As the other guys arrive, they invariably say something about Trevor's coat and tie. He explains that his date is meeting him here and they're going out for a drink. When the doorbell rings an hour later, Trevor freezes. Normally, people just walk in the door for Shoot Club, kind of like Fonzie on Happy Days or everyone on Seinfeld. So when the doorbell actually rings, it's a strange new sound. Everyone looks up from his screen.
"Who's ringing the doorbell?" someone asks.
"That's my date," Trevor says, his voice colored with some otherworldly inflection. The game of Unreal Tournament limps to a halt. The two guys playing Virtua Tennis pause the game. Lisa puts her book down.
"Maybe you should get it," Trevor says to me after a moment, "I mean, it's your house and all."
"Yeah, sure."
The moment I open the door, I know Amy is trouble.
"Hey, is this where the party's at?" She's looking past me, wondering why there's no loud music playing. She's wearing sunglasses even though it's dark outside. She has a belly shirt on and a silver hoop in her pierced navel. She's about fifteen pounds too heavy for the shirt and ten years too old for the ponytail on top of her head.
"Yeah, come on in. You must be Amy." She steps on her cigarette. I shake her hand and introduce myself. She walks into a room of about twelve guys trying not to stare at her. 'This is Trevor's date,' they're all thinking.
"Hey, Amy, boy, see you here, is a real, fresh of breath air," Trevor blurts.
"Yeah, man," she says with a weary smile. It occurs to me she may not even know his name.
"Hey, you're not in your uniform. I'm all used to seeing you in your uniform. That looks good on you, though. Did it hurt? Getting the belly ring?"
"Where is everyone?"
"Oh, some of the guys come late, you know."
Lisa steps in. "Hi, I'm Lisa."
Amy gives Lisa that look that girls sometimes give each other. I don't know why they do it or what it means, but if a guy did it to me, according the to the guy code, I'd be honor bound to hit him, even if it meant getting beat up afterwards.
"What's that smell?" Amy leans in to sniff my shirt. Why was she trying to sniff my shirt? "What are you wearing?" she asks me. Why does she think I'm wearing it?
"So, how long have you guys known each other?" Lisa asks.
"We don't really. He just comes into the Denny's where I work. He said there'd be a party here."
"Hey, Amy, you want to go get a drink?" Trevor says.
"Sure. Where are they, in the kitchen?"
"Oh, I mean, yeah, I think so. Are the drinks in the kitchen?" Trevor asks no one in particular.
"Would you get me one? I'll just have a lite beer." Amy says.
Trevor shuffles into the kitchen.
"So what, are you guys doing some kind of video game thing? My nephew has all kinds of shit like this. He's eleven."
"Well, it's a sort of computer game thing we have every week. I have this four computer LAN set up -- the other computers are in the other room -- and we try the multiplayer support on new games. We also play a bunch of old favorites." I suddenly realize how hard it is to explain Shoot Club to someone who has no idea what a computer game is. Based on the look she's giving me, I may as well tell her it's a cult meeting and later on we're going to sacrifice small animals to Baal.
"What are you guys doing? Who was at the door?" Eric has come into the room to see why the Unreal Tournament game stopped. "Amy? Is that you?"
"Eric!" she cries and throws her arms around his neck, "What are you doing here? I haven't seen you since that party at Beth's."
Trevor comes back in the room and stands there with her beer in his hand. He has the bottle of champagne in his other hand for some reason.
"You guys know each other?" Trevor asks when she takes the beer from him.
"Yeah, we used to go out in college," Eric says.
"Hey, cool, that's funny. What a small world, huh?" Trevor says.
"So, Eric, how come you never come to Denny's with these guys?" she asks him, "I would have seen you there."
"Hey, so Amy, what kind of music do you like?" Trevor interrupts.
"I like all kinds of music." There's a ring of people standing around her and yet trying not to stand around her.
"Yeah, that's what I like, too. So let's get to it," Trevor says to the assembly, "Hey, too bad The Sims doesn't have multiplayer. Chicks dig The Sims. Have you ever played that game, Amy?
"No."
"Yeah, me either. But I hear chicks dig it. It's kind of like a dollhouse in your computer. But it's like a dollhouse guys would play with."
"Do you still live over on the west side, Eric?" Amy asks him.
"Yeah, but I'm in a condo now. You should come visit me sometime. I still have that ashtray you made for me."
"Hey, Amy, chicks also dig Secret of Monkey Island." Trevor turns to me. "Or is it Curse of Monkey Island, I never could remember?"
"I'm not sure," I tell him.
"There's this undead pirate called Le Chuck you're always fighting, but there's like this princess, so it's got real, you know, bi-gender appeal."
"You play all these things?" Amy asks.
"Hey, you might like Black & White. You can have this monkey and you can scratch his nuts." Trevor abruptly half laughs. Then he just as abruptly stops half-laughing. "Hey, I guess we could play strip Unreal Tournament. If we had more chicks. But it wouldn't be fair to us since you're the only chick here besides Lisa. The statistical odds of you seeing naked dudes is considerably greater than the statistical odds of us seeing a naked chick. And I sure don't want to see naked dudes. If I wanted to see naked dudes, I'd hang out at a gym."
I can practically smell burning flesh. We're standing around with the morbidly fascinated air of people watching a car wreck. It's a horrible burlesque of something a million miles away from an actual date.
"Hey, Amy, why don't you come in here and check this out. These maps are really rad." Trevor stresses the word 'rad' too hard, making it obvious he's never used it before.
"What do you guys do with maps?" Amy directs the question at Eric.
"It's one of those computer things these guys play. I don't really know a lot about it," he says. Eric's lying through his teeth. He once tried to make a Quake level of his new condo. It kept crashing when we tried to use it in a deathmatch game. 'It works fine on my system,' Eric had insisted.
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