s line drives.
My peripheral vision shows me Mills’s hand with the soda can as I feel her forearm come to rest on my shoulder, her perspiring head and body continuing to emanate the heat and pleasure of the real world. I see her reflected head, floating in an ephemeral darkest shadowy patch of the ever-changing inner-city HD shitscape, turn toward me.
“Who’s winning outside, Mills?” I ask, and resume firing warning shots. I’m trying to put extra caring and sweetness in my voice as I keep looking to murder the boss. “And where did you get that little soda?” It’s a short, squat can, about half common size, like I’ve never seen before.
“Mr. Levinson gave ‘em to everyone. WE’RE winning. Me and Mr. Levinson and Stacy and her dad. Mr. Levinson has to go soon, so you can take his place. Daddy, you’re sweating. Sure you don’t want a sip?”
“No, thanks, honey.”
She presses the cool can to my neck.
“Oh, that feels nice. Bet I could hit that little can at a hundred feet. I’m shooting really good right now.”
“Could you shoot it with your real gun from that far?”
The somewhat important detail I had missed-when I first saw her behind me drinking her soda- was that I’d left my Colt New Frontier on the coffee table. And now, with her up next to me, I manage not to notice that she has it in her left hand.