It was so hot the summer before you were born, all I could do was play marathon sessions of video baseball. Day after day I played, amazed how the players looked like real players on real teams. But unlike with real players, I could modify the career potentials of these players so unimpressive rookies posted numbers worthy of Willie Mays. I made some trades, modified some career potentials, then led the perennially hapless Royals to 12 consecutive World Series victories. How much fun to simulate a season, win the big game, then take digital photos as the team pumped fists and a stadium exploded in fireworks and cheers.
I was not solely responsible for the Royals’ success, however. A shortstop I created knocked 377 homers in 2009 alone. He looked like a cartoon superhero. Waist no wider than his skull. Chest like the chrome grill of an SUV. I named him after the imaginary son Girlfriend and I have, a virtual son so much more virile than me, especially after someone stepped on my big toe in a pickup basketball game. The nail cracked, so I couldn’t run. Instead, I became obsessed with this extraordinary game, which Girlfriend welcomed because it meant I’d leave her alone. Your mother would have made me film the game, then doctor the playback so batters stepped to the plate swinging enormous erections. But instead all I did was hit homers with the übersuperstar I created, shortstop extraordinaire Thorstein Mohr—whose life ended when I destroyed the game disc after Girlfriend failed to sympathize when I lost to Boston in the 2017 American League Championship Series. Our imaginary son lived on, however, trapped in the big rock in the backyard.
It was around this time that your mother emailed her response to my manuscript. Easy reading, she wrote, nothing too difficult, but dark, and oddly—definitely oddly—autoerotic. Not heavy. Worthwhile. Fun. She added that she didn’t think it was shit. Which I took to mean that in all the time she spent reading, she’d learned one lesson very well: Never ask to see anyone’s unpublishable novel. It’s not like a video. You can’t just hit “play” on its pages and see into another world.