Had a college roommate my freshman year named Gene. Gene was a real piece of work. Not the subtlest of minds, but could be very funny, very friendly, even charming. Could also decide to tear street signs out of the ground and destroy whole swaths of campus landscaping.
One Friday night, a bunch of us sat down to play a big game of Risk in the dorm room Gene and I shared.
With fake IDs, the boys headed over to the Stop-In convenience store just off campus, going in on a case of Schaffer—a good choice for an eight-hour Risk game, as it was known as “the one beer to have, if you’re having more than one.” But Gene, who had been huffing all afternoon on his marijuana-stuffed “Zeppelin” pipe, picked up a few big oil cans of the boozier Australian beer Foster’s Lager, his favorite. So Gene was in high spirits as we laid down the board, set down the dice and dealt out the cards and started moving our troops around by turns.
We were all having a good time, settling in, but after an hour or two, we noticed something wrong with Gene. See, Gene had a lazy eye, that would only start to wander when he’d had a little too much Foster’s. We didn’t say anything to each other, but we all saw: As Gene’s left eye began to roll, his right eye began to narrow, in a gathering rage. He was losing, though not badly. But Risk requires longevity. And I think Gene’s bongwatery brain was getting the sense that his night was no longer young, and he wasn’t going to outlast this complex battle, by these detailed rules.
There was no warning. (Aside from the eyeball.) Instantly, dice, cards, infantry pieces, cavalry pieces, artillery pieces, Schaefer cans and one still-smouldering Zeppelin: all in the air, suspended in Gene’s enraged scream, the board torn in half and the evening over before anything hit the floor.
I don’t remember what happened after that. It didn’t matter what happened after that. We’d all devoted ourselves to this project, set aside other possibilities to spend an evening following a common set of rules, together. I don’t remember Gene apologizing the next day. But you can be sure we didn’t sit down to play any more games with Gene, ever again.
Boy, I haven’t thought of old Gene in years. Wonder why I’m thinking of him now.
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