SoMa Literary Review - My First Night with Star Craft

My First Night with Star Craft

By S. Woan

One night, James reawakened the college spirit in him and wanted to play Star Craft, but with the catch that I played, too - a sort of gamer's ménage à trios, if you will. I warned him I never played before, so he would have no right to be mad at any ineptitude I may show. He agreed, claiming he understood.

He set up the game on my laptop and proceeded to his end of the apartment to set something up on his. I stared at the screen. He messaged me. "Hey." Ooh, I thought to myself, so this is like AOL Instant Messenger. I chatted back. He told me we were in a "private channel." Ooh, I think to myself, so this is like a private chatroom.

"I just want to reiterate how terrible I am at video games," I typed.

"It's all right," he typed back.

He dictated set-up instructions to me, telling me to click this, click that. I'm computer-stupid so I followed along. Then another chatroom appeared, just like the private one before (I assumed). So I tried to be cute with him.

"Hello there." I typed. "Wanna play with me? I've got nice titties. Play with my nice titties."

I looked over at him fetchingly, yet he paid no attention to me, oblivious to my prurient stare. I looked back at my screen. I had been messaged a dozen times by unfamiliar aliases.

"Oh yes, let's play with nice titty girl."

"I bet you have nice titties."

"Can you show me your nice titties?"

Mortified, I yelp for my knight in shining armor. He came over, assessed what happened…and laughed. Not helped, but laughed. As I burned with embarrassment, he shrugged and said, "Don't worry. No one knows who you are. It's no big deal at all." Nonetheless, I felt a scalding bath was in order to cleanse me of my shame and humiliation. James, the boyfriend, emphatically insisted the game continue.

As for the game? First of all, in the beginning while teaching me the basics, he mentioned that I should build lots of Pylons (me = Protoss; him = Terran). So as soon as the game started, that is what I did. I built like 15 of them, partially because I thought he told me to and mostly because the Pylons were pretty–they looked like big glittery diamonds. (I am a girl, after all). While I blissfully built rows upon rows of Pylons, the boyfriend jolted me back to virtual reality and demanded for my Dragoons to attack.

"What Dragoons?" I asked.

"You know, the dozen or so Dragoons I told you to build five minutes ago?"

Golly. How time flew. I forgot about them Dragoons, those visually repugnant creatures. Anyone could easily forget about them, they were so unsightly. Fine. Whatever. I'll build Dragoons. Wait. How do I build Dragoons?

"Didn't you build a couple Gateways like I told you to?"

"Gateways? Huh, you mean Pylons?"

"No, not Pylons! Gateways!" He clicked the map to check out my Base. "What are you doing over there?! Why haven't you built anything bb-but … Pylons?!"

Oh, my. He seemed to be reaching his boiling point.

"So…should I build anymore Pylons?" I asked timidly.

"No!"

Anyway, in the end, we won the round, no thanks to me. I did, however, ultimately build a gigantic, perhaps over-populated army of Dragoons which I sent to where he told me to send them to. However, they did not help because the boyfriend forgot to emphasize the importance of pressing the "A" button for "Attack" before sending.

"So basically," he gawked at me, "you marched your minions of Dragoons to their deaths?"

I told him I had more Dragoons to send, but I could not figure out where they went. I was certain I clicked for the Gateway mechanism to crank out more. He came over to check on me. Apparently, I had somehow set it so that after each Dragoon was created, they were transported directly to the enemy's territory one by one for an early unfortunate demise.

"You are terrible at this!" He said it like an epiphany. "I don't understand how a rational human being could be this bad at Star Craft." Then, in typical male asininity, he said to me, "Let's play again tomorrow."