Shoot Club: The Curious Incident of the Monkey in the Night-Time
TomChick - Columns - Comments - 10/11/04
"Now I know that makes a lot of people uncomfortable, but it's important that you know that." Out of the corner of my eye, I see Eric slowly ease the twelve pack of beer behind his back. "Where you're standing used to be my wine cellar. Even after I got sober, which was eight months ago, I kept the wine cellar, figuring I could just be a collector. But my sponsor convinced me it wasn't a good idea. So last month I sold my collection, used the money to buy these computers, and remodeled the cellar into what you see now. If I was still a drunk, we wouldn't all be here. We'd be at a bar someplace and I'd probably be cheating on my wife again."
His hand is still on my shoulder, so I know I'm supposed to say something. I nod and the first thing out of my mouth is "Well, I don't really drink. That much."
At which point Trevor blurts out, "What about this beer that we got? I mean, I guess you don't want one, but is it cool to keep it in your fridge?"
"I'd rather you didn't, bro." He finally takes his hand off my shoulder. "My guys will be here in about twenty minutes, which will give me time to give you boys the orientation. No alcohol, and no food down here, as it gets in the keyboards. Here's the schedule." He refers us to a whiteboard on the wall. The evening is broken into thirty-minute blocks with the names of specific Unreal Tournament 2004 and Counter-Strike maps. Counter-Strike? Who still plays Counter-Strike?
"Now, of course, this is open to change with a majority vote. But my vote counts as five."
While he goes over the rules -- we can opt for a fifteen minute pizza and soda break once every two hours. no shouting after 10pm because his wife will be in bed, no inverting the mice, no changing the controls or graphics settings, no kicking the dog even if it tries to hump your leg, and so on -- some of Douglas' friends start to show up. They stand quietly off to the side while he explains everything. I can tell my friends are getting a little nervous, wondering what I've gotten them into.
"And that's pretty much it. Any questions? No? Okay, let me introduce you to my crew." He stresses 'my' as if to emphasize that it's going to be an evening of us vs. them. It feels like some kind of set-up, like someone's about to suggest a "friendly wager".
We take our assigned seats while Eric goes out to put the beer back in the car.
"These chairs rock," Trevor says. "Why don't you have chairs like this?"
"For the same reason I don't have a house like this," I tell him.
"Wait just a minute here." Douglas aborts the countdown. "Who is Death Feist?"
"It's DeathFyst," Trevor corrects him.
"That's you?"
Trevor always uses the name DeathFyst in multiplayer games. We forget how silly it sounds, although we're fully aware that it sounds silly. We're just used to it. It comes from when we were all in high school. Well, Trevor was in college, but he was still hanging out with us because he was our DM. On the last night we were allowed to play at Bobby's house, Trevor was showing us how when you get in a fight, you have to hold your thumb a certain way when you punch someone. He said if you do it wrong, you might break your thumb. To demonstrate, he curled his hand into a fist and gingerly cocked his thumb over his fingers, as if he was holding one of the buzzers on Jeopardy.
Looking around for a soft target, he demonstrated by taking a quick jab at some drapes. His thumb got caught on the lace and he yanked the drapes down with a not insignificant crash that brought Bobby's mother into the room. Bobby explained that Trevor was punching the drapes but that he didn't mean to knock them down. To her chagrin, she discovered that they were torn, one end of the curtain rod had punctured her leather sofa, and the other end had cracked the window. Hence, 'DeathFist', only written as 'DeathFyst' to sound more heavy metal, which is kind of what we were into back then.
"Yeah, it's the name I always use," Trevor says.
"Well, not here you don't, bro. I'm going to need you to use the first three letters of your first name, followed by the number of the station you're at, which is three. Capiche?"
So now Trevor is Tre3.
"Who's 'Tree'?" Eric asks after accidentally shooting him.
Between maps, Trevor asks why we can't play the new Source Counter-Strike.
"What's that?" Douglas asks.
"What's that? It's the Half-Life 2 version. Much better than this. Better graphics and everything."
"No, I don't think so," Douglas says. "I don't really like to install new software unless Louis is here. There's lots of, you know, spyware and viruses out there."
"Viruses? Are you kidding? This is Valve."
"Valve? What's that?" Douglas asks while de_dust is loading again.
That's when it hits me: Douglas is a casual gamer. Sure, he and his buddies play lots of Counter-Strike and UT2004, but that's it. Which explains why they're so good. But otherwise, he's completely out of touch. What a terrible way to run a Shoot Club. No Joint Ops, no Dawn of War, no Star Wars: Battlefront, and no old stand-bys like Aliens vs. Predator 2.
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