A-NU-BIS!

I played on a AAU basketball team called the Vipers in early high school. I hated that team. We were second tier - all the good players were on the Hawks - and I was still riding the bench. Also, all the starters were socially maimed and the man who started in front of me was mean. His name was Ryan Hoover and he used to throw elbows in practice. I think he may be in the military now.

The only upside to the tournaments the Vipers played was when we were in Tulsa and we went to Laser Quest between games. Laser Quest is a three story dark room filled with death traps and older men who have gotten really good at laser tag. Almost forty people can play in this laser tag free for all the Quest puts on. Sometimes I would tell Hoover we were a team, then I'd shoot him in the back and blame it on a kid. Then Hoover would hunt down the kid and I'd have to listen to his screams.

Last night I took twenty fraternity brothers on a trip back to Laser Quest. I had to make reservations earlier in the week because it's so busy. Our group reserved two slots alongside a triple birthday full of twelve year olds.

Most of the guys who came were new members; they were my pledges last semester. Once during Rush Week we took potentials to Lokomotion, which houses the closest and lamest laser tag apparatus. Once the employee on duty locked us in, I took off my vest and shirt and began to wrestle the pledges as they screamed, "Why won't you die!" Four days later, we christened 84 pledges. And the manager of Lokomotion said that wasn't appropriate behavior. What does he know?

Before we went into the arena, I saw the twelve year olds pointing at me and giggling. This recalled terrible memories of third grade, and since my therapist has been encouraging to confront my fears, I asked one of them what his Laser Quest codename was. "Bigfoot," he said, "What's yours?" I asked him why he wanted to know. "So I can murder you."

I don't care how Hollywood portrays it - laser tag is chaos. It's sweat and light and smoke that may be from a machine but also may be from that pink eyed teenager running the desk with a name tag that reads "Stitch." A few of my brothers asked me if I wanted to team up. I told them no: "I work alone." Then I ran through the three story arena yelling "BIGFOOT! SHOW YOURSELF!"

I went to D.C. last spring break with five other fraternity brothers. Two of them were seniors at the time, so it was a last goodbye of sorts. On our way back, we stopped in Lexington, KY, where we had to drop Ben Rector off at a wedding. There was a laser tag palace close to our hotel. Unlike Laser Quest, this place assigned you nicknames - you didn't get to pick. Ben got the name Anubis. We were on teams, and I got paired with some easily scared eight year olds. I tried to rally their courage, but when Ben would come up the ramp stomping his feet and yelling, "A-NU-BIS!" they would scatter. I found one of them afterwards holding his head in a corner and whispering to himself, "He never stops, never stops."

Bigfoot beat me both games. After the first game, I told him he may have won the battle, but it was a fake battle anyways and I was going to punch him in the back of his vest when he wasn't looking. After the second game I just walked out in a cold fury. On the ride home, I was sitting next to Tyler Taggart, who pointed out the moon in the black sky. It was red. "Blood has been spilled this night," he said.