Thinking back at the beginning the day started out like many I've been through before it, at one thirty in the afternoon...
I awoke several times before finally giving up the ghost and downing a cup of delicious coffee, thoroughly inundated with powdered french vanilla creamer and two heaping spoonfuls of sugar. I spent many a morning in the years past sucking down black espresso, which has the taste of liquid burnt ass, and have promised myself never to look back. The coffee I drink, I sip, I ENJOY. Its purpose is not just to pump my veins full of caffeine but as an integral part of my waking ritual. I sip, I smoke a cigarette, I sip some more, I ease into the mid day like most people ease into a favorite pair of highly comfortable gloves, as to say: slowly and enjoying every minute of it.
Then, without warning, the loneliness struck. I picked up the phone and called my mother: busy... I called the few friends that I have: busy, preoccupied, available but very far away. Nothing left to do but set out on my own, it was close to the first of the month and I still had and ample supply of greasy bills and there far less greasy digital counterparts in my bank account, and they burned in my pockets like hot coals on the soles of a witches feet during the inquisition.
I made it as far as the mail box before the first impulse to turn back struck, the heat in the hallway was stifling and I argued internally that I was wearing leather pants, not proper attire for ninety degree weather (I further visualized my social worker jotting down notes, something along the lines of "inappropriately dressed for the weather"), and I decided to instead check the mail.
Inside was a flat square envelope inscribed with the words "gamefly" (think netflix but for video games, REALLY think "superfly: now with more game for every playa"). I knew at once exactly what game it was, kingdoms of amalur: the reckoning, or, as I had been calling it: kingdoms of anal-whore: I reckon. It was GABE'S game, one that I had ordered at his behest purely to cease his constant reminders and gentle nagging that I had "promised". Every time he used that word I pictured him as an overly large toddler so caught up in the concept of a promise that he felt that if one were to be broken it would forever break not only his trust, but his very spirit.
I grudgingly walked to the bustop, the game still in my mailbox. Pulling my cellphone from my leather lined pocked I dailed gabe's number.
"Hello?" an aging woman's voice answered after a few rings...
"HI, yeah its Zak again, can I speak to gabe?"
"Yeah, hold on a second, I have to YELL" Was her answer, and yell she did, in the unmistakable blow-horn tone of a mother to her son, albeit normally this would be reserved for a MUCH younger son... Gabe, as it was, is 35...
"GAAAAAAABBBBBEEEE! TELEPHONE!"
I couldn't help but to snicker, and though she heard me she didn't comment on the matter. Distantly through the tiny receiver I heard my friend in the background asking who it was, as if anyone else ever called him. Soon the phone on the other end jostled and changed hands.
"Hey, you just called a minute ago?" Responded that very same friend.
"Yeah, guess what SHOWED UP TODAY!??!?" I said sing-songedly into the cell-phone.
"What?"
"KINGDOMS OF AMALUR! You want to come over? I'll pick you up at fashion square!"
"I don't know, let me ask my mom..." Was his response, but I KNEW he was ready to shit his big-boy pants with excitement over his precious game finally arriving.
Through the phone, an epic but all too frequently occurring battle took place, a battle between man-child and overbearing mother. I could feel the sting of her incessant nagging just as readily as I could the dull hurt of his uncaring and thoughtless "whatever"s. Finally the battle was won, and Gabe, Jester of his own private domestic kingdom, stood triumphant.
"Yeah, I'll meet you at fashion square, bring change for me to ride the bus..."
He then hung up shortly after my curt response of "awesome" which was spoken in a stutter of stifled boyish giggles.
And thus, the day was set, that day, YESTER-day, and the night that followed would be glorious indeed...
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