Carpe Scrotum

It's strange to think back on the days when i used to hang out with the likes of Gay Eskimo, Skippy, and Other Kid. If you haven't gathered yet, these are of course handles and not their real names; further, odds are good these handles haven't been used since those days. [Side note: I've been trying to use handles or nicknames for people in this blog because i don't feel like people would want me using their real names; sometimes i use just a first name but this becomes problematic when you consider how many people are named things like "Chris."] But it's weird to think about because i haven't even seen any of these people in at least five years, and we all used to be inseparable. We were a gaming group, for god's sake! That's closer than kin. But then after high school we all started to occasionally game with other groups, and eventually we kind of informally disbanded. We all wear different clan tags now.

The separation may have actually started before the end of high school, come to think of it. Probably about the time that we started to spend time with actual girls, rather than just comic books and game art and pictures of the Spice Girls.

That kind of thing started a little earlier for me than it did the others in the group, which kind of makes sense since i was a little older. But naturally, i wanted my newfound female friends to be friends with my other little group, so i thought i'd bring them into the fold. Many gamers would probably be apprehensive about this, and in most cases they'd be right to be, since your average girl is going to be scared off pretty easily by your average gamer, but things worked out pretty well.

I remember the first time that i brought Juli and Cyndi out to hang out with my group. Gay Eskimo, Skippy, and i...i'm actually not sure if Other Kid was there or not...had spent the night at Gay Eskimo's house, up late playing GoldenEye on the Nintendo 64, as we usually did on the weekends. In the morning, which is defined as "whenever we woke up," we were going to meet up with Juli and Cyndi and bring them back to Gay Eskimo's house to hang out for the day.

I slept on the top bunk, Gay Eskimo on the bottom, and Skippy (and Other Kid if he was in fact present) on the floor. These were our standard arrangements.

When i opened my eyes, Skippy was standing directly in front of the bed, his head at the exact level of the top bunk so as to look me in the eye. If there is a creepier thing to wake up to than a man who's best known for sticking his dick into his own ass staring you in the face, i've not experienced it.

"Umm...good morning..."

His gaze was unwavering and more serious than i'd ever seen him before. He spoke with a cool, even meter and i swear his voice was deeper than normal. "Today's the day," he said with conviction. "I'm gonna get laid."

I think my laughter was probably what woke Gay Eskimo up.

Predictably, Skippy did not get laid that day. It would in fact be a couple more years before he did lose his virginity, or at least his virginity with people, and even that was kind of an accident.

A year or so later, Juli, Cyndi, and i were heading over to Gay Eskimo's house to hang out. When we got there, he was playing his Sega Dreamcast. People still remember that the Dreamcast happened, right? I mean, it was kind of a big deal at the time, and as far as console gaming platforms go, it was really ahead of its time. But unfortunately, the system didn't do so well, and i think it's dropped into obscurity by now. I guess you young whippersnappers can think of it as the predecessor to the Xbox.

So we were trying to get him to be sociable with us, but he just kept brushing us off in favor of his game. It was rather rude on his part, and i suppose nowadays we probably would have just left the sad sack of shit to wallow in his own filth. But not back then! Back then, we were convinced that getting him out of the house and making him friendly was the right thing to do. Plus, we didn't really have anything else to do. Diplomacy having failed, we turned to physically trying to remove his fat ass from the couch. We attacked.

Unfortunately for us, we had not taken into account that the Dreamcast gives Gay Eskimo superpowers. I'm not kidding. Suddenly he developed super strength and agility as long as he held on to a Dreamcast controller.

Now, it had been proven time and again that i could take Gay Eskimo in a fight. I did mention that we were a gaming group, fights are liable to happen in those. But suddenly he had become a fortress! It was like he had extra arms or something, we'd come at him and he'd bat us away like flies. He remained immobile on the couch for the longest time before we somehow pried him loose, and then he just stood in the middle of the room, clutching his Dreamcast controller, trying desperately to play his damn game while continuing to fend us off.

Finally the battle reached a climax when i rushed at him and, in the most surprising feat of physical prowess of Gay Eskimo's entire life, he reached out with one hand, grabbed me by the nuts, and threw me over his shoulder. I saw a carpet coming straight at my face for just a second, and came away from it with rugburn on my forehead.

This action, though, finally pulled the controller from its port on the Dreamcast (yes, the days before wireless controllers had their advantages), and broke Gay Eskimo's videogame trance. He felt genuinely bad about what he'd done, and agreed to go outside with us.

I suppose it's only appropriate to finish this post with this:

(RLC)Ducks out