Had I ever met a girl who cursed so much? It was college, so I must have, even at Stanford, but I’d never had a beer with one before. And something about the cursing of a Cal girl was particularly blunt. They weren’t test curses, dropped to see how you’d react, or tried on for the first time after moving away from mother and father; they were the real thing, casual and heartfelt.

I don’t even remember who won The Game now. I barely watched after I got a look at her in the stands. So unlikely that she would be at a football game in the first place or that she’d talk to someone who looked like I did. Lucky the guy who brought her was such an asshole. Derrick. Thanks for being an asshole, Derrick. Thanks for leaving her at the after-game party.

Parties.

The party on Vermont.

Where Beenie introduced me to Hydo.

All Hydo could talk about was girls. Girls and gaming. Speed jabber. That girl over there looked just like a girl he wanted to nail when he was playing World of Warcraft for the first time. When it was “like just for fun an’ shit, not like a career.” He talked about the character he had, his first character, a dwarf. Told me its name. Zolor? Zoler? Zolar? Zorlar? Zolrar? Zorlir?

Xorlar.

“Like with an X. Anytime you slap an X on something, you make it cooler.”

Xorlar.

That’s it.

Funny how those things float to the top.

Rose told me, “The point isn’t to try and think about anything, don’t try to solve anything, just write. What’s important will float to the top.” Me sitting with a thick leather-bound journal in my hand, flipping all those blank pages. The first gift she ever gave me. She wanted me to fill it with something. With me. I don’t know. I tried. But I didn’t have anything to write. It sat on our bookshelf for how long? 2001. We met at The Game. Spent Christmas together in her cold room in Berkeley. I remember because we talked about 9/11 so much. She was so pissed at us, America. I understood the point she was making, but it still made me angry. And she gave me the book.