Mrs. Pac-Man and the Male Libido (excerpt from a short story)

Bella and myself make our way to the Mrs. Pac-Man/Galaga machine. After asking a hipster cliché to move, we realize the game costs a buck to play. Mrs. Pac-man would be rolling in her grave if she knew this establishment was charging a dollar to play her namesake game.

We agree that we’ll play lives and levels, just like I used to do with my brother on our SNES. I am excited for Mrs. Pac-Man. I had just found a website that I could play Mrs. Pac-Man on for free. I set a couple personal records and vowed I’d never follow Paul’s footsteps of playing Mrs. Pac-Man for eight hours in one day. But this would be my first arcade experience with the lovely lady Pac.

Since it was Bella’s dollar I allow her to go first, which I realize was a mistake when I see how fast this Mrs. Pac-Man moves and watch her get eaten by a ghost after three dots. I take over hoping the beers will make me extremely confident mode and not effect my hand-eye coordination. I take the stick and begin guiding the yellow pie chart with a pink ribbon around the screen.

Dot-dot-dot-dot-dot-dot-dot-Superdot-dot-dot-dot-ghost-dot-ghost-ghost-dot-dot-dot.

I take a sense of pride getting to the next level, I hope girls find that an attractive quality. I hand the joystick back to her, I remember reading somewhere that girls that play video games get laid more than girls that don’t. After reading that I thought of course, because girls that like video games only like video games because their boyfriends like video games. And sleeping with a gamer is about as challenging as level one of Tetris. Anyone can do it. These guys are sexually stimulated and socially crippled. If the game isn’t sold on sex and violence it had better be a pretty fun game. The video game industry is built on providing extreme and unobtainable sexual conquests only a button away from the guy who still receives fashion advice from his mother.

Even Mrs. Pac-Man feeds the male fantasies. Pac-Man find the perfect mate, some one just like himself only sexy and a little bit smaller. That is a gamers dream, those selfish fucks only thinking about themselves, the girls have to be the most selfless people to sleep with them, that or they are just as selfish and are using sex to keep the guys around. Which doesn’t sound like a bad deal, I might sign up for a girl like that.

Bella’s second turn was a lot better than her first, but I was still needed to get us to the next level. I decide that it might be a nice thing on my part to let her finish the level. We have one life left. I eat all but three dots before I let Blinky eat me. She steps up to the plate, but strikes out before the three dots can be eaten. I check my pockets as “Game Over” flashes on the screen. Bella hands me a dollar and tells me to get change. I rush to the bar hoping that I the count down won’t expire before I can feed the machine four more quarters.

The bar was still busy, but the bartenders weren’t and I was able to get change in a flash. I raced back to the machine and entered enough coins to go another round. I let Bella take the first turn, and she is a quick learner and nearly completes the level on her first try, but by this time we are both a little bored with the a game that already cost as much as a quarter of a pitcher and are intimidated by the seven digit high score that stairs at us from the upper corner of the screen. She was looking away when the final Mrs. Pac-man came and went.