I AM NOT A GAMER
Lying to my physiotherapist
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I have acquired a repetitive strain injury (RSI) from sitting at the computer. This is due to my work as a writer. It is not because I play video games. I am not a gamer. I don’t have time to play video games. I am too busy being a successful writer.
Ok, sometimes I play video games, in between primetime BBC1 sitcom commissions and showbiz parties. But not much. Anyway, as well as giving me headaches, the RSI also means my right hand is often completely numb. Which is good because now, when I have to write emails, it feels like someone else is doing it. But it is also bad, because I can’t feel my hand. So I have booked to see a physiotherapist.
When I arrive for my appointment, I find that the physiotherapist’s office is in a cavernous conference centre. I wish I hadn’t brought such a huge rucksack. The weight is forcing me to walk bent forwards like the top half of an angry coat hook. I had to bring the rucksack though: there’s no way I’m letting a little back injury stop me from carrying around all the books I’m not reading.
There’s some kind of conference going on in the building. Men in suits sit in Zoom pods having serious conversations. A security guard eyes me suspiciously.
“Can I help you, Miss?”
“I’m here to see the physiotherapist.”
The security guard looks at my posture. He is convinced. He directs me to a printer which will give me a guest pass, then goes off to talk to some men wearing the thick lanyards of overcompensation. While my pass is printing, a second, burlier security guard comes over and asks if I’m okay.
“Other than carrying this lot around!” I say, shaking the bag on my back like a drunk tortoise doing a table dance.
The second guard looks alarmed. Then the machine spits out my guest pass. I hold it up apologetically.
“I’m here for the physio?”
He gives me directions up the stairs. A third, even more muscular, security guard follows me up the stairs, to check that I take the first left as instructed.
“Wow,” I think. “Everyone here is so helpful.”
Then I see a banner advertising the day’s event. For the last five minutes, I have been loitering in the foyer of a mining expo, hosting some of the world’s most predatory and environmentally-ruinous companies. I am an angry-looking millennial with blue hair and a suspiciously huge rucksack.
But there’s no superglue in my bag for sticking myself to the floor - just a second-hand copy of a 1960s anti-capitalist tract that’s been rendered incomprehensible by the previous owner neatly cutting out every tenth page. Maybe if I’d read those pages, I would have known to bring my superglue.
Once I’m in the physio’s actual office, I explain my problem (“My neck hurts so bad I can barely carry these books I’ve been reading for over a year”) and its cause (“I am a writer, often working long days in badly equipped BBC meeting rooms. I often work at the BBC. Because I am a professional writer.”). She feels my shoulder and neck, then looks at me solemnly and says:
“And are you… a gamer?”
“No.” I say, too quickly.
Yes, fine, I do play games. But I’m not about to admit that to her. I do not play a CLINICALLY RELEVANT amount of games.
After the appointment the physio sends me away with some neck stretches to try, along with an app that teaches me to sit like a human being. Each day I have to attempt, no joke, “10 reps of finding good sitting posture”. If I get past this, maybe I’ll progress to other essential adult life skills. Next thing you know, I’ll be doing 10 reps of not talking about 90s Jonathan Meades documentaries at parties.
And over a few weeks, it starts getting better. My neck and back pain that is, not my ability to make small talk.
Then, over Christmas, Jon and I buy the Dungeons and Dragons game Baldur’s Gate 3. The game combines fantasy battles with a dating simulator. I am obsessed with trying to romance Astarion, an evil vampire bastard with no redeeming qualities. Jon and I play the game for up to 5 hours at a time. Completely unrelatedly, I suffer two of the worst headaches I’ve had since I stabbed myself in the eye.
On January 4th, I return to the physio and tell her my neck and back have got worse again.
“I think it might be because,” I choose my words carefully: “I started using Duolingo over Christmas.”
She looks doubtful. She’s felt my neck muscles.
“As a successful writer, it’s important to understand linguistics,” I say, “so I’m learning two languages.”
Two languages was too many. I should have just said French. Everyone in the UK is always vaguely learning French.
“And were you using Duolingo for a long time”
“No.” I sigh. I lower my head in shame, which is easy because it’s already bent over like a coat hook. “I wasn’t using Duolingo. I was spending 26 hours trying to make out with a horrible vampire on Baldur’s Gate 3.”
“Yes, well that will give you a neck injury.”
So she admits it. I’m not a gamer. I’m a victim of vampirism.
The physio asks me if I’ve been doing my exercises. I ask her if she’s seen Get High, Jonathan Meades’s esoteric 1994 documentary about vertigo in architecture.
Then I go home and do 10 reps of not playing Baldur’s Gate 3.
Thanks for reading HIGH RESOLUTION GORE & GRAPHIC VIOLENCE, a newsletter by UK-based writer Zoë Tomalin. If you enjoyed this edition, please share it on social media, ask a friend to subscribe, or drop a tip here.
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Alongside Charlie Dinkin I’ve just finished co-writing 3 episodes of Mukpuddy’s Badjelly, starring Miriam Margolyes and Rhys Darby. It’s a beautifully animated adaptation of a very silly Spike Milligan book, and I can’t believe I got to work on it.
