There was a year you could say I was almost pretty. It was the same year I wished I was gay. Not that I could guess what it would be like—gay or pretty. But that year things came to a head and I had to acknowledge popular opinion. So I became Farah.

Oh, was I confusing sexuality with gender? Of course I was. It was barely 1980. My friend wore a button on his shirt to announce it. Back then, you could hope that a new decade would save you—with a fashion that would look good on you, or with better music on the radio, or with world peace or whatever. The details were hazy because all details were hazy. The Age of Explanation lay more than a decade away, its juggernaut of data yet unborn. Meanwhile, the Age of Aquarius drew its dying, ever-hopeful breaths, and you trudged down a crowded hall between Chemistry and Social Studies, and the question of who you were, what you wanted, was just a sexified mishmash. The only authority to consult was the moving mass around you, and like gorgeous landing pages with no links, its surfaces were preened, provocative, and impenetrable. Of course there was Sex Ed. But Sex Ed was condoms, period. And yes, the library had books; but who would pull one of those off the shelf except under duress, for a project on Brazil’s exports, say, or aqueducts in Rome? In short, like everyone else, I had to work with what I had. And what I had was Farah.

*

“The scruffy child leads you into a twenty-by-twenty, candlelit room. There’s nothing in it except, in the middle, a sparkling glass coffin. Lying in the coffin is a powerful, perfect-looking knight—but he’s dead. Or asleep. His eyes are open like he’s in a trance—”

“I try to kiss him,” I say. What’s the point of being a girl if you can’t try this kind of thing, I told myself. I’d seen girls do stuff like that on TV, so I figured real girls must be doing it too, somewhere I never saw, like outside of class.

“Ha ha,” Sam says drily.

“No, really,” I insist.

“You hit your face on the glass,” he says, annoyed. “Now wait. The knight’s skull is cut open in a perfect circle, and the top is lying beside it, like a lid. Inside, the skull is empty. There’s no brain.”

“Okay, I don’t kiss him.”

“We ask the scruffy child who he is,” Terry says.

“Scruffy child says it’s Melvin, the Protector of the Kingdom. Since a warlock stole his brain and changed it into the Despicable Orb, the Kingdom has been dark and dreary. If only the Despicable Orb could be returned, then Melvin would be reunited with his brain and bring goodness and plenty, and his natural charm, back to the land.”

“Where is the Despicable Orb?” Dennis asks.

“The scruffy child says it’s in the clutches of the undead sorcerer king Pün. Anyone who brings it back from Pün will gain the Kingdom as their reward.”

“How do we find Poon?” says Dennis.

“A scintillating cloud materializes and punches you in the face. Pün, not Poon! it shrieks in an undead sorcerer king-like voice. You lose (Sam rolls a die) two hit points.”

We all groan.

I give it a try. “Okay, I say: Can you tell us where to find… Pyoon?”

“A scintillating cloud materializes and punches you in the face. Pün, not Pyoon! it shrieks in an undead sorcerer king-like voice. You lose (we hear the same die) one hit point.”

“Annoying Scruffy Child, where can we find this sorcerer king of Pün?” Terry purses his lips like a duck and draws out the name.

“They say he lurks in an ancient crypt, oh noble warrior (Terry smirks), deep beneath the ruined castle, on yonder mountain. But I warn you: many have ventured, none have returned.”

“Let’s go get that Despicable Orb!” I say.

“Bathroom break?” Terry says.

*

That year, more than once it was said to me, too bad you’re not gay. Girls didn’t say this. They never talked to me, nor I to them. They seemed to have their own problems. The view from the masculine shores, then, across a great, rippling infinity of adolescence, seemed to hint that my fate lay elsewhere.

I wanted to be attractive, but I wasn’t. So I felt transported with Maria, when she sings to her factory mirror—I feel pretty, oh so pretty—and I felt joy shifting the depths of my soul when Eliza makes her dazzling splash in society. I could have danced all night! All because someone finds them pretty. Apparently, however, only men thought I was pretty. And the problem was, unlike Eliza and Maria, I despised men, and the last thing I could imagine was yearning for them. Men were cocky materialists who had stranded all of our young futures on twin precipices of nuclear and pollution apocalypse—and it was anyone’s guess which would come first. Being a man meant dominating or damaging anything around you, especially women. Women understood how to be. Men ruined it all.

Of course, I freely admit, I wished that when I strode out of the ocean waves and raked my fingers through dripping raven locks, like 007, a woman would lower her speargun and unzip her wetsuit. But the thing is, 007 is already there—already who he is. An unimaginable abyss lay between me and him, foreclosing any identification. But Maria, and Eliza, and Marian the librarian, and the hopefuls of the Chorus Line, and even the speargun girl, they’re more like me, I thought, not there yet, waiting to be seen, to be discovered.

*

“As you approach the castle gate, a towering golem steps forward, blocking the way.”

“Can we kill it? How many hit points do those things have?” Terry asks.

“Way, way too many,” Sam cautions us.

“We ask to enter,” Dennis says. “Politely.”

“You must pass the test, the golem intones. Complete this rhyme: The King of Krull will polish your skull; the King of France will polish your…”

“Pants?” Dennis says, before anyone can stop him.

“Polish your pants?” Sam repeats. “What do you think this is, the golem says, a dry cleaners? He looks disgusted and pounds you into the ground with his fist. You die.”

“Aaagh,” Dennis cries.

“You don’t even have time to say aaagh,” Sam informs him. “There’s just a squelchy sound.”

“I know the answer,” Terry gives a sly grin. “The King of France will polish your lance!”

We all think about this.

“Gross,” Sam says.

“Excuse me, I have delicate sensibilities,” I say, as Farah.

“The golem looks even more disgusted and pounds you into the ground with his fist,” Sam informs Terry. “You die.”

“Damn.”

“Okay,” Dennis says to me, head in hands, “carry us back and we’ll start over. Otherwise we all die.”

“No,” I say recklessly. “I have a woman’s intuition! The King of France will… polish your dance!”

“Your answer is true and virtuous, oh pure of heart! cries the golem. He steps aside.”

Now Terry and Dennis look disgusted.

“I drag their bodies through the gate. What do I see?”

“You’re in a ruined courtyard, forty by sixty. An elderly man hobbles toward you. He’s wearing embroidered robes and a yarmulka. Oh dear, oh dear, he says. I fear Benny got carried away. Do you need help?”

“Yes, my companions are dead. Is that your golem?”

“Benny? Yes, sorry. He’s supposed to offer you a rest, not a test—I sneezed in the middle of the spell. Take your ease on these blankets, enjoy some food and wine, while I revive these two unfortunates.” The rabbi-cleric rolls up his sleeves, lays on hands, and mumbles kabbalistic spells, Sam explains, until Grog, Terry’s half-orc footpad, and Tattoo, Dennis’s warrior dwarf, come back to life.

“And you get five hundred experience points, Farah, for getting into the castle alive. Also, the old rabbi gives you a pouch of manna, which gives you plus three strength per flake and lasts five rounds; there are ten flakes. And he gives Grog and Tattoo, each, a yarmulka of celestial light, which cast ten-foot circles of protection. You’ll need them, he says, once you are through that door. He points to a crumbling stone doorway with steps leading down. Faint, weird sounds drift out of it.”

“I memorize a Charm Person spell,” I say.

*

Farah was my greatest character creation. I had to roll the dice several times to get her right, all the while reporting back to Sam, our DM, on the telephone. I made her half-human, half-elf. In this game, humans are useful but boring, so miscegenation is the way to go. I made her a magic-user, or in common parlance, a sorceress. I wanted her strengths to be magical, scintillating, alluring. Not all beating and hacking. In any case, I could never sustain a fantasy of girding myself in stiff leather jerkin and breeches, or draping myself in chain mail. Magic-users are not permitted armour, so I clothed Farah in a flowing, gossamer robe hemmed with little stars and cinched with a spare, dark, I’m-here-for-business sash. Her hair floated wavy and free, and her large, emerald eyes shone with elfin daring. I spent hours drawing and re-drawing her for my character record. In a better world, this was who I would be. Men? Bring ’em on, they’ll kneel before me. Women? I’m with you, girls! Paradoxically, though, Farah was also the girl I wanted to fall head over heels for me, or climb into bed with me, like the fantasy lab partner I dreamed of in Chemistry who would smile at me as she fired up a Bunsen burner. Farah turned me on. I yearned to be spellbound. But also to be spellbinding. To be ravished by Farah and to be Farah.

In real life the only ravishing on offer came from other boys, which I wistfully declined. For example, Peter. We sprawled on a pair of sofas one afternoon, talking music. Through half-closed eyes, he asked if I wanted to make out. I said no, not really. He said okay, then his eyes fully closed and he fell asleep. He was kind of narcoleptic. I waited a few minutes, then left.

If you could enter dreams, you might see what makes you truly desirable.

*

“You see an ugly gnome guarding a doorway thirty feet ahead.”

“I speak gnome,” I tell Dennis and Terry. “I’ll scope it out.”

“I come around the corner and walk up to the gnome. I say, hi, sexy!”

“Ugly gnome looks at you. (Sam rolls a die.) He looks suspicious but interested.”

“I put a hand on his ugly arm. Are you all alone in this boring old dungeon? So am I. How about we pop into this room here and get better acquainted?”

“Ugly gnome thinks about this, looking you up and down. (Sam rolls a die.) You’re a witch, he says. You’re trying to trick me into stealing our treasure. I’m not that stupid. So move on.”

“All right, spoilsport, I say. Then I yell treasure and attack him with my dagger.”

Sam rolls a die. “He’s surprised.”

I toss two four-sided dice for damage: “Six!”

“Ugly gnome dies but six more gnomes run out of the room wielding swords.”

“Are they ugly too?” Terry asks.

“Not if you’re a gnome.”

“What—you want to keep one as a pet?” Dennis asks.

It takes four melee rounds to kill them. We don’t sustain much damage. We divide up the treasure—nothing magical, alas, but lots of experience points—then we move on.

*

“Are you a true Debutant?” Shaf stood at my desk in History, smiling broadly. That week he had proclaimed himself King Debutant and we were all signing up to be his followers. It didn’t require us to do anything; only proudly to identify as Debs. And to recognize his Debness. This was easy because Shaf presented himself in a heightened style: pressed blue slacks, penny loafers, striped button-down shirt, black dress belt, and short, glossy, carefully parted black hair. In other words, nothing like a high-school student. His voice affected aristocratic distinction as his eyes, behind glasses shaped like television screens, sparkled ironically. This is how he made the best of his unasked-for citizenship in the nation of nerds. Why were we zealous to be Shaf’s Debs? Partly because he referred to everyone else as the hoi polloi. But mostly, we just loved him—his sui generis style, his free invention of himself like a divinity. We couldn’t have denied that for anything. It was the same feeling as when my middle-school friend came out his front door, on a day like any other, singing, “I’m gay, but that’s okay,” in a lilting, parodic voice. From then on, he sang it all the time—well, not in school—but at odd, random moments. And so did I. It was catchy. When you have not discovered magnificence in yourself, you reach for it in those who have.

To make a long story short, I decided to submit my prettiness to the ultimate test. I decided to try sex as Farah. If you aren’t getting it in real life, then why not do it in a dungeon? Remember, it’s a fantasy, so you don’t have to focus on circumstantial minutiae like the pervasively damp, cold stone or the lack of personal hygiene. And it ticked all the boxes for safe sex.

Sex didn’t normally happen in dungeons, not in ours, not back then. We were strictly muscular, conniving, battle-ready adventurers who, like warrior saints, put all erotic and romantic thoughts aside, indeed escaped from them, because they led neither to treasure nor to experience points. Since females were irrelevant to gaining levels, they popped up only sporadically across these action-packed, tenebrous worlds, in the shape of a comedic buxom wench, for example, or a cluster of ornamental mermaids.

To be Farah was to be pretty among monsters, for monsters. Attractiveness had no rules; it was a roll of the dice. Or so I thought. You hit your face on the glass, or you woke the prince.

*

“I rub the lamp,” Dennis says.

“A thin mist rises from the spout, which turns into a ten-foot high djinni. I am released from my thousand-year prison, the djinni says. In gratitude, I will grant each of you one wish.”

Dennis, Terry and I huddle to strategize.

“I wish for everything I need to defeat the undead sorcerer king Pün,” announces Dennis.

“The djinni holds out his hands. In his left, there’s a huge gem, which he tells you is magicked inside with an endless maze. In his right is a scroll with a spell to trap the king’s soul inside the gem.”

“I wish for directions to the king’s lair,” Terry says firmly.

“The djinni says to pass the next intersection, take three lefts, the next but one right, another left, then the farther steps down, then keep to the corridor until you pass through the dragon’s den, then down a spiral staircase to the crypt.”

We had agreed that my wish would be to heal Terry’s hit points, so we’d all be ready for combat. Instead I say, “Farah says, I want you to have sex with me, big guy! And make it good.”

“The djinni looks weirdly at you,” Sam says. Terry and Dennis are in shock. “Then he waves his hands and a silk divan appears, festooned with cushions and carpets. He pulls you down and has his way with you. Happy?”

I think for a moment. “Yeah, it was pretty good.”

Because actually, it was. I’m not sure what Farah thought.

Smirking, Sam rolls two twenty-sided dice in front of us. Those dice are for percentage chances, one to a hundred. When it comes up ninety-six, his smirk is gleeful.

“What’s that for?” I ask.

“Nothing to worry your pretty head about. Not for now.”

“What do you mean?” There’s always a catch with magic. Especially wishes.

“Just don’t be surprised if there’s a mini-djinni in your future.”

“Girl or boy?” Dennis asks.

“Or other?” Terry adds.

“Only time will tell,” Sam replies. “But from now on, there’s a 10% chance every four turns that Farah will be incapacitated by nausea.”

We all groan.

Secretly I was okay with it. A half-djinn baby might have useful powers, like having your own little Yoda. But in the next session Sam made it get born to the elemental plane, so I never saw it.

*

Fergus was tall, Scottish, and dour. His lantern jaw gave the world a permanent frown, barely modulated by a dry wit. He did not fit my stereotype of gay, and I could hardly believe it when he told me. We were squeezed into the corridor of a small apartment he shared with his father in a high rise looking over the old cemetery downtown. It was dim and humid with plants spiraling out from shelves and a bubbling aquarium illuminating its tropical otherworld. He had just also confessed to being a Trekkie—like, an obsessive fan—and the gay thing seemed to layer right on top. There was something comforting in the moment. If Fergus and I were together, we’d be like those fish, I thought, swimming in our lambent, separate world, happy as can be. Because we could both be beautiful there, and in truth, I was a bit dour myself. It was only a moment, though. More disappointingly for Fergus, I had nothing to say about the life of a Trekkie. So we discussed Lucifer’s Hammer, a novel about a rogue meteorite that destroys the Earth, while he made us cups of tea. In proper teacups, but very strong.

*

The undead sorcerer king Pün is, in the end, easily defeated. Which is to say, after battling his loyal hordes of zombies, ghouls, skeletons, and also a pet otyugh, nearly to the death.

When we return to the scruffy child with the object of our quest, the Despicable Orb, we discover he has been elected mayor. He takes us immediately to Melvin, shatters the glass coffin, and inserts the Orb into the knight’s skull. Suddenly the lowering clouds part and flowers bloom, crops flourish, and springs flow. Melvin sits up.

“Melvin offers you his kingdom’s treasures,” Sam says. “He takes you to a room heaped with coins and precious items.” For several minutes Sam does nothing but roll dice and recite the contents of the treasure room, which we divide up and record on our character sheets.

“Does it seem like Melvin likes me?” I finally ask.

Sam rolls dice. “Could be.”

“I ask if he has a girlfriend.”

“My comatose condition prevented me from forming personal attachments, Melvin says.”

“Okay. But what are your plans for the future?” It seems a womanly question—at least on TV it is.

“Well, protect the kingdom, obviously. But otherwise, go fly fishing. Play croquet.”

“I love fly fishing! I love croquet!” I enthuse. “I always want the yellow mallet.”

“I always want the blue!” Finally, Sam is getting into the spirit of it.

“What a coincidence. What’s your favourite book, Melvin?”

“Gilgamesh. The tablets are kind of heavy for reading in bed, but hey, totally worth it.”

“I love Gilgamesh! Have you read Ovid?”

“No, I wanted to start the Metamorphoses when this happened.” Sam points to his head. “But Farah, fly fishing, that’s kind of a man’s sport, you know? Out with the boys.”

“I understand, Melvy. I can make you sandwiches to take with you. I have a magic touch with the mayonnaise.”

“And the bologna,” Dennis puts in.

“Can we fast forward, here?” Terry says. “I’m going to the tavern for a wench. Or several wenches. You said the kingdom was ours, right?”

“Alright,” Sam says. “Farah and Melvin get married. Grog and Tattoo go to the tavern. End of adventure.”

I must say, I like being married. Even to an NPC. I picture myself sashaying off with Melvin by my side to our new castle, richly decorated in the Ottoman style. Go ahead, laugh, but you learn a lot about yourself in this game.

Dennis, Terry, Sam, and I go off to McDonald’s to celebrate. It’s like, you need to consume something real after all that, to feel reality penetrate your body. And fast food is very real. Dennis tells us he’s working on his own dungeon. The quest will be to rescue a “dragon in distress.” 

“Are you going to keep your nymphomaniac?” Terry asks through a mouthful of Big Mac.

“She’s free spirited,” I retort.

But sucking on my shake, I decide that maybe I’m at the end of Farah’s arc. It’s like she’s arrived where she was going—as if, unlike me, she knew she wasn’t a person to begin with, she was only a happy ending. I have to break up with her, it. And to create someone else. Someone—I don’t know—more down to earth, more real. Possibly a gnome.

*

Of course I had it all wrong, back then. I couldn’t make myself who I wanted to be. Instead, those others made me who I am. All of them, oh so pretty.