Gambles and Games
When Singapore recently went into lockdown-lite, I formed a little quarantine bubble with my sister and a couple of friends. The first time we went into lockdown, eighteen months ago, everyone panicked and tried to make the most of it, the nation experiencing a collective FOMO over the time we were all losing, reacting badly to the parameters of this pandemic that are still kinda impossible to define. People started breaking down, working out, Marie-Kondo-ing their lives, whatever. This time, we played board games and waited for the world to return.
I am very competitive at games, though bad at nearly all of them. I don’t care about winning; for me, the fun is in the competition, the same way I scream a lot on roller coasters, though I feel nothing about being flung around upside-down in midair. The problem is I often get carried away. I got into a shouting match in a LAN shop once, because a semi-carry ganker range DOTA hero had accidentally nuked me, just as I was about to deliver the killing blow on a low-level jungle creep bot for a pathetic piece of gaming gold. We were on the same team, which was the primary source of conflict. Why are you screaming at me, we’re on the same team. Why did you nuke me, we’re on the same team. So on and so forth. The acned boy who manned the LAN shop came up to us nervously, venturing: aren’t you friends, is everything okay? When I turned to him I was grinning, exhilarated, but later my friend told me that perhaps I scared people who didn’t know me personally, and also sometimes scared people who did.
Because of this, I am careful when I move into new environments, I keep away from competition, I say no to nearly all game-night invitations unless it’s known that what’s on the agenda are games of the co-operative sort. When I moved to New York in 2019, I made some new friends who were into games. They opened up their home to me. I definitely wanted to hang out, but didn’t want to terrify them, hyper-conscious of how our friendship was still in its early stages, how easily they might think: o-kay, we judged this one wrong, actually now we’re not so sure. Before I headed over for game night, I looked in the mirror, and chanted: You like to lose. You like to lose. We’re still friends today.
There are other things to do in life, it’s easy to go for long periods without wandering into the personal danger zone of games. But in the last month, the stars all aligned. We were stuck at home, there really was nothing to do. The lockdown-lite was in response to a mild bump in cases, but this far into the pandemic, most of us were adaptable, half-vaccinated, and mainly masked. Instead of being paralysed by panic, like we were the first time round, we broke out the air fryers, made nuggets, and waited.
I was coming out of my anime phase, so no longer glued to the TV. I was going through a generally hyperactive period, which didn’t allow me to sit still for long enough to focus on reading. I’d already tried to work off the excess energy with YouTube home workouts and obsessive vacuuming. But after a couple of days, my house was sparkling clean, my cat was pissed as all hell about the vacuum, and my delts wouldn’t even let me pick up a glass of water without screaming. When my friends, who lived within a 5-minute radius, proposed that we start playing board games, I thought it was safe territory. In our quarantine bubble of four, I was engaged to one, joked about also marrying the other, and blood-related to the last. A bit of competitiveness couldn’t scare them off, they were stuck with me regardless of my bad behaviour. Let’s do it, I said.
It turns out that love, amongst other things, is not simply about being tolerated, but having your quirks and rough edges actually be enjoyed. It’s not as if I didn’t know this before. But having your relationships withstand the test of crisis isn’t quite the same as having it flourish from the extreme pettiness of competitive monopoly. With every backstab, manipulative negotiation, and too-smug jab, the dense fuzziness of communal affection bloomed. Late one night, as we were winding down after a five-hour game marathon, I turned to my partner in the middle of an episode of The Mandalorian. I’d, once again, lost my shit during the game, cackling for six-and-a-half minutes after executing a very flawed double-cross which I thought pushed me into the endgame but in reality spelt out my avatar’s premature death. Our neighbours were starting to really dislike us.
You’re not scared of me?
I wasn’t afraid of his answer, no. But I still found myself holding my breath, just a little bit.
Babe, He scoffed. You wish you were scary.
