Love Is In The Air(Raids)!

They say love is in the air. Just turn on a radio station that plays 70's music and you can hear it in almost every song they play. But if that is true, then the world should be a happier, albeit smellier, place. So what happened? How could things change so much in such a relatively short amount of time? All you really need to do is look at where you are now and you can begin to understand what is going on. Still, some of you may say to me, "but Sephris, what the hell does this have to do with playing video games? Shouldn't you be pimping your sexual prowess on Match.com or something?" Ah, my petty little friends. There is so much you still don't realize. But fortunately I am here to give you a helping hand. And when I am finished, you will see that love is in the air. Or at least in the air raids.

I am a love machine. I always have been. I could get a girl to drop to her knees in front of me at a gay bar. And all things fair, I wasn't the pretty boy type. Nor was I rich. It all had to do with confidence and karma. But after a while I noticed that the girls in the bar scene weren't really all that good of material. So this left me wondering where all the long term, marriable types were. Scraping away all those that either were wonderful one night stands or only had getting really drunk and looking at gorgeous people while flailing around drunkenly on a dance floor in common with me and the pickings got slim. So I did my research. and I uncovered a treasure trove of perfection. And I found it in the least expected of places.

I am and always have been an RP junkie. My introduction to it was when I was 13 years old working under the table at a pizza place in Lake Geneva, Wis. Just by pure luck I met a guy named Gary Gygax who introduced me to the Basic and Expert set for Dungeons and Dragons. Gary turned out to be the inventor of the game and I got to sit in on a few sessions with him and his TSR buddies over the summer I worked there. I say this because it lays the framework of what I will be speaking about.

I played table top RPG games for two decades afterwards. From D&D to Star Frontiers to GURPS, I was the DM, or GM depending on the game, that everyone wanted. I learned to shit creativity. Literally. I got my best ideas looking through books while I was on the crapper. But it did me little good with the girls I was after. I had moved to San Diego at this point, so the flesh was amply available, but I still found the pickings slim. It wasn't until I was near the end of my 20's that I realized something so brutally simple and so strait forward that I didn't realize just what I held in my hands. And the epiphany that came to me? Girls LOVE fantasy. They secretly live it and breath it. But, every fantasy is different.

I met my wife in 2001 on the AOL RP game chat rooms. I was playing Gor while she was playing Rhydin. For those of you too young to know about these places, Gor was hard core adult RP, while Rhydin was PG 13 at it's worst. Eventually we married, obviously, but the courting session was so dynamically different than what I was use to, and it is this dynamic, and the skills involved, that will help you now to get the woman of your dreams. So lets go over a few guidelines.

#1) Girls DO Play Games.

I know a shit ton of beautiful gamer girls. My wife, who looks like princess Leia and is 13 years younger than me, (high five to all those old bastards out there), was the first, but I realized that once I got past the myth that girls just go on to browse Ebay, things got better. Girls are no longer the shopping addict cooks in training that they use to be. Girls LOVE to blow shit up. and I've found that they can do it just as good, if not better, than we testosterone laden males can. If you are playing Halo or some other PvP game and you get your ass kicked by a girl, don't automatically assume it is a guy in disguise. Girls have taken the violent games by storm, and they are only getting better at it.

#2) When you realize there is a girl gamer, don't be a douche.

There are two things girl gamers hate. The first is being friended just because they are female, and the second is being told "Wow! You really did good for a girl!" Would you like it if a girl wrote you and said, "Wow, you did good for having a schlong!"? No, you wouldn't. It puts all your efforts into your sexuality. Your dong doesn't aim and fire and neither does her boobs. Compliment her on what she does, not what she is. Because chances are she has worked just as hard as you have to get where she is, and the majority of guys out there can't see that. forget sending the friend request. Point out how good she is and show a desire to game with her again. Doing so has just put you in the top percentage of guys she meets online.

#3) Bliss isn't a set model.

There are all kinds of gamer girls out there. Yes, I got lucky and I have a dream girl in all aspects. But when it comes down to it, the best part of my marriage isn't me putting her in the slave girl Jabba palace outfit and playing out the scene that C3P0 couldn't bear to watch. It is going day to day without problems. It is having conversations that after over 10 years of being married are still fun to have. It's having a best friend that I can offer my soul to and not fear it being damaged for bearing it. I've had plenty of beautiful girlfriends living in Southern California, but it was a girl from Ohio that was too creative and smart to give the jocks and preppies a chance that won my heart. And that leads me to the next point...

#4) Girls crave creativity

Reality is a bitch. society has set us into roles that we must conform to. guy combat this by blowing shit up. Girls combat it by sinking into imagination. you doubt me? One of my good friends is a writer in Australia who loves to write sci-fi, but makes his paychecks by writing soft core romance novels. He hates it, but that is what pays. Girls love being in love, even if it is just with a fictional character, and they love someone who is creative. But for a guy, creativity rarely comes natural. They are so eager for it that they will glom to a guy who can bust out a few rap rhymes just because at least that guy isn't thinking about football players bending over at one another to toss a piece of leather at one another until someone gets hurt. If you want a great girl, grow a few brain cells and give them some imaginative fun. With the slim pickings the girls have at hand, you will easily put yourself among the top ranks.

#5) The best girl a good geek can get is found online, usually playing a video game.

I will throw myself on the sacrificial alter of truth here.I'm a 41 year old geek with a 28 year old wife. Gaming is my life, and no, I don't live in a basement. I bring this up because I have played the game in pretty much every arena. I was a lead guitarist and a chef which paid me to be a lead guitarist. And I have come to realize that the girls that have "gone wild" are just a passing memory. When I got sick of it all and just secluded myself in my house and leaped head first into the gaming world is when I really started meeting girls that had some substance to them. Girls that I could talk throughout the night with. And it turned from my usual "I really want to lay this girl" into "wow, I can relate to everything she says! And she can with me too! Why didn't I just come here in the first place?" And the answer is that I am an old guy who didn't have the internet until I was already old. But that is beside the point. the best girls aren't the ones who bar hop. They aren't the ones that want to lay the guy in the band. They aren't the ones that walk around in string bikinis looking for the perfect tan. They are the ones that sit at home playing games that stimulate them, both intellectually and emotionally. Just like we guys do.

When it comes down to it, girls and guys are not that different. We both love watching an enemy get splattered across a virtual desert. We both love imagining ourselves as weapon wielding bad asses.And in the gaming world, we are too intelligent to deal with the drama of superficial idiots that don't have a game plan in mind. Though the game plan can be nothing more than figuring out how to beat the boss on level 32. At least to start with.

Love truly is in the air. And that air may be found with bullets flying or spells cast. But it is there. And the best of them aren't even looking for love. They are looking for that certain someone that they can scream in delight with when the final boss is taken down.

And after nearly 11 years with that kind of girl, trust me when I say it is well worth the effort.

[Sephris]

Please keep in mind this is, at least for the most part, a satirical article. It's meant to be taken lightheartedly.