Underpants On The Outside

I’ve done my share of illegal narcotics (Mom, you should probably just skip this one). I’ve spent a night in absolute terror because mushrooms made me think my best friend was the devil, based on the fact that his teeth are jacked up and every time he smiled he looked positively terrifying. (Of course, he thought it was funny that I was pointing at him and calling him the devil, so the problem perpetuated itself a bit.) I’ve spent hours watching lint under a couch, then gone off to write the greatest poem mankind has ever produced, though the next morning there was only one semi-legible word and I’m pretty sure it was ‘cat’.

I don’t say that to brag or anything; I just want to establish that I am familiar with the sense of exhaustion that comes from a night or four of being propped up by exotic chemicals while you fail to find the words to describe the boundless love you have for your friends, loved ones, and gummi worms. I just never expected to wake up with that empty paper bag feeling after a weekend of Magic: The Gathering.

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Thank God for insufferable heat and my cable being broken.

On Saturday, I invited my friend Sarah to Brooklyn to hang out, enticing her with an offer of my delicious rainbow sherbet margueritas (patent pending).  I was actually low on tequila, but when it came to lies my pantry was very well stocked.  There was nothing to do at my house, but we couldn’t go out because New York had some apocalypse-caliber thunderstorms.  (Normally I pride myself on my superior electrical conductivity, but every once in a while it means I have to spend an evening indoors.)

On top of that, my cable crapped the bed about a week ago.  Only the major networks come in clearly, and since my two favorite shows right now are Project Runway and So You Think You Can Dance, you can imagine how bad the summer schedules are.  It makes me wish I knew how to read. 

I knew all this ahead of time, of course; I also knew that with nowhere to go and nothing to watch, there was only so long we’d be able to talk to each other without looking for some game to play.  (Actual time: fifteen minutes.) And as it turns out I’ve been playing an awesome game lately.*

So Sarah learned to play Magic.  And then she beat me.  Twice.

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In the pursuit of nerditude, I recently decided to start playing Magic: The Gathering, after a ten-year hiatus. Let’s see how it’s going so far…

I have to admit something: I tried online dating for about a year spanning 2002-2003.  I was ashamed at first, then amazed by the amount of time and effort it required, but in the end I couldn’t argue with the results: a series of dates with women I bestowed with well-deserved nicknames like “Limpy”, “Lumpy”, and “The Deuce”.  (The first two are pretty self-explanatory; the Deuce was named after my best estimation of her weight, a good sixty to seventy pounds more than she listed on her profile.*) The experiment wasn’t a total failure, however; I got laid… with a girl who punched me in the face TWICE during sex.  But that’s a story for a different time.

Now I’m turning back to the internet for a new type of relationship: Magic buddies.  For some reason it is now easier for me to have sex than it is to play Magic, a typo in the natural order of the universe I suspect came from Y2K. 

I’m certainly not the first nerd looking for a soulmate on the internet, but the only way I can think of finding buddies is to put an ad up on Craigslist, the internet’s answer to the Port Authority bus terminal, and the type of place I feel real comfortable leaving my inner child at 3AM.  With any luck, someone in the New York area will be sitting at their computer and be struck by a sudden urge to search for “Magic the Gathering” while they wait to see if anyone is willing to give them a blowjob in exchange for an eightball.  When they do, a lifelong friendship will be waiting for them. 

I don’t see any way this could turn out badly.

*To be fair, I deserve some of the blame for the date going badly; I should’ve chosen a better way to greet her than “Whoa.”

This weekend, I attended my first officially sanctioned Magic tournament on Saturday, followed on Sunday by a special surprise I’m saving for the last paragraph.  I’m not seeing Wonder Woman for a few weeks as she bears down to finish off her final semester of law school, so until then I won’t just be wearing my underpants on the outside; I’ll also be wearing a big pointy wizard hat.  (Note: I do not actually own a big pointy hat, so if anybody doesn’t know what to get me for my next birthday…) 

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In the pursuit of nerditude, I recently decided to start playing Magic: The Gathering, after a ten-year hiatus. Let’s see how it’s going so far…

I went to another draft tournament on Monday, where lots of new faces were sitting around the table, clearly divided into “rookies” and “veterans”. As I do any time I meet new people, I made snap judgments about their personalities based solely on appearance.

On the veteran’s side there was the Know-it-all, Fat Guy in Sweats, and Guy with ADHD. I’ve met ADHD a few times now; he’s always helpful and he even coached me a bit during my first tournament. I like him, but several times during Monday’s tournament I could hear him shouting the name of his favorite card, “Runeboggle”, regardless of whether he was playing it. It’s not even that good of a card. He just liked howling “Ruuuuuuuneboggle.” Remember: all you need is a deck and a friend.

Then there were us rookies. Just as babies all look alike, we all had the same lost, resigned expression on our faces. We accepted that we’d never fully escape our nerd-dom, but we at least wanted to keep it at arm’s length. I still show up thinking, “I’m probably going to lose, but at least I’ll be the coolest guy in the room.” Then I see the thugged out Yu-Gi-Oh players and think, “Well, I’ll at least be the coolest MAGIC player in the room.” But unfortunately, in the “coolest magic player” contest, there are no winners; only losers.

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In the pursuit of nerditude, I recently decided to start playing Magic: The Gathering, after a ten-year hiatus.  Let’s see how it’s going so far… 

Went down to Neutral Ground yesterday.  Or at least I thought it was Neutral Ground, instead it looked like I’d wandered into detention.  There wasn’t a single nerd in the place.  Instead, the place was packed with kids with shaved heads, doo-rags, and graffiti on their backpacks.  The trash talking sounded like a basketball court, and on two occasions I thought there was going to be a fight.

Instinctively I was frightened. Here I am, returning to my childhood, and the kids whose attention I’d sought to avoid all through middle school were there!  In the nerdatorium!  The foxes were in the henhouse!  Then I realized the foxes were laying eggs.

That’s right. The tough kids were playing Yu-Gi-Oh, a similar game to Magic with Anime artwork.  It even has a cartoon show based on it.  And it wasn’t just younger kids, either; I would say that a majority of the guys were 15-18 years old.  They weren’t playing Magic, but who cares… THEY WERE PLAYING!  My initial reaction was to wonder how I could reenroll in high school.  Clearly the social dynamic had been flipped on its head, and somewhere there was a quarterback praying a janitor would come let him out of the locker the chess club had shoved him in.  I’d be PROgraMming KING in no time.

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For days I hinted a nerdy endeavor of grand proportions.  Well, it’s time to reveal my secret:

After ten years away from the game, I have decided to get back into Magic: The Gathering.

Some of you might be unfamiliar with Magic. It’s a trading card game, like Dungeons and Dragons for people who need pictures.  The title of this post is a reference to the game’s old slogan: “All you need is a deck and a friend.” I always thought this was Magic players taking a frank look at themselves and acknowledging that they tended to be awkward and anti-social, often with offensive body odors.  The slogan seemed to say, “C’mon, geek, all you need is a friend.  Just one. Even you have one, don’tcha?  How about the Asian kid who doesn’t speak English very well?  You two get along, and he always has good video games. Or the fat kid? He’ll play any game that doesn’t require him to run.  If you get them and the kid who plays clarinet*, you’ll practically be able to start a gang.”

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