He sits alone in the corner of the shop with his Toshiba laptop. I’m sitting maybe eight feet in front of him, but he doesn’t notice my watching. His eyes, enlarged by his wireframe glasses, are affixed to his screen. From here I can hear rampant clicking from a separate, gold colored mouse.
He’s been here for hours, I presume, as he usually is on the days he comes in. I’ve seen him here before in the daytime, only to see him in the same spot when I return hours later.
League of Legends, World of Warcraft, DOTA 2 — God only knows what he’s playing, but it sucks up enough of the store’s internet to slow down everyone else’s. He doesn’t appear to care, though. He’s enveloped in his mystical world, and has probably transformed himself into whatever character he’s playing as. On occasion he’ll suck his teeth in disappointment, or grunt in excitement. He constantly looks back and forth, his eyes darting from one end of the screen to the other over and over again in unison with his clicks. He’s so into it he requires a sweat rag that sits next to him on a table that also holds his drinks and his food.
The drink he ordered is now gone, replaced by ice and Brisk pink lemonade. He hasn’t touched it since I arrived, and beads of perspiration drip slowly down the sides of his cup. A scone of some kind sits on a brown wrapper, but there only appears to be one bite taken from it. I imagine he’s too deep into his game to care about eating.
He’s a nice man — I know this from previous, brief discussion with him. One night a couple of weeks ago as he left the shop, he stopped and asked me about my laptop.
“MacBook?”
“Yessir.”
“I bet it has a great battery, I wish I could afford one.”
“It does alright.”
“You play any games?”
“I’ve been known to fall into fits of playing Civilization V for hours on end, but other than that not really, no.”
“I love games, man, I wish they had this stuff when I was your age.”
“Come here often?”
“I come here for the free wi-fi, I stay because they’re nice to me.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Well hey, have a good night.”
After that he sat in his car for a few minutes, scrolling through his smartphone.
He has a scruffy, peppered goatee. He’s got a gut that fights against the pull of a red Under Armour shirt, and legs like tree trunks that sprout from the openings of black basketball shorts. He’s slightly overweight, but not unhealthy. When I say he’s old, he’s maybe in his mid-50s — and I presume he has some joint problems based on the fact that he walks with a cane.
But he’s young at heart — he’s genuinely nice to everyone around him. He offered to give up his seat tonight to a family that had just gotten in from New Jersey, which I assume is a big gesture from him given how entrenched he was in his MMORPG.
As nice as he is, he sits alone. I have to wonder where his family is, or if he even has any family. I have to wonder what drives him to play games that are meant for my demographic. Is he playing vicariously for a lost child? Or does he just really love virtually killing and looting people? Does his imagination run free like, perhaps, it couldn’t when he was young?
The possibilities, I imagine, are endless. But then so is his imagination, at least so it seems.
The People Watcher 