accountability
An ex-roommate recently texted. He’d reached out to another former roommate of ours directly, attempting to gain readmission to our dorky little guild now that some time had passed—only to discover he’d been blocked on all fronts. Too quickly I told him “I’ll talk to her.”
He texted thanks, but then he texted, “What did you tell her?” with a jokey little emoji. “She must think I’m Satan or something.”
In that moment I realized, alas, I would not be reaching out to the third roommate after all. This is simply not a labor I’m meant to perform.
I waited a few days before I asked to video-phone and speak face to face.
Just now, out in the real world, I was finishing my lunch while talking with my best friend and her mother. We’d been discussing when it is appropriate to generate consequences for someone else—maybe rarely, since letting things shake out on their own, organically, is typically the better lesson—and when we are absolutely obligated to, as a service to them. It might be when we are functioning as their parent, their professor, or “designing a game for them,” I suggested. We’d originally been speculating about what restorative justice looks like, versus when it is merely retributive and self-aggrandizing. I say this as someone who constantly fights against myself on the perhaps-misguided instinct to strike back.
I warned against casting oneself as judge, jury, executioner, but I did so by using an anecdote, a semi-recent one. I recalled sitting with my spouse outdoors, nighttime in the Midwest, in the seating area just outside a pub, tugging on my vape. I hadn’t wanted to go out that night. I’d just returned from a wedding; he’d just flown in from Australia. In the hotel lobby, we’d argued. I was exhausted but, to hotel and restaurant employees working after 11PM, I’m sure I just looked like a bitch. I’d gone back upstairs, I think rolling his luggage with me, and changed out of my pajamas while he stood downstairs waiting.
Now two strangers were in an animated argument, standing maybe 35 feet away. One was highly agitated, “very stressed out,” I said carefully to my best friend. At some point my spouse started to stand, about to walk over and insert himself: an inclination toward launching a rescue mission. I’d grabbed his hand and held it.
“What are you doing. This doesn’t call for a third person,” I’d said. He’d stared at me. I hadn’t let go of his hand yet. Reluctantly he sat back down.
Later, we’d been encircled by a small, sweet group. “Sorry about our friend,” a soft-eyed young hipster said to my spouse as he sat down with us. “Thanks for being so cool earlier.”
So cool earlier. My husband was magnanimous. “You all were great friends to him,” he answered—a compliment to the group of 9 or so, if perhaps a bit condescending toward the one in acute crisis. Yep, nothing but chill over here. I was silent, but I’d put my hand on my spouse’s knee gratefully. It turned out they were all coworkers at the Black Sheep.
“I don’t know what that is,” my best friend said. No, of course not.
“Great burgers,” I said. I’d gone there with one friend and her mother, then with another friend. I’d also gone once by myself.
The thing was, I continued, the very highly agitated man had maintained relatively constant eye contact with me while insisting “witches, there are witches everywhere!” It had been a performance directed at us, at a volume we could hear—we were already being involved as witnesses—and I was already just listening. He already had our attention. It had been an invitation to engage. I’d been trying to look impassive, rather than scared. Ultimately a couple friends had calmed him, had walked him home, but it had taken time to deescalate.
In lieu of this entire anecdote, perhaps the adage “not my circus, not my clowns” would’ve sufficed.
Later my best friend and her mother began discussing an issue in the house. I had, by now, amassed a number of observations, and I’d developed some very strong opinions over time. I’d noticed a specific pattern that I do not like or trust. At the same time, I questioned my own judgment. I did suggest bracing themselves now for conflict to come to an organic, if rocky, end.
But also, this was none of my business, “I just live here,” I said. I sighed. “I’m here to help strategize, to discuss your options and their consequences. But I do not want to meddle. Please do not let me meddle.”
My best friend started to thank me, but her mother interrupted.
“I want you to meddle,” she said to me, wide-eyed.
Slow to eat, I’d been putting the lid back on my curry. I stopped what I was doing and looked at her. I regarded her, immobile in her chair, her face grim. I nodded at her decisively.
“Whatever the two of you decide to do, I’ll back,” I said to her. I hesitated. “Did you know my surname can mean both ‘free’ and ‘lance’? Freelance,” I said. “A mercenary.” Unconquerable, actually. I paused. “Whatever your will, I’m aligned with it.” I hesitated again. “With discernment, of course.” I reserve the right to flex my own autonomy at my own discretion.
“We aren’t going to just let this stand, Mom,” my friend added.
I nodded. I picked up my leftovers. “I feel terrible, I need to lie down,” I said. I guess I’m not at 100% just yet.
What are we asked to metabolize for one another? When have we explicitly consented to do so—have offered our help—and when have we been bullied into doing the work of a donor organ, a farmyard animal, an indentured servant?
“Get rest,” said my best friend. I stood up and dragged myself out of the room.
On FaceTime, he began by recommending a cool game I’d like. I opened the link.
“Ooh! Blood on the Clock Tower!” I happen to love things that have been named Clock Tower, and I told him so.
“It’s a social deduction game,” he explained, adding he was surprised I hadn’t heard of it. I said that it looked intriguing—like the TV show Traitors, a reality competition show I cannot tolerate watching, but maybe I could inexplicably bear playing.
“Actually, I have a couple games to show you, too,” I said. I began to scoot backward from my desk. “Sorry,” I added, now a few feet away, roll-turning in my seat to look at him onscreen.
“I know how you operate, Frank.”
He sure does.
“That’s right, I like to get all warmed up first,” I laughed, walk-rolling back with a couple books in my hand. “It was Sophie Houlden's birthday, apparently, so I—”
“—bought a Sophie Houlden game?”
I nodded and held it up. “Yep! ‘Dice the Demiurge’; it finally just arrived.” The physical copy I’d ordered, I meant. “You aren't gonna believe this.”
I gently cracked the spine, performatively adjusted my glasses, and began to read the Introduction aloud:
Dice the Demiurge is a game without end. Once per day you will roll dice to deal damage to the Demiurge, a great demon trapping you in a false world.
The blood you draw can be spent to improve your dice and become stronger.
After killing the Demiurge you may ascend—to where stronger foes await.
“New levels, new devils, as they say,” I murmured, flipping the page. Daily rolls chip away at the illusory god’s hit points, or “Blood Drops.” Blood also functions as in-game currency: you can spend Drops to level yourself and your gear. “However,
spending Blood Drops returns them to the universe—to the Demiurge itself. You will need to find a balance between getting stronger and damaging the Demiurge if you want to ascend quickly.
Oh boy, I hate a budgeting game. Resource and time management, the way scarce resources should be allocated, is just not my calibration. However, my stupid-human party trick is that I can eyeball a grocery cart and tell you within cents the amount you’re about to be rung up for. If I’d really wanted to win I should’ve played to my few strengths by going on The Price Is Right instead.
“I might end up rolling a month’s worth in a day,” I mused aloud, “just so I can ‘catch up’ starting from the day I bought it, really jumpstart the game. Ah, it says this on the very next page! Daily Rolling: ‘The game is intended to be played in real time—you roll your dice once each day, with extra rolls to catch up on any days you have missed. However, a day in the game can happen as often as you like.’
“Okay, very simple rules, right? But here’s where I get wet,” I said, and I said it very quickly so he wouldn’t be sure he heard me correctly—because in that fleeting moment I’d decided this particular person maybe deserved to be gaslit a teensy, harmless bit, one little blood drop from him—and his head wavered and then he squinted at me suspiciously. Delightful. My sentence rattled forward: “…the whole rest of the book is just a catalogue of all the classes, the guilds, the different shops, and all these different worlds you visit. All this juicy meaty game, built atop the very simplest of play mechanics.” As I spoke, I slowly ruffled the rest of the pages with my thumb. I returned to the first shop and began picking and choosing the very cleverest and funniest mechanics to read out loud.
As you move between worlds, you are “reborn,” meaning you get to pick a new guild class each time. But, because an ascension is effectively a death and you “can’t take it with you,” so to speak, you lose all your Drops and your entire inventory, starting fresh in the next world. Therefore, one of my favorite storefronts had been the “Cathedral of Death,” where you can buy an indulgence—or bribe someone in authority, right up to the Pope—to permanently keep some-to-all of your banked Blood Drops between ascensions. (The incredibly expensive perk that allows you to travel with 100% of your Blood Drops is called Just Bury Me With It.) Many shops are only accessible in specific worlds; which world you visit is also determined by die.
I flipped to the last page and read the entire FAQ aloud, as well.
Q: What happens if I break the game’s rules?
A: Good question, ask your conscience.
I started wheezing on the very last question.
Q: How do I reconcile this game’s setting/mechanics as an inaccurate representation of gnostic theology with—
A: Excuse me? You DARE criticise this world I have crafted? ...Excellent. You are beginning to learn. Keep amassing your strength and destroy every false world that attempts to contain you.
Next I briefly compared Community Radio and Void 1680AM, two different games—the latter a solo game—about radio broadcasting.
“And then this one,” I said. “‘Death of the Author’.”
Death of the Author is a 1–2 player game about a character fighting for agency within their own story. Over the course of five chapters, the character attempts to shape the narrative by twisting the scenes written by their author.
Use a deck of Tarot cards to tell a story of character autonomy and authorial intent. What messages does the author send throughout the character’s story? What happens when the character finally confronts their author?
“You are the Character, who knows they are part of a story. Throughout your tale, you attempt to wrest narrative control from the Author, doing everything in your power to make this story yours.” I shook my head. “It’s really funny,” I continued. “Because, of course, you’re playing the main character, all the supporting characters, and the Author. At endgame there is always a final confrontation between the Main Character and the Author, when in actuality both are, of course, you.
“It’s normal to want to fight God. But this is a mushroom kingdom. To fight God is to fight ourselves; to hurt someone else is to hurt yourself.”
My former roommate nodded.
“It reminds me of that dream I had in college,” I continued, “where I suddenly realized I was dreaming, and as I told each person they weren’t real, they realized it was true, agreed that they weren’t real, and then poofed out of existence, these glittering clouds. I was standing in a circle with six or seven girls, and they all poofed away, one by one. Until the last girl, who folded her arms and refused to disappear.
“And she said, you only think you’re ‘real’ because you’re dreaming in first-person, but you’re as made-up as I am. The only ‘real’ one is the one lying in bed asleep, dreaming. And it was true, and I gasped, and I woke up.”
Terrific, now he seemed sufficiently startled. All right, enough noodling: I’d deliberately wasted enough of his time.
I have not talked to her about this at all; I am coming straight to you.
I was so proud, I explained, when he’d said he’d reached out to our old roommate himself—a great first step. But when he’d followed up by texting what did you tell her to me, “I got really angry. Because you’re still using me as a human shield, holding me personally responsible for the outcomes of your own behavior.
“And here’s the truth: when you send someone else to act as your PR flack or your community manager, it makes other people trust and like you less.”
As for the third roommate? Trust had ruptured many years earlier. That roommate had come to me about his behavior—inadvertently establishing a blueprint for the type of mediation I could expect to be doing ever-hence—and I’d bungled it bad. I couldn’t even remember the exact circumstances of the conflict, in fact, but for the detail that a simple ‘no’ had repeatedly been disrespected and ignored. “He would never,” I’d told her. “He didn’t mean it like that,” I’d told her. “I’ll talk to him,” I’d suggested. Oh, my God.
“So here I was,” I told him on FaceTime, “acting like the authority on what truly constitutes a ‘violation’ and what does not, and I will tell you I’m so lucky she’s even my friend,” I said. I was not why he’d lost trust. I was fortunate to still have trust. The trust he wanted me to start rebuilding for him, he’d lost years earlier, all on his own.
Which was why I could no longer mediate. He’d have to find some other way in; I’m not making any more introductions, any more doorways or portals. And I apologized to him—not for my recalcitrance, but for all the rest. I’ve always tried to be a loyal pal, but “I’ve done you a terrible disservice,” I said sadly.
I’d always wanted to shield him from the consequences of his own behavior, believing that’s what loyalty looked like, “and that’s how I’ve betrayed you,” I explained. “That is the real betrayal. Like, it’s just bad parenting. My own mother always wanted to shield me from consequences, to fight every battle for me, to go in on my behalf and fix everything. And that’s the worst thing you can do unto someone. I’m sorry. I have betrayed you over and over again.” A shared mother wound, a wounded mother archetype.
And I’m not even a good human shield. In 2D fighters I always forget to block. I dash forward, I jump back, I launch an offensive, but I’ll never be ‘good’ because I cannot block. In a fantasy game I’m always a monk, heal, punch, heal, on the offensive right behind a real tank, casting buffs and debuffs even though I’m a DPS build, but oh so very bad at just fucking getting out of the way.
That was why he’d have to go in and tank a fix himself, I explained. I wouldn’t be preempting him, not even to prepare her, not even to give an opinion or advice. The block had been her choice; lifting it would be, too.
“And I have to tell you, if you go in to repair that friendship, you’ll be starting over as strangers, from ground zero, the bottom level. I think that’s great. That’s great, to have a blank slate. What a blessing.” I thought for a moment. “But please initiate repair because you want to restore the relationship. Please don’t initiate just to regain access to a space that has been closed off to you. She will not like that. She will be able to see it,” I told him, “and she will not like it.” I could think of a few other closed clubs he’d obsessed over infiltrating, and I couldn’t resist naming them. “If access to community support is really what you want,” I suggested, “you can always start your own guild. You have options.”
And I did not have to tell him any of this, when a simple “I reconsidered, and the answer is no” would have sufficed, I said. In fact, I don’t have to say anything at all. “Silence is a boundary,” my therapist always warned me. Now, at this juncture, I mentioned the latest loan request I’d received—and my refusal to respond to it. Just explaining myself is a vampire-electronics energy drain. I’d decided to explain my rationale here, now, this one time, as a courtesy and a service, because I do care.
“Because this is my test from the Universe,” I told him, “and I want to ace it.” A rumble strip, a checkpoint, a gate.
I am a good mediator. I’m a good translator and a good liaison, and I’m not saying I’ll never go to bat for anyone again. But I’ll do it only because I ever wanted to: “Please—don’t do me any favors.”
“I say all this with love,” I’d said then. “I do think you genuinely, nobly operate as a white-hat hacker, the last person to ever get to exploit a loophole.” We are all QA-testing and patching an imperfect reality, aren’t we? “And I will never tell others to not engage with you,” I said firmly. “If you want to mess with people—”
“I think I’m too tired to be the physical embodiment of the archetype of a Trickster Spirit for Good,” he said, his face pale and drawn. He had the flu.
I smiled sadly. Oh, my precious Rumpelstiltskin. As a kid I’d played the Miller’s Daughter in a community theater production of Rumpelstiltskin—and hadn’t I always adored and pitied a Gollum, or loved an impish grin, and wasn’t I always my own little shoemaker elf.
The day before yesterday I unpacked my sophomore-year high school yearbook. Next to her own photo, I was startled to find, a classmate named Courtney had written “Hi Guinevere!” and then signed off with her name—alluding to the role I’d split with another student, the two of us part-time leads, where she was considered the better voice and I was considered the better actor, because of the limits of both our ranges. However, sadly for me, she had been the better performer overall: she’d gotten pretty good, from repeated viewings, at replicating my movements and my cadences, whereas I was always a very creaky mezzo. She could reproduce my performance; I couldn’t imitate hers. I remember the feeling of resentment, of having the hard work of my entire characterization swiped.
A thought has been bothering me. Hadn’t I always been a weird little gremlin, pointing out nonobvious problems and dynamics, as a kid, at schoolboard and PTA meetings? Hadn’t that been me? It was something I’d inherited from my own dad, or maybe from a steady diet of Fraggle Rock LPs. I’d had horrible ADHD, too—in the boy way, not the girl way. I was constantly in trouble, in elementary school, for jumping up out of my desk and pacing. A landlord eventually threatened to evict me, for pacing.
But I’d lost this spark at some point. Sometimes I wonder if I were Spirited Away, put to work just so I’d forget what I’m supposed to be doing. And hadn’t I been flaunting it, showing off to my former roommate, now that I’d gotten ‘it’ back? I began to wonder if ‘it’ were a quality of myself that I had given away, that I’d contracted out. Having become extremely fearful of being visible, of being a full person in the world, I had maybe outsourced my own best or at least weirdest attributes.
“You’ll be my emissary!” I had said happily, the first time only one of us went to a conference and the other didn’t—effectively sealing the deal.
Anyway.
“But we’re not meant to inhabit just one archetype in this lifetime,” I was saying to him unhappily. “We are the full deck.” Hopefully we’re all operating with a full one, anyway. He sighed and nodded, possibly irritated at the frequency with which I’ve said “full deck” to him.
Now I dreamily mused aloud that maybe our contract had always been to shield each other from the consequences of our own actions or choices. “Huh,” he said, genuinely considering it.
I didn’t say what else I was thinking, which was that, by karma-deflecting and sin-eating, we’d somehow put a consequence multiplier on ourselves, eating critical resources and wasting lots of time. I managed to not mention karma or sin-eating even once, in fact.
“Thanks for talking to me, even though you feel bad,” I told him brightly. “I always love talking to you. That's why I [lived with] you,” I said, turning my head to fix him with a little glint, a little smirk. “Ah! It’s always so… nourishing. Oh, I hope you don’t feel drained.”
“No,” he said sadly, “I’m just tired.”
As soon as we got off the phone, my flu started. It was immediate. “Oh,” I said, setting my datebook on the foot of the bed. “Oh, no,” I moaned, pushing my face into a pillow. I’d had a sneeze all week, but I seemingly suddenly got got.
I remember waking up sweaty, once, where I’d just been praying to God in my sleep to please just let me fucking die already. I woke up horrified. That’s one of the only parts I can remember. Somehow, throughout this ordeal, I’d managed to also take care of the dog. Also, myself, but also the dog.
Today my best friend’s mom kept mentioning a puzzle piece near her on the dining table: she could see the piece from where she was sitting, and she could also see where it was supposed to go. Her ex-husband was preoccupied, but he happened to be preoccupied with the section of puzzle where that missing piece went. He was just too focused to really hear her. (Also, her voice is very weak, when she has one, and his hearing is shot. “Oh, boy, you two,” I said to them once, laughing.)
I finally couldn’t take it and stood up. “Which piece?” I asked her. I moved my hand around like a Ouija planchette, watching her face, until she confirmed I’d hovered over the correct piece. I picked it up.
The piece was placed. “I’m sorry,” I said then, stating the obvious, “that would drive me crazy, to see a piece and where it goes, and not be able to just... pick it up and put it there.” We smiled at each other.
Sometimes I function as her voice-activated television remote. “Right,” she mouths. “Right. Right. Down. Right. ...Select.” I watch her face, lip-reading, instead of looking at the screen. This is laborious but I don’t care.
I’ve had a lot of opportunities, lately, to think about how this service of reciprocal caregiving is absolutely not the same as being the king’s personal poison-taster.
I’m still recovering. From the flu, I mean. Later I’d look at my Hobonichi, how the top of February 12 says “FaceTimed” and then every space and page after it is blank. The worst of it had lasted eight days. I'd had eight days and nights of fever dreams. The house was empty. It gave me plenty of time to process what I was feeling and to sweat it out.
I remember showing up at my friend’s apartment just up the block from mine, where he was already outside, already waiting for his sudden-ex to grab her things. She soon arrived with her own ‘second,’ and perhaps only then did I understand that I had not been invited there to be an entirely mutual friend—that, rather, I was attending a duel. I will never, ever forget the look of absolute horror and betrayal on that girl's face. I have my own core abandonment/betrayal wound, and it has made my sum life an extremely melancholy one. We were barely 21.
If I had understood earlier what I recognize now, I would’ve tried to articulate it. I would have tried to say, Stop right there. I think I can intuit what you may want to ask of me, but I won’t continue being everybody’s designated bad guy. I can’t. I’m exhausted. I love you. If there is something you are wanting to do, I’ll ride for you. Maybe, speaking realistically, the integrity of my line will always bend for you. But you need to do things the right way. If you want help brainstorming how to do something well, I can be available. But if you want me to blindside someone with my very presence, to ride in on a white horse or maybe a dark horse, can’t do it, it’s a no, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I shouldn’t’ve come here at all.
Oh, how I’ve always wanted a friend and collaborator—but it seems to always result in being cannibalized for parts. The problem might be me, might be how much soloing I’ve done. Believing myself to be too wounded to be safely around others, I’ve simply soloed everything—up to and including my own marriage, hurting the other person in the process, I’m told.