My mother always had a guest over when I came home from school. Sometimes it was the next-door neighbor. Other times my aunt, or a co-worker from the hospital. Her constant shuffle between the neighborhood, the family, and the workplace appeared to be methodical, a calculated keeping-up of appearances. It was as though she needed to maintain a foothold in each social sphere, or else run the risk of losing her context. And yet, somewhere along the way, this anxiety dulled. By the time I entered junior high, my mother’s round robin had come to a complete stop, the array of guests narrowed down to just one person: Mrs. Russell, an old friend from the PTA book club. They would sit on the back patio with a glass of wine and crackers and I would give a quick “hi” as I got my snack, then make my way upstairs to do my homework. Or play videogames on mute.

One day, at the tail end of seventh grade, I came home to the sound of Mrs. Russell crying. My mother stopped me in the kitchen before I could get my snack. She told me to go to my room. I ran upstairs and listened to their conversation from the back window. Mrs. Russell had found a flyer for a “gay party” in the backseat pocket of her husband’s car. When she asked him about it, he told her that he no longer loved her and wished to file for divorce. My mother kept repeating “what an asshole” under her breath.

That night I sat in bed and tried to picture what a flyer for a gay party would look like. The scribbles of funny men danced in my mind; they faded away when I tried to focus on any individual figure. I could see the flyer. It was printed on yellow paper. The color, I felt, had to be yellow, for some unknowable reason. And in the front seat of a car, the shadowed figure of a man. Mr. Russell, void-like in his unloving. He crumpled the flyer in his fist. His face was all scratched out. I’d never met him before.

I gave up on sleep and went downstairs to the garage. My bike, long since out of commission, lay hidden behind the rusted weight rack. The back tire flat, but still rideable. And I knew how to get to Mrs. Russell’s house. I’d been there a few times with my mother, when I was younger. Just a few blocks away, behind the community golf course. I could make it there in ten minutes, maybe less.

Mrs. Russell's house was much smaller than I remembered. A prefab duplex in a low-cost housing development. The surrounding street was quiet. No dogs in the side yards. No sighs from late-night joggers. No crickets. Only the sound of my tire as it flattened against the pavement. I stopped, stuck in the driveway, unsure of what to do next. Inside, the lights were still on. I could see a man at the window, bent over the kitchen sink. He ate what looked like ornamental candies from a jar. Glass bon-bons cut up the inside of  his mouth. The shards got caught in between his teeth. I probably saw this all wrong. But I think I wanted to see the wrong thing.

The sound of plastic scraping concrete came from the side yard. I kept still. Mrs. Russell walked toward the curb, a trash bin pulled behind her. She stopped and looked at me.

“It’s late,” she said.

“I know.”

We stood there on the cracked blacktop and waited for a release.

On my way back home, I walked my bike up a hill. A set of sprinklers came on, dousing the grass from both sides. My knees were soon wet. Worms stretched themselves onto the sidewalk. They wriggled in the sudden spray, like disembodied limbs, an image that made me nauseous. I attempted to step on every worm as they emerged. I wanted to still them. To stop their squirming. But there were so many—I couldn’t help but miss a few. As I walked to school the next morning, I found the worms dead, all dried up in the hot sun. They were nothing but bloody flakes now, little red bits plastered to the pavement. A few splotches on my sneakers.

Lamprey

![image3](/assets/images/issues/issue3/posts/RyanPetersen-Twitch/1.jpeg)

The priestess fell to the floor and choked in a fit of static. *There is another prison…a shadow prison…built within the ruins. Go there, my pilgrim.* The neural connection short-circuited. Her body tensed upwards and disintegrated into a thousand micro-spheres.


“Another nanobot cluster down the drain,” said Mateo. A running theme throughout the game was the inorganic world attempting to replicate the human form. Collectivist clouds of lesser robots came together, so that they could pose as a single, cellular being. Within the in-game universe, these characters often met a tragic end. A body without organs was a difficult thing to sustain.

*And she said nothing about the golden figure,* I typed. *Untrustworthy?*

I watched my message enter the chat. Mateo looked up at the camera and pointed his finger in affirmation. “When you’re right you’re right Crono.”

Crono, my username—the sensation of being seen gave me a jolt of libidinal energy. And then a pang of worry. I began to question what I was doing. Me on my computer, watching a kid who plays video games on his own computer. Why didn’t I just play the game myself? Because there were layers to the streaming experience, that's what I told myself.  It was the complexity that compelled me.

I knew I was attracted to Mateo. He was beautiful, and I tried to take in as much of his face as possible. My eyes gravitated toward his lips. Plump pouty things that were always wet with a slight glaze of saliva. Or was it a gloss? I found it hard to believe he’d wear makeup. And yet his lips appeared so unreal at times, as if his cam footage itself were processed through a beauty filter. Or a deepfake app. I imagined what it would be like to kiss him. Soft fruit pressed against my philtrum. The weight of his tongue in my mouth. An earthen taste to his spit, like water from a deep well.

But if I allowed myself to peel back this surface-level attraction, I found there to be a deeper appeal hidden beneath, one inherent to the streamer setup. I entered into a theoretical framework, one in which I saw Mateo as my own player avatar, within a separate game. A diagram was sketched out in my head.

> *Fig. 1* was me: I was at my keyboard. I held sway over Mateo through the chat.
>
> *Fig. 2* was Mateo, streamed onto my computer screen: he held his own controller. Mateo played as the avatar in the game.
>
> *Fig. 3* was the unnamed avatar: he looked down a shadowed corridor. A derelict spaceship lay ahead of him.

This mental diagram clearly illustrated a field of play much larger than it appeared at first glance, with at least three degrees of possible remove (*Fig. 1-3*). Through the chat interactions, I controlled Mateo. Or rather, there was group control, along with the other users in the chat. Mateo excavated the open world of the game. And in turn we excavated Mateo.

There were several personal details one could glean from Mateo’s streams, if close attention was paid. He was of Puerto Rican descent. He lived in Southern California, but I remained unsure of where exactly. A few location tags on his Instagram pointed to Chino Hills. That would place him only about forty-five miles from my parents’ house. Mateo lived with his mother in a small condo. He was the youngest child of three. His two older brothers moved out a few years ago. He had just turned eighteen. He was an Aries. He dropped out of high school last year. He was studying for his GED. He worked part-time at Starbucks. His best friend was a girl named Madison. He made no reference to dating. No stated preference for boys or girls. He was six-foot-one. He had a map of the world pinned to his bedroom wall. His favorite drink was Glacier Freeze Gatorade, from which he took large swigs during his streams.

I signed up to be a Tier-Three Subscriber for his channel, costing me about twenty-five dollars a month. The perks included a monthly private stream and privileged chats. This was the reason why my comments always rose to the top, above the non-subscriber riff-raff. A private stream for premium subscribers was scheduled and rescheduled a few times since I had signed up. Mateo canceled the most recent one the day of, a few hours before it was scheduled to start. He cited a family emergency. I didn’t mind; I knew the private stream would happen at some point. The contours of his personal life would slowly come into focus. I carved the stray details he offered me into a mental high-relief.

Mateo’s avatar walked through a large torture chamber. Tubular devices made of green chrome were laid out in a tight grid, like terracotta soldiers. Skeletal remains protruded from one of the coiled appendages. I imagined the machines sucking the life out of prisoners. But there was no given lore to explain how they had once been used. No obvious practicality as instruments of torture. There was a lull in the game. Mateo had gone quiet. The chat fell off. An opening for true connection presented itself. I began to type.

*Have you ever heard of those empty property developments in China? The Chinese ghost cities? This level reminds me of them.*

“No, I don't think I have. What are they?” He scratched at the razor bumps underneath his chin.

*Giant urban projects erected at the edge of the Gobi desert,* I typed. *Built in the hopes that the country’s economic growth would soon reach Inner Mongolia. Residential buildings left empty, a construct-now-and-find-the-residents-later approach. They were the mirror image of the game’s abandoned cityscapes. An urban environment that existed in-waiting. Shopping centers and plazas untouched, save for the powdering of the desert sand, their utility left in waiting. A temple made for a god without followers.*

“Ok wow.” Mateo's eyes darted over the screen as he read. I could make out my chat log reflected in the glow of his iris. “Spooky vibes. China’s kinda wild, huh?”

I nodded along in agreement, as though he could see me. China *was* kinda wild. I had read an article earlier that morning about an iPhone factory worker who jumped from his employee compound roof, only to get his head caught in the suicide prevention netting. He stayed there for hours, still alive but his neck fully broken. Middle management couldn’t figure out the best way to cut him down. The factory continued its operations that day, without pause. A true horror story. And yet—my desire to visit the country remained strong.

I saw myself boarding a high-speed train, an express liner to the remote ghost city. There was a phantom companion at my side, a shadow puppet with no discerning features. I wore a bucket hat and tiny-frame sunglasses. We arrived to find the city in the midst of a dust storm, half-finished towers swaying in the wind. We walked through a large shopping mall. Every store was empty. The elaborate water fixture had gone green with algae. I asked my faceless partner to take a picture of me, in front of the cinema multiplex. I made a peace sign with my right hand. The phone flashed. I looked at the picture and studied its composition. My slight figure, surrounded by a landscape of overwhelming pathos. I saw that the space’s hidden potential had finally been realized: a staging ground for compelling content. At the edge of the world an aesthetic oasis springs forth. A bounty of potential images, all imbued with an elegiac aura.

“You know, it's funny that you mention those ghost cities.” My ears perked up. I reemerged from my dissociative state. He’d been thinking over what I’d just said in the chat. He was giving me a considered response. “I’ve always pictured all of my work shifts as little bricks being added to a giant skyscraper. But it's just like you said. The building is for a city that nobody lives in yet. Big luxury apartments that are all empty. Sorry, I don’t know if I’m making any sense with this.”

I typed out *you are*, despite not understanding his leap in logic. How did the hours at his dead-end job become the building material for an unpopulated housing project? Did I miss some connective tissue? Then again, I’d never held down a nine-to-five. Maybe I just couldn’t relate.

“What I mean,” he continued, “is that things don’t really matter much, outside of your job. And then your job, it turns out, doesn’t matter much either. So the only thing I’ve found that really matters, for me anyways, is gaming. Because even when I’m not playing a game, I’m still in the mental mode of *not-playing*, like I’m thinking constantly about when I will get to play the game next. Love and friends and money, those are all great, I get it. But they can also start to bore you. Gaming stands outside of that. Outside of the boredom. There’s the world of gaming in here.” He pointed to the screen. “And there’s the world of boredom out there.” He pointed to his bedroom window. “My personal heaven and hell. Staying in the game for as long as possible—that’s my key to survival. Everything outside of the game is just no longer useful. Or whatever use it may have had, like back in my parents’ day, that's over you know? Like out there…that’s the real ghost city…” Mateo trailed off. He clicked on the trigger buttons on his controller. The reanimated corpse of an executioner approached him with a giant axe.

I replayed his monologue a few times over in my mind, extracting a sense of satisfaction from every word. An intuitive conclusion from Mateo, derived through my direct involvement. The proverbial joystick pulsed within my hand. And the dichotomy of our interpretations—that contrast had some real torque. I wanted to travel to the ghost settlements as a gonzo tourist. Mateo saw himself already a resident, longing for escape. There was a dialectic there, one that could propel us forward into new configurations. Sexual and intellectual stimuli synthesized into the sublime.

Mateo was decapitated. The executioner held his head by the helmet and thrust it down a stairwell. A LOST TRANSMISSION banner scrolled across the screen. *The excavation ends here. NEW GAME?*

“Godammit,” said Mateo. It had been a particularly long run. Almost four continuous hours and all without a bathroom break. He usually didn’t survive that long. “So what’re you guys thinking?” The Glacier Freeze sloshed in the back of his throat. “ I could go one more round. Or I can call it a night. Let’s get a yes or no poll going in the chat.”

I looked at the time. 2:00 AM. I felt a strong pull to get to bed so that I’d wake up at a decent time. The days had begun to lose their shape, I was sleeping-in more and more. Signing off was the sensible option. But just before my exit from the browser window, I stopped myself. What exactly did I have to wake up in the morning for? Tomorrow held no obligation. The morning and afternoon exhibited no discernable difference to me. Not anymore. What value did “fully-formed days” hold within a shapeless life? The only thing left to lose was time with Mateo. I re-entered the chat.

*Yes. Let’s give it another go.*

Mateo laughed. “Don’t know why I even do these polls. You always tell me to keep going.”

&nbsp;

&nbsp;

*Illustration by [Daniel Levya](https://www.instagram.com/wordofcommand)*

Twitch

&quot;An activation.&quot;

&quot;Activation? For what?&quot;

&quot;A new kind of whole-grain pita chip. Super healthy. And gluten-free. I think. Come in and I&#39;ll give you a few free raffle tickets. You could win a car.&quot;

I followed his lead into the astroturfed parking lot, a temporary branded zone.

&quot;International School of the Hague, right?&quot;

&quot;Wait. Yes. I went there. Do we know each other?&quot;

&quot;Was only there for third grade. Military family, moved around. Thought I recognized you.&quot;

I looked at him. He didn&#39;t seem familiar at all. His face kept changing, as though in a dream, a pair of oaken eyes the only constant.

&quot;Ok, yeah, I think I remember you,&quot; I said. &quot;We were in different classes, right?&quot;

&quot;Yeah exactly, I was across the hall.&quot;

I didn&#39;t believe that school had hallways—I was envisioning separate portable classrooms, trailer-like, plopped down on asphalt, each a self-sustaining pod, where eager volunteers had to rough the outside chill in order to ask the teacher next door for a dry erase marker. But what would you call those demarcated alleyways in between the little elementary houses? Hallways? I didn&#39;t think so. All I could recall was the tall brick building reserved for the middle school and the long shadow it cast upon the lower grade encampments, an insistent reminder that a place of true halls and gymnasiums lorded above us.

&quot;I&#39;m Gavin.&quot;

I stared at his outstretched hand, slender fingers with nails left slightly long, a hint of chaos. I squeezed his palm firmly, the disembodied voice of my mother reminding me &quot;no dead fishes.&quot; But I was holding on for too long and jerked back my arm unnaturally. He smiled. The late afternoon was fading. Amber light mingled with his teeth, his eyes, his olive skin—he had strands of long hair that he habitually stroked back behind his shoulders, with every other fidget. Black bile was beginning to mix inside me with something unknown, metallic in taste, a liquid akin to mercury.

&quot;You live around here?&quot;

&quot;Kind of. Was on my way home from work.&quot;

&quot;Huh. Seems like no one in this city walks anywhere. You have a car though?&quot;

I paused, searching for the lie and coming up empty.

&quot;Well. I recently got a DUI so my license&#39;s been revoked for the next 10 months. Not my best moment.&quot;

&quot;No shame in that. We&#39;ve all been there.&quot;

&quot;Have we though?&quot;

I looked at him in mock-puzzlement, a bit too performative for the conversation&#39;s current tone. I saw a snapshot of myself: cocked head, face pinched, mugging for the invisible camera. My face went slack.

&quot;Well, I&#39;ve personally been there. Got pulled over in high school. It sucked.&quot;

He told me what he was doing (temp gigs, trying to become a model slash actor), I told him what I was doing (internship at an agency, trying to write spec scripts), he told me where he lived in the city (some art collective&#39;s loft), I told him where I stayed (on my cousin&#39;s couch), he said he liked living here (laidback attitude, positive vibes), I said I hated the people here (emotional vampires and grifters). This comparing of notes lulled briefly and a man, looking to be Gavin&#39;s supervisor, took the opportunity to make eyes at him from across the pita chip sample tent.

&quot;I should probably get back to soliciting on the sidewalk. But what&#39;re you doing later? I get off in like, forty-five minutes.&quot;

What was this exactly? A pick-up; a friendly gesture; a professional connection; a grasping for Dutch nostalgia lost? Like his face, his intentions seemed ever-morphing, always on the verge of articulating themselves. A more forward, solid person would nail down these grayer details, would motion to define the dynamics at hand. But I was someone else, a different beast. I&#39;d make my settlement here, upon this ambiguous mound, embracing the indistinct until evicted into clarity.

&quot;I&#39;m meeting my friend for a drink a few blocks away. You should come join us after you&#39;re finished here.&quot;

&quot;Great. I&#39;d love that. Let&#39;s meet there.&quot;

&quot;Can I still get those raffle tickets though? For the car?&quot;

&quot;What do you need a car for? You wouldn&#39;t be able to drive it anyways.&quot;

We laughed at this and shook hands again. Before leaving, I surveyed the parking lot, unable to find any reference to the car or raffle tickets, no real marketing to speak of at all, save for a large inflatable bag of pita chips in the corner of the mini-mall, its body rippling upward in the air, finding and losing its form, constantly re-asserting its existence.

I met Alisa at the back of the bar, twenty minutes later than our agreed upon time. She looked at me, smiled, and rolled her eyes.

&quot;So where&#39;s this boy that made you so late?&quot;

&quot;He&#39;s going to meet us here.&quot;

I had texted her on my walk over, summarizing the encounter with Gavin. She&#39;d only responded with a clenched teeth emoji, the meaning of which eluded me. I was beginning to realize my disdain for our relationship, this hold-over friendship from high school that had been briefly rekindled post-college and was now souring into something like a bitter rivalry. Her small head, pygmy-like, those inwardly bent teeth, the metal band tees she always wore, her job as assistant to a high-profile video editor, the droning on about work, as though it were her only tether to the world—I listed these personal affronts in my head as I drank my beer and nodded along to her venting, unlistening and bored. A basketball game played on the TV and I watched it fade into a Geico commercial, the glow of the LCD reflecting upon the lacquer of the bar, the winter dusk outside making every illumination in the room heavy, exaggerated. A melancholy, sharp and acute, pawed at my left lung—I would soon have to respond to Alisa, her speech pattern moving toward a concluding tone, and a pin of anxiety also formed, this time from the right flank; it was becoming a full-pronged attack. I was there, in the bar, but tenuously so, my membrane on the verge of rupture, if not for Gavin placing his arm on my shoulder, introducing himself, dissolving the previous interaction and holding me firm in a new one.

&quot;So you guys know each other from school?&quot;

&quot;Yeah a long time ago. Elementary school in Holland.&quot;

I listened to them talk to each other for a long time, barely speaking myself, enjoying Gavin&#39;s genuine interest in Alisa&#39;s work, her own fascination with his acting career. He recounted for her a recent student film he was in, describing having to get naked for a sex scene while a tungsten light dangled precariously over him, the temperature getting so hot that his pubes began to singe. The teenage director, who was shooting the movie &quot;on precious 35mm film stock,&quot; had to beg Gavin to finish the scene while his crotch was slowly burning. Alisa was laughing, close to crying. I winced. Part of me questioned the story, his skin would be blistering into third degree burns if the heat were really so intense as to ignite human hair, but my less cynical side believed the story, or more, believed its mythic value, this image of a fire raging on this man&#39;s lithe body while he finishes the sexual act, a gif of his ejaculate extinguishing the surrounding flames, reanimated over and over again, action, cut, action, cut. I carried on with this train of thought until I realized Alisa&#39;s voice had shifted to a lower register.

&quot;But is it, I don&#39;t know, more relaxing for the girl in the sex scene, knowing you&#39;re gay?&quot;

&quot;Oh, I&#39;m not—&quot;

&quot;Oh my god, I&#39;m sorry. I just assumed—&quot;

&quot;No, no, it&#39;s totally ok. I get that sometimes.&quot;

He smiled at me widely, amused without agitation, as though beaming with a newfound confidence. There was something of an expectant reflex I felt I was meant to give, a mournful moment for the desire, once excessive, now energy trapped, without egress—but I felt hollow. All these previous fluctuations along the axis of despair and intrigue—they fell into nothingness, theatrics for an absent audience. I was bored again. Maybe a little angry. Not being able to listen to another industry story, I got up abruptly to close out my tab. Upon my return, Alisa and Gavin were arranging for him to take care of her cat when she went on vacation to Brazil next month, a job typically reserved for myself.

&quot;You said you needed odd jobs to support yourself, so this could be perfect for you. If you think you have the time.&quot;

&quot;Wow, yes, that would actually be really helpful.&quot;

I stared at them both blankly. I said I was exhausted and needed to head home. Alisa gave me an unconvincing look of concern. Gavin, on the other hand, seemed startled, the emotion foreign on his facial features, as though things were going off script for the first time since our meeting earlier that day.

&quot;Wait, give me your number. I want us to hang out soon.&quot;

I handed him my phone and almost flung the thing across the table, barely catching it between my index finger and thumb. I bugged my eyes out, into the middle distance, as if to communicate a &quot;yikes,&quot; or possibly &quot;yeesh,&quot; though at that point my aims were operating on a different plane than my actions, so who can say what I was doing. He put his name into my phone.

&nbsp;

hey gavin, nice (re)meeting
you today
see you around


Yeah man! Was so nice!
Lets hang out again really soon :)

Been good! Just crazy busy with work.
Auditions keep piling up, plus a new restaurant gig.
How about you?

been ok, busy with work as well
intern life is not all its cracked out to be

so what&#39;re you up to this weekend?


hey oh

Hey! So sorry I went MIA
Been swamped with rehearsals for this new play I&#39;m in.
Lets grab a drink this week though?

oh cool—what&#39;s the play called?
and yeah sure, just hit me up with a good day/time
&nbsp;

What&#39;re you doing this weekend?
I have a film premiere on Sunday.
Student film of course, nothing fancy.
But you should come! Free food and booze.

ahh that sounds really fun
but I&#39;m actually out of town this weekend
for a family thing
lets meet up soon tho?

No worries! Have fun with the family.
And yes, let&#39;s definitely set something up for next week.

Hey
Can I ask you a big favor?
Kind of in a bad situation at the moment.

I&#39;m at Alisa&#39;s right now.
Taking care of the cat.
And I think something might be wrong...

It&#39;s being a bit weird.
Not moving around much.

you should take it to the vet
maybe call alisa?

Could you come over and help me?
I feel really uncomfortable with this.
And you know Alisa and the cat.

Can you take a break and come here
Just need someone to help me sort this out
Won&#39;t take long.

you really can&#39;t do this alone?
or ask alisa for help?

Would like to keep her out of this.
If possible.
Because maybe it&#39;s nothing?

ok
ill take an early lunch
be there in about 20 mins

Oh my god thank you.
I owe you big time.
It means a lot.

its cool
im doing it for the cat, not you lol

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