Yeah, it was a lot to take in.
Now, maybe my brain got jolted by my fall—but maybe, just maybe, it was a sign. A message. A calling to be something great, to be something bigger and better than what I was. And to kick the crap out of the little turds who kept bullying me.
I thought about it for a sec, shrugged, and chose the call to greatness and ass-kicking.
My attackers were on me in a flash. I leapt up, computer box in hand, and smashed Ramrod over the head, knocking him out cold. Ugh!
I quickly disarmed Razor Frank, who was only carrying a disposable Bic. Shing!
I spun around and caught One-Eyed John right in his pudgy loose gut. Grunt!
And finally, saving my best for last, I walloped that little shit Steve right in his ass. For a second I thought about wedging my foot there for payback, but I decided I was better than that, and I settled for spanking him like the little bitch he was. Oof!
The rest of the mob—there must’ve been at least nine more—saw my utter, unstoppable dominance, turned tail, and ran for their lives.
Lying in the dust, Steve looked up at me and squinted. “Who—who are you?”
Which was kinda weird, because we all went to the same school, and my mom was actually their teacher, so they really should’ve known my name, but it was a powerful moment and I was sick of my old weak identity anyway, so I just went with it. I chose a new name. A name forged in the flames of the sun, born in the cry of the hawk, and suckled on the sweet teat of Victory.
“The name is Dr Disrespect.”
For some weird, supernatural reason, there was this amazing, badass reverb when I said it:
“The name-ame-ame is Doctor-octor-octor Disrespect-ect-ect-ect.”
Steve frowned. “Why are you making that funny echo noise with your mouth?”
“Shut up,” I said. “Or I really will shove this Commodore 64 up your butt.”
At that very moment, I felt my jawline harden and square up, my voice grow deeper by 2.3 octaves, and the first young tendrils of Slick Daddy sprout on my upper lip. Shit, I think my mullet even grew another couple inches in the back.
The punks ran in fear. I picked up the mysterious, fateful Commodore 64 to take home as my mighty prize. And then some old fat dude stuck his head out a door in the alleyway and screamed at me.
“Yo, you gotta pay for that fucking thing!”
Turns out I’d fallen right outside a CompuLand loading dock, and my mystical miracle machine was just part of a big new shipment. Not really sure how I missed that, because there was a giant CompuLand sign right above the door, but whatever.
The old me would’ve apologized and begged forgiveness, but the new me just flipped him off and stole it. Which was doing him a favor anyway, because the box was a gory mess and he really should’ve been selling Super Nintendos or IBMs or something. I mean, it was 1992, for shit’s sake.
Back home, I plugged the computer into our TV, this dusty old black-and-white RCA. I hooked up the joystick that I’d also stolen, and I turned it on.
As I started to play my very first game of Contra, I could feel the electricity running through my body. I could sense the spirit of the warrior twitching in my twitchy abdominals, and I could hear my destiny of greatness calling to me in the wind.
“Woooleee-woooo! Wooooddleeeeee-wooooooo! Woo-wooo!”
That’s what destiny sounds like, man.
Immediately I dominated.
My parents watched in awe from the other room. Honestly, they were pretty good parents, even if they were baby-butt soft. They even bought me a Super Nintendo the next day, because seriously, it was 1992. And also because they’d finally started to guess what I already knew: that their son was meant for greatness. For a reign of supremacy unprecedented in modern gaming. For a garage full of Lamborghinis and a vertical leap of no less than thirty-seven inches.
The Doctor was born.
A Short Break
Anyone else feel psychically exhausted by the First Dimensional journey of my creation?
What I like to do, during these rare moments when I’m overcome by raw sentimentality, I like to kind of shake it off, you know? Let the vibrations of the experience work their way through my stunning six-foot-eight frame.
So right now, let’s stand up together, okay? Get that lazy, flabby, book-reading ass of yours out of your chair and start hearing the music, all right? Yeah, that’s it—a super-badass electronic beatbox just running through your brain.
Bump-tsshhh.
Bump-tsshhh-tsshhh.
Yeah, there it is.
Now let’s add a sexy, smooth lyric. Just imagine this light, feathery whisper of a voice.
“They call him Doc!”
Oh yeah. There it is.
Now we’re gonna move our bodies, exactly like this:
Turn that head to the left, to the left.
Now turn it to the right, to the right.
Now flick that mullet to the left, to the left.
Now flick it to the right, to the right.
Now thrust those hips to the left, to the left.
Now thrust them to the right, to the right.
Bump-tsshhh.
Bump-tsshhh-tsshhh.
“They call him Doc!”
Congratulations, you’ve been emotionally cleansed. You’re welcome.
MY ORIGIN IN DIMENSION R
Why should Dimension One always be followed by Dimension Two? Trite conventions are for weaklings and runners-up.
My second origin took place in Dimension R, the coolest dimension of them all. In this dimension things started out very different than they did in the last one.
In this dimension, instead of small, I was big for my age. Instead of long luxurious hair, I had a crew cut. Instead of a cute face with a weak jaw, I had a strong jaw but I was ridiculously ugly because of my crew cut.
And I was a girl. And I had this big fighting robot spider I controlled telepathically. And I had a cartoon mallet I used to bonk bad guys on the head. And I called my enemies “turtle-slappers and biscuit-boxers.” And my name was Spider-Man. Oh, Spider-Verse already did all that shit? All right, fine. Never mind this paragraph, then.
But all the other stuff is true, and I also lived in Sacramento, which in Northern California is pretty much the exact opposite of Oakland. And my dad was a teacher while my mom sold used Chevys. If that doesn’t blow your mind, I can’t fix stupid.
In this dimension, by the time I was ten I was already playing video games obsessively with my friends. Every day we’d swarm the local arcade, Pinball Pedro’s, engulf it with our youthful energy and machismo, and claim every game as our own—WWF WrestleFest, TMNT, Fatal Fury, and never, ever Michael Jackson’s Moonwalker, which was for pussies.
I completely dominated all the other children in my gang. Their names were Ramrod and One-Eyed John and Razor Frank and Steve. In this dimension, they were my boot-licking lackeys, and they were also all different ethnicities than their counterparts in Dimension One, like Razor Frank went from being Hui Chinese to being Zhuang Chinese. You kinda had to be there, but trust me, it was cool.
I never lost a single game, knew nothing of failure or the probably bitter taste of defeat. And I was a grade-A, expert shit-talker.
My specialty was getting in other kids’ heads, setting up shop there, and just kind of fucking around. Like if I was playing Razor Frank in WWF WrestleFest, I’d be like, “Yo, Frank, how is it that I’m only ten and I’m already your daddy? Like, is that even biologically possible? Like, can my future sperm magically go back in time, impregnate your mom, and somehow make you my bitch of a son?”
The kids would laugh, and Razor Frank would say something in Zhuang, because I don’t think he even knew English, and then I’d use Sgt. Slaughter to body-slam his ass.
So I was pretty much the best. But I could sense there was something more. A higher plane of dominance, a more electric arena of competition I hadn’t yet tapped.
I found it in the back
corner of Pinball Pedro’s, where the grown-ups played Street Fighter II at the big-money table. These dudes were the real winners in town, you know? We’re talking guys with ponytails and thumb rings. Men in their thirties who lived with their parents, couldn’t hold a steady job, but held the top record on the arcade’s Ms. Pac-Man. The fucking champions of the only arena I knew.
And the stakes? The stakes were massive. Not cash—cash was for suckers and for dudes who had cash. No, these guys played with the only real currency of value in Pinball Pedro’s, these little orange paper prize tickets you could trade in for cool shit at the prize window. A couple tix would only get you a little plastic spider ring or some shit like that, but stack up enough and you could get some major high-tech hardware, like a Discman. Well, not a real Discman, I think it was a Sanyo or something, but still pretty badass.
I’d watch these balding giants of manhood from afar, my eyes wide in awe and envy as Blanka gnawed heads and Ryu threw “Hadouken!!” and giant stacks of prize tickets changed hands faster than a Chun-Li helicopter kick. I studied the moves, soaked up the knowledge, and something told me deep down that maybe, just maybe, I could compete with these titans who were old enough to (probably) have pubes.
But for the first time in my cocky young life, I didn’t have the guts to try. Most important, I didn’t have enough prize tickets to bet.
Until one day I saw them playing a new game, their cherished Street Fighter II pushed to the side like a bowl of soggy Mr. T cereal. This new game had a level of action that made Street Fighter II pale in comparison. A level of violence. Of speed. Of momentum.
This new game was Mortal Kombat.
Blood spattering, heads decapitating, spinal cords dripping, lightning blasts exploding, screams of agony and rage and “FINISH HIM!” echoing everywhere! I’d never seen anything like it.
I had to play it. Had to. But how?
I pushed my way through the crowd of greasy goatees and black pleather jackets, elbowing fuckers out of my way until I finally grabbed a joystick for myself.
“Hey,” someone shouted, “you got enough tickets, kid?”
I was about to lie my ass off, when suddenly the crowd parted and a man stepped out of the shadows. He was skinny and pale, with a scraggly little mustache. He might’ve been twenty-five or he might’ve been forty—he had one of those weird young-old faces. He eyed the mob around me, pulled out a switchblade, and flicked it open, revealing a gleaming black plastic comb. He ran it through his oily, thinning hair. It was impossible not to be impressed.
“I’ll cover him.”
He slammed down a fat wad of tickets. It was a crazy-huge bet. I mean, I could’ve bought, like, a brand-new solar calculator with that kind of paper!
So it was like, fuck, you know? The pressure was on, the buildup was just insane, I had no idea what was gonna happen. Suddenly all my shit-talking arrogance just drained out of my body. I totally choked up, my mouth got all dry and sandpapery, and I went straight-up silent. My hands were sweating like a muscleman prizefighter’s, my adrenaline was coursing through my veins like a Lambo at full throttle, my heart was pounding like an ancient shaman’s drum.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
So I gulped… Took the controls… Chose Raiden as my fighter because he reminded me of Big Trouble in Little China… So much anticipation… So much suspense… So much anxiety…
And then, yeah, I pretty much just lost.
And, you know, that was it.
Look, I really don’t know what else to tell you. I lost, okay? Some old dude in sweatpants with a ponytail and two thumb rings picked Sub-Zero and he beat my ten-year-old butt. I’m not going to give you the play-by-play, because honestly it was pretty embarrassing and losing is not, like, part of my brand. I’m seriously already tired of writing about this stupid little story of me actually losing for the very first time in my Dimension R life.
Anyway, after I got totally destroyed by this random guy—and let’s keep in mind I’d never even played this game before and I was just ten, all right?—the skinny switchblade-comb guy came over. Still feeling like shit and totally unlike myself, I started to apologize for losing his huge stack of tickets.
He cut me off almost immediately.
“Boy,” he said, “I’ve been watching you… from the shadows.”
His voice was rough and scratchy, like Splinter’s in TMNT.
“Whoa—you mean like the creepy bike-store owner Mr. Horton watches Arnold and Dudley in that very special episode of Diff’rent Strokes?”
(And if you’re too young to get that reference, LOOK IT UP. Lazy-ass Gen Z–ers.)
“No,” he said. “Not like Mr. Horton, although that’s a great reference. I’ve been watching you, and I’ve seen that you’re not like others. You talk too much, it is true. But you do not run from the dark places. You seek out conflict. You crave battle. You have talent. You simply need a teacher to help you hone it.
“I offer myself, humbly, as that teacher.”
He used the switchblade comb on his mustache, which was weird because it was really thin, ratty, and pubey, so the comb was just going through like three long gross hairs.
“Who—who are you?”
“I?” he said. “I am the owner of this fine pinball establishment. I lurk in the shadows, hiding, seeing all, waiting for a student like you. You may call me… ‘Sensei.’ ”
Suddenly this big blond lady stuck her head out from behind the prize counter.
“What the hell you say, Billy?” she shouted.
Sensei Billy rolled his eyes.
“Fine,” he said, his voice no longer rough or scratchy. “My mom owns the place. But I run it for her.”
“Say what?” she yelled.
“I help her.”
“My ass!”
“Okay, so I just kind of hang out and play video games. But I’m very, very good at video games.”
“Get a job and a haircut!”
He snapped the switchblade comb shut like a boss.
“I must warn you,” he continued. “The training will be vicious. It will challenge your mind, punish your body, perhaps even shatter your very soul. You may actually die.”
I shrugged. “Sure, why not?”
“Cool,” he said. “So you, uh, want to set, like, a time to meet or something? I’m pretty much always free.”
“Nah, that’s okay,” I said, heading for the door. “But I’ll probably see you around or whatever.”
“Great!” he called as it shut behind me. “Well, I’m mostly just here, so, you know—”
I didn’t actually hear the end of his sentence because I was already gone. It probably wasn’t important.
But then, over the next few weeks, my life turned into this kick-ass training montage straight out of Rocky IV, except I was both Rocky and Drago at the same time. And this was totally, absolutely real:
Out of nowhere all of a sudden, that awesome Joe Esposito song “You’re the Best” from The Karate Kid started blasting everywhere.
Sensei Billy told me to mop the floor. I asked him if that would teach me some kind of cool muscle memory, and he told me his mom made him do it so he figured he’d make me do it. I told him to fuck off.
Sensei Billy shouted, “Again! Again!” for no reason.
I ran around the block a couple times while Sensei Billy smoked a clove.
Sensei Billy brought out an old Casio synthesizer and made me play arpeggios to enhance my finger speed and agility, using both hands, starting at middle C and going faster and faster. I’d never played before, but I was like this natural virtuoso. Notes of fragrant sonic honey rained forth from my fingertips. Small children passing by began to weep. I finished the exercise, smashed the Casio to the ground, and never played again. I was just too good for this broken world.
Just kidding, I sucked. I shouted, “What the hell does this have to do with Mortal Kombat?!,” smashed the Casio to the ground, and never played again.
I told Sensei B
illy that if we didn’t start actually playing Mortal Kombat immediately, I was gonna fucking leave and never come back.
Sensei Billy agreed, then pressed stop on his Sanyo boom box. “You’re the Best” stopped playing, and Sensei Billy muttered, “Goddamn song was driving me nuts anyway.”
So yeah, it was all pretty frustrating and I lost respect for him almost immediately. But it did help me get my confidence back, because I was like, “I’m way cooler than this idiot, and I’m only ten.” After all that garbage, he finally started teaching me about Mortal Kombat.
“Let me guess,” Sensei Billy said. “You chose Raiden because he reminded you of Big Trouble in Little China.”
“Duh.”
“You have good taste in movies, but that was a mistake. He’s a split second slower than other characters, and he has a tell whenever he performs his flying-torpedo move. It’s lightning fast—haha, see what I did there?—but he crouches right before he takes off. A good player will see this, block the move, and effectively counterattack before you can recover.”
I thought about it for a second. Finally there was nothing I could do but admit it.
“Shit,” I said, “you said something that makes sense.”
“Thank you,” he said. “The optimal fighter to choose is Sub-Zero. He’s as quick as anyone, his recovery time is fast, so you can flow from one move to another almost seamlessly, and if you time his slide attack right, you can ‘juggle’ your blows—hitting your opponent with a combination of punches and kicks while he’s still stunned. Cheap, but effective. And his ice blast is faster than the spear throw of Scorpion, his duplicate. Plus, everyone knows blue is cooler than yellow.”
Violence. Speed. Momentum. Page 2