"DT no nothing of honor. They are cowards."
-Heartcutter
|
| Dances With Double Dash | | | Author: | | | IP: | S0106000XXXX | | Date: | 02/08/05 10:02 | | Game Type: | Other | | Labels: | none | | Report Rating: , # of Ratings: 4, Max: 10, Min: 8
Lifetime Rating for CynicalMagician: 8.7556 |    |
Before today I'd never been in a fight with a
cokehead. Last year I came close when an barroom argument about the
original cast of Saved by the Bell got a little out of hand, but that
ended in the creation of a drinking game centered around Zack Morris
rather than a fist fight. Today there were no new drinking games. Today
fate caught up with me. I used to be able to say I had never gotten a
black eye because of Mario Kart: Double Dash, but those days are now
over.
But I digress. Let me start at the beginning.
I'm in the grocery store picking up my weekly sweets and sundries when
I notice a familiar face. I can't think of who he is, but I know I know
him. He looks up at me and I see the same flicker of almost-recognition
cross his face. Somewhere in the back of my mind a hamster is running
in a wheel, moving memories across my mental gears ever so slowly. My
cognitive rodent is unreliable at best, so I decide to take matters
into my own hands.
I walk over to the mysterious stranger. "Do I know you? You look familiar."
"Yeah, you too. Are you from around here?"
"I am now. I go to UBC, but I used to live in Nanaimo. I'm Pat."
"I used to live there too. I'm Collin."
Suddenly I remembered. "Did you go to Rock City Elementary?"
An epiphany flashes before my eyes. "Yes! Oh yeah, I remember you, we were in the same classes for years!"
"Collin... Applewood, Applegate, was it?"
"Applegate. And you're Robin Hood something. Pat Nottingham, Pat Maid Marianne..."
"Littlejohn, but you were close."
At this point I notice that the only things in Collin's basket are a
gallon jug of prune juice and a box of laxative pills. The afternoon
only got weirder from here.
A little background. From kindergarten on up to university I've always
been an antisocial nerd with an awkward sense of humour. Thankfully I
was never alone. There were always one or two kids in my classes that
showed as much of a disregard for the norm as I did. Collin was one of
those people. He didn't fit in with the crowd and didn't want to. In
grade 5 we sat next to each other and spent a lot of time artificially
resuscitating erasers and writing elaborate biographies about the class
pet. Collin abruptly vanished sometime in grade 6 and I never heard
from him again. I never thought I'd see him again, so his return was a
bit of a surprise.
I was happy to find that Collin had retained his ridiculous sense of
humour. We spent a few minutes bullshitting in and around the frozen
foods section, reminiscing about our lives in elementary
school.
Eventually, "So you said you're at UBC, eh Pat? What are you studying?"
"Materials engineering. I've got another 16 months before I'm outta
here, and then I'm headed towards the big bucks."
"Nice one. You know, if you really wanted the big bucks, you'd do what I'm doing."
"Oh yeah?"
"I'm an independent pharmacist."
I had been waiting for an appropriate time to mock him for the laxatives, and finally this was it.
"Independent pharmacist, eh? Looks to me like you're just full of shit," I gestured to his basket.
"Uhhh... They're not mine! I'm just holding them for a friend!" He
pulls a sarcastic parody of a shifty drug user confronted by parents
and we both start to laugh. This guy was entertaining as all hell in
elementary school and it's good to see that nothing has
changed.
"So what's this about independent pharmacy? Are you a lone gunslinger in the world of pill pushing?"
"Something like that..." He answers me with another shifty eyed look,
but this time the sarcastic paranoia is closer to home. I've been
around enough drug dealers in my life that I can guess at Collin's
profession without much trouble. I'm vaguely put off, but what the
hell, this is Vancouver, BC, aka Vansterdam. In this city it's a
surprise to meet someone who doesn't sell freelance
medication.
"Say Pat, what are you up to right now? Feel like watching some Ninja
Turtles over at my place?" He hesistates, then adds with a shit-eating
grin, "I've got the Secret of the Ooze."
I laugh. "Sure, I've got some time to kill. You live around here?"
"Yeah, like two minutes away. You can meet Lex on the way."
Lex was out in the parking lot. She was fucking hot. I don't know shit
about cars, but judging by the way her seats were leather and heated,
I'd say Lex was a nice one. On the way back Collin mentions someone
else I'd get to meet.
"This guy Gary is at my house right now too. He comes off as a pretty
sketchy fucker, but he's alright. He's a friend of a friend that I owe
a favour to, so I'm giving him a place to stay for the day while he's
up from the States."
Soon we pull into a garage in a nice house near Cambie and 37th. A
really nice house. I start thinking, "Hang on a second, a nice house, a
nice car, and this guy is my age? What the fuck? I've met dealers
before, and none of them are set up like this guy is. Crazy." As the
phrase 'independent pharmacist' meanders through my head I start
thinking that there might be more to Collin than meets the eye. I send
a memo to my mental hamster that Collin might be a Transformer. The
hamster starts a double shift and the wheels turn a little
faster.
Entering the house, we walk through a hardwood foyer into a living room
dominated by black leather couches and a massive TV. The soundtrack is
Led Zeppelin 4, and a beautiful but dishevelled Chinese girl is playing
Mario Kart: Double Dash.
"Pat, this is my girlfriend Samantha. Samantha, Pat. Have a seat, I'm going to go find Gary."
I say hi to Samantha and she replies with a barely perceptible nod. I
ask her if I can join her in the game, and she gestures to a controller
on the coffee table, still too engrossed in the game to respond
verbally. It is then that I see the elephant hidden in plain view, a 3
foot glass bong on the table. My hamster is running faster now and
through his detective work I realize Samantha is too stoned to do
anything but hit blue sparks on the curves of the Rainbow Road. While
she finishes the race I take the time to admire the bong on the table.
The glasswork is beautiful and ornate, with swirling blue and white
patterns throughout. I've seen some nice bongs in my time, but this one
was gorgeous.
Samantha guns through the end of of the Special Cup and I pick up the
loose controller. Without saying a word, she starts up a round of 150CC
on the Flower Cup. I choose the twin koopas in the Barrel Train while
she puts the mushroom people in the Bullet Basher. The countdown starts
to tick away for the first track, a loop around the Mushroom Bridge.
From the steely look in her eye I can tell that It's
On.
I'm going to replace modesty with honesty for this next paragraph. I'm
an all-star at Double Dash. I've studied the minutae of every track,
the physics of every kart, and the intricacies of every powerup. I'm
the Bruce Lee of Double Dash. If the ancient Israelites played Double
Dash, they'd forget about the golden calf and idolize me. If Double
Dash were sexual prowess, I'd be banging two supermodels at once. On a
rollercoaster. A rollercoaster of love.
Thus you can understand my surprise when Samantha beat me on the first
track. The rollercoaster turned out to be a prison bathroom, and the
supermodels turned out to be large burly--well, you get the idea. I was
not impressed. I blamed my loss on a lack of focus on my part, not
prolific skill on her's.
The next track is the Mario Circuit - 7 times around an open oval
surrounded by pure carnage. Because there are no obstructions this
track tends to get busy in a hurry. After the first two laps I've taken
first but Samantha is right on my heels. We trade back and forth
several times, swapping positions like something out of CD-RAM: Touch
My Mainframe (With your Hard Drive). As we close in on the finish we're
neck and neck when Donkey Kong nukes us both with a peel from a
genetically altered banana. He takes our dignity along with the race,
leaving Samantha and I in second and third
respectively.
I was down by 4 points. I had to take first on the next track to stay
in the game. It was time to get serious, ill, and possibly medieval.
The corners on the Daisy Cruiser require robotic precision, but I'm up
to the task. This is one of my favourites races and it shows. Thanks to
a couple great shots around the pool and a beautiful juke to avoid an
angry question box, I stay several seconds ahead of Samantha for the
opening. A well timed barrage of green shells on the last lap drives
her into third for the finish while I take the gold. I'm untouchable.
The scores are tied, 24-24.
While the times roll over before the next race, Samantha sets down the
controller in favour of the blue-white monstrosity on the coffee table.
She inhales, expanding like a blowfish as the ivory smoke climbs up the
neck of the bong and into her mouth. She exhales, deflating further
into the couch as a cloud billows out of her puckered lips. A change
sweeps across her face as she withdraws further from reality and
becomes one with the game. The smell of competition seeps into my
airways, accompanied by the acidic tang of burnt cannabis. I feed my
hamster some metaphorical methamphetamine and concentrate on getting in
the zone. I start by sitting up straight. Nothing improves my videogame
performance more than proper posture.
The final showdown takes place in the Waluigi Stadium, a dust bowl on
the scale of Saskatchewan circa 1933. The countdown for the race
begins. Red. I take a deep breath. I'm bathing in adrenaline. Yellow.
My thumb is perched over the A button like a sniper in a clocktower.
Green. Miliseconds seem like milihours. Double green. The flag waving
Lakitu is left in a cloud of burnt rubber.
What followed is a blur of bonus boxes, blue sparks, and nail biting
competition. I'm on the razor's edge of perfection, every maneuver
executed with absolute percision, every shell thrown with pinpoint
accuracy. The AI competition melts into the ether leaving only Samantha
and I to duel for the title. I edge ahead only to be knocked aside on
the next corner. She hurls red shells only to have them shatter on my
tail. Attack, parry, feint, counterattack, like a digital ballet. Our
reflexes and skill are dulled only by the childish grandeur of the
medium.
In the end, I'm cuffed by the cruel backhand of fate on the last jump
of the track. Seconds away from the finish line, Samantha nudges me
just hard enough to knock me off course and into second place. I'm
devastated, but not for long. I may have lost, but the thrill of the
race is still with me. Samantha turns to me and smiles a drug-addled
grin that betrays her immense skill. I smile back, and the bond of the
elite is formed between us.
Raised voices come from down the hall and I set down the controller in
order to go investigate. Samantha shrugs, too fucked out of her tree to
be concerned.
As I approach I hear Collin getting bent out of shape. "Listen Gary,
don't pull this bullshit on me. Knock back some intestinal ecstasy with
your prunie-colada and let's finish this off." I hear mumbling from a
voice I assume to be Gary's, but no words.
When I'm not in houses populated by strange drug users and Double Dash
prodigys, sometimes I go to raves. I've been a part of the rave scene
for a long time. With the rave scene comes a lot of drugs. Wherever you
find a lot of drugs you will find dodgy individuals, and thus, I've
seen a lot of dodgy individuals. You know the kind. Nothing about them
stays still and nothing about them is non-confrontational. They radiate
imminent doom like Chernobyl in March '86. Whether they're born
this way or if their psychosis is because of substance abuse is
immaterial, because in the words of Raoul Duke, "You can turn your back
on a person, but never turn your back on a drug."
I enter the kitchen and am thrilled to find that Gary is waving razor
sharp hunting knives every way but literally. He's the archtypical
sketchy fucker: a perfect example of someone that you don't want to
turn your back on. His eyes hit me, turgent with suspicion and
undercurrents of anger. He has all the hallmarks of a long time cocaine
user, complete with cornered animal paranoia and white knuckles from
inner tension. "Who the fuck are you?" he snaps at me. I'm having
trouble taking him and his greeting seriously due to the glass of prune
juice in his left hand and the five or six laxative pills in his right.
My hamster makes glacial progress around its wheel and I stand
speechless.
Collin steps in, nodding to me in silent apology. "This is Pat, he's a
friend of mine from school. Pat, this is Gary. Now, why don't we all
just chill out and go play Double Dash in the other
room?"
I nod and Gary follows, quelled for the time being. We join Samantha on
the couch and I'm unsurprised to see Gary choosing to use the Bowsers
and the Koopa King. The spikes on Bowser's shell match the studded
bracelet around Gary's wrist. For the span of several races, an uneasy
truce is built around Mario and I forget about the overall strangeness
of the situation. Gary seems to relax as the game progresses and for a
brief moment I believe my afternoon might return to some guise of
normalcy. Unfortunately, I was wrong.
After taking a particularly vicious bombardment from my Koopa Troopas,
Gary loses his meagre supply of cool. He jumps up and starts screaming
at me, "You fucking shit! You and your fuckin' red shells, I'm going to
fuck you up you little--"
Gary is cut off in midsentence by his own horrified expression. The
exertion of flipping out apparently catalyzed the laxative reaction,
and his time had come. He ran to the bathroom yelling, "Oh shit!"
presumably unaware of the irony. I'm unsure whether I should laugh or
cry. However, I was pretty sure that it was time to leave. I said
so.
Collin was ever the diplomat. "Sorry about that, man. Gary's way out of
line. Business is business though. Tell you what, assuming he comes out
of the can in one piece, I'll close my deal with him, kick him out, and
give you a lift home. Sound good?"
I shrug assentingly. I don't want to leave without my groceries anyway.
I settle back down for more Double Dash and after a few more
comparatively peaceful races against Samantha, I hear Gary yell out,
"Collin, get over here. I've got your shit, I want my money." Again, I
wonder if he's aware of the irony in his words. As Collin leaves the
couch, Samantha and I start playing the Special Cup, this time as
equals rather than combatants. Now we're racing as a team sponsored by
Sanity, directly opposed to Team Drug Psychosis. With any luck the act
of losing 10 pounds in as many seconds has caused Gary to forget his
grudge against me.
Samantha and I start making our way around Wario Colliseum. Collin and
Gary are in the kitchen, speaking in relatively subdued tones. Subdued
compared to the screaming and flipping out that's been the recent
norm.
Now we're on Dino Dino Jungle. Things are heating up in the other room.
I can't tell what they're arguing about, but I remember hearing Gary
say something about swallowing a condom. Looking back, I see that my
hamster is about a lap behind reality.
Bowser's Castle. I catch another phrase, this time something involving
the word 'street value'. My hamster is closing in on an important
epiphany, but he's not quite there yet.
Rainbow Road. The argument in the other room is rapidly turning into
combat, and as Samantha and I enter lap 3 Gary loses it. "300 fucking
dollars? I dug through my fucking shit for 300 dollars? This shit is
high grade Columbian you fucking faggot!" Faggot is puncuated by the
sound of glass smashing. My hamster finally catches up and I realize
the ghastly truth of what's going on here. I was Double Dashing against
a mule, and my elementary school friend is buying cocaine that was up a
guy's ass. What the fuck is this? Is my life a Quentin Tarantino
movie?
A scuffle erupts in the kitchen and spills into the living room as a
fist fight. Gary sucker punches Collin across his jaw, and as he
follows through he sees me. Apparently my Double Dash transgressions
against him are not forgotten, and his eyes glow like something feral.
I stand up in a hurry and prepare for the worst. His expression is past
all reason and he lunges at me.
Let me pause here and mention that I've always loved jump kicks.
Specifically, jump kicks like the one at the end of the first Karate
Kid when Daniel-san crane knocks out the bad guy. The look in the
antagonist's eyes when he catches one under the chin from Daniel...
It's perfect. Jump kicks are what made me start taking karate in the
first place. I wanted to get a taste of the real ultimate power behind
a flying freight train, so I started Shotokan. I did it for about 8
years, stopping when I was 16. Even though I quit, I never lost my love
of trying to break shit while in mid-air.
Now, I don't know what was flowing through my machismo charged, hamster
powered mind, but something in me snapped. I decided to use all those
years of training right here and now. Despite the fact that I hadn't
trained in 6 years, despite the fact that I was woefully out of shape,
despite the fact that he was a huge coke-fueled gorilla, I decided that
it was time to draw a line in the sand. I decided I was going to kick
this guy. I was going to jump kick this cocky asshole and knock his
sketchy-fucker-that-sucks-at-videogames ass out.
The best laid plans of mice and men, etc...
My leg shot up and out.
His fist did the same.
I missed.
He didn't.
I went down ass over teakettle.
He didn't.
I took a blow to the face.
He didn't.
Crushed on the floor underneath a rabid cokehead, I was hardly prepared for what happened next.
Neither was he.
I hear the sound of breaking glass from somewhere far above the raging
mass on top of me and suddenly all the fight goes out of Gary. His
limbs cease flailing and he collapses on me like 200 pounds of
overcooked spinach. His face is inches from my own and from behind his
vapid and glasseyed stare I can hear the faint creaking of an
ill-maintained hamster wheel. As I lay there panting under his bulk
something wet creeps against my skin and a foul but familiar smell
surrounds me. At first I think it's blood, but as I twist my head to
one side and see shards of blue and white glass on the floor beside me
I recognize the smell of bongwater. I manage to push the now
unconscious lummox off me and I see Samantha holding the upper foot of
the now defunct masterpiece. The rest is shattered below me, like a
cruel practical joke played at the expense of stoners everywhere.
Before she twists away and flees the room, I see a single tear escaping
her bloodshot eyes. Collin is gaping at the scene as blood drips from a
split lip.
I decide it's time to get the hell out of here, groceries or no.
"Catch you later Collin. Good luck with the business. I don't think
independent pharmacy is for me." He waves and I grab my coat and start
the walk home. The adrenaline has worn off and the hamster is running
slower now, but not so slow that I can't wonder what the fuck just
happened.
<3,
-Cyn
|
|
|
|
Home
Forum
Starcraft Tournaments
