Seven hours straight. That’s today. That’s how long I deadbrained on computer Solitaire while Becca sat there watching. My book? Not getting written. And what about yesterday when I put in a straight six hours. On the game. So, same thing. No pages. But the cards turned over and over and over and that’s enough.
Not real cards. Flashing images.
I used to start every writing session by playing maybe three Solitaire games, just to get loose on the keyboard. Some months ago—and I’ll tell you why—I drifted into all game and no writing. It didn’t feel so much like I was being pulled away, more like I was headed to where I wanted to go. And no problem to admit it: I enjoy hearing myself tell the usual worn out, hollow lines: “One more and I’ll quit.” I think I love when people, things, waste my time.
Now, though, with Becca beside me—we live together—I get even more of a kick because I can feel her ripe disappointment. I warned her that this is what would happen. You wanted to come and watch me work? So watch me work. And BTW, I warned her about something else, too—and I was right: if you think a threesome can’t be boring? You haven’t jumped into bed with…
OK. Lately, I’ve come to the realization that I love this Solitaire game. It’s partly because the cards aren’t real so I’m diving into this fantastic catastrophe of lights. At no point in my life have I ever sat down by myself, opened a pack of actual playing cards and proceeded to lay out a game of Solitaire. Never. If I’d done that, I’d think something was out of whack with me. I’m guessing, but I don’t believe that real cards would cross you over the border into The Pleasant State of Numb. That beautiful, relentless sensation. Everything is fine. I watch as the light-formed cards ripple from the deck and set themselves out in a line of illusory piles. This is the sweet edge, the almost-there. I relish that sense. Let’s see what happens next.
I could do this for the rest of my life.
When we were standing there in the bar, looking at him, I told Becca that he wasn’t the one…
In Solitaire, I’ve learned some tricks.
Becca sits without comment. Because I love her, I hope I’m not launching into some droning explanation, when I tell her that If you get an initial four matches—not two, not three although three comes in a lot—but four initial hits, your odds of winning seem to be a bit better.
It’s not a perfect system. I’ve had four matches and hit replay any number of times and still no game. But, like I said, the odds are better. (This may be wrong. I’ll have to play some more…)
Also, I tell Becca, “Watch out for too many of the same cards. And don’t go with games where the card numbers are all too low.” And hit “Deal New” if there’s too many face cards. I don’t know why this is. I’m not even sure it’s accurate. But that’s how it seems. Becca won’t comment. She once said that I think there are lots of rules and I follow them, but that I have no idea what they really are.
I play until my eyes tear.
Before I let Becca into my work room, she’d call to me through the closed door and I’d yell back, “Not now! I’m working!” although I was still trying to match up cards and didn’t plan on doing anything else. Back then, after some hours at the Solitaire screen, I’d call it quits and go out to where Becca was reading or going over projects or fixing food. She’d say, “Well, how did it go?” and I’d say, “Just great, fine” even though I’d been doing nothing for hours but playing computer Solitaire.
It’s a good thing Becca has a job and some family money. She likes to work. And finding that second guy was her idea…
Sometimes, I think about all the people I know who are now dead. I wonder if the dead watch us and judge. It feels that way, sometimes.
I often worry that I’m trapped in a cliché. Or that I’m like the character in that Kubrick movie from the King book, the one where the guy is a writer—Jack Nicholson, I think—but all he keeps typing is “All work and no play…” and then he tries to kill his family. But I’m not that interesting. I’m just sitting in front of the screen, playing Solitaire and I don’t pretend it’s anything else.
There was an old Twilight Zone episode with something like this in it, too. I saw it on YouTube. A couple gets obsessed with a jukebox fortune telling machine that’s in a small-town diner. They can’t leave town without getting an answer. I’m not like that, either. When you’re doing Solitaire, there is no future and no past. You’re just right there.
I like being here, fully present, in the moment, playing the screen. I turn over three cards at a time. That’s slightly more challenging than doing it one-by-one. I’m not suddenly distracted by anything, so it’s not like working on the book. There’s no urge to get away, to wash the dishes or eat or jerk off or do the laundry or vacuum. No anxious twinge to turn to the internet or my phone.
After the bad, boring threesome, the guy cursed and slammed the door and we got up and went out to another bar. Becca said maybe we’d find somebody better. Like I said, her idea.
You won’t go thirsty if you’re looking for a bar in this town. To keep the one department store open on Main St., the county kicks in money and keeps the prices low. Restaurants close, hairdressers close, gift shops close, the climbing gym closed, toy stores closed, the cardshop closed, the newspaper place closed. An old style café that had been here for 35 years closed but next door, the Indian place stayed open (explain that). Also open, the store that sells second hand vinyl and games. You can buy drugs and you can get shot. And you can always find a bar.
Walking to the new place, Becca said, “When will you give me something to read?” She always asks this. “I can’t jinx it,” I said, doing a good job of sounding slightly flustered. “You know that. I don’t make the rules. The book does.” I don’t like when she looks at me like that.
Sometimes, I set challenges for myself—if I don’t win this game, I tell myself, then I’ll get cancer and die or die in some other way, anyway. But definitely die. So, you’d better win. That lasts about ten minutes. Then I chicken out, back off this idea about dying, tell myself it really means nothing and I’m not going to worry about losing and I go ahead and play.
Becca and I have been living together for three years now and sometimes we talk about getting married. The discussions always end when one of us says something like, “What would that do?” or “What’s the point?” and then we don’t talk about it anymore. On this night, though, like I’ve said, she wanted to try something else. And when it didn’t work she wanted to try again. I told her that with her attitude, she should try playing computer Solitaire. When she said, “What? What do you mean?” I said, “Nothing.”
In the first bar, Becca said to me, “Look at these people. Which of these people cares whether you finish your work? Or even whether you start? And I don’t care, either, I’ll tell you that. And you? I don’t think you really care, not really.”
That’s another thing. She likes to talk like that but I’m not sure she really understands that you have to figure out everything for yourself.
OK, so we’d had this boring, bad threesome and then because Becca wanted it, we went to another place. Not crowded with only a comfortable low hum, except for a couple at the end of the bar, maybe three seats away. They were talking loudly. He was, anyway. The woman kept laughing like there would never be a funnier joke in the world. I hated them right away. Becca poked me with an elbow and said, “Maybe them. Two people this time.”
I stared. While staring, I said to Becca, “The guy will have to watch, I’m not doing that again,” and Becca said, “Whatever.”
I don’t think they heard but they knew we were talking about them. The woman stopped laughing, her partner called across to me, “Hey,” he said, “hey, pal. Can you actually see out of those ridiculous glasses?” Of course, his very loud partner thought this was hilarious.
I moved my shoulders and made like a guy who knows how to handle himself. You know. Don’t mess with me. I might have been imitating something I saw on TV. “I can see,” I said this quietly after the perfect pause. “I see pretty well, how about that? Why do you want to know?”
“Because they’re ridiculous,” he said. “Stupid. And you look like an idiot.”
Becca was whispering “Let it go,” but it was one-of-those-nights and not one of those give-peace-a-chance moments. I moved away from the bar with a style of dangerous dexterity (I might have also gotten this from some film) and saw that his woman friend had now stopped laughing. “That’s a punk’s way to impress a pretty woman,” I said. Which I thought was pretty good.
He was walking towards me. I stood my ground. You really can’t back down in a situation like that. I could feel Becca’s hand pulling at my sleeve which I thought gave the scene an impressive, dramatic aura. With the two of us now fairly close to one another, this man actually didn’t feel embarrassed about coming out with the line, “What did you say?” So, I followed his lead. “I said you’re a punk. And she,” here I nodded towards his lady friend, “deserves better.”
After that, I remember Becca standing over me in the emergency room. What happened—this was Becca’s account—there was only one hit but it scored, directly in my forehead and I fell down with my face slamming into the floor. The doctors wanted to check me for brain damage. I tried to explain that this really wouldn’t matter because…and they finished it for me, “it wouldn’t be much different than before.” I was going for the laugh but they’d worked in the ER a long time. Luckily, Becca had me on her insurance. She said the fight was a stupid thing to do, that’s not why we went to the bar and I looked up at her thinking that she didn’t know what it was like to be drawn into the magic pattern of the Solitaire cards. See them turn over and over and over.
Lying there in the hospital that night, I missed my Solitaire. Maybe, being forced into bedrest was good—I could deeply feel that Solitaire loss—and I might never have realized that otherwise, that love, how much I loved it. Love comes in stages, in layers.
Back home, everything was brighter. The screen, the cards. The game was showing that it missed me, too. It didn’t matter that I got tired easily and earlier (a result of what Becca referred to as “the incident”) because Solitaire would send me to bed. If I drifted off? Solitaire would make me a winner for the next game, without fail, Solitaire would then flash the word “Congratulations!” on the screen and I’d breathe easy. Becca was already lightly snoring in the bedroom.
I thought it was nuts but Solitaire was seeing me in its own way and, I believe, Solitaire was hearing me, as well. I couldn’t explain this scientifically except to say that maybe human beings are really nothing more than sophisticated electrical circuits which is pretty much also at the base of Solitaire. Somehow—again, I’m not exactly sure how—Solitaire mingles. We joined circuits. It drew me in, I could feel the absence when it was gone.
After what Becca calls “The Incident” (like I told you) I began to think that I might not want to experience Solitaire alone. Like some people can’t believe in God unless everyone else does. I wanted to share. And Becca? Hadn’t she asked to see my work?
Of course, Becca wouldn’t understand any of this. That doesn’t make her a bad person. She just doesn’t have a sophisticated mind. A lot of good qualities, yes, but not that. She kept asking and asking me about the book I’m working on so finally I said, “There is no book. I don’t need a book. There are enough books.” I think I might have been yelling. “You told me that yourself. There’s Solitaire and that’s enough.” I explained everything. “Come see.” She didn’t want to. I told her that we could do things like, play the game where if she didn’t win, she’d get a disease and die. Or die, anyway.
When I put the game up on screen, I read the cards and then read them a second time just to be certain: two of diamonds, nine of diamonds, jack of spades…I’d played this hand before. I knew how it turned out. I pressed for another hand. The card images flipped across the screen. Five of hearts, ten of spades, four of spades…I knew this hand, too, I’d played it before. Same with the next and the next. “Not possible,” I said out loud. Becca said, “What’s not?” I told her that I’d run through every combination. “No, can’t be,” I said, (again out loud) but I knew that I was losing my mind and knowing that, feeling it go, that was the worst thing about it.
It wasn’t like what happened to me back in the bar. I didn’t hit Becca, no matter what she might tell you, if she could still tell anyone anything. I don’t think I hit her, anyway. I just made it so that she could see things right.
I figured that she’d be a little angry at first, but eventually, I guessed, she’d have to admit that either way—book or Solitaire–it’s totally OK. It’s all good. Eventually, she’d warm up to the comforting monotony that is the grace of Solitaire. Now she has done just that. I’ve got Becca in the chair. The old wooden one. It made it easy to use the rope. I’ve got her right there beside me, watching. I mean, her eyes are rolled back but before that happened, I think she understood what I was trying to show her.
And I’m sorry about her eyelids. And I’m sorry I had to use the hammer and nails but she kept trying to move her hands.
It’s nice to have her nearby. I lay down my light cards. Red on black. Seven on eight. Kings on the empty spaces. The same cards I’ve played over and over and over. I’ll do that until it’s time to fade. We can do this together. That lovely sensation of endlessly floating on nothing.
[Image Credit : Photo by Klim Musalimov on Unsplash]
by 
0 Comments