Revolution

Dance Dance Revolution. Remember it? I murdered that game. No, seriously. I was the freakin’ champ of DDR. Every Friday, with a pocket full of quarters, I hit the Santa Monica arcade and boom boom bop, boom boom bam! I drew crowds of hundreds. People flooded the place, spilling into skee-ball, standing on top of race car games, just to watch my feet. Fast feet Eddie. That’s what they called me.

You should have seen me. I could flip over the railing, spin around and land without missing a single beat. I remember this one night, I did a standing flip. Stuck it on one foot. Didn’t even know I could do it ‘til it was done. The crowd went nuts. I felt like Elvis himself or one of those cheesy boy band dudes all the girls went crazy for.

Each night, when the arcade closed, I’d strut back to my bus stop like a King. I was the man. I was the freakin’ man back then. But, ya know, all things end. All things change.

I wish I knew how good I had it back then. I wish I could talk to my old self and say, “Stay in your lane.” But it was the crowds. The encouragement. Every week having hundreds of strangers tell you “you’re amazing.” That changes you on a cellular level. I wanted more. I thought I deserved more. So when a manager showed up one day and flashed twenty-thousand dollars in my face, I signed my life away on a dotted line.

I cringe when I remember it. Who did I think I was gonna be? A dancer? Being good at DDR means you can memorize and step in a square pattern, not actually move your body. And who was going to put me on TV for more than three seconds? Can you believe I thought I was going to be on MTV? I pictured my friends coming home from school, turning on TRL and seeing me there with Carson Daly. God, I was stupid.

And the money. It should be illegal to give a fifteen-year-old twenty-grand. I bought a chain, grillz for me and my boys, a cotton candy machine, a stereo system, and a tattoo. Yep, I have “DDR God” tattooed on my bicep. I’m a 36-year-old man who can’t wear a tee-shirt without everyone knowing that I proclaimed myself the God of a now-irrelevant game. Do you know how embarrassing that is?

And the money was a trap. That manager was a snake. He was Satan incarnate. He took things from me, things you can never get back. You know the story. You know what people like that can do to kids. I was innocent. I just liked going to the arcade and playing a game. But people like that know how to get you. They know how to lure you in, and you are defenseless against them. A fifteen-year-old isn’t prepared for evil to be coated in sugar.

I drank a lot. When I realized my “career” in DDR was a road to nowhere, alcohol became my future. It was only thing that gave me the same high as walking back from the arcade after a legendary set. The only thing that could help cloud what happened to me. I could feel like a god for a moment, appear fun on the outside, even though my insides were screaming.

One morning, I woke up outside the arcade. Can’t tell you how I got there. I was spooning a bottle of Jack, blocking the front door. My head was pounding, body shaking. I stood up and stared at that building, tears pouring down my face. Have you ever wanted to change the past so badly, you became scared of the present? That’s what happened to me. I was so scared of who I was. A shell of myself. A quivering, crying, no-one on the steps of the place I used to be a someone.

I threw the bottle of Jack at the arcade. It smashed through the glass doors within eyesight of a cop. Didn’t even see 'em. I ran at the door, shoulder first. Smashed through the glass, cutting my arms and legs. I staggered over to the place where the DDR machines used to be, trailing blood on the way. I just wanted one more game. I wanted it to take me back to how things were. Maybe it could transport me to a better me, before the money, before the booze. But the machines weren’t there. They’d been replaced with some new virtual reality game. It was over. And when the cop slapped the cuffs on my wrists, I knew I was over too.

I should have a criminal record, but when the owner of the arcade saw who vandalized his place, he dropped the charges. He remembered me. He actually remembered me.

I told him I’d pay for the damage. Begged him to pay for it until he finally accepted. And you know what it cost? Twenty-thousand dollars. Can you believe it? Twenty-freakin’-thousand dollars.

And that’s what saved me. Every dollar I paid back was one dollar closer to erasing the worst decision of my life. I kept track of it here, in this little black book. See? Every dollar paid, the date, and what the money went toward. I even started going to some group meetings too. You know, the anonymous kind. I also kept track of those. I’d write about the meetings starting at the back of the book. Erasing a past from the top down, building a future from the bottom up.

And look in the middle. On the exact same page, on the exact same day today, five years sober, twenty-thousand paid. Now if that isn’t a high-five from life, I don’t know what is.

I know I’m a walking red flag. I haven’t been the most emotionally available partner. My life has been one game after another, most of them I lost. But I was on a mission to win this one. To close this book. And now that it’s closed, I’m finally ready to open another.