Alone Together: How A Pandemic And Donkey Kong Country Helped Me See That I Wasn't Alone
by Amy Estes
Art by Leah Dockrill
“Alone Together” is the runner up of our “Quarantine” Creative Non-fiction Contest. Judge Sarah McGlinchey Aronson shares why she chose Estes’ essay as the runner up:
Amy Estes' essay was also excellent! She included a lot of deep, excellent personal reflection from the narrator and vivid detail, and carried it through to the end. The one advantage I think Henry's essay had was that Henry brought the other part of the narrator's reflection, and the other people in her essay, the customers, to life for the reader, and I don't quite think Estes did that with the narrator's wife, Amy.
I didn’t meet my wife until I was 35 years old. Before her, I didn’t believe I would ever find love. I didn’t come out until I was 30, and besides one spectacular heartbreak, I hadn’t found a woman with whom I wanted to build a life. I went on half-hearted dates occasionally, but would always return to the safety of my apartment to enjoy my solitude. I told people that if I was alone forever, I would be okay. I said it so many times that I convinced myself.
Everything changed when I met Amy (yes, we are both named Amy). We both arrived hilariously early to our first date at a local bar. Amy was wearing a striped linen shirt that brought out the blue in her eyes. It was an immediate oh shit moment in my heart. Before the date, I’d promised myself the same thing I promised before every date: I would stay for 20 minutes or one beer, whichever was shorter, and if it was terrible, I would excuse myself, stop for tacos, go home and watch The Office with my dog, Hank.
I had an unexpectedly great time on our first date. One hour and two beers in, we shared an order of tacos, instead of the solo meal I’d imagined. While we are both decidedly “home by nine” type of gals, that night, we stayed for hours, mocking the antics of a loud group of young women who were aiming to take “hot bar selfies!” and talking about our lives growing up in small, conservative cities. Not only did Amy make me laugh so hard I cried, I felt instantly comfortable in her presence. Before the end of the date, we’d made plans to hang out again. We crammed in four additional dates during the first week we met. I was enchanted.
Amy is kind, disarming, intelligent, and deeply funny — the sort of person everyone loves to talk to. I wasn’t foolish enough to believe in love at first sight, but for the first time in many years, rather than wanting to be alone in my life, counting the minutes before I could return home to blissful silence, I found myself wanting to spend more time with her.
One of the things that drew me to Amy was that she had a full life. She had been married for years, and had spent the year after her recent divorce enjoying the freedom that comes when life opens up again. Her schedule was as full as mine: happy hours, work with a non-profit, and time with people she loved. I’d built a busy life of my own — one that wasn’t exactly welcoming to potential partners. As the sole architect of my calendar, I filled my time with work, seeing my family, yoga, my budding stand-up comedy career, writing, time with friends, and the demands of my teaching job, with no consideration for how someone else would fit in with my plans. With Amy, I wanted to make the room, no question.
Within a few months, Amy and I moved in together, and exactly one year after our first date, Amy proposed to me with a delicate gold ring as we hiked under a canopy of redwood trees. I said yes immediately, stunned that I was getting a fairy tale ending that I had convinced myself I didn’t want or need. On the hottest day of the summer in 2019, we got married under a giant tree in our backyard, surrounded by the people we loved most.
Even after saying I do, my life remained basically the same. I was still busy, gone most evenings, spending my time doing stand-up comedy or writing in coffee shops. Amy met up with friends for happy hour regularly or enjoyed the blissful alone time. It worked well for us — we had both promised each other early on that neither one of us would ever make the other person feel guilty for having their own life. Friends marveled at our ability to let one another have so much freedom. I did too. I didn’t think I’d ever find someone who cherished my fierce independence. I loved Amy deeply and I knew she loved me too. I felt supported and cared for, but I’d retained my notion that even after marriage, it was still me, myself and I, navigating the world alone, but with someone I loved waiting for me to arrive home. We were on our own, together.
I didn’t anticipate a global pandemic eight months into our first year of marriage, forcing us to be home together with no distractions for months. Instead of our usual schedules of work, friends, stand-up comedy, and varied commitments, it was suddenly endless time, just the two of us. I don’t know anyone whose marriage is thriving in quarantine, but this was uncharted territory. Our rare fights suddenly escalated into more constant ones about stupid things: acquiring hand soap, sharing space, who made more messes. Our world had shifted, and we were suddenly forced to exist in a new one with no warning.
Two months into the pandemic, my wife and I hit a wall. We’d gone through the phases of quarantine: organizing, a surprise move (don’t recommend) to a larger house (do recommend), Alison Roman recipes, canceling Alison Roman, baking sourdough, making desserts, getting really into our Peloton, and most notably: getting tired of one another. I recognize what immense privilege we have to say and feel that. In the middle of a global crisis, we were well-fed, safe, and able to care for ourselves — what a gift. And yet, even under the best of conditions, life as we knew it was gone, suddenly, and we were left to face the prospect of being alone together 24/7. We had to rely on one another to support our emotional and physical well-being in ways we hadn’t before.
One Saturday morning, we kicked off the day with a truly fantastic fight — tears, yelling, doors slamming, me driving around the city listening to Phoebe Bridgers and sipping coffee, fantasizing about finding a studio apartment for me and my dog and starting my life as a recluse, safe and secure in my own ability to care for myself.
Leah Dockrill, DETOUR, Acrylic /Mixed Media painting
After a little while, I drove home, the way I always do. We reconciled, the way we always do. Even after we talked, things felt tender between us — the remainder of the morning marked by the distinct feeling that with the wrong word or glance, we’d trip a wire and be back to fighting. After processing the details of this particular argument, we moved to complaining about life in a pandemic. We decided we needed a distraction, together, to clear our heads. Seeing that we couldn’t leave the house, our options were limited.
“You know what I want?” Amy said. “A SUPER NINTENDO.”
I hadn’t played video games for years. I’d grown up playing Nintendo like many 90’s kids, logging hours beside my little brother, sitting cross-legged on the floor, and defeating varied enemies together. It was a happy memory and I was excited by the idea of having a light-hearted distraction.
“Let’s get one,” I said. “Sounds fun.”
We decided that we’d purchase the Super NES Classic (a tiny version of the one we’d loved as children that came preloaded with games). We started searching websites of local gaming stores and couldn’t find one anywhere nearby, dashing our hopes of a quick escape. We finally located one online, and when our Super Nintendo finally arrived days later, we immediately settled on playing Donkey Kong Country, which had been a childhood favorite for us both.
For the uninitiated, the premise of Donkey Kong Country is simple: two monkeys, Donkey and Diddy Kong, work to recover their banana hoard, which has been stolen by King K. Rool, a giant lizard-dragon hybrid, and his team of baddies. The game takes you through the jungle, through mines, into a factory (no one said the game made sense) and finally, onto a ship where you must defeat the final boss, King K. Rool himself.
Our Donkey Kong antics started as a fun game and an easy distraction for our evenings. We fell into a familiar routine: we’d each finish work, have dinner and then settle in for hours of Donkey Kong Country. At first, our skills were rusty and we plowed through our lives rapidly, dying at the easiest encounter with an enemy.
After a few weeks, we got legitimately good at the game, beating even the most challenging obstacles with ease. We got more and more invested, laughing at one another, taking turns beating obstacles that stumped the other, swearing, struggling, and cheering each other on. Instead of evenings consisting of separate activities in different worlds, we shared one where we could be silly and determined to defeat a common foe. When I couldn’t figure out the timing of jumping on a swinging rope over an abyss, Amy stepped in with her impeccable timing and did it for me. When she couldn’t make it past a certain level after endless tries, I would take over and beat it for her. Suddenly, we weren’t just two people working on our own, but instead, we were a team of two, determined to take down digital enemies.
Our video game personalities reflected our real ones, laid bare by our time playing together. Amy played recklessly and with imagination, willing to explore corners and crevices in hopes of finding bonus levels and extra rewards, always willing to take the risk. Her spatial awareness and focus on timing gave her advantages I didn’t have. I played more cautiously: hoarding lives and sticking to the established, safe routes. I rarely took risks in the game, choosing instead to stick with the familiar, meaning that while I typically finished levels first, I didn’t have nearly as much fun. I teased her for being wild; she chided me for playing it safe. Slowly, I realized that this wasn’t that different from our real life where I was cautious, thoughtful, and routined where Amy was open and fun. I hadn’t expected that I would get to know my wife so deeply through time spent playing a video about two cartoon monkeys, but I was.
When we got to the end of the game, Amy helped me beat a particularly challenging level, and cheered me on as I defeated King K. Rool himself, our final obstacle. While it was thrilling to win, particularly as a non-gamer, I was surprised at how sad I felt when our shared quest ended. What had started as a quarantine escape turned into a ritual I loved.
It seems silly to say that Donkey Kong Country helped my marriage become a true partnership, but it did. Somewhere along the line, as we crushed cartoon lizard rebels wearing army helmets and acquired bananas, we became a team in a way I hadn’t let myself succumb to before. Playing the game started as a reprieve from the realities of the world around us, but instead it helped us recreate the one we share every day. It provided levity in a time that could have felt heavy and dark, and showed me that while I treasured my independence, being part of a team was something special. It’s cured me of the notion that I’m alone even while we’re together. Now I know that whether we are crossing chasms filled with bananas, beating oversized dragons on pirate ships, or dealing with real-life issues, it’s not just me: it’s us.
Leah Dockrill, The London Version, Acrylic /Mixed Media painting
