This is Life

I sighed, waved my empty Gatorade bottle half-heartedly, and bid them all good night. Tired and tired of socializing, i wandered back down the line of doors, into the one in which i was staying, and up to the air mattress. Silence.

Bathroom time, pajamas, resetting. Reclined in "bed", computer in lap, i can relax without concern. Star Trek in one window, Warcraft in another, my friend in my phone, telling me about the new patch, i am at peace. I don't need to try, schmooze, wink, lie. I can channel lightning bolts at elves and laugh at early-90s space drama.

I am making my guild-mates laugh. I am chatting with an ex-girlfriend at the same time. I'm carrying on a conversation with Nate on the phone about the intricacies of arcane raiding. My shaman is dealing more damage than the rest of the Damage Per Second team combined.

Thunder crackles in the halls of the Nexus, ionizing the air and igniting the flesh of our enemies while i listen to the details of the Arcane Mage's proposed 400% mana increase for the last stack of Arcane Blast and i'm whispering a young druid that PMS is not a good excuse. The bizarreness of the situation is lost on me.

Later on, i am a mage wandering the woods of Feralas. Nate has left for the evening, the ex is talking about Kat Von D, i am keeping up a txt conversation with someone who needs me, and Matt returns from the outside world.

Years of practice allow me to read his mood in an instant. The mage is abandoned to die among the trees, the ex is told "brb" and even the friend in my phone is asked to hang on. Star Trek is paused and with it, the rest of my little bubble.

My fingers nimbly roll up two cigarettes, bits of tobacco scattered across the counter top. Matt has grabbed a couple beers and we climb out the window into the sky.

A tiny logic puzzle later and we have both opened our beers and lit our cigarettes, all while keeping one hand to the shingles so as not to fall off the little eave that is our veranda. The hot Georgia night air mixes with the smoke in my chest, only to be washed away by the soothing coolness of my beer. We talk about life and its complications in complex, abstract analogies and examples. Our words, formed by the careful locutions of our lips, flow out to mix with the smoke, blown away with the wind.

Everything is quiet on the roof and life seems to almost be understandable out here under the great Georgia sky.

Georgia is for Others

I love a good road trip. Hell, a bad road trip is still better than the average work day. There's just something fulfilling about throwing a bunch of supplies and whatnot into a bag and setting out your door for distant locales. It satisfies, in a sadly safe way, the occasional bout of wanderlust that i suspect plagues most males from time to time.

This week i find myself in Georgia visiting a very dear friend of mine from high school, Matt Grajcar. He had moved down south of the Mason Dixon line about a year ago from the New York Metro (read: New Jersey) stomping grounds of our youth. Technically there was a four-year matriculation in Rochester in between NJ and GA, but my frostbitten toes still haven't forgiven my for spending a year up there, so i don't like to talk about it much.

As Matt's sister pointed out, the sky is enormous here. Everything just feels so spread out, almost stretched. You can drive for 15 minutes through northern New Jersey and pass through five or six different towns. Here, you'll never leave the city of Canton, though i couldn't for the life of me point out where exactly the town center is. Its as if the surrounding countryside had been populated to the point where they needed to put down some arbitrary boundaries and call it a new town. We'll call it Canton because otherwise we wouldn't know how to refer to this expanse of road in between Atlanta and North Bumblefuk.

The heat is oppressive. My immune system is quite strong, but my constitution is compromised by an inability to regulate temperature very readily. I overheat quickly and easily, and while my relatively ineffective sweat glands are a blessing in social situations, they are not up to the task of protecting me from the sun which feels all to close for my comfort. I swear the thing looks bigger down here.

The rain keeps me sane and hale. The clouds come up quickly out of nowhere, obscuring vast amounts of sky in a matter of minutes and pouring down a gentle layer of static over the life of sleepy Georgia. The patrons in my little coffee shop hunker down and wait for it to pass, tic-tacking on their laptops or murmuring over their game of Rummy. I alone venture into the vibrant precipitation, luxuriating in the soothing pattern of sensation over my shoulders and neck.

Then the bastard sun busts in like a bouncer breaking up a fight shoos the clouds on their way.

I think he's watching me. And i'm sure he doesn't like me.