Shoot Club: The Curious Incident of the Monkey in the Night-Time
TomChick - Columns - Comments - 10/11/04
In fact, it was my straight-guy paranoia that almost saved us from Douglas. When he said we should meet "for coffee" the next afternoon, I demurred, suspecting a pass. "I'm supposed to go help my girlfriend carry some heavy stuff," I lied, making a point to reference a fictional girlfriend.
I had just met Douglas five minutes ago. Me and Trevor were at EB, reverently looking at the coming soon boxes for Halo 2 and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. Douglas sidled up to us and asked if you could play those games on a PC. Douglas was a good-looking guy, which fueled my suspicion that he was gay. Partly out of jealousy, but mainly out of wishful thinking that I don't have to compete with these guys for chicks, I figure all good-looking guys are gay.
"Ha, that's funny," Trevor said to me, "You should write about that." He then told Douglas who I was, introducing me by name.
"Oh yeah, I know who you are," Douglas said, "I remember you. You're the guy who gave that game everyone liked that bad review in that magazine, right?"
I knew exactly what he was talking about. I get this every now and then, but it's usually an email.
"Yeah, I remember now," he continued. "Boy, that must be hard. You write something like that and by the time it gets printed, you realize it's wrong. How does that feel, knowing that you were wrong and it'll always be out there."
"Well, I wouldn't say it was wrong. Just that--"
"Yeah, but you know what I mean. Everyone but you loved that game. Where I come from, bro, we call that wrong." He smiled broadly. His teeth were large, straight, and too white.
"Well."
"Anyway, you probably learned a lot from that, hey?"
"Yeah, you could say that."
"You probably got the what-for from all kinds of people, so you don't need me busting your chops, hey?"
"Well, that's the truth."
"Hey, you want to go get a cup of coffee with me sometime? Maybe tomorrow afternoon?"
Douglas emailed me a few days later. He explained that he had his own Shoot Club and he said I should join him some time, me and my big friend. And I could bring some other guys if I wanted. He said he had quite a layout and that I should at least see it. He said it was inspired partly by stuff I'd written. He said he'd be honored.
Being as prone to flattery as the next guy, I accepted and convinced the other guys. "Think of it as a field trip," I said. "We're taking Shoot Club on the road this week." Only four of us ended up going. Peter asked if the rest of them could just hang out at my place instead.
Douglas lives on the west side, where the houses are a lot nicer. "Are you sure this is it?" Trevor asks as we pull into the driveway. "I didn't know these kind of people played computer games."
Douglas greets us at the door. There's a little tan and black dog behind him, looking at us.
"Hey, Doug," Trevor says.
"No, no, bro, it's Douglas. Doug is what you do to a hole. My name is Douglas, thankyouverymuch."
He shows us in and immediately herds us past the real parts of the house and down into the basement. The little dog follows us.
"So here's where the magic happens," he says with a sweep of his arm. There are twelve identical desks topped with twelve identical 21" monitors. There are Aeon chairs in front of about half of them.
"Whoa, what are they?" Trevor asks.
"The computers? Let's see," he looks up at the ceiling and reels off specs he doesn't seem to understand, "each one is a 2 gigahertz pentium four processor. My tech guy told me that AMDs aren't reliable. They have one gigabyte of RAM. There are ATI radeon 2800s in each one. We used to have geforces, but my tech guy said these were better."
"Your tech guy?"
"Yeah, it's this guy Louis I know. He comes over and sets everything up. I have his pager number for when things don’t work."
"They're all yours?" I ask. At our Shoot Club, the six computers are cobbled together from bits and pieces, many of them second-hand, plopped onto whatever horizontal surfaces are available. One of them is on a nightstand I got at a garage sale. We sit on folding metal chairs and sometimes put the couch cushions on them when our asses get sore. Something might die or go wacky and me and Trevor spend a half hour trying to fix it while the guys give me a hard time about how much my computers suck. I wish I could hire a guy named Louis.
"Oh yeah, they're all mine."
"Where'd you get them?"
"I don't know. I can ask Louis if you like." He volunteers to flip open his cell phone.
"No, that's okay. It's just... Well, they look very nice. You just up and bought them all?"
"I know what you're thinking. And I have to tell you something about me." He puts his hand on my shoulder and looks me straight in the eye, like he's going to confess that he's my real father or something. Or worse, that he's a Christian and God gave him the computers and can he tell me about his personal experience with Jesus Christ?
"I'm an alcoholic." It's not as bad as the Jesus thing, but it's close. He pauses, the hand on my shoulder, the eye contact. I wonder if I'm supposed to say something. He's just standing there. Maybe he is gay. A gay alcoholic. Maybe he's about to try to kiss me in front of all the guys.
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