Nonfiction from Lindsey Danis

Photo: Ravi Palwe

Minus World

1.

Play through World 1-2. Stand at the far left edge of the pipe at the end of the level. From a jump position, break the second to last block on the ceiling. It may take several tries to get this right. Punch the wrong block and you risk becoming trapped in the wall until the timer runs out. Get it right and you travel through the pipe, through the wall, into the Warp Zone. From the Warp Zone, choose the left or right pipe; both lead to Minus World.

2.

Five years later, go to college in Boston. Not that college; your ancestors are Irish American mill workers who scrimped and saved to send two of their four kids to college.

Study. Work hard. Stop calling home. Make the decision without knowing you are making it. A month before graduation, inform your parents that you don’t plan to look for a job. You are going hiking in the Rocky Mountains with friends.

Head west, hike, come back. Move into the condo your parents own in Lincoln, Rhode Island, even though you are no longer on speaking terms.

Ignore your family’s attempts to reach out. Avoid contact for years, until your parents tell you they are moving your grandmother into their condo, and you need to leave.

Return to your childhood bedroom, with its plaid curtains and wood-paneled walls. When your grandmother stops by and rings the doorbell, lock eyes with her through the peephole. Of all the grandchildren, you resemble her the most: same freckled skin, pale blue eyes, and copper hair.

Look her in the eye and do not answer the door. Head to your room to play video games.

—§—

1.

Watch your older cousin play Super Mario Bros. Shake your head when he punches through the bricks as indicated in Step 1 and asks you, Can you do this?

Minus World is an underwater world similar to 2-2, which you have completed; it is an exact replica of 7-2, which you have not yet reached because you always die too soon. Watch as Mario swims over corals, dodges pufferfish and white jellies, their tentacles jerky like arcade claw games—you never win those, either.

When Mario reaches the end of the level, he descends the pipe and returns to the beginning of Minus World. Watch your cousin do it all again, over and over, until the countdown timer ends and Mario dies.

Because you’ve been one step away from drowning ever since your parents separated, the glitch makes terrific sense to you. The certainty of your five first years was revealed as an illusion. You are no longer sure what is true, or where you fit. In the absence of real-world logic, the game glitch fills a gap.

What other secrets has he discovered? What might he be willing to share in the hour before your parents call you both down for Thanksgiving dinner? When he offers you the controller, decline.

2.

Five years later, message your cousin online. Ask, what happened?

Be stunned when he closes the AIM chat window never to reappear, when his older sister calls off her wedding the month before, when she too disappears (in Massachusetts, near enough that your mother runs into her at the bank one day, and they make small talk).

Ask your father, what happened? He tells you about the time he took your cousin sailing in Quincy Bay, at the request of his parents to talk some sense into him, try to reach him.

Your stepmother, pregnant, stayed home. She interrupts the story to say, I was so worried that he would push your father overboard and I would get a call from the Coast Guard. If something happened out on the water, your father does not say.

Certain your father is hiding something, push at the story over the years, hoping to dislodge the secret. Bring the few memories you have of your cousin into the light. Comb through them for the cause of his disappearance, for the hidden clue only you can decipher.

Ask your grandmother, who says I don’t know, until the day she tells you about the time she saw him through the peephole.

Share her outrage. How could he ignore her, a woman who shows you the unconditional love her son cannot, who asks every time you talk, how is your mother doing?

3.

Study your aunt and uncle on the rare instances you see them; with two estranged children, they never stay long at family gatherings. They are pinched and aging. They don’t say much, though your father tries to engage them in conversation about football or work.

That you can recognize his attempts to set others at ease makes you sad, then enraged; don’t you deserve the same care and attention?

You are a reminder of his failed first marriage—a constant disappointment. You begin to understand this from the explosive fights about little things—how you got a B on a test, how you can never make plans with friends on his weekends—that end in one of two ways: 1) He puts you in your place, shaking with anger, How dare you speak to me that way? You shrink into your shell, true moon child. 2) He banishes you to your room until you can present a plausible excuse for unacceptable behavior. You learn to lie, ignoring the discomfort until you no longer feel it.

Spend the next four years hiding in your room. Do your homework then read: Naked Lunch, On the Road, stories that hint at what you can’t yet say. Come out to eat peanut butter Saltines and play with your much-younger half brothers. Make up games together in the backyard. When they get older, play HORSE, which they win every time. They accept your presence with simple joy. This makes you happy, and it complicates things.

Understand that it doesn’t matter what you do. Like Mario in Minus World, any action leads to the same result. You swim, dodging enemies and collecting coins, until you descend the pipe and warp to the beginning. No matter how many times you complete the level, how many coins you collect, how many 1-ups you earn, there is only one way out of Minus World. You have to die.

4.

Admit to yourself what others have long suspected. Tell your mother and not your father; now that you are comfortable with lying, you don’t tell him a thing.

Sift through your childhood for clues you have always been this way. String together an origin story from the fact that you never liked dolls, were always the father in games of House, disliked the color pink.

Commit yourself to rigorous self-study. Learn the contours of your new identity the way you learned Super Mario Bros.: through careful observation, applied knowledge, and plenty of mistakes. Give yourself permission to stop liking men, wearing dresses and makeup and jewelry, shaving your body hair. Discover yourself under the trappings of girlhood: a body without a gender, unencumbered, free.

5.

Make the decision without knowing you are making it. Stop answering the phone when he calls.
Leave his voice messages unheard. Remind yourself that you are a disappointment to him just by existing, and he has no clue who you really are.

Continue talking to your brothers until you realize it puts them in the middle, then let them go. Shut out everyone from the family who tries to talk to you, even your grandmother, whose love is uncomplicated and pure.

Reach the warp pipe, battered but sure. Descend. Rise up, out of the waters, into a new world.
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Lindsey Danis is a queer, gender expansive writer whose essays have appeared in Longreads, Catapult, and Hobart. Lindsey runs the queer travel blog Queer Adventurers and is working on a book about the queer travel experience.