I Am King of the Ogres

I can’t even listen to Kings of Leon anymore without thinking of the grind. Caleb Followill’s voice gravels out of our little iPod stereo, and I’m back in Duskwood, in Azeroth, where I farmed out the recipe to make Elixirs of Greater Agility.  For hours I ran back and forth between the Yorgen Farmstead and Addle’s Stead, killing every Defias I could find, waiting for a drop that would never come.  

I shouldn’t have bothered, I say to myself, chuckling.  The extra 8 Agility really wasn’t …

“What,” Megan says.  She’s futzing around in the bathroom, cleaning up, and heard me chuckle.

“Um.  Bananas,” I say.  “They’re rich in potassium.”

“Aha,” she says.  She shakes her head at her poor, tragic husband, and goes back to cleaning.

If there’s a picture of our summer, this is it: an exasperated Megan churning away at the steady work of living, and my mind tumbling with uncertain purpose through the implausible landscapes of Azeroth.

 It started around Christmas, when I realized that it had been a year since I’d gotten The Burning Crusade, the first expansion pack for the obscenely popular online game World of Warcraft.  I’d quit about a month later.  Now I was starting to miss the game, and I was painfully aware of how much content I hadn’t explored.  Plus, my best friend Dave and his wife, Zarqa, had started playing again, and it seemed like a good way for us to hang out.  Megan and I were sitting in the drive-through at Sonic when I told her.

“I’m thinking about opening up my WoW account again,” I said.  

“Oh yeah?” she asked.  I don’t remember exactly what she did—I was driving, or looking at the menu, maybe trying not to watch her reaction—but I imagine all her muscles tensed and her spine went rigid, like I had drawn a knife.

“Yeah.  Dave and Zarq are playing again, and we all have Tuesdays off, so I figured we’d all start new characters and play together.”

“Once a week, huh?”

“Yeah, not like before.”