This note is dedicated to a girl. It’s not a story about love nor is it a story about hate. It’s a story based around a simple question, with each second of silence proceeding it more thought provoking than the next.
It started when she slowly poured cheap red wine into a chilled Bordeaux glass she had “lying around.” She carefully eyeballed the glass like a scryer would a crystal ball , until the liquid reached midpoint. I reached for the glass, but she playfully slid it further away from my outstretched hands. She smiled and instructed me to ‘stare deeply into the glass.’ Was she going to show me my future? My reverie was interrupted by her soft voice, floating delicately towards my ear on a gentle wave of sound. “My mother told me that you can tell a lot about a person by what they see within the confinement of a wineglass. My mother was an alcoholic, but she rarely gave me advice, and we both saw different answers when we gazed into it. Tell me what you see. Is the glass half full or half empty?”
***
At the time, I never really bothered to answer her question. Instead, as a starry eyed nineteen year old fighting through the coldest winter months of 2007, I bleakly proclaimed that our society’s strong individualistic tendencies mould us into imitators, and if imitation is unsuccessful, we become disappointed and disenchanted with ourselves to the point of bitterness and despair which ultimately lead us to social segregation. My declaration, albeit merciless and condemning, was not as radically melodramatic as first thought. Ruminating on that night now, I doubt she remembers our conversation and since then our fractured friendship has given way like the bracing on a burning bridge and her memory of my voice has likely become an indistinguishable sound collage in her life’s soundtrack. Because of this, I wish I could sincerely apologise, but I know that there is a strong chance that she will never read this note. Regardless, I feel more willing now to pour myself a glass and find out.
Every single weekday seems to tick by in a hurried blur as I fail to keep up with the expectations of my colleagues. However, by the time Friday and Saturday evening roll by, as if to mock me, time lets up, and gives me a few sustained hours of reflection. It is at this time I feel the warm glow of the neon lights, a warmth I once felt from the summer sun’s rays as a naive adolescent with the future far ahead of me. I find a bittersweet comfort in what should be a noticeable culture clash for me – The meaningfulness of life juxtaposed with the meaninglessness of clubbing life – and I soak up the culture, like I would the customs of a different society. Despite this, the neon lights are an austere reminder of how lonely I really am, no matter how many people bump into me in a drunken stupor, and spill their drinks on me whilst dancing to The Bloody Beetroot’s ‘Warp 1.9’ as if they haven’t played it the same evening twice already.
While everyone else was packing condoms into their wallets, I packed myself a crinkled daily bus ticket that I got more than my $2.90 worth out of and yielded to the arbitrary and unforgiving world of Brisbane nightlife. The bus trip involved sitting at the front, listening to the deafening screams of several drunken partygoers eager to commence their night of intoxication.
My first stop is Fridays on Eagle Street. The glamorous drinking venue known by many, at the time, to be the ‘place to be’ on a Thursday night. Apparently I am the only one who sees the paradoxical irony in going to a ‘club’ incongruously named Fridays on its more popular Thursday nights, while its Friday nights could be more effectively likened to the abandoned wasteland in the popular Fallout video game series? Regardless, I rendezvoused with my friend and we commenced our infamous journey around the establishment, eyeballing potential females and a table a safe distance away where we could discuss hypothetical situations we would find ourselves in to ever start a conversation with them. Conversations usually follow (but are not limited to) the following formula:
“That girl looks hot”
“Yeah” “She’s alright”
“Yeah”
Ad infinitum.
After engaging in some enthralling conversation detailing my disgust regarding the blatant mixing of both real and hypothetical continents in the original Pokémon Gameboy adventures, I started to feel a little thirsty. Upon noticing one of the finest beers to have ever graced my lips (Coopers) on tap, I immediately proceeded to the bar and joined the queue. I am never completely sure how to act when I approach the bar counter. Should I lean? Should I wave my fifty dollar note like a white flag of surrender, yielding to the unglorified fate that the bartender will be the only female to start a conversation with me on purpose tonight? I decide to hunch slightly over the bar, when I notice out of the corner of my eye a group of girls approach the bar and immediately fix their eyes on the television where Australia was getting slaughtered in the Rugby. As I’m waiting patiently for service (as everyone else seems to be attended to first), I turned my head and decided to strike up some conversation. “Atrocious game isn’t it?” I say, with a hint of disappointment. At this moment in time, I am a rabid fan of Rugby Union. Annoyed by my remark, she stared coldly into my eyes like she would to any irritant, human or otherwise, and replied, “Sorry?” I repeated original remark and she continued to stare at me blankly. I reiterated, knowing full well that this conversation was going to conclude on the next words uttered from her lips. She turned back to me, clearly exasperated by my incessant socialising, and offered a nonchalant acknowledgement, and moved across the bar counter, to her friends who had already purchased her a shot of some description.
Surprise, surprise – I’m still waiting at the bar. Finally, in a valiant act of altruism, a horizontally challenged woman directed the bartender to me. I nodded her thanks, then looked at the bartender. She stared back at me, with utter contempt. I didn’t receive a smile, or even one raised eyebrow in acknowledgement. Great, I’m thinking. The one girl who should have been a definite guarantee of initiating a conversation with me is angrily staring back at me like I was someone who had just said that the initiation level in Driver was justified in its inexplicable requirement of completely insanely difficult manoeuvres in such a short amount of time. Nevertheless, I ordered a schooner of Coopers. She sighed as she poured me a glass. She was a horrible pourer and was constantly tempted to ask her whether it was possible to get some beer with all that head. I thought it best not to push my luck, as she shot me stares like I had stomped on her pet dog’s head when she was twelve.
I return to my table and my friend is off, talking to the girl I had my eye on. I have nothing else to do, so I pull out my HTC Touch phone and resume my game of bubble breaker. People pull out there phones all the time when they are alone to avoid looking like a loser, so I don’t see why I can’t continue to follow this trend. One girl walked past and saw me playing bubble breaker, and let out a disgusted sigh of some sort that resembled the neighing of a horse. My friend came back and, in his excitement at getting a number, accidently knocked his drink over on the table. As the alcohol poured out over the table like Niagara falls, a group of ‘older’ women glared at us, as if we committed a genocide reminiscent of Adolf Hitler’s plight against the Jews. Yes, we purposely knocked over an alcoholic beverage that WE PAID FOR just so we could look bad ass. After all, what else would we be doing whilst wearing leather jackets and greased hair?
My friend sat down, animated about getting the number of the girl I had my eye on. He replied to me with, “don’t hate the player, hate the game.” When people utter this phrase in relation to love and relationships, it frustrates me – but I can’t help realising how right they truly are. The art of relationships and picking up can be related to a game. That game is one of the greatest multiplayer shooters of all time: Counter-Strike.
For those n00bs who do not know of this ‘Counter-Strike’ game – please GTFO. You’re as useless as a Metapod in battle. So for the rest of you, why is Counter Strike, a game where you have to either plant a bomb at specific sites as a Terrorist, rescue hostages as a Counter-Terrorist, or eliminate the entire opposition, so comparable to the formulation of relationships, and the dynamics of a human’s ability to love and win over the opposite gender? Because it accurately sums up the attitudes, values and beliefs of players in both ‘games’, and the juxtaposition of the dominant discourse of how they achieve victory in both forms of the game. So, let’s have some fun, this beat is sick, I want to take a ride on your disco stick – and prepare to find out why you should hate the PLAYER, and not the game like first thought.
Let’s start with player dynamics. Usually, in maps where there are bomb sites for the terrorists to plant a bomb to win the map, players are forced to rush as a unit to succeed. However, often when players rush by themselves they are shot down quite early on by the hungry, camping CTs.
Consider this scenario in a Counter-Strike setting. The map is de_dust2 on CS Source. The terrorists need to plant the bomb at B, so they go through tunnels, and are met by two CTs around the corner, camping and waiting for the Terrorist player to come through. One decides to ‘Chuck Norris’ it through, and gets shot down because of his incompetence. He does manage to get a couple of shots on the CTs, and their health has been greatly diminished. It’s getting near the end of the map now, so the CTs are getting a little bit bored and less attentive. Another terrorist player comes along, who is much better than the last, and manages to shoot both CTs in the head, killing them instantly, due to their low health.
Now consider this scenario in a clubbing setting: Two girls are waiting at a table for a man to walk through. Eventually, one male comes over to the table early in the evening. By this time, the females have only had one or two drinks. He is immediately shot down by 25 rounds of sprayed insults. However, the male manages to get a couple of shots into the two girls because of his sheer incompetence, and their self esteem is reduced slightly. As the clock is about to run down on the evening, the girls have had about 10 drinks and are completely shitfaced but still ‘camping’ by the table. A much better player comes over to the table, he’s a little bit more attractive than person A, and because of their reduced self esteem and their increased drunkenness, they are susceptible to his shots. He eventually head shots them both – in more ways than one. Fuck the player!
After growing tired of the snobbish people prancing around the club like some kind of sultan, and the DJs weak attempt at scratching between popular house tracks, I decided to leave Fridays and continue on my journey. You’re welcome to join me too – this is just the beginning of the amazing adventures of Matt and Pikachu. My journey is destined to be packed with nonstop action, millions of laughs, heart pounding perils and endless excitement. Together, we’ll encounter fantastic friends, evil enemies, and meet creatures beyond our wildest imagination. And as our story unfolds, we’ll unlock the magic and mystery of a most wondrous place - the incredible world of Brisbane.
