32 Flavors...And Then Some

Epiphanies are great, aren’t they?

I’m sitting in Starbucks® writing something, and looking at all the attractive men around me. Part of me was thinking how pretty they all were, in such wildly different ways. Cute coffee queens with baby-faces and 9% body fat, crunchy guys in Columbia Sportswear jackets and Buddy Holly glasses, sexy hipsters clinging codependently to their girlfriends… So many flavors of guys, and all hot in their own ways.

And as nice as it would be to be dating someone, I’ve got other things to focus on.

It would be nice to get to the gym once in a while (more than zero times a week, at least). I have goals that I want to achieve, and NOT going is a great way to NOT achieve them.

I also want to get a little into my Recovery, learn a few lessons so as not to make horrible choices yet again. I want to face a few of my man-related demons before finding new ones, you know?

There are a million other reasons why I’m not in a place to be looking for a guy. I couldn’t really imagine any of these hot guys finding me attractive anyway, despite doing the eye flirt thing with this tall drink of water who tried unsuccessfully to establish MORE eye contact with me.

And all of a sudden it came together. If all these guys are attractive in their own ways, why am I not allowed to be one of those many attractive flavors?

And like a soap bubble bursting, I felt free. All of a sudden, I GET IT. I understand that I don’t need to be perfect. I don’t need to fit into ANY mold of “attractive man.” All I need to do is be, truly, myself. The right guys will be attracted to me. And many, many of them, I will be attracted to in return.

I don’t have to go to the gym to be attractive. I don’t have to be emotionally perfect to be attractive. I don’t have to be ANYTHING other than willing to be honest with myself, not self-deprecating, not falsely modest or deceptively confident.

Relax, for gods sake. It’s supposed to be fun.

And I’m actually beginning to believe it really could be.

Can I Put Up a Lost Dragon Poster?

I got the best compliment yesterday.

About a year and a half ago I started running a D&D campaign. Yes, Dungeons & Dragons, ye old staple of nerd-burgers and geekazoids (sorry, “Saved By The Bell” flashback). I’ve played for years, and had always wanted to run a game myself. It took time, guts, and planning, but I finally bit the bullet and assembled a game.

Yesterday was the latest game, where the players finally completed navigating their way through a huge compound that took three sessions and the entire floor space of the living room. There, the players finally learned at least part of the answer to a question from the beginning of the game 18 months earlier. They had found a journal detailing many things, including who had kidnapped them and why.

I try to put my players in to their characters headspace as much as possible, by keeping information from them, creating misleading signs, and scene setting as much as possible. It seems to be working. I was chatting with one of my players, himself a DM as well, about different DMing styles.

“Your game is like ‘Lost.’” he says.

I took it in and continued on with the conversation, but it stuck there, wedged in my brain, for a day. Percolating. I was in the shower this evening when the full meaning of that really struck me.

I love “Lost.” It’s brilliant, it’s captivating, and they’re very good at parceling out just enough information to keep you interested and still questioning. It’s the kind of thing I’ve been trying to do without realizing I’ve been trying to do it. And apparently succeeding at.

I’m doing a good job, it seems, at creating mystery within my game, at teasing enough secrets to keep them coming back for more. It’s a great trust players put in their DM to take them on an enjoyable ride. And if my game is like “Lost,” I think I’ve earned that trust.

And that’s the best compliment I could get.