Things Best Left Unseen

One thing that having intimations of mortality will do for you is make you look back on the good old days through a golden scrim of warm, fuzzy nostalgia. And since my interests these days lie in the general direction of gaming, I've been having wonderful warm golden fuzzy flashbacks to the glory days of wargaming and... no, wait a second, that's not a warm golden fuzzy memory! That's a horrible memory!

Okay. One thing that having intimations of mortality will do for you is make you look back on the good old days and realize they're full of horror.

Once I decided to drive all the way across Phoenix to get to a particular game store in Gilbert. I've always lived on the far west side of Phoenix, so going to Gilbert almost qualified as a pilgrimage. I wouldn't go there just to sample the tacos, if you take my meaning, and though I can't remember why I went to that game store in Gilbert, it had to be for a pretty serious reason. My personal mythology is that I went all that distance seeking a copy of SPQR, but it's more likely that it had something to do with Traveller supplements or D&D figures.

Anyway, I drove all that way, and when I went into the game store, I found a group of guys playing a game on card tables in the middle of the store. That's pretty common in game stores. Guys are forever playing games on card tables in the middle of game stores, but as I came closer to see what they were playing, my flesh began to crawl.

The guys were in their thirties, faces unshaven and gleaming in a rank sebaceous way, hair limp and coated with what looked like a thin layer of Pennzoil's finest. They were clad in wife-beaters and t-shirts and sweat pants, all of them greasy and smudged, the kind of clothing that you just know will stink up your whole house if left in your clothes hamper for any length of time. They were playing a role-playing game. Most of them were playing the game with the kind of excessive seriousness that only sebaceous thirty-something men can pull off (the only to have fun is to be serious about it, you see) but one guy had blushed to the color of cooked lobster and looked like he was about ready to start beating himself to death with a copy of Russian Campaign.

And for good reason. They were playing - and I shudder to speak it - a Sailor Moon role playing game! See the artwork at the top of this article. That's Sailor Moon. So what would possess thirty-something guys to role-play nubile fourteen year old girls?? It's wrong on so many levels I scarcely know where to have my emotional breakdown.

First, nobody should role-play Sailor Moon. Ever. At all. For any reason. That may sound harsh, but that's my stand.

Second, thirty-something guys in particular should not role-play Sailor Moon.

Third, sebaceous, unshaved guys in dirty clothes shouldn't be role-playing anything. They should be taking showers and laundering their togs.

Anyway, that image continues to corrode my soul to this day. I never even bought what I went there to get in the first place, so horrified was I. I suspect I felt a little bit like a survivor of the Titanic. After all that tragedy, all that horror, all that shipwreck and rescue business, I imagine a lot of them said "Uh, does anyone remember why I was going to New York in the first place? Because I sure as Shinola can't." I think the image of basement-dwellers role-playing Sailor Moon completely drove my mission of out my head and I tottered back out to the parking lot, spent and defeated.