dnd, louisville, kentucky
it was midday in louisville and the sign out front said '10am: open mic burlesque. 11am: d&d'. i am indifferent to burlesque but i like dungeons and dragons so i paid the $5 cover charge and went inside. in the corner of the bar were several big dudes at a table doing whatever it is that dnd players do. when i came over and said i was here to join, they tensed their shoulders and hunched even more, because as you know, you can't really just join in on a dnd game; it takes forever to make a character sheet and new players always ignore the dungeon master's carefully constructed world to walk into the mountains or slaughter a shopkeeper. but i thought that maybe it would be okay on this occasion, seeing as i was a foreigner and had been greeted so far in the USA with universal acclaim.
so i said ‘hi. im ben, from australia’. the players looked at me with blank faces. the dungeon master sneered. 'hi ben from australiaaa' he replied. the other players chortled. i can never tell if someone is being rude to me or if they generally just have a rude sense of humour, so i asked them if it wasn't too late to play. the DM sighed and made an exaggerated effort to pull out a character sheet. then i asked if he had a spare pencil and the DM shuffled through his backpack again. i noticed some of the players were tapping their dice impatiently. one was building a little tower. i asked if i could borrow some of his dice to calculate my stats, and how many do i roll, is it 3 or 4? a player stood up and walked outside. the DM was twisting his lips and pretending he couldn’t hear me. after 5 minutes of sitting with them in increasing tension, i said i had an important call and left the game.
the burlesque show was over. two little tattooed guys with dumb haircuts were sitting al fresco with a couple dancers, chain smoking and drinking mimosas, probably as a joke. one guy looked like Rumplestiltskin. the other looked like the green guy from Doug. the two dancers looked like Daria and Jane in their mid-30s. i thought i’d fit in as it was just like being at The Bird. i sat at a nearby table and used my #1 strategy for meeting new people where you pretend you have business on your phone but that their conversation is so outrageous that you can't help but laughing and joining in too. i didn't understand what they were talking about, but from the sneering and cursing and jibing it sounded like something humourous, so i laughed, and instantly they picked up on the absence of /r/ at the end of my haha, and in typical abrasive youth fashion asked me where the ‘fuck’ i was from, and then why the ‘fuck’ had i come halfway cross the world to this ‘shit hole’. i said i was just passing through and wanted to play dnd. 'with those fucking incels??' shrieked rumplestiltskin, jerking his thumb at a dnd player who was waiting outside for his uber eats and pretending not to hear.
'yes' i said, and in a whisper i told them about my rude reception at their table and the 'hi ben from australiaaaa'. when the green man heard this he smashed his fist on the table, spilling daria’s mimosa.
'fucking gate keepers!’ he shouted. ‘fucking NERDS'.
when the dnd guy turned his head to look at us, all havoc broke loose. greendoug jumped up on the table, spinning around and pulling down his pants waving his spotty green arse at the nerd. rumplestiltskin tilted back his head and waggled his tongue between two fingers. the dancers hitched up the sides of their skirts and gyrated against a street sign. it was all very rude. barbaric even. these punks, i thought, are very barbaric– even more so than the nerds, but the key difference is that they are not being barbaric to me.