Text: Darkness, Dreamworlds

I remember the hot summer in Kansas like it was this summer in Colorado. The sun is the same, no matter who or where you are. Sometimes I would escape the basement to be comforted by it's warmth. I had little physical warmth back in those days. A hug or a kiss or a feeling of passion was as the result of textual discourse and my imagination. Apart from running outside during the summer months, I participated in a lot of exercise classes in high school. I tore the hell out of my abs, arms, and legs doing a weightlifting gym course. I had nothing else to focus on except my dreamworld and a rather silent sophomore year.

Andarielle's player sent a check to my mom that week to help her recover from the giant phone bill. Andarielle's player, who I will just call C, reminded me that her phone bill's were much larger. I could only imagine--long distance wasn't cheap during those days. There was a rather large group of people that surrounded our two characters, sort of fascinated by them as a pair, like they had a Brangelina-style celebrity status. It could be merely my perception, but sabotage, jealousy, and a constant barrage of instant messages to either of us supports my notion. When we would log on, it wouldn't be long before someone sent a message our way, maybe even several people. We'd have to sift through a variety of mail from council decisions, applications to the kingdom, missives from friends, family and enemies. It was like being captain of a political office, where at least a hundred people would be directly involved in your current dealings.

Let me give you a brief explanation of the realm that surrounded Alendria, but do not get confused, as no group was associated with the other, some characters and lands were in different time periods, others existed on the foundation of being certain types of characters, like Goblinoids. A group called DETH had Mourne and NightJewel at the helm and they thought so highly of their own writings and affairs, they were like a mini-France. There was the Goblinoid Horde led by EVILGOBLIN and VILEGOBLIN, GOB7DSYNS, NastyGob, and scores of other players that specifically lived out the roles of Orcs, Goblins, and other evil races. Alongside Alendria, several kingdoms existed to keep control of the evil population, and merely to help bring some order to the chaos that was Free Form Role-Playing. The Wardens of Loreil were a small group of players who acted like judges to combat disputes and mentors to new players. I pictured them like sheriffs of the realm, since they put special attention to wearing the badge of Loreil. I explored all of these groups, but not in depth. Draven watched from the outside, perched atop his throne in Alendria, bogged down in worldly affairs.

War was always on Draven's mind. It was really the only competitive outlet I had online and offline. Personally, I loved baseball but I didn't want to join any group in Kansas. Not after the way I was constantly treated. The only way for me to channel any sort of rage or feel any adrenaline was through character combat. Draven entered tournaments, jousts, even battled "death matches" where the loser would have to delete their screenname from AOL. He won about 20. It was just a gamble of the dice. In a random survey online one year, Draven was named the Most Experienced Male Combatant in a realm of thousands. Although, it can't be a huge compliment, of course the survey was only participated in by a small group of people. Not everyone knew of Draven and his legacy.

I found a picture of how I saw Draven, it was the closest I could find, so it is not entirely accurate.



(to be continued)

Text: Darkness, Rejection

(This is a continuation from the last blog entry)

Besides having a fantasy crush with Draven and outside of that I spent a lot of time being confused on what to do with my spare time. I was a lot more involved with taking honors classes. I remember dedicating a lot of time to taking senior courses my sophomore year and also sitting in the library trying to read difficult texts. I think I got through about 100 pages of War and Peace among other accomplishments.

My mother became concerned after months passed and I expressed no interest in being outside with others. Prior to moving out I developed asthma from sleeping in my mom's old moldy basement during junior high. In an effort to tackle that obstacle I ran nearly every day during the summer and school year. It was another activity that I shared by myself, except for one of the two dogs on occasion. I did it to mostly be in shape, but another part of me was frustrated with the way I was treated during that time.

I was a 15 year old kid forced to ride the local bus that was shared by all grades, since it was a small district. The younger kids were much more apt to make fun of me, since I was probably the eldest there. I remember being called "The ugly kid" or "Screech" by people who were careless in their action. I am almost positive, as I reflect back on this period that they were probably more insecure than I was. Most of the kids who made fun of me were not necessarily the stereotypical jocks or cheerleaders. They were additional reasons I was addicted to my isolation. Instead of being confrontational and standing up for myself I walked away dejected.

I retreated to Alendria in class, in the library, on the bus, and at home. My addiction continued to grow as time passed. Draven became embedded in online political affairs, he worked his way up a rank of leaders and became an imperative figure in many eyes. His presence was both admired and despised, but in him I could channel confidence as the veil of the Internet kept my real persona out of the mix. Yet, as I said before, Draven was a projection of me in several ways. He was everything I wanted to be; he was the man who would stand up to all the people who looked down on me. He was the romantic man, the ideal father, a defender of peace, an upholder of the law, a glorified warrior-king, and above all else, recognized among the masses as a handsome, bold figure. He was everything I wished I was; but could people smell the fear of an insecure child behind the mask of an aging knight?

Draven stumbled through many introductory relationships where I experimented, textually, with the limits of my knowledge. I expanded my database of sexual terms without ever leaving my room and without the physical company of others. I visualized the female form from what I could access on the Internet, besides porn, fantasy images of nude females ran rampant as the ideal profile picture for over-weight women in bad marriages, playing fantasy roles themselves. A majority of the women online played both female and male characters, since many of the men who played were obsessed with war and had little to no knowledge of romance. Or, if they did, it was particularly skewed since most men didn't need to find refuge online for romantic interludes. Women had more trouble in this area. A lot of the women I talked to were in their mid-thirties and suffered from abusive or controlling husbands, or had to watch one of their many children. America Online was their solace; a momentary sanctuary were silence prevailed and pure, emotional thought was poured out in instant message through one of their active online voices.

Much like the men wanted to be the online Rambo, the women wanted to be fragile, beautiful, sexy, in the way a pin-up leaves little to the imagination. There were other women who shed that image for one of violence, an image that made them as strong if not stronger than the men online. What fantasies were these? Who were these people? I often asked myself these two questions and sometimes I was able to penetrate the characters to learn more about the players. We would trade images of each other to better understand, eventually I was strictly talking to people out of character, rather than writing with them. In the early days it was hard to find fantasy images online in an efficient manner. The more veteran players who started at an older age or had some outside talent could create artistic portraits of their characters. Some were amazing, others were pencil doodles that could hardly be taken seriously. I never found a portrait that represented Draven. In my head he had a well-kept graying beard; he was tall, broad shouldered, and his hair was long, flowing, and thin. The most prominent feature that I loved to picture was shinning silver armor that was accompanied by a thick hooded cloak. I even named his sword Duranel.

My addiction to Andarielle and her player became more addictive as well. Instead of calling the 1-800 number which was free, obviously, I started calling through my mom's phone service to her home in California. I remember my mom taking my computer upstairs and hiding it from me after she got a phone bill for $180.00. I couldn't help myself. Andarielle's player was one of the few people who could actually understand me. She was someone that I could ask questions and get answers when everyone else in the world was just laughing at me. My whole life I have been raised by women who have experienced more than I have, yet I rejected them all the same for not being men. For not being Draven, or my grandfathers, or my dad, who all raised me in some ways, but never enough to compensate for the time the women put into my life. As I grow up, I realize that I am particularly dependent on women to teach me things and in return, I offer little to no substance as I leech their knowledge. That's another story altogether.

(to be continued)

Text: Darkness, Dawn

I like to write my blog when listening to a select album that summarizes my mood. Right now I'm listening to the haunting melody of My Morning Jacket's album At Dawn. In particular, "Lowdown" is such a great mixture of contrasting elements of sadness and greatness. Anyone reading this should check them out, if even at a glance on iTunes previews.

On with the blog.

The last week has been another wreck for me. I feel like I am throwing myself under the bus seven days a week with work, drinking, eating out, and passing out in my room full of forgotten laundry and the trash of days spent. I really should take the time to be better about my health. For the last several weeks I've been doing all activities, including night-driving (which I suck at), with only one contact in. I'm legally blind in both eyes without them. I also came down with one of the worst colds. It drained my body completely. Besides that I think I prolonged my body's healing process by continuing to go out and drink each night, except for one particular night that my joints ached so much I had to call it early. I had to call in sick the next day, too. The first time since I've started my job.

I remember back in school when I would want to call in. It happened so frequently my sophomore year of high school, I can still remember it being my all-time high. I missed 29 days of class. I did fairly poorly, but Kansas was a difficult period in my life. I was reminded of it a few days ago when I was listening to Third Eye Blind's first album. What a dark period in my life. It is one that I currently ponder writing about. It is brief enough that I can tell a tale from beginning to end, and mix some of the modern day elements of Internet, fantasy, and relationships to possibly make a successful story. Let me fill you in on this section of my life:

My sophomore year of high school I was conned into moving out to Kansas with my mom. I was, at the time, living with my grandmother in Colorado, attending Arvada West High. It was the start of my second year. I had several friends that enjoyed my company, but I was a very confused, growing teen--as most are. I wore glasses and last week's fashion. I was always trying to catch up to what was cool and always the last to know. I just really wanted to make people laugh and mostly to hang out, play video games and go exploring late at night in the school fields or parking lots near my house.

I got a call before summer started and it was my mother expressing how much displeasure she had that my dad's mother was raising me. She said, why don't I come down for the summer, and unknown to me of the plan, I accepted. I hauled my shit down to Kansas. At the time, it wasn't much, but the most important thing to me was my first computer. America Online had really started becoming popular when I built it. There was, however, a particular part of America Online that really stuck for me. It made me addicted to it's services. So much so that I got frustrated when I couldn't connect, if even for a single hour. If there was trouble with the Internet dial-up connection, I was immediately on the phone with whatever technical support group that could link me back in. I was troubled.

America Online had a dedicated area to Free Form Role-Playing. In it, I lost myself to constant character creation and storytelling. There were online message boards for all to see, where I could create an entire world for people to participate in, according to what I desired. I created a character who I felt would be an ideal persona of myself, maybe a project of who I could only aspire to be as I got older, maybe it was even a grand-scale vision of what my father or grandfather's might've been like - in this fantasy setting. Someone suggested I name him Draven, after Eric Draven, a Brandon Lee movie character. I liked the sound of it. I didn't know the movie at the time. I was only 12 when I created Draven and about 14 when I landed in Kansas, my fantasy world in tow.

Kansas was terrible. Nothing as far as the eye could see. We lived in a really small community of houses separated by several fields. I often joked that the only things in Wichita, Kansas were a hundred bars and a shopping mall that was going out of business. This opinion of mine, coupled with the fact that I was too young to drive, and didn't know anyone in the area, made me a recluse. I had a giant, cold, dark basement to myself. It housed my bed, my computer stand, a bathroom, and a stone, empty room containing the furnace. It was my cell. I knew it would be, the minute my mother told me, "I know you want to go back, but I feel it's best you stay here and be raised by me." and I said, "Fuck you." slammed the door, and disappeared into my world.

Let me catch you up about my fantasy world. As a child, and even a little now, I daydreamed about a fantasy-medieval world, one that would reflect Arthurian romances. The duties of knights, their tireless chivalric standard, never-ending pursuit of battle and glory. The reign of King Arthur, a true, just king, passionate about his conquest and ambitious in his quest for the Holy Grail. He was admired by his citizens, his brothers, his knights-in-arms;he was a leader, a man's man, coated in platemail, justice sheathed at his side. I dreamed I was as powerful as him, as admirable and as noble--a man's man. I was a child. I knew nothing of myself or the world, little of women and nothing that I couldn't fantasize or dream happening before me. For almost a decade, I used Draven off and on as an escape from my own reality as a growing teen. Whenever I was down on myself, I could retreat to this gaming world where hundreds of people knew my character and I had made for myself an image much of Arthur's in Draven. Outside of this world, I was just the dorky virgin, living a world on the Internet far larger than my real life ever was. When I couldn't be there, my life was on hold. I was waiting until I could sign on and check to see who was online. Then I would start chatting or writing an entry on a message board. I would check the Member Directory like a Celebrity Searchlist to see who had updated their profiles, who was online, who was claiming what guild status and what was new in the realm. There were tricks to figure it out. I would have to enter certain acronyms to find particular groupings of people. In a hurry to check everything, I would glance over a variety of message boards containing posts of hardly any meaning except to the author who was trying to flesh out their character in a world they created before them. The most interesting stuff to view was particular emails. Emails of gossip, alliances, applications to Alendria, and more. Even praise of Draven or criticism, which in turn felt like praise or criticism of me, because in a way, I was him.

Draven met a woman. Her name was Andarielle. She was a just woman, donned armor and a sword and had a thirst for battle almost as much as Draven. Together they fought side by side, confused at first whether the matching tattoos on their back made them family, or destined lovers. Eventually the latter became the truth and they were married shortly after their initial meeting. As a partnership they built a kingdom; a land I called Alendria (hence my name.blogspot.com). It was a region I separated into four provinces, governed by Draven's four brothers, some played by real life friends, others played by me. The world was interesting, peaceful, and at best, the greatest escape of my life for a period of several years.

Andarielle was played by a 25 year old woman who lived in California. I was only 13 the day our character's met online. We played out this fantasy relationship, but then it drew more interest offline. We called each other, became involved in each other's lives. There was a brief stint where I would call her at work, on a 1-800 number, from my high school during my lunch period, because I felt so socially awkward with people. I was such a loner. I sat at random tables with only a few people at it, who probably, in some way, felt the same way I did, but didn't know of my wonderful escape. I was obsessed with the fact that this girl talked to me, cared for me and my future. I even started having fantasies about seeing her in person. I was three-times deep in fantasy.

(to be continued)