My boyfriend and I are playing the game of LOVE again today. Isn’t that sweet? I made the first move, beginning the game about twenty years ago. I moved my metaphorical pawn a whopping, shocking, well—thought—out two spaces up. I said, “You know what? I think you should just leave.” I wanted that sentence to be an “I think you should just leave because...” but unfortunately I couldn’t remember what he had done that made me so upset. Maybe he punched me in the face? Maybe he used the word “fat” when talking about my mama? Surely it was something terrible and worthy of being upset. Probably. Right? Yeah.
The offer of the battle was laid out on the table like a turkey, and it was up to him to accept or decline. But who declines turkey? Vegetarians, I guess, but let’s just say it was a vegetarian turkey.
He accepted with a fierce nod of his head, a painfully cold glare. Then, he moved a pawn of his own, utterly shocking me, utterly stealing my pawn. I gasped, with my mouth and with my eyes. He said, “You know what? I think you'’re right. I will leave.”
Shocking remarks! How dare he!
It was my turn. I said, pouncing on him with the calmness in my tone, “You're not leaving. You’re staying. So we can talk this out.”
My words were traps. He fell in. “Fine,” he said. “What do you have to say?”
I did not like the way he sounded. It was a bad tone, a tone not to be tolerated. “Never mind! I have nothing to say, not to YOU.”
I considered adding that I did, however, have a lot to say to my friend Brad from work. And the garbage man who comes by sometimes. And to the postal worker that comes by on a daily basis. But, really, I did not want to hurt him. I just wanted to win.
He grabbed a loaf of bread from the counter. For the road, I guess. From outside, I could see him tugging on the house. I guess he was trying to take that with him too, but he just couldn’t lift it.
Aha! He would be homeless, and I would win. That bread would not last him very long. Plus, I was pretty sure today was gang initiation day, and although I had canceled by subscription to the Blood newsletters, I’m pretty sure they usually have to kill people for those.
I was scared, because he was gone, and I was alone. I wanted to tell him that the game of LOVE was canceled due to rain or maybe traffic. I called him. “Harry...you should come back. I’m sorry,” I said, wanting peace.
“What? No. I’m not coming back,” he said, solid as stone. “That's ridiculous.”
Peace offer: rejected! “Fine! Then leave!”
“I already left. I’m on the streets,” he retorted, like a winner.
“I meant get off of the phone. I”m kicking you off of the phone,” I said, and he agreed by hanging up.
When we were first going out, most of our games involved phones. He would say something stupid, and I would say, “BYE!” and then hang up. He would call back, about 23,432,432 times, and in order to win I would have to not answer. Seven months later, he stopped calling back. I would call, to say, “Why didn’t you call? Fine whatever BYE.” Then I would call back again, “Hi, Harry,” I would say. “I’m calling you...and now I’m hanging up. WHATEVER BYE!”
Call back number 3. “Hi Harry, so, I’m sorry...are you there? FINE! BYE!”
I lost a lot of games in my day.
My friend Michelle called, asking how everything was going. “It’s good!” I said, gleefully, gleefully, gleefully, dashing through the snow, doing the twist like I did last summer, and walking on sunshine, man. “My boyfriend and I are playing a game where we don’t talk to each other. I’m winning, so far, I think.”
“That is a really sad game,” Michelle said. “What do you get when you win?”
Interesting question! The answer was a resounding NADA but I didn’t want to admit that. “When you win...you get five dollars! That’s enough for a whole burrito. And imagine winning twenty five times. Seriously, just imagine.”
Now Michelle was jealous. “Hey, I don’t call LOTS OF PEOPLE. How come none of them gave me five dollars?”
“Well...” I started. “Because...you can only play it with significant others.”
“Sometimes I don’t call my significant other,” she said.
“Well... you can only play it while you are wearing purple,” I said.
“Oh. I never wear purple,” she had said, and apparently I just won myself another game, one that did not include winning five dollars but included the general concept of victory (plus making someone feel sad about not owning anything purple. VICTORY!)
Sometimes, Harry and I play a slightly alternated version of the game of LOVE, clearly morphed and potentially Americanized from the...Chinese version that I play. Yes, Chinese.
It usually begins with me saying, “I love you more than you love me.”
Then he would say, “Uh, no. Lie. False. False lie. I actually just opened a factory of wage slaves, who I force to build love in sweatshops for 5 cents an hour. I use that love to give to you. Do you have a factory of love-making wage slaves?”
“Uh, no,” I said. “But I did form a Gang of Love and we go around killing people and taking their hearts. I use these hearts to love you with. Oh my god! Victory! I just won! I can’t believe I won. I officially love you more than you love me. This is so cool.”
“Uh no,” it was his turn. “I love you more—”
“More than a rock? Man, that stinks for me!”
The scariest part of these games was that, in reality, if we loved the person more it meant that we were probably losing. That’s why I like the telephone game better.
The battle rages on, twenty years longer than its initiation. Do you know what that means? It means we beat World War II! We beat a lot of wars, in fact, like the American Revolution and the War Against Terrorism. We have not quite beat the Korean War, because that thing is still technically going on and no one seems to remember; it’s been so long! But I remember that I am still fighting. And maybe he remembers, too; maybe he remembers me at all.