Potatoes Steam the Sinfully Blasphemous Bungee Cord

Lurge is one of those Gen-Y kids, all bleach-blonde hair spikes, odd piercings and not-nearly- abstract-enough tattoos. But his looks are the least off-putting thing about him. It's one thing to look scary - especially to someone like me, teetering on the precipise of middle age - it's a whole other thing to actually be sacry - to anyone at any age. And when I say scary I don't mean like the kind of scary you get from some freakazoid on a reality TV show. I mean the kinda scary you take home with you that keeps you from sleeping and peeing and stuff. I mean really fucking scary.

I know it's the height of underachievement to be a 40-something short order cook. Not that this isnt' a good job for a newly arrived immigrant without papers, but I have papers, three of them showing my educational achievements at major universities. And, no, I didn't buy them off the interenet or at a flea market. I paid for them with $60,000 in student loans that at this wage rate I won't pay off until well after retirement age. Of course writing about my situation only makes things worse. At work I can measure my daily achievements by the 22 dozen eggs I cook. But sitting down to chronicle the aggregate meaninglessness of 20 years of grease, sweat and fears is not positive therapy.

Lurge thinks I'm the coolest person he's ever met. He's in awe of my ability to deny the cycle of earn and spend insanity so many of my peers are trapped in. I tell him my condition is purely accidental and not in anyway part of a grand life scheme or trend-bucking philosophy. Somehow my desperation is invisible to him. Somehow he continues to celebrate my, how does he say it, "liberationist determination?" This sounds vaguely like some mid-20th-century heuristic I studied in quest of my PhD, though I can't, at this great temporal distance and intellectual atrophy, put my finger on who might have been responsible for this bit of wisdom, so I give credit to Lurge.

It's nice to have a fan. Everyone wants to be awesome to someone. Perhaps it's my desire to be awesome to someone a little closer to my erstwhile peer group that is disappointing. Eightteen-year-old videogame junkies seem like an easy group to impress unless your in an opposable thumb coordination contest.

<> So as I spend shift after shift clogging the arteries of truck drivers and answering Lurge's nearly unintelligible queries about life at my age, the reality of my life at my age becomes more dismal and depressing. I could become what he believes me to be, an incredibly brave and grounded-in-reality liberation determinist, but boy would that require some serious attitudinal adjuistment. And when you're as mired in masochistic introspection as I am it's nearly impossible to determine which attitudes need adjusting first. Liberation is a luxury I can't figure out how to afford.

Well, after about six months of dour responses to his sincere inquiries, Lurge blows my mind. No, he didn't put LSD in my coffee. Yes, he did give me the key to life fulfillment. Just like that. In the blink of an eye. Without my even being aware of what was happening this scrawny lamebrain presented me with a puzzle that I feel certain will unleash my full human potential once I unlock its mystery.

As we were leaving work last Saturday, Lurge invites me over to his Mom's house to this new game he's playing with a bunch of Scandinavian kids over the internet. I'd never really thought about Lurge having a home of any kind. He seems to just appear out of the dark each morning to immediately begin his inquisition. Nine hours later he's gone just as quickly. So, this particular morning I think 'Why not check out Lurge's place? I can skip Sally Jesse, Rosie and Jerry once."

I drive Lurge to Fontana, a fairly disreputable industrial suburb known mostly for the amazing variety of after-market auto parts manufactured there. The house is small but tidy and identical to the three hundred or so houses we pass in the subdivision. No one else is home. Lurge's bedroom is startlingly tidy, the walls covered in In-Sync, Brittney Spears, and Los Angeles Lakers posters. In the corner next to a large window is the computer. Lurge starts up the machine and logs on to the interenet. While he's busily rousting competitors halfway around the globe he explains the general rules of internet gaming and the subculture it has spawned. Well at least he's not out shooting heroin like I imagined all kids his age doing.

There is a knock at his bedroom door. His Mom enters the room carrying two bowls of steamed potatoes. Normally I don't eat potatoes. At my age, the starch turns immediately to tummy fat, but I didn't want to be rude. Afterall how strange must it seem to her that a strange, middle-aged guy is in her son's bedroom with the door closed.

<>
After his Mom leaves, and at the very moment I take my first bite of steamed potatoes the start-up screen of the game appears on the monitor: "The Sinfully Blasphemous Bungee Cord." That's an odd name for a game.