C LABRACK: you starting to get tired of competing with GTA?
FieryGwenivere: yes. yes I am.
FieryGwenivere: and if you just assumed that, you're very insightful. I don't remember mentioning that to you.
C LABRACK: it's not that insightful. I've just always noticed zack playin them more and more. plus, so many great ones are out right now. and finally, I know a lot of girls who have the same problem around here.
FieryGwenivere: Well, it's more insightful than, uh, Zack.

Casey knows all about the feeling of being second to various technical entities, whether it's someone else putting you second, or you doing it to yourself. But I've discovered, just now, an entirely different, but related, feeling.

Let's say Zack's been playing San Andreas for a while, or I've been playing for a while, or we've been taking turns for a while. Let's say I'm thoroughly bored by now, and let's say I'm at that point where I really feel like I'm going second to a video game. I start to say sort of bitter, hinting things, and he gets it. He's heading towards a save point when he says it-- that totally fucking innocent phrase of malice. The one harmless evil with which I have no chance to complete. He looks over at me and, without a the slightest detectable amount of agenda in his tone (except that provided by my ever-suspiscious mind) asks, "So, what are we going to do after this?"

And what can I say? "Well....we're gonna put on some TV that neither of us will really like, and that most likely only one of us will even somewhat like, and we'll eat snack foods we're not really hungry that are designed to rid us of our sex appeal by our mid-twenties." Well? What would you come up with? "We'll sit and talk?" We've been married for a while now, and certainly spending every available moment with each other for much longer, and nowadays, before we can sit and actually have a conversation, there has to be some supply of subject matter. (And, not surprisingly, the only subject that's been in supply lately has been fucking GTA.) So let's face it-- we're broke, pre-twenty-one, newly married and living in Brunswick fucking Maine, and we can't fuck, or, due to the stress of the whole non-fucking state, function sexually with any mutual pleasure at all, about 80% of the time. San Andreas is about the best we could hope to do.

(And, for you fucking skeptics {the ones I keep so well-armed}, I relate to you that this isn't a direct effect of marrying too young, or rushing a relationship, or not going to college straight of high school or not travelling the world, or not stopping to do what everyone warned you you ought to. This is the reality of vaginismus, plain and simple. So I'm gonna hurry up and shut-up the wannabe pricks.)

So it's not a matter of feeling like I'm being put second to GTA. It's a matter of feeling like there's no reason why I shouldn't be considered second to GTA.

So, here we are, post-that-actual-circumstance, and I gotta say the only slight upside is that my website is getting some attention.

...oh, god.


On with it.