Here’s what I wrote about this in 2021, the first time I think I was ready to talk about this in public, on my fifth soberversary:

For probably three years, I knew that I was slowly and steadily killing myself with booze. I was getting drunk every night, because I couldn’t face the incredible pain and PTSD I had from my childhood, at the hands of my abusive father and manipulative mother.

It was unsustainable, and I knew it was unsustainable, but when you’re an addict, knowing something is unhealthy and choosing to do something about it are two very different things.

On January 8, 2016, I was out in the game room, watching TV and getting drunk as usual. I was trying to numb and soothe the pain I felt, while also deliberately hurting myself because at a fundamental level, I believed the lies the man who was my father told me about myself: I was worthless. I was unworthy of love. I was stupid. The things I loved and cared about were stupid. It did not matter if I lived or died. Nobody cared about me, anyway.

I knocked a bottle into the trash, realized I had to pee, and — so I wouldn’t disturb Anne — did not go into the bathroom, but instead walked out into the middle of my backyard and peed on the grass. I turned around, and there was Anne. I will never forget the look on her face, this mixture of sadness and real fear.

“I am so worried about you,” was all she had to say. I’d been feeling it for a long time, and I faced a stark choice that I had known I was going to face sooner or later.

“So am I.”

Roughly 12 hours later, I woke up with the headache (hangover) I always had. For the first time in years, I accepted that I brought it on myself, instead of blaming it on allergies or the wind.

I picked up my phone, and I called Chris Hardwick, my best friend, who had been sober for over a decade at that point.

“I need help,” I said. “I don’t think going to AA is for me, but I absolutely have a problem with alcohol and I need to stop drinking.”

He told me a lot of things, and we stayed on the call for hours. I realized that it was as simple and complicated as making a choice not to drink, one day or even one hour at a time. So I made the choice. HOLY SHIT was it hard. The first 45 days were a real struggle, but with the love and support of my wife and best friend, I got through it.

2016 … remember that year? Remember how bad things got? (2023 Wil hops in to add: Oh, you sweet Summer Child) I was constantly making the joke about how I picked the wrong year to quit drinking, while I continued to make the choice to not drink.

Getting clean allowed (and forced) me to confront why I drank to excess so much. It turns out that being emotionally abused and neglected by both parents, then gaslit by my mother for my entire life had consequences for my emotional development and mental health.

I take responsibility for my choices. I made the choice to become a drunk. I own that.

But I know that, had the man who was my father loved me the way he loves my siblings, had my mother just once put my needs ahead of her own (or been emotionally mature enough to even acknowledge that I had needs), the overwhelming pain and the black hole where paternal love should be would not have existed in my life.

I made a choice to fill that black hole with booze and self-destructive behavior. That sort of put a weak bandage over the psychic wound, but it never lasted more than a few hours or days before I was right back to believing all the lies that man planted in my head about myself, and feeling like I deserved all of it. If he wasn’t right, I thought, why didn’t my mother ever stand up for me? If he wasn’t right, how come nothing I ever did was good enough for him? I must be as worthless and contemptible as he made me believe I was. Anyone who says otherwise is just being fooled by me. I don’t really deserve any happiness, because I haven’t earned it. Anne’s just settling. She probably feels sorry for me.

All of that was just so much. It was so hard. It hurt, all the time. Because my mother made my success as an actor the most important thing in her life, I grew up believing that being the most successful actor in the world was the only way she’d be happy. And if that would make her happy, maybe it would prove to the man who was my father that I was worthy of his love. When I didn’t book jobs, I took it SO PERSONALLY. Didn’t those casting people know how important this was? This wasn’t just an acting role. This was the only chance I have to make my parents love me!

The thing is, I didn’t like it. I didn’t love acting and auditioning and attention like my mother did. It was never my dream. It was hers, and she sacrificed my childhood, and ultimately my relationship with her and her husband, in pursuit of it.

I didn’t jump straight to “get drunk all the time” as a coping mechanism. For years I tried to have conversations with my parents about how I felt, and every single time, I was dismissed for being ungrateful, overly dramatic, or just making things up. Every single time I tried to have a meaningful conversation about my feelings, I was met with an endless list of excuses, justifications, denials. They just refused to accept that my experiences were true or that my feelings were valid. When the man who was my father didn’t blow me off, he got mad at me, mocked me, humiliated me, made me afraid of him. I began to hope that he’d just blow me off, because it wasn’t as bad as the alternative.

It was so painful, and so frustrating, I just gave up and dove into as many bottles as I could find. And I was varying degrees of a mess, for years. A functional alcoholic, is what I believe people like me were called.

But then in 2016 I quit, and as my body began to heal from how much I’d abused it, my spirit began to heal, too. I found a room in my heart, and in that room was a small child, terrified and abused and unloved, and I opened my arms to him. I held him the way he should have been held by our parents, and I loved him the way he deserved to be loved: unconditionally. I promised him that I would protect him from them. They could never hurt him again.

I realized I had walked up to that door countless times over the years, and I had always chosen to walk right past it and into a bar, instead.

But because I had made the choice to stop drinking, to stop hiding from my pain, to stop self-medicating, I could see that door clearly now. I could hear that little boy weeping in there, as quietly as possible, because he was so afraid that someone was going to come in and hurt him. Without alcohol numbing me, I clearly saw that my mother had been lying to me, and maybe to herself, about who that man was to me. I realized that the man who was my father had been a bully to me my whole life. I accepted and owned that it wasn’t my fault. I didn’t deserve it. I didn’t do anything to cause it. It was not may fault. It was a choice he made, and while I will never know why, I knew what had happened to me. I knew my memories were real, and I hoped that, armed with this new certainty and confidence, I could have a heart-to-heart with my parents, and begin to heal these wounds. I sincerely believed this time would be different, because I was different. My parents are people you can’t talk to. You have to write everything down so you can refer to it when they twist around what you said and meant. So I spent a lot of time carefully putting my words together, shared a lot of my feelings and fears, and finally told them, “I feel like my dad doesn’t love me, and I don’t know what to do about that.”

I know some of you are parents. What do you do when your child says that to you? What is your first instinct? Pick up the phone right away? Send a text right away? Somehow communicate to your child immediately that, no, that is not the case at all, and they are not unloved, right?

Of course you do, because you’re not a selfish piece of shit. But if you’re my mom, you ignore me for two months. Total radio silence. When you finally do acknowledge the communication, you spend paragraphs telling me how much your horse costs, complaining about some woman I’ve never heard of down at your barn, and several other things that you don’t even realize or care are a list of things that are more important to you than your son’s realization that his father — your husband — does not love him. Eventually, you get around to telling me how you are incensed and offended. How could I be so hateful and cruel and ungrateful? Why would I make up so many lies about the family? Nothing is more important than family! How could I say such hurtful things?! Why would I make all that up just to hurt them? If you’re my mother, you don’t even acknowledge, or allow for the possibility, that I am in tremendous pain, and have been for my entire life. If you’re my dad, you wait four months before you write an email titled “your mother wants me to email you” that I don’t even open, because everything is in that subject, isn’t it?

Well. There it was. I had changed. They had not. They will not. Ever. They are emotionally immature narcissists.

So, I want to be clear: I take responsibility for the choice I made to become a full-time drunk. But I also hold my parents accountable for their choices, including the choice to ignore me for weeks when, after a lifetime of failed attempts to be seen and heard, I finally confessed my deepest fear: that my dad didn’t like me, much less love me. I can not imagine ignoring my child, who is clearly hurting, the way they ignored me. When I used to do the bargaining part of grief, I always came back to the weeks of silence after I confessed that I, their eldest son, felt unloved by his father. I mean, who does that to their kid? After a lifetime drilling into his head that “nothing is more important than family”?

Their silence during those long weeks told me everything I needed to know, and my sobriety was severely tested for the first time. Everything I had always feared, everything I had been drinking to avoid, was right there, in my face. When they finally acknowledged me, and made it all about their feelings, I knew: this was never going to change. I mean, I’d known that for years, maybe for my whole life, but I still held out hope that, somehow, something would be different. I had known it, but I hadn’t accepted it, until that day.

During those weeks, I spent a lot of time on the phone with Chris, spent a lot of time with Anne, and filled a bunch of journals. But I didn’t make the choice to pick up a drink. I’d committed to taking better care of myself, so I could be the husband and father my family deserved. So I could find the happiness that I deserve.

Once I was clean, I had clarity, and so much time to do activities! I was able to clearly and honestly assess who I was, and why. I was able to love myself and care for myself in ways that I hadn’t before, because I sincerely believed I didn’t deserve it.

I will never forget this epiphany I had one day, while walking through our kitchen: If I was the person the man who was my father made me believe I was, there is no way a woman as amazing and special as Anne would choose to spend her life with me. Why this never occurred to me up to that point can be found under a pile of bottles.

Not having parents sucks. It hurts all the time. But it hurts less than what I had with those people, so I continue to make the choice to keep them out of my life.

After five years, I don’t miss being drunk at all. It is not a coincidence that the last five six years have been the best five years of my life, personally and professionally. In spite of everything 2021 took from us (and I know it’s taken far more from others than it took from me), I had the best year I’ve ever had in my career — and this is my career, being a host and a writer and audiobook narrator. This is what I want to do, and I still feel giddy when I take time to really own that I am finally following MY dream. It’s a shame I don’t have parents to share it with, but I have a pretty epic TNG family who celebrate everything I do with me.

I wondered how I would feel, crossing five years without a drink off the calendar. I thought I’d feel celebratory, but honestly the thing I feel the most is gratitude and resolve.

I am grateful that I have the love and support of my wife and children. I am grateful that because I have so much privilege, this wasn’t as hard for me as it could have been. I am grateful that, every day, I can make a choice to not drink, and it’s entirely MY CHOICE.

Because I quit drinking, I had the clarity I needed to see WHY I was drinking, and I had the strength to confront it. It didn’t go the way I wanted or hoped, but instead of numbing that pain with booze, I have come to accept it, as painful as it is.

And even with that pain, my life is immeasurably better than it was, and for that I am immeasurably grateful.

Okay, before I add some new thoughts and reflections, I want to share last year’s progress / status update:

Okay, we’re back in 2023 now, and I’m so glad I read that all the way through. I’d forgotten some things and lost sight of others. I have some perspective again that I really needed today. As surprisingly good 2021 was, 2022 came in HOT. My memoir was released and I made the New York Times bestseller list for the second time (when they debuted the audiobook list, I was on it at number freakin’ one for Ready Player One. NUMBER ONE Y’ALL!). I mean, come on. That’s pretty incredible. Then I got to play on Celebrity Jeopardy THREE TIMES (my final airs next month). Oh, and I turned 50, which was not guaranteed as recently as eight years ago, when I was slowly drinking myself to death.

The most significant thing in the last year, though, has been a deliberate and consistent effort to heal as much of my cPTSD as possible. All the press for Still Just A Geek took a lot out of me. It was tearing a scab off a wound every day, exposing that wound to potential new infections, and then trying to clean and dress it before the whole thing started again. I don’t regret it. I did really good interviews and participated in public discussions centered on mental health care and abuse recovery that I know were meaningful to a lot of people. I’m sure the hard work I did promoting the book helped it get to the NYT list. But that work came with a hidden emotional cost I didn’t know to even look for. Since I finished, I’ve been doing EMDR therapy every week. I’ve been doing daily mindfulness exercises. I’m prioritizing my mental health in a way I haven’t, before, and it’s making all the difference. In fact, mental health care has been my theme since July, and is currently my theme for 2023.

None of this exists if I don’t make the choice I made 2556 days ago, that I have made every day since then, that I make today and plan to make tomorrow. But tomorrow is tomorrow, and I’m going to let today be today.

Hi. I’m Wil, and it’s been five six seven years since my last drink. Happy birthday to me.

Real quick: there’s a lot in this post and I want to take a moment here to tell you that if you’re hurting, there are wonderful people who are waiting RIGHT NOW to help you. I didn’t know that when I was suffering the most. I also didn’t have instant (and private) access to resources and professionals online to counsel me via my phone or laptop or whatever. I can’t tell you how to approach your journey, but I can show you two places you can start: https://www.mentalhealth.gov/ or https://nami.org/Home

As I observed last year, the press tour for Still Just A Geek exposed and intensified a lot — a lot a lot a lot — of deep emotional trauma. All my panic attacks came back. The night terrors returned. I started seeing my dad out of the corner of my eye, all over the place. I was so anxious and activated, I lost my shit at more than one person who absolutely did not deserve it. It was so awful, so painful, so scary, and I’m only now noticing that I never once considered diving into the bottom of a bottle to escape it.

That’s a big deal.

Instead, I did the work. Oh man. The work has been really hard. I’m doing EMDR therapy using an IFS model to help heal from childhood trauma that is so overwhelming and so extensive, I frequently have to stop and take a step back to just take in the enormity of my parents’ selfishness, abuse, cruelty, and neglect. It seems like, once a week, I remember something shitty or hurtful or selfish one or both of them did, and I have to like … disconnect from reality for a moment, become an objective observer of this set of facts and behavioral choices that two adults — two parents — made, and … even now I can’t find the words or images to describe the enormity of my father’s disinterest and cruelty, or my mother’s gaslighting and manipulation. It is no wonder I did everything I could to soothe that, but it’s a blessing that I found the strength and support to begin healing it.

About a year ago, I began spinning a cocoon for myself. With the help of my therapist, the love and support of my wife, my kids, and a couple friends I can trust, I went into that cocoon as fully as I could, to be in a place where I could safely do The Work.

I’m still doing The Work. I do it every day. It’s practice, like yoga or writing, or whatever you do daily with no expectation of solving or completing. It’s something ongoing and evolving, and while it is so much more challenging than pouring a third and fourth and fifth drink, I’m worth the effort. My wife and children are worth the effort.

Hi. My name is Wil. I’m 51 years-old and a survivor of child abuse and neglect. I have CPTSD, and I am a recovering alcoholic. It’s been eight years since I stopped drinking, and every day I make a choice to continue the streak. If you recognize yourself in my story, and you’re thinking that maybe you want to begin your own journey, I believe in you. It’s not going to be easy (for me, it wasn’t even about physical addiction; I don’t miss booze at all, and never had any withdrawal symptoms. It was all the emotional pain and trauma that I had to feel and experience without the alcohol to numb it, and finding other things to do to fill the time I spent getting drunk.) but nothing worth doing is ever easy.

I’m not here to preach at you or judge you. I’m just here as an example of someone who has endured a whole lot of real traumatic shit, who believes in you. I know how hard this was (and occasionally still is) for me, and I know that if I can do this, so can you.

So I went into that thread to see how long it took for the Andy Dick stories to get to the top (4 hours) and saw someone relate how they saw Gary Busey at LAX, and he was just sort of badgering everyone who was near him. I commented that I have seen him at LAX two different times, separated by at least a decade, and he was doing exactly that both times. You know that Far Side “How Nature Says Do Not Touch”? This is where I gesture toward Gary Busey and his teeth.

In response to that, someone asked me to flip the thread and share my weirdest fan encounter. I don’t know that I have one that’s weird (the space between weird and terrifying in this instance is measured in microns), but I do have two that are especially memorable, so I shared those.

I’ve had people behave in appalling ways, treating me like a thing, like a Pokemon to be caught and displayed. One guy followed me into a bathroom at an airport, literally trying to shove a pile of 8x10s into my face while I was at the urinal. I’m a generally laid back person, and I lost my shit at that guy. In retrospect, I should have just peed all over him. His version of the story must be … interesting.

But that’s a real outlier. I’m so lucky that I seem to draw the attention of kind and gentle people more than anything else, so those are the people who tend to approach and interact with me.

My favorite (well, most memorable) experience in recent memory was about … maybe six or seven years ago. My wife and I were in San Francisco for work, and we were waiting at a light to cross the street. This guy comes up from our left, jogging, and as he passes us, this sixth sense I have developed to keep me safe tells me that this guy just made me, and I need to be aware of that. Luckily for me, there are endless escape routes in this moment, but something in this guy’s body language tells me I won’t need them. (Hypervigilance, which is part of my body’s response to trauma, takes all of that stuff in, processes it, and blares it all back at like an air raid siren in the span of about a second and a half. WE ARE AT DEFCON 2 PEOPLE.)

He stops jogging and does that jogging backwards thing. He says, “Are you on The Big Bang Theory?”

He’s jogging in place which always looks funny to me, even though I’m a runner and do it myself.

I tell him that I am. His face lights up. “I knew it! Oh man! I love you on that show!”

WE ARE BACK AT DEFCON 5.

“Thank you!”

Then he takes a second while he’s thinking of something and says, “this is embarrassing. I know that your character is Wil Wheaton, but I don’t know what your name is.”

That’s when I got to tell him that I am Wil Wheaton Prime, and that the Wil Wheaton he sees is a character.

“I had no idea you were a real person!” He said. Then, he kind of caught himself, like maybe he’d insulted me or been unkind.

Oh buddy. You have no idea.

“Oh, I assure you, I am a fully functional human being with a backstory and everything,” I laughed.

He laughed with me. The light changed. We did a terrorist fist jab, and went on our separate ways.

I related this to Anne last night. She remembered all these things, because she was there for them.

“Weird shit happens around us a lot,” I said, “because of this weird job I have. But I read that whole thing, and I gotta tell you how grateful I am to know that I’m never showing up in one of those threads as the bad guy in someone’s story.”

“Except the bathroom guy,” she said.

I laughed. “I would love to hear that guy justify how he was the aggrieved party in that story.”

Of course, I know what that guy told himself. He told himself that he waited at the airport for hours and I owed him. That’s a thing that happens all the time, and it’s why I have this blanket policy of never engaging in photos and autographs at airports, ever, for any reason. And I don’t feel guilty about it. I used to, sure, thanks to all my mom’s conditioning, but I gotta tell you, the day I said to a belligerent guy at PDX, calmly and simply, “No, I’m not signing anything for you and I don’t care how long you waited here. You chose to do that, and I don’t owe you anything. Respect my boundaries.” And walked away while he sputtered in self righteous anger? Yeah, that felt great.

I am a fully functional human being with a backstory and everything. 99% of people I encounter know and honor that, and I am so grateful.

At the time, I hoped it would sort of revitalize my blog, which had taken a back seat (in a vehicle that was parked in a garage across town) to social media and the like. I hoped I would be inspired to keep writing in the new year, maybe get that vehicle out of storage and drive it around town.

But I felt like all the effort was for nothing. I wasn’t creating to satisfy myself; I was posting to create content. Eww. Gross. And the numbers on my blog didn’t move at all. Hardly anyone commented, I didn’t see an influx of returning or new readers, and when January rolled around, I remember thinking, “well, thank god that humiliating waste of time is over.”

Until just recently, I didn’t see any value in the exercise. Like I said, the goal was to generate interest by posting new content every day. And I didn’t hit that goal, because generic content isn’t what people came to my blog to read (and it isn’t what I like to write). I wasn’t all that interested in what I posted (though I love the Blades of Steel post I did, and still laugh when I think of calling my team “The Los Angeles Los Angeleses” as they played the “Vancouver Vancouvers”) and the old adage “When you are interested, you are interesting,” has an equal and opposite adage “When you aren’t interested, you’re labored, or trying too hard.”

You can see — I can see, rather — the very meaningful difference between the two. And with the benefit of hindsight and experience, I get why I didn’t achieve what I wanted. I went about it in a way that was unlikely to deliver what I was looking for. Lesson learned.

Yesterday, I saw that my friend John gave himself a Daily December last month, where he wrote about a different comfort movie every day. He said it was to get that daily writing muscle stretched out and warmed up, because he has two novels due this year.

I don’t have anything due, at least not right now, but I do have some things I want to finish and release this year, and the muscles and discipline I need to use them have been neglected while I’ve been focused on mental health therapy and complex trauma recovery for much of the last year.

I’m not ready to commit to daily posts. I’m going to do daily writing (I’ve written this over the last six days), but I don’t know for sure that I’ll have something to publish every day. I’m not going to pressure myself with expectations. I’m going to start out with weekly posts from a list of topics that interest me, in the hopes that I will be interesting when I write about them, as well as looking forward to the creative process involved.

Inspired by a lifetime of RPGs, I made a table featuring all the different topics that are interesting to me. I’m going to roll on the table, and use the result as my prompt.

Today, my rolls landed on Classic Arcade Games: Bagman.

Okay, here we go.

Bagman was released in America by Stern in 1982, when I was ten years old.

I first saw and played Bagman at Shakey’s Pizza on Foothill Blvd. in La Crescenta, when we went there for one of those school fundraiser things that I weirdly remember were always on Wednesdays for some reason. This place had a dedicated arcade room, large enough to hold maybe five machines along one wall, with two pinball machines perpendicular to them. A change machine and candy machines were against the other two.

The routine was familiar: order dinner, drink as much soda as I could before my parents caught on, cram some mojos into my face and then go play video games while we waited for the pizza to come out. We sat a long, banquet tables on padded benches. Lamps hung low above the table, dressed up with fancy stained glass shades. The glasses were red, pebbled plastic. Mine had a chip out of the lip.

In 1982, video games were a huge part of my life, but my exposure to them was relatively limited. I didn’t get to go to arcades often, and never alone. I didn’t get to go to the mall where they had everything. I got to go to the 7-11 where they had two games and a pinball machine, and if they weren’t fun for me, tough shit, kid. Maybe they’ll be replaced next month, which may as well be a year.

Shakey’s was a place we only went to every couple of months, so there were always new games there, and they were always ones I never saw anywhere else. They had Pac-Man and Galaga, Space Invaders, of course, but they also had Star Castle and Vanguard … and Bagman.

In those days, everything you needed to know about the game was on the cabinet. Some games, like Karate Champ, had all kinds of combinations to refer to betwen levels or turns. Some games told you who the bad guys were and how to defeat them. Some games had vital parts of the instructions burned out by a player who carelessly let a cigarette burn down across it. (This happened way more often than you’d expect).

All games had gorgeous artwork on the sides of the cabinets, that hardly anyone ever saw, because most games were stacked right next to each other to maximize space. In 1982, I was starting to notice games with an attract mode, where it would play music and walk you through how the game was played.

Bagman’s bright, yellow, cabinet stood out in the dark arcade room. Other kids were clustered around Pac-Man and whatever was just past it, but Bagman was wide open. Nobody was playing it, and there wasn’t a single quarter on the “I got next” rail at the front of the marquee. I noticed that there was a comic strip on the marquee, and I took a closer look.

The marquee was so bright in the dim light, I had to squint to read it. Okay, so the Bagman breaks out of prison and goes into an old timey gold mine to collect bags of money he stashed there, with the prison guards hot on his heels. Okay, that makes sense, and it’s kind of promising an experience that is closer to Choose Your Own Adventure than Galaxian.

See, all the games I played up to that point were essentially about being a space ship, or whatever Pac-Man was. Occasionally, I was a car. Those games were about getting points and putting in my initials (or ASS if nobody was looking). This looked like a story, where I was a GUY. The only other game I played where I was a GUY with a story was Donkey Kong, and I loved that sense of being a person instead of a thing. (You know, something I was desperate for in my real life.)

While I considered what could happen should I take control of the story myself, and what (if any) animation I could expect to see when I picked up all the money bags, the game began its attract mode sequence. It played music, there was something that sounded like speech, and holy shit was there a lot to do! You could ride in a mine cart! You could break down walls with a pickaxe! There were multiple screens that were all connected! And though I would NEVER EVER EVER EVER EVER admit it to anyone, the sprites were ADORABLE. The little Bagman in his prison suit, the guards with their giant mustaches and little shotguns? The money bags that could have come out of a Saturday Morning Cartoon? UGH! STAHP! happytearsemoji.png It got me the same way the Smurfs did, for the exact same reasons. I stole a quick, furtive glance around to ensure that nobody — especially my dad — had somehow heard my secret inner thoughts. Of course, nobody did. That was impossible.

And yet. Where my dad was concerned, I could never be too careful. I’d learned that the hard way, over and over and over and

Still. Even a single quarter represented a significant portion of my budget. My parents were so stingy with the quarters at these things, I’d get maybe a buck and a half to spend on six games (the 50 cent games didn’t exist, yet) and I had to make each one count. It’s funny, the parent in me is like, “Maybe it wasn’t as unreasonable as you think it was,” but I’m telling you this story from a specific point of view, and I’m just relating how ten year-old me felt, something he wasn’t ever allowed to do.

So. To recap: in Bagman, you walk around a mine, picking up bags of money that you carry up to a wheelbarrow, while you avoid the guards. Fun music plays while you do it, and the whole thing is adorable. Okay, very simple. I got it.

I reached into my pocket and fished out a quarter. I felt its ridges against my fingertips as I turned it around and held it flat against my thumb in a singular motion before pushing it into the slot.

The game skipped the “are you ready” formalities of Donkey Kong and, like someone who had just escaped from jail, threw me into the middle of the action, on the run, bottom of the left screen at the base of a ladder. The music played! The little guard guy came lumbering across the top of the screen toward the top of the ladder, and I realized that I didn’t know where I was supposed to go. All the way to the right, along the bottom? All the way to the top? I guess? To escape? Like Dig Dug? Wait. I have to get the money! First you get the money, then you get the mojos, then you get the pizza. The world is yours.

The guard guy was now coming down the ladder.

I didn’t even have to move to pick up the first bag of money. I just tapped the button and grabbed it. I started to go up the ladder, but the guard was coming down too fast. So I yanked the joystick as hard as I could to the right, running away from the guard whose singular focus on methodically, relentlessly chasing me down was rivaled only by Jason Vorhees. I was about halfway across the screen when he got off the ladder. The money bag was slowing me down so I dropped it, picked up speed near the edge of the screen, and got run over by one of those mine carts I was so excited to ride in.

A sad “you lost lol” tune played.

Shit. That was really fast.

The game reset, and this time I went straight up the ladder. AS the guard started coming down, I was off to the right, picking up a different money bag. I went back to my left and up a different ladder. The guard followed me and gained as I climbed to escape him. Desperate to stay alive, I dropped the bag of money, killing the guard guy, who fell all the way to the bottom of the screen. “Yes!” I hissed with quiet excitement, as I pulled the stick toward me to climb down and retrieve my loot.

I was picking up the bag when I discovered that the guard wasn’t dead. He was just resting, pining for the fjords. Beautiful plumage. The Bagman cried out a digital “aye yi yi!” and the game reset for a third and final time.

Up the ladder, to the left, up another ladder, back to the right, up the ladder to the top of the screen! Now off to the right to see what’s hidden one screen away! IT’S HAPPENING!

The guard, realizing he’d been fooled my my clever movement, ascended the ladder. I scoffed and tapped the button to push the wheelbarrow into the second screen, which revealed itself to me in all its glory. This screen had TWO mine carts, three pick axes, a silver bag of money behind a wall that had to be blown up with a bomb — A BOMB! — and an elevator you had to wait for if you wanted to cross the shaft in the center of the screen. An elevator that didn’t arrive before the guard from the first screen appeared and ended my game before he even touched me. There was nowhere to go. Game Over.

Well, that sucked, right?

Yes. And no.

There was SO MUCH to do, I just had to figure out how to do it. There was probably a pattern or something to get me started. I just had to find it in a book at B. Dalton’s in the mall. (more about those books another time).

It wasn’t fun. It was frustrating. Why give me all these things to do, and program it so that all I could do was run away from the guard? I wasn’t mad as much as I was confused. Crazy Climber would vex me in a similar fashion, as would Track and Field, before I finally figured out that I just wasn’t very good at these games.

I went back to the table a little dispirited and resolved to be more careful with my quarters. I didn’t like mushrooms on my pizza. Mom and dad knew that, and they always got them, anyway.

I saw Bagman again and again over the years. While researching a little bit for this post, I saw that it was actually quite popular. There’s something to be said about perception versus reality, but not by me, at least not right now.

I also watched someone play the first level on YouTube and … yeah, there is no way ten year-old me was EVER going to figure out the things this dude had to do to complete the level. Like, I honestly have no idea how he figured it all out. Trial and error would have cost me a fortune back then, so when I played Bagman — always as a second choice when the clock was ticking on getting picked up and I had quarters left in my pocket — I never got past the first level. I never even came close.

But I kept going back, trying to kick that particular football, and AUGHing onto my back each time.

I have Bagman in my gameroom. It’s why it’s on this list of possible topics. Of COURSE I played it before I wrote this, between drafts, and during the rewrite. It remains as compelling as it is unsatisfying, more of an oddity in my collection than a beloved source of memories like some of the games I will likely write about at some point.

But I have played it so much this week that I got to put my name in for the first time, ever, which was pretty great. Bagman allows for long entries, so WIL RULES is currently looking down upon FANCHOIS, GASTOUNET, PIERROT, and JOJO.

And that’s Write, You Fool, Volume 1, Number 1.

This is the kind of thing I enjoy talking about, so I thought I’d share it here.

++

The biggest surprise for me this year was finding my way back into the depths of my library.

My first RPG was D&D Basic in 1983, and I’ve played ever since, tons of systems. I love it. It’s even part of my job.

But somewhere along the line, I lost the ability to pick up a module, some rules, a sourcebook, whatever, and just read it for the sake of reading it, to enjoy the prose, the box text, the illustrations, the fiction, unless I was going to play the game.

So I have entire shelves in my library that are filled with RPGs I haven’t read, but “want to play someday.”

This year, I read an AMA here from Stu Horvath, and someone asked if it was normal to just read RPG materials for fun, with no intention of playing them. He observed that there was nothing stopping anyone from doing just that, and for some reason, that’s what I, a 51 year-old Ur-Gamer from the Old Times needed to hear.

It was late in the year, but since then, I’ve gone through maybe a dozen of my books, some of them various flavors of D&D, most of them indie RPGs, all of them games I don’t think I’ll ever play, but *intensely* enjoyed reading.

The pandemic delivered a metaphorical (and practical) TPK to my group, and I don’t know how quickly or easily I’ll be able to assemble a new one, but when I do, it’s going to be one hell of a game, because I have all these new ideas and inspirations in my head, from reading systems and adventures I’ll probably never play.

++

When I was in my teens, I read every GURPS sourcebook I could, cover to cover, losing myself in the imaginary worlds they represented. I loved those things as much as I loved any novel. I read all the FASA Star Trek RPG sourcebooks, because I wanted to know everything I could about the imaginary world I lived and worked in. Also: blueprints. So many wonderful blueprints.

I’ve recently read The Skeletons (the players are the undead who guard a tomb that is defiled by adventurers), Maschinezeit (what if dead spaceships were possessed by Lovecraftian cosmic horrors and you went to one, anyway?), Mothership (in space, no one can survive), and about half of The Lost Mine of Phandelver (5e starter box) because I hope to run it in the new year for a small group of friends.

I have shelf after shelf of books from popular systems, indie systems, out of print systems, loved and hated systems, and 2023 was the year I stumbled into permission to read them on my terms, rather than reading them to prep for a test.

Maybe 2024 will be the year I played more RPGs than I have in a long time.

The spray of orange oil as I zested the peel into the sauce was bracing and wonderful. I looked up and just took in, for a few seconds, the love and the joy all around me.

And I didn’t want to, but I remembered, all at once, 40 years of holiday meals with my parents where I was the scapegoat, my brother was the golden child, and my father was the racist uncle. (About two years ago, I was talking to my sister and one of us said something about how weird it was that we didn’t seem to have that racist uncle. Both of my uncles are awesome. And that’s when I realized that, just like if you don’t know who the sucker is at the poker table it’s you, who our dad was at every gathering of extended family.

And then I was as grateful and thankful and overwhelmed with happysadness as I’ve been in a long, long time. After a lifetime of being an unwilling but fundamental part of my mother’s Happy and Perfect Family lie, which included the demand and expectation that, at all family gatherings, I would make myself as small as possible, that I would absorb all of my father’s humiliation, mockery, and bullying, in front of generations of family, that I would be a thing to show off as evidence of how successful she was, how they were all wrong about her, I noticed something profound today.

Today, when I had those memories, I didn’t get angry. I didn’t get depressed. I didn’t get triggered or disregulated. I felt sad for the loss I always feel for the childhood I never had, acknowledged the grief that comes with it … and then I noticed that the hard work I’m doing with my therapist to heal and recover from my CPTSD and pain has created space I never had before to feel all of the joy and love and being part of a sincerely and genuinely happy family that doesn’t need to be perfect, because we are all enough, just as we are. I realized that I used to dread holidays, but I’ve been excited for weeks to be with my family today.

And I am so thankful for that love we share. I’m thankful for it every single day, but I’m thankful for it today, especially, because I can still feel what it was like, and how much it hurt, before.

The cranberry sauce bubbled as it thickened. I turned down the heat and grabbed a handful of herbs to chop up for the rub. Rosemary, thyme, oregano, and fresh black pepper mingled with the orange oil. The faint aroma of boiling sweet potatoes was just behind it, growing stronger by the minute. A cranberry snapped, releasing a tiny burst of steam.

We got the turkey into the oven, and quickly cleaned up as much of the kitchen as we could, in consideration of our future selves who we expect to be very fat and happy in a few hours, and probably won’t want to clean up a messy kitchen.

We did it all together, a simple expression of love for each other.

When we were done, my sons and daughter in-law went out to my game room to play video games. I came into my office to get this dust out of my eyes, and write it all down, because I’m a writer and that’s what we do, even on holidays, when something special happens that we don’t want to forget.

I am so thankful for that love we share. I’m thankful for it every single day, but I’m thankful for it today, especially, because I can still feel what it was like, and how much it hurt, before.

I’m pasting it here, so I have something to refer to going forward.

Covid is very much still A Thing, and so is the flu, the common cold, and other respiratory illnesses. I started masking during the pandemic, because I didn’t want to get sick and die. I have kept masking when I’m in close proximity to other people, large crowds, or small indoor spaces because I haven’t had the flu or a cold or, gods forbid, Covid, since I made that choice. It’s such a tiny, simple, thing and it makes a huge difference for me. It’s too bad that so many people have decided to make another personal health choice that is none of their business, that doesn’t affect them at all, just another part of their culture war. And it tells you everything you need to know about a person when they are a dick about it.

From a practical standpoint: the guy next to me was coughing and sneezing his face off the whole game, and he couldn’t be bothered to wear a mask to protect the people around him from whatever he had. Whether it was a cold, or something more serious, I know I didn’t pick it up from him. That’s basically why I wear a mask whenever I’m in a crowd, and why I wish it wasn’t such a big stupid deal (pro or against).

I see a lot of thank yous for wearing masks in our photos. I appreciate the kindness, but we aren’t making a statement. We aren’t modeling behavior. We are doing what is best for us, period. This isn’t a statement, it’s just a personal health choice. If it helps normalize the entire thing, I’m happy for that passive bonus, but it’s not something I’m spending an action or even a bonus action on.

I haven’t heard someone complain that I wear shoes into a restaurant, and I haven’t ever had someone thank me for wearing shoes in a restaurant. I hope it will be the same with masks, sooner than later. It’s nobody’s business, and the only people who are dicks about it are dicks about everything else, anyway.

I’m just tired of this being not just A Thing, but A Big Stupid Fucking Culture War Thing.

So. Mind your business, do what’s best for your health and in consideration of the health of those around you, and don’t be a dick.

Thanks for listening.

Here’s the story of a dork named Donnie
And every single thing he touches dies
Like the steaks the Taj Mahal and the election
He lost in court sixty times.

Here’s the story of a crazy lady
Who told a lot of crazy crazy lies
And she got together with some looney lawyers
To steal some votes they tried.

Then the loser set his mob upon the Congress
And Giulani’s hair dye ran right down his face
And the crazy lady said the vote was stolen
By Jewish lasers shot from satellites in space.

And when they all got caught for doing some light treason
Chesebro flipped and Kraken lady, too
And Donnie you’re in real big fuckin’ trouble
Because Fanni Willis is coming for you

And the Treason Bunch
The Treason Bunch
A criminal conspiracy called
Treason bunch

My friend Will texted me and said “The answer to your question is Assassin’s Creed: Origins. I know you’re going to look at every recommendation you get, because you’re a nerd like that, but that’s the game you want to play.”

We call sharing good, insightful ideas like this with each other, “Wil(l) thinking.” Of course, he knows me that well and of course he was right. It only took an hour of Assassin’s Creed: Origins for me to know I was going to be spending quite a bit of time in ancient Egypt for the near future.

So in late July, I while I was playing it, I wrote this on my Facebook, and for some reason I didn’t post it here. I think it’s pretty entertaining, so allow me to correct that right now:

So I finished the story about 10 hours ago, and since then, I’ve been running around the map, as a massively overpowered Bayek with a flaming sword and everything, Leeroy Jenkinsing my way across the world. I’m hunting the Phylakes, and have two left.

Hey, speaking of those guys, here’s a fun thing that happened. I was trying to draw a Phylake away from a populated area, so I could focus on him and not risk his allies showing up to distract me. I mean, I’m just trying to cut his head off with my flaming sword and honestly who can blame me he and his friends have been hassling me for literal months. GOSH.

I pull him into a field, and hit him in the face with an arrow that does not do nearly as much damage as an arrow to the face would do. But considering I climbed all the way up a mountain and then fought a bunch of Romans without pausing to catch my breath, maybe I can just agree to suspend my disbelief for a minute.

He comes at me in his fancy chariot, and I’m like “Yeah, buddy! Get ready to be set on fire!” and I roll out of the way, slash at him, and set him on fire. It was so great, until the grass I was in also caught on fire, which then caught me on fire.

Thinking quickly, I ran out of the grass, did the STOP DROP AND ROLL I’ve been preparing for my whole life, and jumped up onto the top of a … something with a grass roof.

This Phylake dude is super mad that I set him on fire (fair) so he starts throwing fucking JAVELINS at me (also fair). I switch to my secondary bow, a predator bow that is both on fire and able to be controlled by me in a first person view that is so much more fun than I thought it would be, I wish I’d bought it earlier.

I target the Phylake, and lock on. As I track him, the fire on my bow catches the roof on fire. Which catches me on fire. Which kills me.

I’m not saying I didn’t deserve all of it, because I was clearly the aggressor, but I will say that when I respawned, I put the fire weapons away and fought this dude with a spear, a pair of fuck you up swords, and poison arrows.

When I defeated him and looted his corpse, I got a Legendary flaming sword, because the universe has a sense of humor.

Okay, so I’m pretty much wrapping that up and looking for something new, which turns out to be Baldur’s Gate 3.

I stuck it to my monitor, next to another one that reminded me to relax my shoulders and breathe.

At some point, it fell off and I forgot about it. Just now, I got under my desk to move some cables and sweep up the dust and animal fur and various Eldritch Horrors that manage to find their way down there and fill all the available space, like the traffic in Sim City. While I was scooping out just way more fur than I imagined existed in my entire house, and at least half a bowl of granola, and a few dollars in tarnished change, I saw my little sticky note. It must have been knocked off and fallen behind the desk when I wasn’t paying attention.

I glanced at it, scooped it up, and automatically put it in the trash, on top of just so much fur and dead leaves and way more rubber bands and twisty ties than would be considered “a reasonable amount”. I turned to go back to cleaning up the rest of the bullshit, when I stopped for a moment, turned back, pulled my little note out, and read it aloud.

“I am loved,” I said, sitting on the floor underneath my desk, the fan of my server quietly blowing warm air across my feet. “Thank you, past me, for the reminder. I don’t need it today, but maybe someone else does, and I’m going to post this for them.”

You are loved. You are enough. I see you.

In the summer of 1981, my friend Jenny, who lived next door, had a friend from Northern California visit for a couple of weeks.

Her name was Candice, and she went by Candi. She was my first — and biggest — childhood crush. That summer, the Stars On 45 medley was blowing up, and whenever it came on my transistor radio, I’d sing “sugar, ah, honey honey, you are my candy girl” from the deepest well of my little first crush having heart. Listen, do you want to know a secret? Do you promise not to tell? Maybe she would be my candy girl, whatever that meant (holding hands, I was pretty sure). I could sing it right in front of her and she didn’t even know! Delightfully devilish, young Wil.

We were playing in the sprinklers in Jenny’s front yard, when her mom called them in for lunch before they went to the zoo. (The kids next door got to eat all the stuff I wanted: Frosted Flakes, Kool-Aid, Ding Dongs, Otter Pops, everything that was marketed to kids that I wasn’t allowed to have because something something sugar. Here’s some carob. It’s exactly like chocolate, except it’s waxy and flavorless and all kids hate it. Enjoy!) I went home to get something for myself and figure out the rest of my afternoon, until they got back.

So with blades of grass stuck to my feet and legs, my hair smashed down by sweat and water, and this fluttering in my stomach that was new to me, I ran out of the summer heat and into my house. The swamp cooler was doing its best to cool the house down, which left a lot to be desired, if I’m being honest. The kitchen was to my right. The living room was in front of me, and the hallway to our bedrooms and the bathroom was on my left. My dad was in the kitchen sitting at the table with his back to me. He was on the phone with the long cord, and didn’t notice me come in.

It only took a few seconds for me to figure out that he was talking to my uncle, who I thought was the coolest dude on the planet. I inhaled, preparing to ask my dad if I could say hi to him, when I heard that Dad was talking about me.

He was telling my uncle that I had my first crush. And he was making fun of me about it. Behind my back. He was laughing about how I didn’t think anyone knew. He said something about how I was picking my clothes out for the first time, choosing them carefully, brushing my hair, and singing this song over and over. To a normal parent, it would probably be adorable and sweet, but to my dad was a point of shameful weakness to be mocked. He was having a big laugh at my expense, and he was laughing with my favorite uncle.

I was humiliated, embarrassed, and deeply hurt. I felt betrayed. I was instantly aware of my bare chest, wet swimming trunks, skinny legs and arms. I was overwhelmed by shame. I was stupid. I’d been embarrassing myself all summer long in front of everyone, and like the idiot my dad knew I was, I didn’t think anyone knew.

I cried out, “It’s not true! That’s not true! I don’t! I don’t!”

My dad jerked his head around and looked across the kitchen at me. It’s been 43 years, but I can still see his face in my memory. He went from surprised, to annoyed, to laughing even harder.

“Okay, cut!” He said, like I was doing a scene, not expressing genuine feelings. This was one of his favorite ways to mock and belittle me when I was upset, and it had the desired effect every time.

I burst into tears.

“Cut! Cut! Print!” He put the phone between his shoulder and his ear and clapped his hands.

I cried harder. “Stop it! Don’t do that!”

“Oh, you are so sensitive! Don’t be so dramatic,” he said, sarcastically. Then, into the phone, “…nothing. It’s nothing.” He walked out of the kitchen and into the dining room, the long cord slowly stretching out behind him, a single knot tightening where it sagged.

After a moment, I ran to my bedroom, threw myself into my Star Wars bedspread, and cried like I’d been beaten up by a schoolyard bully. Which … well.

My dad never came in to talk to me, to check on me, to … you know, be a dad who loved his son. (I brought this up when I was in my twenties, hoping for some resolution to a deeply painful moment in my life. WHe dismissed me then as being too dramatic, so … at least he’s consistent?) So I stayed in my room with my door closed, and cried until I fell asleep.

Eventually, my mom came home with my infant sister. I had the puffy eyes, heavy chest, and weird mouth feeling of sleeping too hard in the middle of the day. But woke up when I heard the car pull into the driveway, and the screen open and close. I heard the keys drop into the bowl, followed almost immediately by the familiar, inscrutable thrumming of voices through the walls as my parents argued, just seconds after mom came into the house. They did this almost every day, and I hated it. It was upsetting. It felt unsafe. It felt chaotic. I never had friends over, because I didn’t want them to see my parents the way I did. The anger between them filled the air in our house with this faint, ever-present haze of resentment and power struggle. It was emotional smog. Some days, it was so thick I couldn’t breathe, other days it was barely visible. But it was always there, poisoning everything.

Their voices got louder and more intense. One of them slammed a cabinet and my sister began to cry. I heard my dad’s familiar, mocking laugh and knew that my mom had slammed the door. I heard heavy footsteps and my sister’s crying get louder and closer as my mom carried her past my door and into my parent’s bedroom at the end of the hall. She slammed that door so hard it shook the bookcase in my room. It was really scary. Lots of my friends had divorced parents, and when I saw parents on television behave like mine did, they usually got a divorce. Even though I secretly wished my parents would get divorced, that was scary, too. I thought about picking a parent to live with, like my friends did. Most of them lived with their moms, which is what I would have done. She forced me to work and wouldn’t let me be a kid, but at least she wasn’t a bully to me like dad was. She was … I don’t know. She was a lot, but she wasn’t mean.

It’s totally normal for a 9 year-old kid to hope his parents will get divorced, so he doesn’t have to live in their angry chaos. It’s equally normal for parents to think that their screaming, door slamming, wall kicking, and tantrum-throwing is super okay and won’t have a negative effect on their children.

I pulled the covers around my head as tightly as I could, to muffle the sounds of crying that I wasn’t entirely sure was coming from my baby sister. Totally normal, not traumatic at all.

I didn’t come out of my bedroom until it was time for dinner around 5. We all sat at the kitchen table, my sister in her high chair, my brother across the table from me, my parents on either side of me. We had goulash, which was basically canned corn, ground beef, I think some noodles, and a whole lot of tomato-based sauce. I usually liked it, it was kind of like a sloppy Joe, but the last thing I wanted to do was eat. So I sat there and pushed it around with my fork while my parents silently seethed at each other. My brother and sister obliviously devoured their respective dinners.

My brother finished his dinner, put his dish in the sink, and went to watch TV. Dad finished, left his plate on the table, and joined my brother. Mom began to clear his dish and looked at me. “What’s wrong with your goulash?”

I sensed an impending interrogation and did my best to avoid it. “Nothing. I’m … just not very hungry.”

We looked at each other, both of us having been run over by the miserable fucking bulldozer that was my father. Please don’t make me talk about it, I thought.

“Okay, well, put it in the refrigerator and we’ll warm it up for you later.”

I exhaled a breath I didn’t know I’d been holding.

“Okay. Can I go outside?”

“Just come in when the streetlights come on.”

I got on my bike and rode it up the street. I felt angry. I felt hurt. I felt confused. I felt scared. But at least I wasn’t inside with them. With him.

I stood up and pushed the pedals as fast and as hard as I could. I wondered what it would be like if I just kept going and didn’t come back. I wondered about that a lot, when I was a kid. I got to the top of the street, jumped up the curb, rode down the sidewalk for a couple houses, jumped off the curb, and raced back down the street as fast as I could. Over and over, as hard as I could go, skidding to a stop as close to the end of the sidewalk as I could, leaving as much rubber behind as possible. Up the street, around the cul-de-sac, power skid, then back down the street, another power skid. I was good at riding my bike. Maybe if I got good enough at riding my bike, my dad would notice.

Jenny’s mom pulled her Ford Pinto Wagon into their driveway as I sped past them on my way down the street. My heart skipped a beat and I gripped the handlebars as professionally as I could, stood up as tall as possible, and pushed even harder on the pedals. I tensed my entire body until my bike and I were one, joined at a spiritual level to become a marble stallion that commanded the attention of all who were blessed by its presence.

I aimed toward the edge of the nearest driveway, so I could take a little jump off the curb. A small flourish to let the audience know I appreciated them. Push, push, push. Pump those legs, Wil. Maximum speed! Get ready to lift those handlebars and soar.

Now, a lot of you expect me to wipe out here. I get that. It’s a perfect time for a sad trombone.

But I didn’t. I nailed it. I pulled off the sweetest jump, got to the end of the street, triumphantly slammed on my back and font brakes, a laid down an epic skid that I’m pretty sure is still there to this day. The kids who live there now whisper stories about it, so I’ll print the legend.

I turned my bike around as slowly and cinematically as I could, ready to receive my audience.

Only they were still in the car, the doors just beginning to open. They’d missed it all. There’s your sad trombone.

Just like that, all my energy was gone. My arms and legs felt heavy and slow. I sat back onto my bike and pedaled toward my house.

Jenny and Candi were waiting for me at the end of her driveway. They were both smiling and blushing. Whoa! Maybe they did see me!

My brakes made an embarrassing squeak when I stopped next to them. I tried to lean my bike to one side, very carefully leaving one foot casually resting on one pedal, like I’d seen on TV. What I managed to do was slide off the seat, spin the pedals around in a backwards loop, smash myself in the shin with one of them, and drop my bike underneath me.

“Are you okay?” Jenny asked.

“Yeah. I’m just riding my bike,” I said, awkwardly, trying not to wince.

They giggled.

“I’m getting pretty good at doing skids,” I offered.

Jenny suppressed a smile and Candi licked her lips.

“Uh … how was the zoo?” I asked.

“Good,” Jenny said, holding back most of a giggle. Was she making fun of me? Why was she laughing?

She elbowed Candi, who I noticed had her hands behind her back.

“We saw the elephant exhibit,” Candi said. They shared a conspiratorial glance.

“Go!” Jenny whispered, urgently.

“Okay!” Candi whispered back.

She took her hands from behind her back and shoved a gray plastic elephant into my hands.

“They have this machine that lets you make models, so I got you an elephant one.”

It came out like, “TheyhavethismachinethatletsyoumakemodelssoIgotyouanelephantone.”

It was damp and warm in my hands as I looked at it. I turned it over and glanced up at her. She was looking back at me, expectantly.

I didn’t know what to do. I felt a little out of breath all of a sudden.

“…. do you like it?” she asked, cautiously.

That’s what she said. But what I heard was, “do you like me?”

“YES!” I practically hollered.

They both jumped a little bit, then giggled. I felt my face get hot.

“I mean, yes. Thank you. It’s great.”

Jenny’s mom called out from the porch, “girls, come in and wash your hands to get the zoo off of them. Then you can go back out and play.”

“Okay, mom!”

They hesitated. Candi and I looked at each other for, like, way too long. I just saw these huge brown eyes and I really wanted to hug her. I didn’t want to kiss her. That was gross. But a hug would be pretty great. The Archies started to hum a chorus in my head.

But what if my dad saw? What if Jenny’s mom saw and laughed at me? What if Jenny’s mom told my parents? What if Candi didn’t like me that way? What if what if what if (welcome to the rest of your life, Wil).

“Let’s go, girls,” her mom said. “They’ll be right back, Wil.”

“We gotta go,” Jenny said, like we were standing on a train platform in 1943. “But we’ll be right back.”

“Okay.”

I dropped my bike on the ground and ran across my lawn. When I got to the edge of the garage, I hid the elephant under my shirt and looked around the corner. I could see my mom in the kitchen window. It looked like she was washing dishes. I waited for her to turn away, and ran quickly and quietly up the driveway, avoiding her attention as I slipped into the house and sneaked down the hallway to my bedroom.

I closed the door behind me and looked for the perfect place to put Candi’s Elephant. Next to my bed was the most obvious place, but it felt weird (too intimate, is how I’d have described it, if I’d known what that meant).

My bookcase was pretty full, and all the space on top of my dresser was taken up with the rebel base on Hoth. That left my desk, a recent addition to my bedroom set that was handed down from one of my cousins. I had real homework, now, in 4th grade.

So I sat at my desk, and put it right on the edge, under my springy lamp. I clicked it on to create a spotlight. I smiled. Candi got this for me when she was at the zoo. She spent her own money on it.

I heard heavy footsteps coming down the hall toward the bathroom.

The laugh. That cruel, contemptuous laugh that I can still hear today, though I haven’t seen him or heard his voice in nearly eight years, and hope I never do for the rest of my life.

I grabbed Candi’s elephant and shoved it into the top drawer. I buried it under some papers, to be sure nobody else would find it.

I listened for him to walk back to the other side of the house, then crept down the hallway until I could see my mom in the kitchen. I made sure she couldn’t see me and sneaked back out of the house, and around the corner of the garage. I ran across the lawn (I wanted to skip so much, but even I knew that wasn’t cool) and met them on Jenny’s porch. We played Pay Day until the street lights came on.

I never hugged Candi, or held her hand, or even told her that I liked her. She was only visiting for another week, and whenever I felt the impulse to express my innocent affection for her, the specter of my dad got up in my face and ensured I kept it all to myself.

I think she knew. How could she not? And I think she liked me, too. I have the elephant to prove it.

About Seven Years Later.

I was almost sixteen, right before I had my driver’s license. We’d moved from Sunland to La Crescenta, and I was working on Star Trek. My mom and I were in my bedroom, going through my clothes. I had to do a photo shoot for Tiger Beat or Teen Face or Nonthreatening Boys Magazine or whatever, and she insisted on choosing all of my clothes for me. “So your fans can see your best self,” she said, reaffirming for me that my best self was not good enough until she signed off on it.

I wanted to wear an Oingo Boingo T-shirt, and in her manipulative way, she pulled every button-down shirt I owned to try on “just to be sure”. She exhausted me, and I wore whatever she wanted me to wear. I did get to wear that Boingo shit a few years later, though; a small, pyrrhic victory.

On her way out of my bedroom, she looked at my desk. Next to my Macintosh II with 13 inch 256 color monitor and massive 35MB SCSI hard drive, was Candi’s elephant.

My mom zeroed in on it like the Terminator. “What’s that? I’ve never seen that before.”

Why was she so suspicious of everything about me? Why did I constantly have to explain myself to her? Why was she so fucking needy all the time? She was just exhausting.

“It’s an elephant.”

“I can see that. Where did it come from?”

“The Zoo.”

“You haven’t been to the Zoo in years.”

“No, I haven’t.”

“So how did you get it?”

This little spark of defiance that was always kind of floating around in the air currents of my mind suddenly hit some dry brush and blazed into an inferno. This was mine. Candi gave it to me. I’d kept this secret for over half my life, just for myself, because I knew they’d fuck it up if they found out. After Stand By Me, I’d felt more and more like a thing in my home. I was Debbie’s Thing, and everyone else in the house was part of her family. My sister still let me be her big brother. But to the rest of my family, I was a thing. I was a thing my dad hated, my brother resented, that my mother jealously guarded like a rare and valuable porcelain doll. And that still wasn’t enough for her. All of my successes and accomplishments in the entertainment industry, all that stuff that I worked so hard for, she reliably found a way to insert herself into it and claim it as her own. Well, this plastic elephant was mine. And it was going to stay mine.

“I traded it for sex and drugs, mom. It’s full of drugs. Call the National Enquirer. I’ll be on the cover.” I picked up Candi’s elephant and struck a big, cheesy, Barker’s Beauties pose with it. “Quick, get the camera before I change my mind.”

“Well you don’t have to be such a pill about it,” she snapped. “I’m just asking. Is it so terrible for a mother to be interested in her son?”

No, mom. It would actually be wonderful if you were interested in your son. Maybe you could talk to dad about that, try something new together.

From across the house, the phone rang. Holy shit. I was literally saved by the bell.

“Debbie!” My dad hollered, “The phone!”

“Nothing is more important than family,” she admonished me on her way out of my bedroom.

I sat down at my desk and gently held Candi’s elephant in my hands. I remembered what it was like before I was a thing.