Some friends that I met in a class on women poets bought me a people simulator computer game, The SIMS. I think it was meant to be a joke. Our class had been full of very heavy stuff. We read Irigaray and Haraway, Emily Dickinson and Sonia Sanchez. In response to the exhaustion incurred from our effort I had quipped about buying the SIMS and spending hours in meaningless pursuit and they had taken me to heart. I am now addicted to The SIMS. It’s not just the hours I spend playing the game that determine my addiction; it’s the hours I spend analyzing the psychodynamic of the game and my own disturbing compulsions when I play.

I spent a little time in the SIMS tutorial but, thinking myself to be fairly intelligent and anxious to play, I left the tutorial, created my own family, bought some empty property and moved them in. I named the man after two unrequited loves-of-my-life and I named the woman the name I often wish I had, thinking that if I had that name my life would be simpler. I had always wondered what would my life be like if I were a simple, less convoluted human, married to the man of    

Things went badly. My SIMS hated each other -- got into stormy physical battles. They wouldn’t sleep together so one of them always spent the night on the couch. The man took a job, which led him into the corporate world, and the woman got so depressed I couldn’t even get her to look for a job.  The game gave me some hints on improvements I could make but life was grim in my little rectangular house.

Then I noticed that when they watched television together or ate pizza together they talked and their relationship got better. It turns out that SIMS couples aren’t automatically in love. They have to work at their relationship. Eventually, they got happier, she got a job and they had more money. I spent every penny they made redesigning the house and buying them better stuff. I loved redesigning the house. I drove them through hours of self-improvement just so that they could make more money, so, in turn, I could pick better wallpaper.

I should make note of the fact that none of my own attempts at self-improvement or a happier life ever led to corporate advance, better stuff or wallpaper. I’d been in India, at the foot of a guru; had a rock n roll band in Boulder Colorado; and worked in restaurants from New York to San Francisco -- none of which resulted in much of a savings account or even health insurance. And pizza and television did not save any of my relationships. My college degree is in the humanities. Enough said.

Things were going well in the first SIMS family. And then I made the big mistake. I adopted a baby. It was a mistake because somebody had to loose their job so that they could stay home and take care of the baby. The only thing that made me feel better about this was that I forced the man to loose his corporate job so that the woman could advance in her medical career. I got him an easel and a guitar. When he reentered the work place it was as a well-trained musician ready for daily advance in the entertainment track. .

The only reason I started developing friendships for my SIMS was because, at a certain point, they couldn’t advance in their careers with out them. Of course this only expanded my addiction since more friends meant more people with houses to remodel. By this time I was periodically consulting the game’s “help” feature to figure out how to make things happen faster. And, I inadvertently created a Virgo who ended up in the military. I had to be sure that didn’t happen again.

I am mindful of diversity in my family creations. I have all races represented and there are two same sex couples, one of which is actually a ménage a trois. I tried to make sure the entire Zodiac was in the mix. However, Capricorns are not that social and don’t want to exercise. I wouldn’t care about anyone wanting to exercise if it didn’t mean getting them to have fun while earning personality points.  Leos need a lot of attention but a Pisces can go days with out seeing their friends.

When I finally made older SIMS, I moved them into the original house to act as grandparents for a second baby. In an attempt to make amends for what seemed ageist in that couple’s assigned life I made an older, same-sex, mixed-race couple. I learned a money cheat, from a SIMS enthusiast web site, so I could build them a huge house and allowed them to spend a long time in self-improvement before they entered the work place. These seniors will be Titans.  

All this meant hours of playing the game. I would play until I lost feeling in my hand. I would wake up thinking about a way to restructure a kitchen. One night I went to bed, after separating a SIMS couple and I dreamt about their little faces in the little personality boxes. Tears were pouring out of their little eyes. I reunited them before I ate breakfast.

I totally dominate my SIMS. I click them through lists of actions and get frustrated when they move too slowly.  Even when I noticed that I was squelching things, like a SIMS idea to hug their child, I didn’t stop my crazed clicking. I’ve tried to sit back and watch but it’s too difficult. SIMS will do crazy things if left to their own impulses. Two minutes before the carpool is about to arrive they’ll decide to grill hamburgers. I pride myself on how often my SIMS are already waiting at the curb for their carpool. Let me say that again.  I pride myself on how often my SIMS are waiting at the curb for their carpool. I’m obviously in trouble.

At one point I called the teacher from that class on women poets. I was telling her that it was more fun to play with the richer and more established SIMS and I complained that the maid didn’t always clean everything and I wouldn’t know that until I sent a child to take a bath and found the tub dirty. I had fired the maid twice for insubordination. My teacher made a comment about my stratified society. I became defensive. Clearly I needed help. I sent emails my friends asking them to come and take my laptop away but remembering me as the person who read Foucault and wrote papers about Rosa Luxemburg they didn’t take me seriously. 

They don’t know that I spent the last of my student loan money on the SIMS expansion pack, “Living Large” so that I could have more wallpaper. My friends don’t know, despite my penchant for long harangues on ethics, I used the money cheat so that I could buy a big screen television. They don’t know that I hum along with the cheesy SIMS shopping mall music when I’m in a redecorating frenzy. And they don’t know that I actually speak the SIMS obscure language. When the kids leave for

I haven’t applied for grad school or a job or a grant. I haven’t read the novel I was in the middle of when I started this game playing. Issues of Harpers and The Nation are piling up around me. I tried to concentrate on the Ashcroft hearings but I was distracted by my Virgo SIMS Military career advancement. I have built an entire community of SIMS friends but I haven’t returned e-mail or called my own friends. My own emotional highs and lows are reflected in the successes or failures of my SIMS.

Everyone, with a new computer, gets temporarily hooked on Solitaire or Free Cell. I once I got a free, limited version of Pac Man that I got caught up in for a while but it was nothing like The SIMS. I don’t actually play this game. It has become my life. In the SIMS, if I have a bad day, I just don’t save that game and then I play the game again until things work out the way I want them.  Maxis, the creator of the SIMS, has released another expansion pack, “House Party”.  Please, someone hide my credit card.