I Just Drove the Tank.
With nothing better to do, I tried out my new/used Atari game set. I plugged in a tank game – no idea what it was called – and I drove that tank with my joystick controller as though I were on a mission to save the world.
I sat on the floor, three feet from the television. I pushed the joystick to the right, holding it with a death grip, so my hand hurt constantly. Video games were far more simplistic in the 20th century, so nothing really happened in my game. I just drove the tank. I pushed the joystick. The tank rolled. I pushed harder to make it go faster; it rolled at the same speed.
I kept playing. I didn’t stop playing until pre-dawn, when I would simply lie flat on the floor. Going upstairs to bed was too hard.
I did this night after night after night. I didn’t do anything else except smoke cigarettes.
During this time I called the vet because Kitty’s nose was randomly changing colors, from gray to pink and back.
“That’s usually a sign of respiratory issues,” said the receptionist.
That’s all I needed to hear. I didn’t smoke in my own house again, ever. Kitty’s nose stopped changing colors and she lived to be 18.
Meanwhile I didn’t do anything that was suggested to me to stay sober. Too depressed to leave the house, I just drove the tank.
I used the tank game to numb myself, to pretend that I had zero emotions. Thoughts of Paul would creep in and I would shake my head violently to make them disappear. I focused on the tank. Other than making the occasional peanut butter sandwich, I did nothing else. I just drove the tank. Over and over and over and over and over and over.
One day, some guy from the sober club came to my house with his motorcycle. He said I could ride it, so I did. I hopped on without a care in the world and I drove helmet-less up and down the brick streets of Oakmont.
When I stopped driving the real-life motorcycle, which was nowhere near as easy as driving the 2D tank on Atari, I realized that the guy was 6’3″ and I was only 5’4″. When I put my feet down, they didn’t reach the ground. The motorcycle fell over and landed on my left leg, wrecking the bike and leaving me with second- and third-degree burns that needed to be treated with pain medication and rest.
“Rest” meant driving the tank.
“Pain medication” meant I felt high in an unwanted way. I stopped taking medication after two pills.
When the motorcycle guy came back celebrating one year sober and asked me, “Do you think I should get drunk?” I said I didn’t care what he did.
He got drunk.
Briefly I considered going to the bar with him, to “keep him sober.” I decided against it – in favor of staying home and driving the tank.
My neighbor’s friend Kathy, who had a sheepdog, needed a dog sitter. So I went to her house and stayed there for a bunch of days, hanging out with the sheepdog and sitting on her very nice couch. I worked on transcriptions for my dad who, with my mom, now lived outside Washington, D.C. I dog-sat and transcribed so I could afford to pay my rent.
The only thing I didn’t have at Kathy’s house was the Atari tank game.
And that, it turns out, was the missing element that drove me right over the edge.