#October2009

The Plight of the Aging Gamer

caffeine

I went to pick up Uncharted 2 with my friend Bags on Monday night at midnight. I was fucking pumped! Hell yeah! I was going to play it until I died. I was going to mainline caffeine and snort pixie sticks and rub out loads to gorgeous polygons. Except that I didn’t do any of that. Because I have begun to realize, I’m an aging, antique gamer.

Bags and I went to pick up our respective copies that early morning. We burnt through the streets quickly, and we encountered no line at the store. The only hassle in actually retrieving the titles was the fat fucking sales guy. It’s past midnight and I’m just trying to grab my copy of Uncharted 2, and here is Joey Lame Piercings trying to get me to reserve more games.

Would you like to pre-purchase blahdy blah blah blah blah?

And I told the guy point blank, I already have like a million reservations with you fucking turd munchers. Ratchet and Clank, Modern Warfare 2, you even convinced me to put $5 on Bioshock 2 seventeen years early. But he persisted. Fuck that guy. Anyways.

I got home, and it was probably 12:37. Something like that. I don’t know why I remember that. And I was all excited and I was going to put the game in, when I was like, fuck, I’m tired. I thought of Far Too Beautiful For My Deserving Girlfriend sleeping in her studio apartment. And I faced a conundrum I hadn’t before:

Play Uncharted 2, or drive and snuggle up to my girlfriend and sleep a reasonable amount.

I thought to myself, man it’s late anyways. How long would I really play tonight before I got tired and started shooting at walls when a puzzle pissed me off? If I leave now, I can get to her house by 1. I can be asleep by 1:15. And I can wake up and play the shit out of the game in the morning.

I stared at Uncharted 2. I imagined the warm body waiting for me in Salem, should I choose. Nathan Drake looked at me and scoffed.

casual

You fucking pussy, Ian.

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