Between the hours of 4:30 and 8:30am, when the sun is still just remembering that it can peak its fiery head above the small growth of trees in my tiny, overpopulated suburb, there is a man screaming at me. Short bursts come out of the crackled audio of a two-way radio, getting more intense as he realize that I don't respond. Always it is intense, this other man's screaming, though I try to avoid it as best I can. But being the meticulous guy that I am, sometimes the constant chorus of "Snake? SNAKE? SNAAAAKE?!" just cannot be avoided. Like everything, I suppose, you even get to like it.
Let me briefly point out that I'm not being screamed at in this manner --which we can heretofore refer to as "playing Metal Gear Solid V"-- for the four solid hours that I've listed above. Rather, let's call that a very generous range. As the proud-yet-confused father of a 3 week-old baby, I take these fleeting moments of tactical espionage action when I can, and I'm certainly grateful for them. In all seriousness, I didn't expect to have any time playing video games at all for these first few weeks or so as life goes through the typhoon of finding the best way to rear a child while also letting the people that birthed it retain some sanity. Every parent will tell you the same. On the other hand, I've always been an early riser, so the schedule of me putting her down at midnight, my wife feeding her between 2:30 and 3:00, and then me feed her again early in the morning has been found to be most agreeable to both our sleeping schedules, and also my appetite for sneaking up on an unsuspecting military goon and choking the hell out of him. Wouldn't you know it, when she's off her sleeping schedule, that's gratifying for a different reason, too. Metal Gear, man.
It's hard, this whole parenthood thing, but so is Metal Gear Solid V. At least, it is the way I've been playing it. Though I typically go through most video games in as bloodthirsty a manner as possible, and past Metal Gear Solid games have certainly been no exception, I'm doing my best to be as holy and true a pacifist as my tranq gun will let me through the whole ordeal so far. You can perhaps imagine my frustration, then, when I get through 45 minutes of silence --almost surgical in precision from one interrogated mook to the next-- before getting caught by some idiot that catches me in the act of doing good soldier-y spy stuff and blows my cover. Pause. Restart. Contain my screams. Plenty of right-thinking people have written reviews and articles these last few weeks about just saying "well, fuck it" and going pro-lethal, but this has become a hurdle that I simply cannot overcome. Call it pigheadedness, I suppose, but when I finish that mission, when I get that child soldier on the chopper, when I extract the opposing faction's commander, when I swipe all of the fuel that I need and nobody sees me doing any of that stuff? Elation, I tell you. There's a tickle in my chest that, well, I also get when my kid is awake and has just cracked a smile, however briefly.
The first week of fatherhood, honestly, sucks. Not this is bullshit -sucks, but more like Jesus, when is this going to get better -sucks. It is action packed in all of the ways you wish it weren't; the baby is crying, you're trying to figure out why, and sometimes feeding it and changing its diaper actually won't get your baby to stop crying. Figuring all of that out is rough going, man, no matter how much help you might be getting from the kind folks at the hospital. The last two weeks, though, have been better. You're surprised how quickly life finds its own small routines (in between the sleep when you can get it and the shrieks of a 7 pound human you love uncontrollably). Still, everything is challenge. You begin planning your day in 3 hour increments. Often, you get a half a bag of chips and call it dinner because cooking is a luxury of time you don't have. Taking care of yourself and your home must be meticulously timed, and abandoned immediately if necessary. Everything takes planning and a little bit of forethought to be executed with maximum efficiency. That is, until something out of the norm happens (like a short growth spurt that makes a baby scream and eat --somehow at the same time-- for days on end) and you have to adjust on the fly. You know, like Metal Gear.
I feel it burning in there, this new and perhaps final Metal Gear game. It is searing itself into my memories already, and finding a suitable mnemonic host in the first month of my first baby's life. Ever will the two be linked together, as other games in life-altering moments have been. Metal Gear Solid V, and all of its confounded screaming, will remind me when I took her home, fed her, swaddled her, and tried as hard as I could to get her back to sleep at 6:45 when a pivotal cut scene begins. When I look at pictures of her sleeping in mommy's arms, freaking out over the bottle we've just fed her, and wearing her first "future Batgirl" onesie, I will remember when I attached a balloon to a tank and sent it off into the clouds. Somehow, it all makes perfect sense.
At least, that's how I felt at 5:35 this morning.
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