A new video game has appeared on the market. It’s called ‘Just Say No’, its purpose is to teach young people to save themselves for marriage. The idea is to keep your virginity as you pass through a series of adventures, each level more challenging than the last. The first hurdles include a teenage crush, peer pressure, curiosity and such. If you stick to your guns and say no, you find yourself having to deal with pleading, arguments, persuasion, threats and seduction. Holding out when he gives you a diamond engagement ring poses an insurmountable problem for many players. At the highest levels, obstacles like barbiturates slipped into your soft drink and attempted rape stand in your way. One false step, give him just one inch or allow yourself to be overpowered, and you’re fucked.

If you come through them all intacta, your reward is a dream marriage. You see yourself in a white wedding gown. Your father escorts you down the aisle to where the perfect husband waits for you in front of the altar with a gold ring. The organist is playing the Wedding March from Lohengrin. Wedding bells peal.

I am told the game ends there. I have yet to make it that far; I don’t even get close. In that, at least, the game resembles real life.

“That’s all there is to it?” I asked. “No consummation?”

“No.”

“They make you go through all that frustration, and what do you get for it? When I play, my only reason for not giving in is that I had sex with that one the last time I played, and I want to see who’s next in line.”

“So tell me, Lizzie, is the sex good?”

“You mean in the game? What sex? All you get is flashing lights saying you lost followed my an on-screen moral lecture. What a waste of time and money!”

“But the game is very popular. Kids say they can relate to it, that it’s exactly like what they go through every day.”

“That’s because they’re young, and the game ends when you get married. What do they know about marriage? Less than nothing. Happily ever after. No hostile in-laws, no screaming infants, no dwindling sex life, no infidelities, no ...”

“None of that should happen. You’ve won the perfect husband.”

“But how can you be sure that among all the men you’ve put off you’ve chosen the right one?”

“Because he’s a Christian.”

“What if it turns out he’s gay?”

“He won’t be. I told you: he’s a Christian.”

There’s no denying that ‘Just Say No’ is all the rage. It has proved a gold mine for the company that patented it. At the urging of an overwhelming majority of their State legislators, the game is now available on all public high school computers in Texas, Kansas and Florida, and a number of other states are expected to follow suit within the next few months. Tens, if not hundreds of thousands of families who used to look on video games as the work of Satan have bought PlayStation consoles for their children. Of course the youngsters immediately go and purchase other games without their parents’ knowledge. The exact statistics have yet to be calculated, but there’s little doubt that the industry as a whole has benefitted immeasurably.

Not everyone is pleased with the game, however. Public health workers, school guidance counselors, Planned Parenthood and feminist organizations have attacked it as unrealistic (tell me about it!) and downright dangerous because it doesn’t deal with the consequences of having sex before you’re ready for it. The makers of the game say they’re working on it, and are even considering including a virtual abortion in ‘Just Say No II’. (Why would I want to terminate a virtual pregnancy? A virtual baby I can deal with.) To objections that they completely ignore safe sex practices and birth control, they reply that since the object of the game is not to have sex, such issues are irrelevant. According to them, the only safe sex is abstinence, which makes the heart grow fonder.

Some detractors point out that somewhere around eighty-five percent of kids who play the game are having real life sex already, and that for them the game is little more than an escapist mechanism to make them feel good about themselves. The makers of the game argue that it will convince that if they stop having sex it will make them feel better, to which the detractors reply, “All the more reason to make safe sex and birth control part of the game.”

So the arguments, counter-arguments and mutual accusations go on. They probably will indefinitely. The game has not been out long enough to determine if the teenage pregnancy rate has decreased, and professional ethicists unaffiliated with any religious group remind us that if it does, an argument built on the post hoc, propter hoc fallacy proves nothing. In the meantime I continue to play the game, getting a little further each time, while I wait for a rival company to come out with ‘Just Say Yes’ so I can find out how it feels to have a virtual orgasm.

"Virtual Virtue"
Copyright: © 2009 Anel Viz

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Anel Viz turned to writing about four years ago. His stories, prose poems and opinion pieces have been published on line and in print.

We’d been talking for not much more than ten minutes when he said it. For reasons which will soon become abundantly clear, I cannot remember what we were talking about exactly. I suppose when you get right down to it we had been talking about nothing, just one of those idle conversations that pop up between two people who happen to be sharing a park bench, which is how we met. But the topic of our conversation doesn’t matter, any more than it matters which of us spoke first. What does matter is that what he said did not in any way follow from what we were talking about. Out of the blue, and in the most matter-of-fact tone of voice imaginable, he up and says, “You know, I’d really like to have sex with you”.

He caught me totally unprepared. I didn’t know how to respond. It didn’t occur to me to punch him in the face; I’m not the kind of guy who goes around hitting people. My mind simply went blank.

He was pleasant enough and not at all bad looking, a few years older than I, but still... The park did not have a reputation for being a homosexual hangout. I had come there to read my newspaper. I had no clue what could have prompted his remark. He couldn’t have been reading my mind, since sex with anyone wasn’t something I had on it. And he put it so bluntly too, without the faintest trace of lust in his voice! It sounded more like an observation than a proposition, not at all your typical pick-up line.

I’m only speculating on how I would have assessed the situation. As I said, my mind went blank, and I just sat there.

“So? How about it?”

“Just give me a moment to collect my thoughts.”

“Take your time.”

He delivered his follow-up question in the same noncommittal fashion, as if it were all one to him. I detected nothing sinister in his manner. What do you make of a person like that?

“So what do you think?”

“I don’t think. I’m trying to collect my thoughts, but it’s as if I didn’t have a thought in my head.”

“That’s because I collected them for you.”

“You what?”

“Collected your thoughts. It’s sort of a hobby. I collect thoughts.”

“You collected my thoughts? You collected MY thoughts?”

“Yes.”

“I want them back!”

“Sorry. Finders keeps, as they say. Besides, I can’t give them back. I threw them out. It was all a lot of rubbish anyway, a bunch of pseudo-intellectual gibberish that had nothing to do with me. It was very rude of you, letting your mind wander like that.”

“You go picking my brain – no, pick pocketing my brain – and then you accuse me of being rude!”

“Oh come now! Lots of people are willing to share their thoughts.”

“This isn’t sharing. This is theft!”

“Well, if that’s how you’re going to be about it. Here.” He reached into his pocket and handed me a coin.

“What’s that?”

“A penny. For your thoughts.”

“This is outrageous!”

“You’re not going to ask for more, are you? I already told you what I think they’re worth. And it’s just for your thoughts, mind you. I don’t pay for sex. Nor do I ask to be paid.”

“You take away my thoughts, rob me of the very essence of my personality, and on top of that you expect me to go to bed with you?”

“Yes. You’re in the perfect frame of mind for it. Not calm perhaps, but collected. And without a lot of trivial, self-indulgent thoughts to get in the way, you can become one with your body. It will be a tantric experience. For me, too. I haven’t a thought in my head. That’s why I have to collect them.”

“You mean you throw everybody’s thoughts away?”

“Yes. I have yet to come across a thought worth keeping. Unlike most collectors, I hate clutter. It’s amazing, the nonsense that goes through most people’s heads.”

“You... you’re nothing but a psychic voyeur!”

“Admit it. You’re intrigued.”

“I admit nothing of the sort!”

“There you go letting your intellect take over. You’re resisting me.”

“You’re damn straight I’m resisting you!”

“You shouldn’t, you know. Not if you want the sex to be good.”

“What sex?”

“The sex we’re going to have together.”

By now I did feel like punching him in the nose. But how would I defend myself against assault charges when my mind had gone blank?

I stared at him, but couldn’t stare him down. He just returned my gaze, not even blinking. I got up and walked away without a thought in my head.

"The Collector"

Copyright: © 2009 Anel Viz
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Anel Viz turned to writing about four years ago. His stories, prose poems and opinion pieces have been published on line and in print.