Heptadecagram

Erskin will be at Origins this year.

I first met Erskin through Marcella, whom I met through Theatre UNC-A. He was one of the first people that I met that was as on-fire for games and game design as I was. He moved in with me, we designed games together, and he introduced me to Looney Labs' games. We even discovered that we had dated the same psychopath. Were it not for him, I probably wouldn't be living in Maryland, near the heart of the Wunderland Toast Society. I wouldn't have as refined a taste in games, and I probably wouldn't be as effective a programmer, as he also got me interested in the vim editor. He was someone I looked up to, admired, and tried to emulate in many ways. He was the first close friend I made in college.

Strong emphasis on was.

In 2000, our friendship ended badly. There was shouting, there was anger. I was unhappy with Marcella, and her living in our house. He was unhappy with me owing him money and being financially irresponsible. Eventually our verbal dialogue devolved to "Hello, Erskin." "Fuck off, Liam." We finally ended up communicating only through typed letters. When I finally got the landlord involved over someone else living in the house (which would break our lease), Erskin did something I didn't expect.

Erskin and I shared the house with one other person on the lease, Jess. I had left that morning for classes. Four hours later, as I was heading home, I run into Jess a block away from our house, and she's crying at the wheel of her car. "Erskin's gone," she said. "The house is empty."

Somewhat disbelieving, I head home with her. The house is empty, with no furniture whatsoever left in it. No bookshelves, no tables, no carpet, no TV, nothing. Just bare floors and walls. I look and my room and do see that my stuff is still there, then turn back to the empty space of the common areas. Blank space. Blank.

I start to remember that, yes, most of the furniture in these common areas was Erskin's. But it's so empty. The few items of furniture that were mine or Jess's were just shoved into our rooms, not removed. But the common rooms were still empty. All in all, only a few card tables of mine and some CDs of Jess were missing. But the house was still so empty.

It turned out that he had rented a moving van and hired a team to shove all of his stuff into it before driving it off to storage. He forfeited his security deposit to get away from me. He ignored the few thousand dollars he claimed I owed him. He desperately wanted to get away from me. And I missed him terribly.

When he and I were still living together in late June, I was exhausted from working at the bakery. I worked a full 40 hours every week, and hadn't had a day off in months. Our standard workweek was from Wednesday to Tuesday, and I asked my boss for a week off. She let me have it.

On my first day off, I asked Erskin and Marcella what they were up to this weekend. "We're going to Ohio!" they said, "There's a big gaming convention there called Origins." Having nothing better to do, I asked if I could tag along. They let me.

I had planned on playing many different games that weekend, but once I met Andy Looney, and figmentatious, and jazzfish, mrstickman and uilos, and too many other people to list, I never left the orbit of Looney Labs. I started many friendships there, and I kept them all.

But I started to lose two on the way back.

Origins 2000 was the beginning of the end for my friendship with Erskin. And since then, I've been to every Origins, and cemented my friendships with the people I meet there. Heck, I now live with one of them, and see many of the others weekly. Erskin and Marcella never came back.

And now Erskin will be there this year.

How do I feel about that?

I'm (hopefully) obviously not petty enough to treat the Lab like it's my space, and he has to apologize to me to use it. I missed him when he left, and I still miss him now. I don't even want an apology from him. All I want is that he won't treat me with the utter disdain and dismissal that he treated me with when I last saw him, nearly five years ago. What I really want is for things to be the way they were, but I know that can't be.

I know it's not about the money. Even if I handed him a check the moment I saw him for whatever he demanded, plus interest, it wouldn't be enough. Because, I think, we were such interlocking friends, our friendship itself became something we tried to deny by hurting each other. We used the things that the other had no control over (his friendship and feelings for Marcella, my poverty) as very effective, unavoidable weapons against each other. There's no easy fix to this. That, I already knew. And I also know that I can't start mending fences unless he lets me.

There is the possibly that his aggressive dislike of me has not diminished with time. That, when I see him, his response will still be, "Fuck off, Liam." And I shall be sad if he does, but I won't tolerate anything worse than ignoring me while in the Lab, because that's not just a place where I live at Origins, it's a place where many people do. And I won't let anyone make that wonderful place less fun to hang out in by making it a drama-stage. But I don't expect that to be any sort of problem.

I used to have a crush on him, but I never told him that (besides, he's straight). My tastes have changed, so I doubt I'd be attracted to him like that now. But I still miss him as a close friend. Knowing him changed me in a lot of ways, many for the better. He was the first person to tell me that the person I was dating wasn't good enough for me. He was the person that got me contra-dancing. He was the person that got me to first try Linux. He taught me so much, and I develop strong feelings for the people that teach me things.

I think I'll wait until Origins, as there's nothing I can really do now. I don't think my e-mailing him is a good idea, as e-mail lacks so many nonverbal cues that I want to be able to convey if I talk to him. And if he chooses not to show up in the Lab at all, I'll be sad. I'm not sure whether it's up to me, as the wrongdoer, to approach him with an apology that I have tried to offer before, or whether it is up to him, as the offended, to approach me when he is good and ready. I'll find out at Origins if it's even relevant.

The thing, actually, that would make me saddest, would be if he asked the people that he did know to come see him, but for them specifically not to tell me. Because then he's making friendship a competition, and that would make me angry. How he and I act towards each other frustrates me, especially so because I miss him.

I miss him a lot.

I like people. I like kids.

I've known since I was in high school that I wanted to raise kids. Not even necessarily my own, but just children in general. This is part of why I so want to be a teacher, because I want to be a positive influence at an important part of people's lives. Everyone gets to be a kid, not all of them get a chance to make it to being adults.

Since I'm feeling my age a lot more over the past three¹ years, I've been thinking more and more about having children. And I realize that most of the people I know are not interested in having children. A quick scan of my friends-list shows only 10% of them to be parents. As a curiousity, I attached a poll to this entry to see what you all think of offspring.

Unfortunately, becoming a teacher at this point in my life is a three-year prospect of getting new degree. I can't be fasttracked due to my poor college grades, and I can't afford that time and cost investment right now. So I feel like the fastest way to be raising kids is to either have them myself, or find myself attracted to someone who already has them. And I'd enjoy the process.

In fact, something I really enjoyed about dating vanuslux and wyspurr and mystic_spectrum was that I got to help with their kids. I like teaching, and offspring are often insanely eager to learn things. So I do know that I do like actual kids, and that this is not just a mental exercise.

¹: Actually, I've been feeling old since I turned eleven and stopped having birthday parties. I'm surprised I've lived this long (I'm 25 now) without dying. Three years is a useful metric since that's when I moved. But, I had been feeling it back in my sophmore year of college, and back in my junior year of high school, and....