8. Better Than Sex?

There are some phrases that cause alarm bells to ring in any relationship; “Should I wear the skirt or the trousers?”, “Surely there’s more to our relationship than sex?”, “Aw, diddums.” But there’s one which doesn’t so much set the bells ringing as drives a fleet of fire engines through the front door…

Hello? Relationship emergency helpline, how may I help you?

And it is this: “If I sat in the corner and made beeping noises, would you pay that much attention to me?”

There have been three women in my life, let me tell you more about them.

My first serious girlfriend, let’s call her Tina (mainly because that was her name), just sort of happened in one of those “let’s pair off somebody” moments that occur when kids get bored during a free period at school. We had been going out for a couple of months when it happened; she’d popped round one afternoon in the Easter holidays. We’d got over the faint embarrassment of Mother’s offer of tea and biscuits and hadn’t yet progressed to the fumbling with underwear stage and I was, after putting some Billie Holliday on the hi-fi, attempting to load Manic Miner or somesuch on the Spectrum when I heard a faint cry of “If I sat in the corner…”, to which I muttered “of course not”, turned the telly off and went over to pay her some attention.

We broke up two weeks later.

My second girlfriend Liz lived in Fife while I, having just left home, was going through one of my short lived PC-free periods in London. We went out for about three years, but only spent about six months of it in the same home-country. Opportunities for game/girlfriend same-time-interfaces were limited because I was only getting to play games at work. There was another opportunity to play games though because this was when you could still find the occasional arcade game in pubs. So I, with a cry of “Wow! Commando!” would descend upon the machine and set myself up, pint balanced precariously on the roof, for a 20 minute session. “If I sat in the corner…” she began, and I replied dutifully “No, don’t be silly, let me just finish this game.” We repeated this exchange so often that it became a joke between us and she would ring me up and make beeping noises down the phone.

Jeff Bridges never had these problems

This time I lasted better, a year and a bit passed after the first “If I sat in the corner…” before we split up. Helped, no doubt, by the long distances involved.

And the third: Michelle, bless her heart, knew what she was getting into when we started going out as we’d been working together for a good few years and she was used to the gang spending a couple of hours playing Arkanoid or whatever before retiring to the pub. Tetris and Lemmings were her games; she was rubbish at them, but would sit and offer advice over my shoulder while I played. But then Sid Meier came into my life with first Railroad Tycoon and then Civilisation. It wasn’t long before the dreaded phrase was to be heard...

This time miraculously I didn’t experience another break up. We got married instead. I can only assume that this was the right course of action as we’re still, some ten years later, together. Michelle has come to grudgingly accept that hulking great lumps of wood, plastic and electronics will always be part of our life and I, for my part, try and remember to pay some attention to the real-world occasionally. It’s a compromise that, although it occasionally causes some friction, seems to work fairly well…

But why does this phrase: “if I sat in the corner and made beeping noises, would you pay that much attention to me?” hold such horrors for us?

I think it’s because the words are laden with a healthy dose of the truth. It, or a variant of it, has become something of a cliché among gamers and their partners and cliché, if it holds any worth at all, is good at reducing uncomfortable truths down to manageable jokes.

I can still remember every nuance of Lunar Jetman 20 years on, but I doubt if I would recognise Tina if we met in the street. Commando holds the same attractions for me now as it did when I was 20, but Liz and I were never meant to be together for long. And Tetris? Well, I’m still better at it when I’m ignoring Michelle’s instructions given from over my shoulder…

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