Four years ago I had no money to my name. Not just insolvent, but occupying the unique space where the direct result of how much I had in my bank account was directly tied to how I could relax. I could have sex with some of the worst people on earth, I could become one of them afterwards. I could have enough money to afford to drink every single day, or feed myself once. You tell me what sounds like it’d make an alcoholic feel better.

Poverty gets a little extra fun when you’re just always hovering over the line that breaks you forever. I’ve known so many people who went too far upside down and never really recovered – a few long term stays in homeless shelters or surfing their friends’ couches until the friends ran out and then it was strangers.

It’s surprising how much a few extra hundred dollars a month can really change your life for the better. Now that we’re post-the-government-just-giving-us-money, that same government is hoping none of us think about it. It would be a real shame if we realized the same group of pondscum and private investors we vote for could have done it all along.

I don’t drink hard liquor any more. I still buy it: that’s what we do with money. It mostly sits in a corner of my house to attract the attention of the guests who do want to drink it. Every once in a while, I’ll drink some in front of friends so they don’t think I just buy it for the strangers that come over.

There’s something about luxury liquor when you’re an adult that feels like a mature salve. You’re economically stable enough that the purpose of liquor is no longer to quash a feeling or bury some distant lingering emotions. The cranking machinery inside of me no longer craves that liquid lubrication.

I can afford to buy Queer art, but I don’t fucking like any of it. There is a buried nervousness and insecurity of identity that I recognize as the same insecurities I used to hold onto. I still buy it – not because I want to, but because I have been poisoned by a thousand twitter threads telling me to support artists if I have the money to. Now I’m supporting the artists, the artists are supporting me.

Queering suicide by making it weird. Queering murder by making it weird. Queering dating by making it weird (and about swords). 

I am no longer broke. I still feel like a lingering trauma follows me wherever I go. A red storm cloud, flesh, blood, etc grinding gears this is all of the imagery I’m supposed to use but what’s more real than that is having to see an eviction notice on your door and thinking every time you come home even years later that today’s the day today’s the day I don’t need to walk past this fence. What’s being ground isn’t the meat, what’s being ground is me and I am so much more than blood.

and say it costs four dollars a bowl of Pad Thai when it costs seventy dollars a grocery store trip to actually buy it all. I can’t believe how many times I fell for it. I didn’t learn how to cook until I had the money to be in love with the food I was buying and not just trying to coax my body along.While in that fugue state of equal parts commerce and drive, I could play videogames to relax. Finally, a chance to catch up on my backloggery. A distant voice echoes in my mind: if you didn’t have the time to play Baldur’s Gate 2 as a teenager, what makes you think you do at thirty years old? Well I’ve got the time and the money now, baby! That’s what makes me feel so secure and fresh.

There’s the blood, the bones, the brittle skin that breaks off under the sun. The scab that rolls over but seems to always be in the same place. Do I play videogames to ignore my body? Death Stranding is a game all about what we do to our bodies: I know a dozen cross-country backpackers who do it for fun now. I don’t honestly think what they experience in the woods is all that different from a warm house on a winter night and a videogame.

I keep coming back to how we look at our bodies and ourselves. Maybe we want a little mutilation: maybe we want more videogames where the only violence we commit is finally against ourselves. We’ll joke that we wished videogames tackled more serious issues and then everyone’s writing scathing manifesto’s about a game that looks like a pixar cartoon for having a serious element as a plot point.

Maybe we’re crying out for something to really torture us. The emotional snuff film. I don’t want to see a character die! I want to feel like my own flesh and blood is dying right in front of me. Anything less is pretending.

Who’s gonna put their foot down and say it’s enough? Boyfriend Dungeon doesn’t scare me and neither do you. I’ve seen enough to hyperventilate, but never enough to come away with sticky blood-sap oozing out of the small holes a scrape against gravel dug into my skin. Never been grossed out enough to get my rubbery-growths checked out by a doctor.

I’m thinking about all of the flesh and sinew tortures the best writers are dreaming up, all the gross-out imagery to shake a fist at. A zombie might look real fucked up in Resident Evil 2 Remake but it can’t see past the screen. Everyday people like me and you put themselves right out in front of the rest of the world for a paycheck, for a trip to Target, for a copy of Resident Evil 2 Remake.

When it’s every day, every day, every day, the made up horror can be a new kind of salve.
I want to go to bed and not be able to sleep. I want to see half of something in my dreams that scares me as much as the old people willing to die to drink a cocktail in a dive bar. I want to see something that makes me recoil in horror, knowing

New common symbolism dictates that work is a meat grinder. Society is a machine of isolation. Playing water polo is a tributary of blades. The body is a market of obsession when so much of the damage done to us on a day to day basis is purely psychological. Every bit of mindfulness we can practice isn’t to make ourselves feel better: it is to coax a body into relaxing to do it all again tomorrow.

I’m screaming at my TV screen or my computer monitor or my phone why won’t you pay me out already why won’t you give me something. Teetering on that edge of identity, turning into one of those writers that just isn’t getting pulled in by anything.

Videogames are a habit of consumption or (for some people) an identity. When you could afford to buy one videogame a year and existed on desperate handouts from friends for so long, what’s the first thing you buy when you don’t?

Maybe it’s time to pay off that PS4 that’s been sitting on a credit card for five years. Or invest in a new gaming PC. Buy an entertainment center and proudly display your switch, your cheap soundbar and the TV you got on a black friday deal years ago because a cheap TV is a cheap goddamned TV no matter where you buy it from or what stage in life you are.

I am not the things I think when I’m the most alone. I’m not the feelings I have that are true, I’m just my actions. All my actions allow is more buying power. Make sure you support the artists with your money. Talking is vague and even written endorsement falls on a silent crowd. If they don’t see you buying, how are they gonna know if you’re a good person or not? Please make sure you support the artists with your money. Only if they make something though. Artists that don’t make things for me are just people.

Somewhere there’s an algorithm to see how many people have actually played Baldur’s Gate 2. It’s matching dating profiles, because “baldur’s gate 2” is just a string of words. We’d like to write so much about how our games can move us. Help us overcome or face anxieties.
There sure are a lot of platforms seeking a mutually agreed upon experience. Yes, what you played is the same game everyone else plays. Put “baldur’s gate 2” in your dating profile and connect with someone over it.

The first thing you do in any videogame isn’t pick new game or whatever is holy and canonized on some ancient fading wordpress website’s independent reviews. The first thing you do when you see a videogame in a store and desire bringing it into your home is Buy It. We want nuance about what a triple AAA game means, about who makes them and what they’re made for. The beginning point of every capital G gamer’s relationship with a big videogame is buying it.

Invite it into your home. It will ask nicely.

There was a point a few months ago where security finally became a state of existence and not just a goal. Rent was paid. I didn’t just have the money to feed myself: I had the money to cook for myself. Never trust any article or video promising you a cheap good meal. They’ll tell you all of the ingredients by cent per ounce, and lie I’m going to be the one to serve them the drink.

Society is a machine of isolation. Let’s re-release some old video games about it. I catch myself wondering: if videogames are anything but products, how come when we stop talking about something and start making it our own, it always gets re-released?

Don’t worry about that game you loved. It’ll get a re-release or a remake right around the time it’s supposed to slide into the public domain. It’ll feel really good.

I’ve got a friend suffering through a hate-watch of a dozen genre TV shows.
Have you ever noticed how if something fills in every little nook and cranny with information, it doesn’t really leave a lot of room for interpretation, fan or otherwise? It’s not the death of the author – the author is strong enough to come back from the grave. Crawling and biting. Anyway, I never noticed until they told me. Videogames don’t need fans or critics, they only want buyers. A buyer is something new and terrifying: a completely closed relationship. Play the game, put the title in the list, and move on.

Got a lot of platinum trophies kicking around these days.