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| Geek Confession |
I love expensive perfumes and cosmetics. I talk to shoes in stores, and tell them how beautiful they are, and how I would take them home if only I had three hundred dollars in pocket change lying around my apartment. I have successfully made curtains, and obsessed over bridal magazines. I enjoy a good chick flick as much as the next girl (French Kiss is and always will be one of my most favorite movies of all time). I have worn nail polish in every shade, density, drying speed and hue.
And I’m a geek.
There. I said it. I have made my confession, accepting, that I am, and probably always have been, a geek. In high school there were often entire evenings spent playing Super Mario with friends on what was, even then, an archaic Nintendo. It was just something to do. A weekend thing. Nothing serious, I could quit any time I wanted.
I hung out with geeky friends, and it was something we did together. My interest was fueled by a friend showing up at school with a Palm Pilot. Before I knew it, I had one as well. With rudimentary wireless internet. Then, a digital camera. Pretty soon I was looking over catalogues for Tiger Direct, nearly salivating over the possibility of adding another twenty or thirty gigs of hard drive space to the family computer.
My geekdom only escalated in college, when I was introduced to a device called The Playstation, known as a ‘PS1,’ and a game. Final Fantasy IX. Two hundred hours spent gaming between sifting through bridal magazines. You see, the PS1 belonged to my now-husband. He is my geek enabler.
Over the winter break during Sophomore year, in the course of one of our lengthy long-distance phone conversations he casually mentioned that he was thinking about buying a Playstation 2, or PS2 in geek-speak. He sounded concerned, at the time, unsure about spending $200 for something so frivolous when we could just as well apply it towards site rental fees, or maintenance for my teenaged car. I assured him, that since it was his money he was earning over the summer, to do whatever he wanted with it, having learned from magazines and my own experiences that no one likes being told what to do by a significant other. Secretly, I was delighted. My heart raced at the thought of the new and as-yet unreleased games I could dive into.
Fast forward a year, and we have our own apartment, and the Playstation 2 is still with us, and our collection of games has grown extensively. I find myself watching Tech TV as much as VH1. Picking up the latest in Playstation goodness, just to try out, based on what I had heard. I found myself discussing what I had gleaned with a friend, who happened to work for a website. He assured me that all I would be doing was reviewing, and that I would be supplied with games to test. I would be free to keep and play them. It seemed too good to be true.
It wasn’t. It was fabulous.
It was a stunning blur of pixels, soundtracks, words, and as many shiny pretty new games as I could play.
It was only recently, that it occurred to me that I might have a problem, a problem twenty-three years in the making. I found myself in an apartment, an hour away from home, with five guys, the soundtrack to a videogame playing in the background, looking over a character sheet. Rolling dice. Not just, your standard six sided dice, (known as d6's on the street) but four, eight, even ten and twelve sided die.
I only meant to be a casual observer, but I was lured in by the fantasy of it all. I decided it would be all right, so long as I only played once every few weeks. Once a week tops.
But of course it didn’t stop there.
I joined an online community for girl-gamers. Then another one. Then a web forum discussing game play and tactics. Soon I had started my own online game, playing nearly every day. Encouraging and enabling others, as had been done to me. Doling out snippets of detail, little slices of description, maybe a world map here and there.
As we speak, sitting at my desk, right on top of the May issue of Cosmo, and a tube of delicious flavored lipgloss, are my dice. Looking at me, and begging to be used.
Well. They say the first step is admitting you have a problem.
I admit it.
I’m a geek. And proud of it.
And I know I’m not the only one out there.
I myself am a second-generation geek. As I write this, my mother, a woman strong and passionate and independent, vivacious and charming, may very well be playing Age of Empires. The ancient Nintendo, which I still proudly own, was originally hers, and she still plays when she comes to visit.
And there are more of us out there. More than one might think. I have this to say:
Be proud of your status as a minority in the primarily masculine and often misogynist world of gaming. You are rare and wonderful. Don’t hide under dark glasses and a baseball cap to pick up your latest fix of comic books and gaming manuals and strategy guides. Walk into the dusky annals of geekdom with your head held high. Show the world it’s possible to be feminine and beautiful and a geek. You may be met with scorn, surprise, or a patronizing demeanor. Show them that just because you carry your gaming manual in a fabulous mock-crock bag with brass details, doesn’t mean you are a gamer to be trifled with.
Because nothing is hotter than a woman wearing beautiful patent leather heels, buying dice.
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