As I Was Going to Strawberry Fair

Chapter 20

Marshal

I have friends who live to role-play. Which is the wrong way to describe them. It makes them sound like junkies or golfers. The correct way is to say that they handle life better pretending it, than living it. If they socialize, they babble or sulk silent; either method leading to people backing away. If they work, they seek jobs requiring the lowest possible level of self-awareness. Their preferred reality is something ignored, unobtrusive and non-conversing. Human lamp stand with salary would be their dream-job. Often overdrawn, usually withdrawn, sometimes overwrought and generally misnourished, not to be confused with malnourished. They are incompetent at dressing, saving, planning and most social interaction between discourse and intercourse. In brief, in their real lives they are bad at life.

But sit them at a table or computer screen to steal the fabled ruby goblet from the idol of the Rat King in the Temple of the Five Fires, and a strange transformation occurs. Suddenly they are clear-eyed, clever and competent. They plan; they improvise; they dare; later extemporizing lyric victory toasts to sips of wine from their new ruby goblet.

Put them on a blind date and they appear at the wrong hour in the wrong clothes, mutter at dinner and make an awkward pass or worse goodbye. Yet challenged to charm the faery queen of the assassin's guild, they efficiently trade a +2 dagger for a +5 charisma cloak, swap dwarf war-boots for elf-bard heels, steal a bouquet from the king's garden, comb their hair and then hold the chair for the assassin queen to sit first. They will fascinate her, seduce her, and exit the bedroom window with her heart and jewelry box equally in their pocket.

But all that's overlong cliché; so just say they live to role-play.

My brilliant theory is that the competence they find when pretending comes from viewing themselves from a slight distance. Trapped in their own skin they sweat; tongue goes numb, eyes seek cover, brain scrambles for distraction. But put where they can watch themselves on a screen, even the screen of their own imagination, and they are free.

The ability to sit outside oneself, able to walk the body through the world and yet no longer suffer the body the world sees, is an anesthetic to the pain of existing. By role-playing, a person enjoys being themselves without enduring the dreadful cost of being.

I sat in the security camera room and watched the screen replaying last-night's recording of Loading Dock: the Movie. Security Guard Guy leaned against a wall, guarding shed and dumpster. Occasionally he scratched, adjusted his hat-tilt. So very dull. Watching him, my hands twitched for a game controller. All my instincts said let's make this guy do something. I longed to get him on a job interview, a date, a duel. I'd make him exercise, open a savings account, level up, rent an apartment, get a car and +5 armor, style his hair and lead him to storm some castle tower. I could do great things sitting before the screen, directing me from outside myself. It just took the proper key sequences.

The Security-Bear fast-forwarded an hour, to when my character stretched, glanced about and walked off stage. My heart sank, knowing the screen would show my post abandoned till dawn. "I think he heard something by the dumpster," I tried.

"He?" asked the King of the Fair. He stood behind the Bear; arms crossed, glowering kingly-ish. "Is that you or not?"

I peered at the screen. "Not sure. I thought I was taller." The King snorted.

I turned to consider the snorter. Well-dressed, crisp in word and movement; he was competent. He was no ruler of a role-player kingdom. He was Mayor of Serious Town; elected for life. Perhaps he'd been born a certain distance outside himself; so that he permanently lurked above and behind his body. Perhaps he directed this 'king' character from someplace safe and hidden, glancing at screens of numbers, expertly calculating the next move. Click this button, make that trade, recite this text. Considered so, it was not us shabby role-players who were broken. It was people like the King of the Fair, permanently separated from themselves. Of course he had no non-commercial use for fantasy. He was born unreal.