gaming with my wife

started playing GTA online with my wife over the past couple of days. I had already been having a strange feeling playing it because living in LA I recognize a lot of the buildings and streets. I'll turn a corner and have that thought of like "oh yeah I know this place" 

She grew up in LA though. I imagine that's a much stranger feeling. "I know this place I've lived here my whole life"

Someone like LA enough to parody it. They painstakingly created a hilarious simulation of every LA stereotype. They captured the feeling of driving up the PCH and let you do it at 130 miles an hour. Even stranger I think was the sensation of a virtual date. I stole a car and drove Pam around in it and it felt romantic. I think since the election was stolen Pam and I have been more or less locked into bed. We try to get out and be part of our community pretty regularly, in part because I have an aching sensation at the back of my head that says over and over:

"it's all gonna be gone soon"

So, we alternate between forcing ourselves to leave the house to make friends and new connections and playing video games for hours on end. We stay up late every night and immerse ourselves in simulated worlds where we can experience violence in a way that is safe and controlled. I grew up playing video games this way. The first time pulled an all nighter I was playing Rayman Rabbids to The Moon. I was obsessed with character customization and collection of clothing items, and I just couldn't put down the remote.

My Character and Pam's Character drove around the virtual city, getting drunk, gambling, committing felony murder and grand larceny. I would have happily not slept at all but I felt my real body beginning to crumble and give way to rest. Last week she talked about feeling agoraphobic, it made me feel kind of scared and worried. That our relationship might shift or that we might be moving into different parts of our life. Obsession with these kinds of games is part of my normal but for her it's new. In the past two months she put in 240 hours on Cyberpunk 2077. She learned how to mod the game and tailored the experience exactly how she wanted it. She kept apologizing as if my gaming history didn't look exactly the same.

GTA 5 exists as a strange kind of time capsule. Cyberpunk imagines a future where GTA records the state of the world it was released into. In 2013 the bridge near her house was the same bridge that had been there since 1932. In 2016 it was demolished and in 2022 they finished the redesign after 6 years of construction. The old bridge still exists in the memories of the people who live here and in a simulated parody of LA from 2013. You can go there and walk the bridge, drive over and underneath it. Ponder the complexities of its construction, crash a car into the railing and parachute off the side of it. 

I think it's extremely interesting that the simulation stops once you cross the bridge. Boyle heights and east LA were not recorded into Grand theft auto. There's a imprint of them there in the shape of a single street neighborhood surrounding a park. In Grand Theft you cross the 6th street bridge that has been there since 1932 and find out that the street my wife grew up on does not exist.

I have a few goals in mind with our playthrough, I want to get enough money to customize a car at benny's workshop. I want flames on the hood and hydraulics and fuzzy leopard print upholstery and a little bobblehead that looks like death on the dash. I want Pam's character to sit in the passenger seat, and I want to drive up the simulacra of Mulholand drive and listen to black flag on the radio. I hope that it helps to motivate me towards doing the real thing as I have never owned a car (lmao).