The Gamer Girl
fiction - jealousy, grand theft auto, succubi, oh my!
Emily was proud of her couples’ Halloween costume that year. She and her boyfriend Josh spent about an hour before the party on Friday blowing up balloons and pinning them to their clothes. Emily’s outfit and balloons were green, Josh’s were purple. She spent an afternoon earlier in the week taking apart a fake vine decoration from HomeGoods and painting it to resemble its organic counterpart, using a photo of a real vine on Google Images as reference. Emily used eyelash glue to stick the leaves on her face. She tried to position them in a way that contoured her cheekbones, and it took nearly thirty minutes. Josh refused the eyelash glue for his leaf accessories, citing the time it took Emily to apply them, and used scotch tape instead. Emily wore a handmade vine-leaf flower crown, Josh wore a purple beanie. They were supposed to be grapes.
By ten o’clock, Josh had managed to pop most of his balloons and lost all but one of the leaves he’d stuck on his face, making his costume totally unrecognizable. So the couple was only ever interpreted as a man in a purple hoodie and a bunch of green grapes floating from cluster to cluster, making idle conversation with half-friends and people whose names they ought to know by now but didn’t. Eventually they found Josh’s coworkers Harrison and Nate talking to a girl dressed as a cowboy.
Emily couldn’t tell from the back of this woman’s head that the night would turn unpleasant. Emily only saw the shape of a human. But the woman’s face, unassuming as it might have been at first, took on a paranormal glow once she gathered the men’s attention. Emily might have been straight, but she wasn’t blind. There was something deeply erotic in the woman’s apparent plainness.
All it took for the men to fold was a costume based off a video game. Some guy called Dutch. Emily didn’t recognize the name or the game, but the men did. They went ballistic, as men so often do when faced with a woman who knows the things they know. Emily was usually entertained by these reminders of humanity’s apehood, the way they hooted at sexual options when they became evident and the simplicity of that evidence. But today she was nauseated by the display, nauseated by her own disappointment, by the predictability.
Emily thought, perhaps prematurely, but still (in her eyes) justifiably, “I hate this bitch. If we lived in a just world, God would come down, hand me a mace infused with divine power, and instruct me to beat her to death with it. But we do not live in a just world.”
Men, who dominated everything, loved to believe in a world where their interests were opaque and shrouded in secrecy. Even though in reality their interests were inescapable, they moved through the world as if they were keepers of great and ancient secrets. Indeed, Emily knew more about the things men enjoyed than she knew about her own hobbies and desires. Emily possessed the awareness that she could take advantage– but never did, thinking herself above it all, in possession of more evolved methods to acquire men’s attention. But this woman, in eschewing that ‘better way’, made Emily look like a fool. Whether that was her intent or otherwise had yet to be seen, but Emily resented the woman anyway. If the woman’s goal was male attention, she was clearly a studied master of the trade. She spoke about gaming with the conviction and confidence of an academic, but never came off patronizing, combative, or competitive. She smiled with ease, rocked towards the men’s bodies as she laughed. She was wearing a fake mustache and still somehow looked fetching.
“And these idiots,” Emily gnawed on her nails as she conversed with herself, “they’ve flocked to her– she’s turned them ovine, blank-eyed and needy. She made them hungry for something.”
The woman said her name was Lara, and though she was ostensibly white, the familiar foreignness of her name made the men all the more curious about her. Emily tried to make peace with the fact that Lara possessed things she never would. Lara was white enough for suburban parents but ethnically ambiguous enough to make aunts gossip anyway. She was certainly pretty but not overwhelmingly so, not pretty enough to routinely take selfies. Or, worse, she was confident enough in her other attributes to never consider taking selfies in the first place. She was funny, but not too funny. She laughed easily, and if she didn’t understand a joke she never showed it. She was a knower of masculine arcana, sincerely enough for it to feel real. She was tailor-made, maybe. Emily wondered momentarily if Lara was not human and was instead some manifestation of male desire made flesh. But there she was, with her flesh-and-blood body, very corporeal, undeniably extant.
Josh asked what other video games Lara played. She erupted into an apparently riveting answer. Emily kept gnawing on her fingernails, ignoring the dark metropolitan dust that had accumulated underneath them.
Lara said, “Oh, and how could I forget? I play a shit-ton of GTA, but it’s been a minute ‘cause I got a little bored.”
Nate, bright-eyed and shiny all over, asked, “Waiting for the next update?”
Lara threw her head back, laughed, and said, “More like the next game!”
And then they all laughed with her. Emily wasn’t in on the joke so all she did was chortle with her mouth closed, keeping her hands clasped on a plastic cup of exceedingly tannic mulled wine. Emily smacked her lips together. Josh smiled showing all his teeth. Emily withered inside. Josh asked for Lara’s number, then with a panicked glance in Emily’s direction added, “So we can play GTA Online together.”
Emily wanted Lara to be a girl’s girl. Emily wanted her to invent a good reason to tell him no. But instead Lara handed Josh her phone and said, “make a contact and text yourself, I’ll hit you up next time I’m online.”
Then Harrison and Nate asked her for her phone number, too. But they didn’t have girlfriends to make panicky eye contact with, no one to clarify for. They made it a little more obvious, like the universe was confirming Emily’s increasingly distraught suspicions. They looked like they were starving.
When Lara was finally gone, unceremoniously and in the blink of an eye, the men looked tired. Sapped of something. The two singletons departed, staring at their phones and chattering about how long redownloading their games might take.
Josh rolled a joint and shared it with Emily, but not before announcing that he didn’t want to socialize anymore. He begged Emily to leave once they passed the weed off to a stranger who would probably never return it.
That night, Emily ate cold french fries on the couch and watched Josh download GTA. She went to bed before it finished, and fell asleep without knowing when Josh joined her. When Emily woke up at five in the morning to pee he was already back on his console, so she couldn’t be sure he ever did come to bed.
When Emily re-emerged at a more reasonable hour to make her coffee, she saw Josh had fallen asleep on the couch, controller still in his hand.
At noon, while Emily was organizing her jewelry, Josh woke up and started playing again. Emily was sure Lara was in his gaming headset, whispering charming poison in his ear. The thought both terrorized and fascinated her, and as Emily sorted through her rings and bangles she imagined the shape of a gaming headset, rotated it in every direction in her mind’s eye. Emily couldn’t let go of the idea of the headset as a kind of erotic vehicle. The warm pads enveloping the sensitive ears. The mouthpiece capturing every breath, every wet sound of a mouth’s interior. It was obscene. Everything about it was obscene.
A few days later when Josh wasn’t home, Emily put the headset on. She should have asked, but she didn’t mean to do anything at first. She simply meant to understand, or try to understand, what she was so afraid of. The headset fit snugly. The ear cups cradled her more sensually than she’d hoped. The mouthpiece grazed her lips if she puckered them. Emily ran her fingers up and down the headband. Her heart beat reckless and loud, and it echoed nervously inside her ears. She moved the mouthpiece out of the way, down by her chin, feeling suddenly imprisoned by the contraption and its proximity to her face.
A car honked outside. Emily flinched, then as if possessed she grabbed Josh’s controller, tried not to be disgusted by the greasy sheen on the buttons, and turned the console on. She opened GTA, and while the game was loading Josh received an invitation to a session from a user called larabbia. Emily accepted. Then she received an invitation to join a party chat, from that same user. Emily accepted.
Lara’s voice was in Emily’s ear. She said, “Heyyy, what’s good?”
Emily puffed out her chest and accessed all the bravado she contained within herself, but her voice was still small and pathetic when she replied, “Hi. It’s not actually Josh.”
Lara was silent, but then with an audible smile said, “Ohhh, right, we met that night, didn’t we?”
Emily said, “Yep! Got me kinda curious what the fuss was all about.” She was trying to come off breezy, casual. But there was a terse edge in her consonants, and her vowels were short, huffy, and breathlessly nordic in character.
Lara said, in a more believably breezy tone, “M’kay! I can walk you through everything. I don’t think we need a private server, Josh is pretty high-level so I doubt any griefers will mess with us while I show you the ropes.”
Emily thought to ask what a ‘griefer’ was, or why being high-level deterred them, but instead she said, “Coolio,” smacked herself across the face as a punishment for having used such a stupid word, and played.
Lara and Emily did not ask anything about each other. Nothing outside the digital scene existed. They spoke about the game and the game alone, with the rigidity and poise of the most seasoned role-players. Emily found comfort in this distance, and her nervousness drifted away as Lara’s gentle instructions eased her deeper into fictional Los Angeles. Lara’s gravelly voice became solid and smoky in the dark, quiet cavern sealed by the headset’s ear cushions.
Emily poured herself a glass of wine. She knew being tipsy would make it all less of an undertaking. She was right. Once Lara told Emily to activate auto-aim and helped determine which vehicle in Josh’s virtual garage was the easiest to drive, they even started enjoying themselves. Emily and Lara shot at pedestrians, rammed a lemon yellow sportscar into a crowd of people in fictional Venice Beach, and flew a military jet into a high-rise building. Emily was having so much fun that she missed Josh’s text that read on the way but ill be awhile. busted track or something on the m/j, need to take the L, literally lmao
After her second glass, Emily asked Lara, “Okay, girl, on some real shit, can I ask you something? I’m drinking red wine, full disclosure.”
Lara exhaled and giggled, “Uh, girl, same.” Lara tapped her nails on what must have been her wine glass, and Emily found herself jealous even of that: the sound was full and clear, and gave away that her nails were stronger and better-kept than Emily’s ever were. Emily’s nails had always been brittle, pliable, soft, breakable. Much like herself, she used to tell people, before she concluded that being self-effacing didn’t make anyone like her very much.
Emily inhaled, then out came, “Do you like. Know?”
“Know what?” Lara’s voice was tighter, like she sat up straighter in her (probably feminine, but surely not pink) gaming chair to better absorb what was being asked.
Emily tried again, “Like. At that party. I was watching you with all of them, thinking to myself, like, ‘she’s gotta know what she’s doing’. Like you were just so cool and casual with it. I think I even said like, ‘master of the trade’.”
Lara chortled nervously, and a crackle on her line suggested she was adjusting her headset. She finally said, “I… think I’m gonna need a little more detail, girl.”
Emily hummed to herself. Then she tried once more, “Like, of course you’re into these games because you’re into them, right? But, like. The way dudes react when they find out, though, it’s so predictable, y’know? And if I was in your shoes I know I’d be doing it on purpose. Like to get their attention. But, like, I don't wanna assume, so that’s why I’m asking.”
Lara was sharper when she asked, “Are you asking if I’m hitting on Josh?”
“No, no!” Emily shook her head even though she knew no one would see. “Not, like, it’s your fault, but like, do you talk about that stuff with them because they all react the same way? Whatever your intentions may or may not be, I mean. I’m just asking if you’re. Aware of it, I guess.”
Lara paused, then.
Emily said, “I’m sorry, I’m drunker than I thought. Forget I said anything.” It was a lie, but it felt true enough to say aloud.
Lara sighed. She said, “If I tell you, do you promise to keep it to yourself? I mean, you probably won’t believe me, but whatever. You asked a real question, I’m happy to give you a real answer.”
Emily said, “Oh?”
Lara said, “Yeah. Hold on, let’s go to my apartment so we can sit down.” Her avatar got in the driver’s seat of the now-totaled yellow sportscar. I pressed triangle to join her, and she drove us up to her apartment on stilts in the virtual Hollywood Hills.
We loaded into her apartment, she poured her avatar a virtual glass of wine, and sat on the sofa.
Lara said, “Okay, so. You know how like. Introverts get their energy from being by themselves, and extroverts get their energy from being around people?”
Emily said, “yeah?” smiling in spite of herself. Lara pronounced extrovert with an a. Emily thought it sounded like a braying donkey, sort-of, and allowed herself to enjoy that this observation felt like a small victory.
Lara said, “well, I get my energy from men.”
Emily laughed. “Quit fucking with me!” she said, half-joking.
Lara adjusted her headset noisily. “I’m serious. When I have their attention, I’m not hungry anymore.” Lara’s tone was marginally jokier when she added, “It’s how I stay so svelte.”
“Right.” Emily rolled her eyes. “Like a succubus, you mean?”
Lara groaned, frustrated like this wasn’t the first time she’d heard this. “My mom was a succubus. I don’t like the sex part, it’s unnecessary.”
Emily grinned and thought, cheerfully, “this woman is a lunatic,” and with that same dopey smile on her face invited Lara to elaborate further.
Lara sounded at first like she was reading something, but relaxed into herself as she spoke. “Trad-style succubi, like my mom, use sex for energy. Pretty straightforward. Pretty boring, if you ask me. And gross. And weird. And kind of exploitative, if we’re being honest! But that’s like, deep intra-community discourse that I’m sure will bore you to fuckin’ death. ANYWAY, I’m part of a new generation, y’know? We’re like… the final frontier. Girls our age, we find better, cleaner ways. Most of my cousins are streamers. I don’t even need to do all that. I already like this shit– like, these games, I mean. And it’s so fuckin’ easy to survive off that alone. Just talking, I mean. I think men now are more open to the energetic exchange than they were in the old days.”
Emily made Josh’s avatar pace around the room. She rubbed her forehead and said, “Isn’t the thing about succubuses–”
Lara interrupted, “Succubi.”
Emily rolled her eyes again, “Right, sorry. Isn’t the thing that they suck the energy out of men, like, in a bad way?”
“Well, yeah, but fuck ‘em, right?” Lara laughed, “no one’s dying here.”
Emily changed the subject, wanting to incense Lara for some reason, “No offense, but aren’t succubi (Emily made a point of emphasizing the I) supposed to be, like, super hot?”
Lara said, “that’s actually a popular misconception. Think about it. We’ve evolved for thousands of years to be able to, if nothing else, fuck our way out of starvation. We can’t do that by being otherworldly beautiful, because that cuts out the vast majority of men. We gotta be cute enough to want, obviously, but we all know that’s a low bar. At the same time we gotta also be approachable enough to. Y’know, approach. The tastiest energy is from the ones that give it willingly, ‘cause they think they have a chance.”
Emily swallowed, less uncomfortable than she should’ve been. She asked, “Is it something you could… teach?”
Lara cleared her throat, “How do you mean?”
“I mean. I don’t need the energy like you do, right? But the way you get it… like, the method. You could teach me that, right?”
“What for?”
Emily paused, because in all honesty she hadn’t thought of that before asking. So she shrugged before remembering Lara couldn’t see her, and hurried to say, “I don’t know. I guess just ‘cause I want to?”
Lara’s avatar stood up and walked in a circle. She hummed, then said, “yeah, why not? It’s the least I could do.”
Emily was relieved and satisfied enough by this answer that it took her a second to ask, “Wait, are you doing it to Josh?”
“Well, yeah, duh,” Lara said, before course-correcting with a stammered, “I mean, is that okay?”
Emily put the controller down in her lap, and Josh’s avatar ceased moving for a moment before lapsing into an idle animation. She stared at the muscular, tattooed version of Josh that did not exist, and imagined his real body as a husk sapped of all moisture. Then Emily asked, after a long and guilty pause she was terribly proud of, “Does it hurt him?”
Lara said, “Nah, just makes ‘em sleepy. Do you really think we’d have gotten this far if it hurt them? Like be so forreal right now.”
Lara had a point. Violence would have made her kind extinct, if they did really exist. So Emily weighed her options. Josh already spent his life sleeping and playing videogames. Emily always considered it a selfish use of one’s time, and she figured it was a net positive that by feeding Lara while doing it he’d finally be of service to another. Nothing of major import would change except for Emily, and the idea was refreshing. “Yeah, y’know, do as thou wilt, sensei. I think it’s a fair exchange.”
Lara sighed, relieved, and launched into, “Thank god. While we’re on the topic, though…do you know when he’s coming back from work? I’m starving.”