FOR WHOM THE INTERSTATE HIGHWAY TOLLS (THOUGH IT DEPENDS ON HOW MANY AXLES YOU HAVE)

*Warning… This post unexpectedly becomes a Hemingway short story about midway through. I'm not sure why.*

So I spent much of last weekend slurping marinara sauce and healing the sick. No, I wasn’t a missionary doctor stationed in Italy. Or God. On the contrary, I was a cleric in an AD&D game at the home of a friend named Dan, who I knew from back in college. He recently moved to our nation’s capital, and as the saying goes, if Solomon can’t go to the tabletop RPG, then…

But before that happened, there was the road trip up from NYC. It was me, two college chums named Hal and Maggie – the latter of whom drove us up in her car – and a plastic grocery bag full of berries, marshmallows, Cheez-Its and candy corn. Words cannot describe how mirthful a time we had. True, I occasionally got antsy, but that only happened when Maggie let go of the steering wheel with either one or both hands, in order to use said appendages to beat the tar out of Hal.

Since a car ride from New York to D.C. only takes four to five hours, not taking into account the volume of traffic, we reached the residence of Dan in the early afternoon. Their family home is beautiful, and words cannot begin to describe the extent of the hospitality extended by Dan and his mom. …Okay, the words “Free Pizza” might be a good start. Dan’s mom bought us free pizza, and it was delicious pizza from a place down the street!

After gorging ourselves on mozzarella and pepperoni (I gorged myself at least. I’m actually kind of embarrassed by it), our party gathered together to plot out the intricacies of the night’s game. Then Mags took a nap and Donny-Clark – yet another fellow alumnus – showed up to share in the revelry. But first we joined Dan’s mom and stepfather in the cozy living room to make small talk with various people from his mother’s prominent non-profit organization.

The conversation revolved around Japanese art and what it’s like to live in the land of the rising sun. These were both topics of which I had no prior knowledge, so I just nodded a lot and ate hummus. At some point, we freeloaders snuck away, but not before piling up a few plates with lasagna and salad – at Dan’s mother’s request, of course. Then off we went to a secluded wing of the house. We played the tabletop role-playing game and it was good. We ate the food and it was good, and we drank diet coke and root beer.

This was actually my first time playing D&D. I should have taken a nap in the car or while we were sitting in Dan’s parlor, because around two in the morning I felt the weakness in my eyelids while the others rolled the dice and killed monsters like it was only the afternoon. But we still laughed and joked with Hal, who had written our adventure and sat there behind his notebook, scribbling things in the pages of the book or hiding his face behind it like a mask. Mags and Donny-Clark drew maps on graph paper, and we drank water and diet cokes straight from the electric icebox.

Then it was two in the morning and we went upstairs, where we ate fresh cookies and went to bed in the dining room on inflatable mattresses that were comfortable, like sleeping on air with a thin layer of foam. Dan’s mother gave us blankets and they were warm, and when we fell asleep, our stomachs were filled with food and good cheer.

The next morning, we deflated the mattresses and put the pillows and blankets into a pile to make room for the long table again. We drank coffee and tea for breakfast, and ate bagels that were chewy and good, and strawberries that were sweet and juicy. I did not remember the last time I had eaten a bagel, so I tried to eat mine slowly. I split it down the middle with a knife and put butter on one half and cheddar cheese on the other. Then we said “Thank you” over and over again to Dan’s mother and stepfather, and they said, “You’re very welcome” to us. The cookies were still fresh inside their plastic bags, so we ate those and some chocolate, and we made more tea from the rest of the boiled water in the kettle.

Our gaming party continued exploring the dungeon Hal had dreamt up. We killed cat monsters who wanted to collect our hearts. We said the incantations that created explosions out of thin air. There was a room where objects fell down, then fell back up, and when we walked into the same space our own bodies fell down before falling back up. We rolled dice, and listened to Hal as he described rooms full of fire. Then Dan the flying wizard, Donny-Clark the fighter and Mags – who might have been a thief or a wizard – went into the room full of fire and drew their weapons against a great cast beast. It was nine monsters in one body, each more terrible than the last. But we killed it; after killing it, we took its claws and other body parts for souvenirs.

When the last cat monster fell dead upon the sword, we realized it was late, so we said good-bye to Dan and put our things in Mags’ car. We drove on the highway past the capital until we reached a place full of clean, sterile-looking buildings. There we had dinner with more friends of Hal and Mags. We ordered raw fish and thick noodles at the restaurant they recommended, and the broth that came with the noodles was good. Then we said goodbye to Donny-Clark, who was staying for another three days. H. and I went back to Mags’ car, and she drove us home, our stomachs very full of food and good cheer.