Letters to No One

Letter 5

Dear No One,

I have broached but little of the absurdity to which I am daily exposed, I shall grant you a dollop. My dnd group is composed of five players; Eor, Earthworm Jim, Huey, Duey, and Louie. Eor wants to quit for the tenth time, or else he wants Duey and Louie to be moved to my other group. They have been picking on him in game, he feels, and not associating with him out of game. He is particularly sensitive to this now because someone new has come to the pod that he believes will influence the others against him.

You see, Eor has that kind of charge, and people with that kind of charge are often mistreated because they have that kind of charge. He has been shunned before, by people he
thought of as friends. The new person is a member of one of those kinds of groups, and people belonging to those kinds of groups won't associate with someone who has that kind of charge, except when they plan on making it a rather unpleasant kind of association.

Eor and I have a long conversation, with him you are lucky to escape in under fifteen minutes, this one stretched into an hour. He explained his position, again and again, even going so far as to say that if he were the DM [dungeon master] he probably wouldn't accommodate someone with his request. I tell him I was planning on winding down the game anyway in the next month or so. I tell him I don't spend much time with these people out of game either, and I don't think it is because they are shunning me.

I don't give a definitive answer to his request, though by not doing so I imply I won't be pushing them into the other group. Eor has never not had negative impressions about at least one of the other players since the game began. There is always something. They call lock down and I say "see you Monday night" , which is the play date. Later that night Jim comes to me about making a new character for my other game, so that H+D+L can play with their friend who shuns Jim as well. Later later Eor comes to my door and says he will tell everyone I'm going on break for two or three weeks due to burnout. I ask him what that will solve and he replies that it will ease the tension.
He was the only one who was feeling the tension. He walks away because it is lock-down time again.

The next morning he tells me he spread the word, because I smiled and he took that as a yes. So that game is finished, I briefly considered rescinding his lie and playing without him but that would be a weird thing to do for spite. I'm tired of the game, so I will take the out that's offered. H+L+D approached me along with their judgmental friend about making a game for them and I made
agreeable noises but that isn't going to happen. It wouldn't be horrible but I am increasingly done.

You wouldn't think that people in prison had interpersonal problems but they do. Jim probably won't be able to join the other game because one of my players there will refuse to play with him for unrelated reasons. I sometimes feel as if they are competing for who can be the smallest man. Why is the most stressful thing in my incarcerated life Dungeons and Dragons? It feels wrong somehow.

On to something more interesting. They made wine today, some of my more industrious neighbors. They delivered it to their clients in Apple Jacks cereal bags, pink fluid sloshing in clear plastic displays. It would be more accurate to say they poured it today, it had been fermenting a few days at least. At 8:30 lock there was an argument, they yelled at each other from behind their doors. They were tipsy. The COs appeared to take them away in cuffs. There was speculation that they
would not return, though they did so soon after, and somehow the authorities did not find out about the alcohol. It's an amusing process over all, from sneaking oranges back from the chow hall in their socks to the inevitable inebriated shenanigans. We take what joys from life that we can find, and I would not fault them for theirs.

I have partaken only once, five years ago. The wine was sweet, which meant it wasn't well made, the alcohol content was too low. The boys in this pod are professionals by comparison. I haven't been drunk often in my life. The first time, I was eighteen, and living with my girlfriend. We had recently moved in to our first apartment, she was old enough to buy alcohol, so we drank until we were both quite sick. It's a fond memory, I was laughing through most of the second half. I miss the things that are now gone. As it turned out, two young adults with mood disorders they mutually refused to address trying to make a life together wasn't advisable over the long term. There was a lot of happiness though, mixed in with the mistakes. I'll probably come back to this another time. For now, that is enough.

Yours,
(15-5-13)