Abruptly but hesitantly, the youngest brother asks George if he's played Half-Life 2 yet. George looks confused but relieved. No, he answers, he hasn't; it just came out and he's still a little leery of Steam - and then the older brother chimes in, saying that now that they'd gotten their internet connection back, maybe they could get it soon. Which prompts the younger brother to make some comment about how much he loved the first game, and George adds, "Except for the headcrabs," and then like a crashing tide, they all begin to talk at once.
I watch them parley in the language of brothers, laughing and one-upping and pontificating over videogames, as if there weren't water stains on the ceiling or a faint brown line on the wall. Through the thickening dialogue, I can see the burden gradually lift, ever so slightly, for the three of them. It is still there, of course, hovering in the hollows once occupied by furniture. But it is less dense now, separating from their bodies like oil from water, skimming the surface of the conversation but never truly penetrating it.
I turn to George's mother, who stands beside me. She has tears in her eyes that her sons do not see. She places her Styrofoam cup of black instant coffee on an empty box, and suddenly, I've never felt more like an intruder in all my life.
But as I watch these three brothers chatter so happily, I think I now understand the rejection of my DS offer and George's strange reaction to finding his poster unharmed.
Hurricanes destroy more than just property; they destroy the sense of property, as well. They smash that universal belief that objects intrinsically carry some emotional gravity or weight. Acts of destruction remind us that physical substances are only equal to the exact sum of their parts: Plastic and cotton, metal or wood. What's left over is a painful buoyancy, an unbearable absence of feeling; you mourn not just your lost PS2 games or your Xbox controllers but also the fact that these once precious things have been proven completely meaningless. Even if they do remain intact after the storm (like the Samus poster), the only entity that really survives is you.
Thus, life is distilled into your relationships with ideas, not objects; family, friendship, emotions and memories. These abstracts are what remain significant. Everything else is washed away.
Videogames retain importance only in the impressions that they've made on us: Memories of playing them, opinions of their value, hopes for the future, how we relate to other players. Therefore, the pursuit of electronic escapism is, at its core, an internal one. What matters more than videogames is the idea of videogames.
From this logic, there is only one conclusion, and I can see it now as I watch George's family growing, if not happier, more peaceful: Once done, the act of escapism lasts forever. Your mind files it away in some remote corner, only to retrieve the moment later and replay it, cherish it, when the time is right. Even at your lowest point, you will never be abandoned by your memories of happiness.
You will never forget a videogame you've played. You may forget the plot and the characters and even the title, but once you have played a videogame and loved it, that happy fact remains with you when you need it most. It is a promise that no hurricane can destroy: You once were happy; you will be again.
Lara Crigger is a freelance writer whose work about videogames has appeared in Computer Games Magazine, Gamers With Jobs and The Escapist.
