Casey's Turning 10!

By: Taylor Gonzalez • @taylorgonzalez

I can confidently say that I’m addicted to my email.
I left IG and Facebook and the others a while ago.
That was easy.
I read somewhere to replace whatever app you’re trying to quit with your bank app.
That fixed me up real quick.
The muscle memory started to fade.
I left YouTube too.
It’s all the same shit.
So now all that’s left is my email.
Work email, personal, doesn’t matter.
I prefer a personal email, of course.
But I’ll take what I can get.
Reflexively, I open and pull down, see the refresh.
It’s the first thing I look at in the morning and, well, you know the rest.
I don’t know why I care.
I know it's designed to be this way, but that’s not it.
Maybe it’s because it’s the only connection I have left to people.
I don’t really get a lot of texts and nobody likes talking on the phone.
I’m not drowning in friends like other people.
My life is pretty quiet.
So when an earnest email comes in
(to my personal, not even a work email)
It’s a pretty big deal for me.
This happens to me now, during a meeting at work
We’re in “New Business” and have my phone under the table.
(1)
This is what it’s all about.
The (1).
The notification.
I make sure my boss isn’t looking.
I make sure I’m not supposed to say anything soon.
And I take a peak.
The subject says:
Casey’s turning 10! You’re e-vited.
The sender is simply “The Engalls”
The avatar photo for them is a dog resting in some grass.
I assume it’s a joke-invite to a friend’s party, someone my age.
It’s hilarious to say you’re turning ten when you’re actually turning 35.
You can even include a photo of yourself when you actually were 10.
People love that stuff.
But I don’t know a Casey.
At least, I don’t think I do.
Maybe it’s someone’s partner or something.
The email is just a link: caseybirthday2002.com.
It’s probably spam.
I archive it and go back to my meeting.
I say something so they don’t think I haven’t been paying attention.

Days later, I’m on my couch.
Watching a movie, but not really watching.
I’m looking at the news on my phone.
Not real news, just articles from Google.
I see a new notification.
A new email.
(1)
It’s the dog again.
“Don’t forget to RSVP,” the subject says.
I open the email and see the same as before.
I’ve had a few beers at this point so I click the link without thinking.
(Phones aren’t as susceptible to viruses as desktop computers.)
The website is neon pink with white lettering.
It says “CASEY’S TURNING TEN!!!”
Underneath the headline, there’s a color scan of a photo of a young boy.
He smiles through missing teeth.
His straight, strawberry hair reflects the camera’s flash.
He faces up towards the camera from the floor.
He’s beaming.
He’s sitting cross-legged on a rug that looks like a cartoon map.
He’s shirtless, wearing pajama bottoms and bare feet.
He has a N64 controller in his hand.
Its wire zig zags across the room to a small tube television in the corner.
As this child smiles at me, I remember.
This is Casey.
This is my childhood best friend, Casey.
He was my first friend in kindergarten.
And we were inseparable ever since.
He’s my age.
He must’ve turned ten in 2002.
The same year I turned ten.
Which means:
I already went to this party.
I look at the address:
QZAR Laser Tag.
I remember that place.
It used to be in my old neighborhood.
I thought it burned down a few years back?
I RSVP.

Shortly after, I find myself at the dinner table with my father.
(My addiction lost me my job, by the way.
You’d think being addicted to emails would make me better at my job.
But I can’t get myself to answer them.
I just mark them as read and move them to trash.)
Anyway, I’m at my parent’s.
Back in my Hometown.
Which is essentially the suburbs of a larger town.
I’m trying to start conversation with my father.
(It must be a strange feeling for a father to spend time with his adult son.
He avoids eye contact with me.)
Sometimes I think he thinks I’m an imposter.
He’s looking at bills through thin reading glasses.
“Casey? The Engalls’ boy? Shit, you two were best friends.”
“Inseperable.”
I ask what happened to him.
He turns to my mother.
“Didn’t Kathy and Joe switch schools because they moved?”
My mother doesn’t want to talk about it.
She’s pretending to be lost in her cooking.
But she’s not moving.
Her back is to us.
The pasta’s boiling over.
Finally, she quickly moves the pot and kills the flame.
Finally, she turns, taking off her quilted mitts.
The corners of her eyes are welling with tears.
She sniffles.
I ask if she’s okay.
“Oh, I’m just fine. Thank you, baby.”
She walks out of the room.
Her cats follow.
Now, I’m alone with Pops.
He puts the mail down and removes his glasses.
He rubs the bridge of his nose.
“Your mother doesn’t like talking about that time.”

Later that night, the house is dark.
I got to the “Music Room.”
I open the double doors as quietly as I can.
You know the room in your parent’s house that’s mostly unused?
The dust has settled and people just walk by it to more important rooms?
Ours is the “Music Room” because there’s a keyboard in it and not much else.
For a time, it was the “Bird’s Room” because we had a bird.
But it’s these types of forgotten rooms that have the most important closets.
It’s where you put things you don’t want to run into again.
I open the closet door.
I switch on the orange light.
Shelves of old linens, boxes of shoes.
Moths.
There they are.
The family photos.
Our family’s photos are in a handful of small photo-sized books.
The binding is black velvet.
I pick up the first one.
A bronze frame on the cover outlines a photo of me as an infant.
I’m standing in a crib, looking at the camera with curiosity.
I’m too young in this one.
Not relevant.
I look for another one.
I look older in this one.
About ten, I’d say.
This may be the one.
I close the door behind me and sit on the floor.
There’s not enough room for me, but I make it work.
The cellophane pages are nearly fused together.
I have to pry some apart.
There’s me swimming.
There’s me wearing a soccer uniform, a ball under my right foot.
There’s me and Casey.
We have matching Razor scooters.
We’re wearing helmets.
Our arms are linked.
“You two were so cute.”
I jolt upright.
My mother’s just outside the closet door.
It sounds like her face is pressed against the other side.
“Attached at the hip, you two.”
“Mom. Are you okay?”
I try to open the door but she’s holding the knob on the other side.
She’s stronger than she looks.
Finally, she lets go.
I keep the door closed.
“Such a shame when he left.”
I hear her shuffle out of the room.
She softly closes the double doors behind her.

You’d think I’d be able to sleep in my childhood bed.
It’s too small and creaks like crazy.
The wood screams every time I adjust.
This is bad because I toss and turn a lot when I sleep.
I give up.
I look up.
The ceiling fan wobbles a little.
It makes a click, click, click.
The chain waves at me through the darkness.
I go to the kitchen and take my mom’s car keys out of the cat-shaped ceramic.
I go for a drive.

I try to remember the way.
I remember in the day time, funny enough.
But it’s two in the morning and my memory fails me.
Old streets in car headlights always look new.
I can’t remember the street names, but I know the general path.
The milestones.
Should be fine.
There’s the little pre-school I went to, coming up on the right.
“La Petite.”
It looks so small now.
Like how those old one-room school houses used to be.
Not ten minutes later I pull into an old strip mall.
Looks the same as it used to.
There’s the same bank that my parents used to visit when I was little.
But there are some new places too.
There’s a modern-looking coffee spot.
And a place that claims “Taxes Done Here Fast.”
But the place I’m looking for is gone.
It was a fairly large warehouse.
Now, it’s completely reduced to an unpaved stretch of concrete.
The lot is for sale apparently.
I get out of my car and stand where the building once stood.
Every kid in town had at least one birthday at QZAR.
I remember the lobby filled with arcade games, buzzing and dinging.
Tickets got you prizes.
There was also a pizza and hotdog kiosk.
Colorful tables and chairs for eating.
There were even two private rooms for birthdays.
Permanently decorated for the occasion.
Then, it’ll be your time to play.
And you and your friends are taken into this holding room.
It’s all black-lit and split into two sides.
The Red Team and the Blue Team, on either side of the room.
This is where the employees would explain the rules.
The safety precautions, the scoring system.
How to shoot the laser gun, how to know if you’ve been shot.
Then, finally, they take you into the next room.
It’s the room filled with all the guns and vests.
The children outfit themselves, bubbling with excitement.
As I remember this, I nearly trip over something in the lot.
A hatch in the concrete.
It’s secured by a large, rusted combination lock.
I crouch down and unlock it.
I know the combination somehow.
The hatch opens to a series of stairs leading down into the dark.
The stairs are carpeted in a black, fuzzy fabric.
The fabric is dotted with bright neon colors: orange, green, blue, red.
I walk down into a massive room.
It’s just like I remember.
It’s the arena in which the laser tag takes place.
It’s a large warehouse broken into a maze with high walls.
The walls are splatted with neon colors that glow in the black light.
There are graffitied wayfinding marks like:
“Red Base Ahead” and
“Re-Charge Station Here.”
I’m nearly taller than the walls.
I can almost look over.
This place felt much larger when I was little.
I try to find my way around in the dark.
I look up and see a massive disco ball in the middle of the space.
That’s the center.
I go that way.
You know, I’ve been here so many times, I almost remember the routes.
The strategies.
The secret passage ways.
The formations my friends and I would enact to try to win.
I turn the corner and I stop in my tracks.
I hold my breath.
There, in the middle of the arena.
Underneath the disco ball.
He sits cross-legged on the floor.
A 10-year-old boy, his plastic laser tag vest just slightly too big for his body.
It’s my old friend, my old friend Casey.
Just as I remember him.
He smiles at me and his teeth are neon purple in the black light.
The black like also shows me specks of white on the shoulders of his black WWE t-shirt.
I look down.
I’m holding a plastic laser gun.
I have a large vest on me too.
I’m on the Blue Team.
I’m wearing sandals with socks now.
I’m a boy again.
I sit down in front of Casey.
I cross my legs like him.
We don’t speak.
He just smiles at me.
He puts out his hands.
He takes mine in his.
Underneath the black light disco ball.
Small patches of light circulate over our faces.
But there’s no music.
No sound at all.
Just Casey and I giggling quietly.
Whispering.
Our hands begin to melt into each other until they become two single joints of flesh.
Where my wrists end, his begin.
Our bare knees touch like magnets.
They begin to connect as well.
I can’t remember much at this point.
Just bright purple-white of his teeth in black light.
He’s missing a tooth.

They say I went missing for about a week.
My parents thought I might’ve offed myself.
But I was found by some old folks.
I was naked in their backyard.
I was sleeping in their shed.
I’ve been in the hospital ever since.
The good news is:
I’m not addicted to my email anymore.
I’m not addicted to anything.

Taylor Jon Gonzalez is a playwright, director and teacher based in New York City.