The Game Cave

(Out of respect for my family, I have changed the names of the people and locations featured in this piece.)

My dead dad’s ashes are kept inside an arcade game. Well, technically he’s my stepdad, and his ashes are kept inside an urn. But the urn is stashed in Star Castle, and Star Castle is stashed in Gamezone, and Gamezone is stashed in Lanford, New Hampshire, which is at least an hour away from my dead dad’s (empty) grave plot.

To the best of my knowledge, the owner of Gamezone doesn’t know my dad’s ashes reside in their establishment. According to the Guinness Book of World Records, Gamezone is the largest arcade in the world. According to no one, Gamezone is an appropriate final resting place for a deceased human being.

I guess that can’t be entirely true. Someone had to have thought it was a good idea, because someone needed to open the back of the arcade cabinet and place the urn inside. I’m not sure who did this and at this point I am afraid to ask. If I had to hazard a guess, it was probably a member of the American Retro Arcade Museum, a non-profit attempting to preserve the legacy of 20^th century arcade games. At one point ARAM was also attempting to preserve the legacy of my dad, which is why they have dedicated a portion of Gamezone’s third floor to his memory, and presumably why they thought it would be apropos to hide his ashes on the aforementioned third floor. Inside Star Castle. A game that my dad loved, and a game that people now play, blissfully ignorant of the knowledge that someone’s bodily remains are located mere inches from the coin slot.

I have never played Star Castle. I had ample opportunities to play it growing up, because it lived in our basement. Our basement is where my dad kept the love of his life. Not his first wife, Heather, who he kept shrouded in bitter hatred in the recesses of his heart, or his second wife, my mom, who he kept shrouded in bitterness-occasionally-teetering-on-the-edge-of-hatred on the upper floors of our four-story home. No, the basement is where he kept “The Game Cave,” his private arcade.

Much of my knowledge about The Game Cave derives from post-mortem research I have conducted on Google. In fact, much of my knowledge about my dad himself comes from this post-mortem research. In the years I lived with him, I did not know that he was the founder of the Northeast Buick Racing Association, for example, or that he had first been diagnosed with ocular melanoma at the tender age of thirty-three. I did not know that he spent his teen years working at an arcade called Dream Machine in Walpole, Massachusetts, or that he had later worked at an arcade called Aladdin’s Castle while he was attending college in Ohio. And I still don’t know what college in Ohio he attended, because his obituary doesn’t say.

I was attending college in Ohio when he died. I imagine I wasn’t far from where he went to school, though I have no way of knowing for sure. I suppose I could ask someone, but I would not know who to ask. We do not talk about my dead dad.

This isn’t to say I have no memories of The Game Cave. My firsthand experiences have left me with a decently accurate mental picture of its claustrophobic, L-shaped interior and exposed brick walls. I can conjure up the outer-space themed carpet, eternally aglow under the blacklights and garishly reminiscent of a 20^th century movie theater. I remember the tokens, caked with fluorescent paint and untold layers of grime, because my dad was a man and men never think to clean these sorts of things. And I can picture the games, the neat row of arcade cabinets boasting such classics as Space Invaders and Streetfighter II. I myself had a brief love affair with Smash TV, a 1990 game whose cartoon gun violence and buxom women scratched some unknown itch in my brain. 

In spite of this access, however, I spent very little time in my dad’s private oasis. There are pictures of The Game Cave on several defunct blogs from the 2010’s, and one image boasts a blurry photo of a high score wall, painstakingly made with laminated notecards and adhered to the back of a door with Scotch tape. My name is nowhere to be found on this wall. Despite having lived in the same building as this makeshift arcade, I visited it a few times a year at most. As to Gamezone, world-famous arcade and my dad’s perennial escape, I never set foot in it until after he died.

He invited me to go, of course. During the first years of his relapse, after we discovered the cancer had metastasized across his entire body, he invited me to do lots of things with him. To go to Gamezone, or take a drive in his Buick Grand National, or attend PAX East with him and the ARAM crew. My memories of his final years are peppered with these requests, these olive branches gingerly proffered and ultimately refused. And despite my refusals, he continued to ask, faithful to our potential friendship until I left for college. Faithful even after I left, sending me cashier’s checks for twenty dollars that I was too embarrassed to admit I didn’t know how to cash.

Here are the things I remember about my dad:

I am eight and my mom has a boyfriend. His name is Tim. He has a four-year-old son, two cats, and a giant freshwater fish tank. I am not sure about the son because I think boys are yucky, but Tim is a grown-up and suits me just fine. He lets me play his vintage Atari Lynx. One day he is babysitting and puts on a Laserdisc of Sailor Moon. “I’m not allowed to watch that,” I tell him. “What your mom doesn’t know won’t kill her,” he replies. Sailor Moon turns out to be awesome.

Tim becomes my dad. He takes me to Walmart, and I see a Poison Ivy Barbie in the toy section. Later that year I see it again, under our Christmas tree. When Tim introduces me to Star Trek, he buys me a tribble on eBay. I draw pictures of tribbles with pilfered paint markers he brings me from his job. I still think boys are yucky, but his son is pretty nice. We both like Jimmy Neutron.

I am eleven and my American Girl dolls are lined up neatly against the baseboard heater of our new house. My dad goes into my room and turns on the heat while I am at school. When I get home, my dolls’ hair has melted. I am distraught.

I watch Grease for the first time and decide it is a cinematic masterpiece. My dad lets me blast the soundtrack on our backyard party speakers and the neighborhood is forced to suffer through “Hopelessly Devoted to You” on repeat. It is the only time the party speakers get used.

It is Christmas and my dad has filled Mom’s stocking with cheap Russell Stover chocolates and even cheaper polyester thongs. She pulls out a copy of Cosmopolitan, but it is in Spanish. My dad hadn’t noticed. Mom does not read magazines.

I am thirteen and Mom’s favorite cat has died. I go onto my dad’s computer without permission and find a kitten on Craigslist. I explain to my dad that it is eight weeks old, up to date on its shots, and lives four hours away. When we pull into the trailer park, the woman tells me it will be fifty bucks. I look at my dad and he pulls out his wallet. It turns out the kitten is only five weeks old, has fleas, and has never seen a vet in its life. My dad helps me hide it in my bedroom until we are ready to surprise Mom. He pays all the vet bills.

It is Halloween and my dad has built an arcade in our basement. He invites trick-or-treaters and their parents to come play and fills our home with people we don’t know. My mom is a local public-school teacher and tells my dad she is not comfortable having her students in her house, let alone strangers. My dad tells her she has a stick up her ass.

My dad builds himself a new computer and explains why Linux is the best operating system. He ports Windows applications onto it so I can still play video games. One day he shows me his old copy of StarCraft and lets me monopolize his computer for weeks, playing into the small hours of the morning. I take a shine to the Zerg.

My dad works nights and begins sleeping on the couch during the day. The air in the living room becomes oppressive. I realize he and my mom are no longer friends. We eat all our meals separately.

I am fifteen and my dad picks me up from school. I don’t see as much of him as I used to. He asks if I’d like a treat and drives me through Burger King to get a milkshake and fries. He asks enthusiastic questions about my life, but I answer perfunctorily. The milkshake is delicious.

Mom is asking my dad a question. He sits in front of his computer, staring at the screen, his jaw set like a Moai statue. Mom repeats her question. He does not answer. After a moment Mom walks away. This becomes a regular occurrence.

I am sixteen and I receive a Yamaha keyboard for Christmas. I practice with headphones on because my dad is always, always watching TV in the living room. He encourages me to take the headphones off. “You’re never a bother,” he says repeatedly. “I’d love to hear you play.”

My best friend and I are standing in the kitchen. My dad says something I take offense to and I make a snide comment in reply. He wheels around and shouts that he has been nothing but nice to me all my life, which is true. I tell him it doesn’t matter because he isn’t nice to my mom. I am profoundly embarrassed that he raised his voice in front of my friend.

Mom and I visit her coworker, Wendy. Wendy gives us a tour of an empty house on her property. Mom tells me we might live there, just the two of us. On the car ride home, she says that she hates my dad. A vacuum opens inside of me.

My dad has cancer.

My dad goes to a video game convention. When he gets home, he pulls out his red Motorola Razr. He does not watch anime, but he took a photo of every anime cosplayer he saw in case I knew who they were. He gives me Naruto pins and a Black Butler keychain. He hopes I’ll go with him next time.

I am riding in the passenger seat of my dad’s Buick Grand National. ACDC is playing at a volume that rattles my skull. Two teenage girls begin to jaywalk. My dad grits his teeth and speeds up the car as if he is going to hit them. They jump out of the way and stare at our retreating taillights in disbelief.

My dad tells people I am “wicked smaht.”

My dad and I rarely cross paths.

My dad builds me my own PC.

My dad tells his teenage son he is a screw-up and a disappointment.

My dad comes to all my plays at school.

My dad quits his job because he is too sick to work.

My dad lets me watch Top Gear with him.

My dad makes a post on Facebook. He says that he was going through Mom’s search history and saw that she had been Googling cancer. “So she does care,” he writes. His family blames her for his illness. My dad does not defend her.

I am seventeen and my dad is going to Gamezone again. He spends more time there than he does at home. He asks if I’d like to go. I say I have homework but I’ll go next time. Next time arrives and I still don’t go. The prognosis for stage IV ocular melanoma is six months. It has been a year.

I am home sick from school. My bedroom is the attic, and I am hiding in my bed with a pair of Invader Zim headphones over my ears. I have turned up the musicas loud as my iPod touch allows, but I can still hear my dad screaming himself hoarse two floors below me. He is screaming so loudly that it vibrates the windowpanes, and I worry he will burst the blood vessels in his lungs. I know he is lying prone on the couch because chemotherapy has made him too weak to sit up. My stepbrother, the recipient of these screams, wails shrilly like a feral kit. My dad continues to berate him until his voice gives out. There is weeping, then silence.

I am eighteen and I go to college in Ohio. My dad mails me cashier’s checks for twenty dollars. I keep them in my desk.

I come home for the summer and my dad is dying. The couch is absorbing his body in an act of cellular fusion. After he dies, my mom will throw all the furniture away. When my dad goes to the bathroom to vomit, it sounds like someone is killing a pig.

I am back at college and I call my mom. My dad picks up and says she is not home. I strike up a conversation with him and we talk for an hour. Before we hang up, he thanks me for talking to him and tells me he loves me. It is the first time we have spoken in months. It is the longest we have spoken in years. It is the last time we speak.

When I type my dead dad’s name into the search bar, I am shocked to discover how much of him still resides on the internet. It has been a decade since he passed and yet his digital thumbprint is everywhere, evidence of his life as an arcade restoration expert spread across blogs, interviews, and even a podcast. I find his old YouTube channel and am appalled by the presence of ninety videos, some with thousands of views. I am even more appalled by the presence of a GoFundMe with hundreds of donations towards his treatment and subsequent funeral, almost all from people I have never heard of.

Most shocking is a New York Times article. When was he interviewed by the New York Times? Where was I? There is a photo of my stepbrother standing at Gamezone, staring rapturously at his dying parent, whose face hovers just out of frame. The article explains that Tim, a video game tournament volunteer, is donating twenty of his prized arcade cabinets to the museum.

“My kids can come up with their kids and say, ‘This is what Grandpa’s basement was like,’” the quote reads.

My dad comes to life in the confines of what I do not know about him. Is it my fault for having never asked? I conjure up his sallow, cancer-ridden body and regard the face of rage incarnate, his skin stretched taut over his skeleton like a primitive drum. Here is a man who shouts until spittle flies from his rotting mouth. Here is a man who spanks his son with such vigor that it borders on abuse. Here is a man that hates his ex-wife so profoundly that he is happy when she gets in a car accident, as if the bitch got what was coming to her. A man who rarely smiles, a man who eats TV dinners in front of his computer and drinks so much Coca-Cola that his blood must be carbonated, a man who never states that he is bitter but wears bitterness like a shroud. My dad looks at the 1980’s like the garden of Eden and his family like the sin that forever barred him from its verdant gates. He was supposed to be young forever. He was supposed to have sex with numerous Amazonian blondes in Baywatch attire. He was supposed to fly his Buick Grand National through the streets like a streak of black lightning. He was supposed to be a rock star, a game designer, a computer magnate, a success. He was supposed to throw epic parties and have fun like it was his day job. He was supposed to keep vintage technology alive because in doing so he would preserve a higher plane of existence, an era of teenage bliss that seduced and mocked him in equal turns. He was supposed to live past forty-six.

There are too many things I will never ask him. What was your major in college? How did you meet my mom in the first place? What happened to that freshwater fish tank you had before you married her? Why did you change? Why were you always so unhappy? Why did you love me even when I didn’t love you back? Why didn’t you love my mother when you had vowed to do so until death did you part?

Why was Star Castle your favorite game?

When I make my initial pilgrimage to Gamezone in the aftermath of my dad’s death, I am shocked to find his picture adhered to the wall. “The Game Cave Collection.” There are not one but two placards extolling his legacy, standing sentinel over the row of arcade cabinets he bequeathed to the American Retro Arcade Museum.

For the first time in my life I pay for game tokens. I pile them in a yellow plastic commemorative cup emblazoned with Snuffy, Gamezone’s dragon mascot, my dad’s chosen god. And I lay those tokens at Snuffy’s feet like an offering, a prayer candle lit by the neon glow of 8-bit graphics.

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