THURSDAY - SUNDAY 3/26-29/2026
Previously on ↝GARAGE ✯ MYSTIQUE↜...
Mystique and I hit the road to Boston. I also got a free Hoverboard, so now I am investigating E-Bike schematics. Stay tuned!
PART 4
Day 2 of PAX was a blast. It was a day of more games, TTRPGs and board games (I saw this really cool one about building robots to battle your friends - kind of like a mix of Voltron and Yu-Gi-Oh), and panels. But first, I had to park Misty.
I have to say, for all of Boston's strengths, it does have one fatal flaw - there is absolutely no free parking there. Everywhere there was a parking meter, a parking garage - but no regular ass free parking space. Apparently there's free parking in Boston on Sunday, but I needed to be back home by Sunday, so I had to shell out some cash to park another place.
Or so I thought - the parking meter that we parked at was broken. Like, Roxy and I were there trying to get this thing to work for 15 minutes before this real Bostonian (I could tell - he had a bag of Dunkin' donuts riding shotgun in his beater station wagon and the voice of Mark Wahlberg) told us we could pretty much just park there for free if it was broken. I do pretty much the same in Dayton anyway, so we parked Misty there and set off for PAX once again.
The parking spot was kind of far from the convention center, but in a different direction, so we passed over another part of the Boston Harbor. We saw the ship where the colonists threw the tea overboard there, and even got a picture of it! I wonder - if you took a big straw to the harbor, would it taste like tea? It's definitely had a lot of time to cold-brew.
After we passed by the harbor, we were at PAX once again, and this time we didn't mess around - we played as many games as we could and made as many friends as we could. I played some games from the Critical Reflex booth (they're the ones who publish those PSX graphics horror games, like "No, I'm Not A Human." I played a detective game from them), and then I checked out an anime-style visual novel called Rain98, which was pretty good, until the part where the player character had to put on some girl's socks. That was a bit... Freudian.
Also, there were some great games from solo devs - there was hack-and-slash game that looked like a black-and-white shonen manga that I unfortunately can't remember the name of, but it was super stylish. There was another game called "Royalty Free-For-All," which was a platform fighter whose characters were all public domain characters like Lancelot, Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz, Sweeney Todd, etc. I was never great at Smash Bros - I could hold my own with Wario, but my older brother would always destroy me - so I didn't do great playing Lilith in this game. Still, it was a lot of fun - the controls were responsive enough that I couldn't blame the controller for losing.
Roxy and I met the queer gamer group again, and we talked a little more about their plans for making games before we had to leave. I had to attend my church's Palm Sunday service on Sunday, and I had about 14 hours to travel, so before we got too comfortable in Boston, we left - much to Misty's chagrin. I think she liked it in Boston among the EVs, because it her biting back a few times when accelerating to even move.
From there, it was smooth sailing - Roxy and I stopped by a Taco Bell to get some grub first, and then we drove over to her place. She took over so that I could get a rest before my 8 hour solo drive back to Dayton, and I fell asleep in the passenger seat listening to Brennan Lee Mulligan pretend to be a haunted and traumatized adventurer on a DnD podcast.
A few hours later, it was my time to drive. After a big cup of instant coffee and some more Kenyan rice and beans and cabbage at Roxy's place, I set off, avoiding the toll roads so that I could make it back to Ohio with my sanity and bank account intact.
The drive back was perilously boring in the way every late night 8-hour drive is. The darkness of the road made it impossible to enjoy any landscape I drove by. The only thing I could see was the road ahead, made merely hazy by Misty's cloudy headlights. My only companion was the Bill Withers cassette that I brought with me that broke down halfway across PA and into "Who Is He and What Is He To You?" and the entire 4th Wave Emo Revival scene that I downloaded onto my phone. Fortunately, Misty didn't have any trouble driving 80mph, so we made good progress on the road and even cut down our ETA by almost an hour.
Good thing, too - by hour 6, running on no sleep, 2 cups of coffee, a cold bean burrito from Taco Bell, and a few oranges Roxy gave me, I was forcing myself to stay awake by spouting the ABCs backward and failing. Soon enough, I couldn't even spout the ABC's forward - unless we count "googaba" and "dilly-doo-dee" and other gibberish syllables my half-melted brain could string together. I was forced to stop at the parking lot of a motel on the PA-Ohio border, sleep for 15 minutes (which was all I could spare), and keep driving on.
Those 15 minutes made all the difference - by the time 6am rolled around, the sun started to come up, and the sun rose up over the horizon behind me, cheering me on as I made my way back home. Finally, with 2 gallons of gas and 20 minutes until the start of the Palm Sunday service to spare, Mystique and I made it back to Dayton - no one was there to wave palm leaves for us as we made our triumphal entrance, but that's OK. I need no one's validation but God's now.
Overall, Misty performed admirably, and she played nice with another driver at the wheel. I'm proud of her, and myself, for being changed by this journey. Now that we're back, we still have some work to do - namely, so work involving her valve cover gaskets and her brakes - but now that I have access to the Chilton manual through my library and a torque wrench from a garage sale, we'll face these challenges with the confidence that we can do anything, if only we love each other enough.
NEXT TIME ON ↝GARAGE ✯ MYSTIQUE↜:
Mystique gets some new cosmetics, and a grim diagnosis! Also, I pull the hoverboard apart even more, in service of creating an E-Bike - I will even have pictures to show! Keep your car tuned-up, and yourself tuned-in!
PART 3
Boston is full of EVs. Priuses, Teslas, Nissan Leafs, even an electric muscle car! It must have been every 5th car that was an EV. Of course, to support all of these, Boston was chock full of EV charging stations too. There must have been 4 or 5 stations in the 12 block stretch of Boston Roxy and I explored, each with 6 charging "pumps." What a far cry from Dayton! There, fossil fuels reign supreme. It's strange to see the amount of support for EVs in Boston, but then again, Bostonians must think it's weird to drive a car that uses dead dinosaurs (or what's left of them) as fuel. It's almost like riding a dinosaur yourself. Makes me feel like Fred Flintstone.
Unfortunately, Roxy and I did not take any EVs to get to the convention center. No, we braved the stiff and salty breeze from the Boston Harbor on our way, passing by the Chinatown gate and the Falun Gong lady who was pristinely still in meditation, the subway entrances that were domed in pyrammids of glass like the Louvre, the train station whose metal details were tarnished by regular use starting from the 19th century, the skyscrapers that glinted like long shards of obsidian in the mid-day sun, five Dunkin' Donuts, and the bridge over the harbor. After we crossed the bridge, we were accosted by a scalper who wanted to sell us tickets to PAX (we already bought those) and an Obama Foundation volunteer who wanted to sell us Hope and Change (we already bought into those). Between the two of them, I think the scalper's offer was more tempting, even if his salesmanship could use some work. At least we didn't know if PAX East would disappoint yet.
It didn't. PAX East was HUGE. It was GIGANTIC. It was HUMONGOUS. The entire convention center (and I mean the ENTIRE convention center) was stuffed top to bottom with gamers, cosplayers and developers. The main lobby swallowed us up in excitement, and the bustling crowd muscled us out into the great expo hall. The expo hall was like a massive canyon-sized swimming pool, with all of its water drained and replaced with TVs and laptops and gaming consoles of every type. It seemed like the entire game industry was there. Nintendo was there. Atari was there. The guys who made Psychonauts were there. And behind all of these industry giants were all of the indie games and publishers. I definitely wasn't going to get any job offers from Nintendo (and getting a job was the whole reason I was there anyway), so I went over to the indie games.
The first game I played was Barony, which is a voxel-art roguelike RPG. It was fun - I liked the voxel art, because it actually looked good and well shaded. Unfortunately, the developers already had a sound guy, so I looked for other games.
I played through some other games as well - there was a cute game made by some university students called "Potted Pets," a roguelike single-player fighting game, and a cool little open world game called "A Corgi's Cozy Hike." All of them already had sound guys.
After playing a couple games, Roxy and I attended a few panels - there was one called "The reality of the Indie Game Industry," where a few industry vets made predictions and basically told us to stick together and buy each other's games and give each other money. Kind of hard when I barely have any money in the first place, but OK. I hope I end up on an indie game that makes a ton of money - that would be cool. I've been part of far too many passion projects to trust these mantras of "make something you love and you'll be successful!" If that were the case, then everyone working in games would be rich - who hates video games??
After a couple more games - including a very brainy physics based puzzle game whose name I forgot, and a cute little metroidvania called "Bolt & Whalington" - Roxy and I were ready to eat. We again braved the cruel Boston wind and settled in a vegan Thai restaurant in Chinatown. I got a vegan Pad See Ew with all of the vegan meats and Roxy got a Chow Mein with all of the vegan meats. The Pad See Ew was probably the vest vegan good I had ever tried - the vegan chicken and beef were almost identical to real beef and chicken. The only disappointing thing was the vegan shrimp - not even Asian vegan technology has been able to replicate shrimp yet.
Roxy and I didn't talk much during dinner - maybe she could tell that I was getting frustrated by the lack of opportunities I was finding, or maybe I was just frustrated by the lack of opportunities I was finding. Either way, our silence was the kind shared by two people who have nothing else in common.
We had one more thing to go to before we went to bed - an LGBT gaming group meetup. If there was any chance I was getting a gig, it was here.
After waiting in line for the entirely wrong thing that was nearby (it turned out to be some signing event for a guy who looked like Luigi from Super Mario crossed with Dr Disrespect), we went into the room where the meetup was, and the first thing we had to do was put on a name sticker and pronouns sticker. And there was my problem.
I don't like letting people know certain things about myself. I don't think it's conducive to business, especially in Dayton. But now, admitting this would be the only way I'd have a prayer of getting something out of PAX. I thought about my image - my identity - who I am and how I was supposed to maintain it. And then I thought of all of the nerds I had encountered on my way to PAX - Roxy, whose nerdiness helped me get into doing sound effects in the first place; the nerds on Roxy's DnD podcast, who were having fun even if they were being embarassing; the EV drivers, without whom those charging stations and all of the infrastructure that could help save the environment wouldn't exist; the industry vets at the panel, who keep making games even if the industry takes a turn for the worse; every single developer in the expo hall who put everything on the line to put out a a game they love; and the nerds who started PAX in the first place, for the love of the art of video games. At the heart of nerd-dom is love. If everyone was cool and no one was nerdy, nothing would ever get done - no careers, no games, no expos. And the first step to being nerdy is being honest.
So yes: I, Xtine, am transgender. There is no need to hide who I am; who I am is beautiful and worthy.
The rest of the night was spent with the queer gamer group talking about games and learning about who was developing what. There was a visual novel that someone else was making that I was very intrigued by - a visual novel that I will be working on. Then, back at the hostel, I smoked a joint outside and listened to all of the conversations happening on the streets of Boston - in English, Spanish, Vietnamese, Japanese, Chinese - and marveled at how everyone was weird and everyone was beautiful.
PART 4 COMING SOON!
PART 2
Roxy's parents remind me of my own - down to even them owning the same bougie white mug set with the butterflies that my parents do. There's just something about it that makes upwardly-mobile immigrant parents feel accomplished. Maybe that's why we didn't have much to say the next morning besides the bare niceties of "thanks for letting me stay for the night" "dinner last night was really great" "what do you do for work". They're both Doctors who have Big Plans for their kid and Do Not expect Disappointment any time soon. Maybe they should've - I don't usually make my bed when I'm staying at my parent's place, either, but I think becoming a disappointment as soon as I got out of bed has to be a new record. Last set of immigrant parents whose place I slept at, it took me 19 years! (And yes, I'm sorry for not making the bed :_C)
I never liked sleeping in my parent's house anyway. While I called it home, the heaviness in the air made every room claustrophobic, but now that my brother is in another state and I live on my own,all that heaviness just feels empty now - like the stale air of an empty office building, achieving nothing but hard-water stains around the water cooler. The room I was staying in this weekend was Roxy's brother's room that was vacant now that he is off to college - no clothes remained in his closet, and his walls were unadorned but for 1st place academics medals and pictures from youth math leagues. I'm sure someone is getting some satisfaction out of those in his absence.
As Roxy and I left, we made sure to get some more essentials, such as the souvenir fridge magnets she got me from her trip to Kenya! Aren't they so adorable? We also got a few fruits and bottles of water for the road, because the drive today would take us 5 hours.
Since my feet were hurting like crazy from driving 9 hours yesterday, I drove the first two hours, up North to New York. I can remember the exact moment we entered New York - we got to a fork in the road and there was a big circle of colored stones arranged to look like one of those cheesy "I <3 NY" souvenir buttons you'd get for someone who you promised to get a souvenir for but don't really know what to get them. I reflected on how weird it was to see a New York thing in PA until we passed by it and my maps app said "Welcome to New York." I just couldn't believe it was so quick to get from PA to New York, but I haven't really left Dayton on a big state-lines-crossing road trip since Philadelphia last year in my old car (who I've posthumously dubbed "Nightmare"), and crossing Ohio to get to PA took me like 4 hours.
Well, my feet started to hurt so Roxy took over. She said that Mystique felt a bit "grindier" than her car, a very practical Hyundai sedan with a new transmission and fresh brakes. I told her that Mystique could NOT go above 80 per hour on the highway, for fear that the valve cover gasket would blow up. We spent Hartford on the general niceties of "what jobs are you looking for" "who are your friends back home" "which games are you excited for at PAX" as she played her Kendrick Lamar playlist. She really wanted to check out Critical Reflex's booth - they published all kinds of indie horror games like "No, I'm Not a Human" and "Buckshot Roulette." She's hoping she can get her game published by them too. As for me... I was just excited to find the first game dev who would give me work making music. Worcestor we drove by without words, except for Roxy's DnD podcast where a couple of nerds made cringy accents silly stories for no reason.
Our hostel was in the middle of Chinatown, and looked very much like what you would imagine a hostel wouldn't look like. It was pretty swanky, with a nice big lobby with a piano for anyone to play, common kitchen facilities on the second floor, and even a shower that told you how much water you used! Chinatown itself looked less like how the Qing dynasty-style gates would have you believe and more like present-day China, with trendy hotpot restaurants and boba shops intermingled with fruit stands, parking garages with downright Anti-Euclidean parking spots to squeeze into, and 1st floor wig stores with vegan Thai restaurants on the second floor. A weird city indeed.
Roxy and I somehow parked Mystique at the parking garage (skinny legend!!!). All that was left to do was attend PAX East.
PART 3 COMING SOON!
PART 1
One of my favorite emo bands, Merchant Ships, once sang:
Hey! Let's leave home and go to New Jersey
Six hundred miles away from our problems
Let's be happy
Vomit from our fucking mouths
Bile in our throats
Let's not come back
Now I don't know about the last 3 lines, but I will say this: Mystique and I definitely needed to run away from our problems, at least for this good weekend, and to what better place than Boston, Massachusetts, to attend one of the biggest video game conventions in the world with my friend?
I am talking, of course, about PAX East. Since I make music for video games and my friend codes, it was the perfect excuse to pay her a visit and to really test Misty's mettle. A-dawg and I had previously given Misty a tune-up, and the weird acceleration issue only ever happens when she starts, so I thought she was ready for a real test.
I left on Thursday afternoon with my suitcase packed with 3 cute outfits, concealer, an orange eyeshadow palette, liquid eyeliner, pink lip gloss, pink lip liner, toothbrush and toothpaste, a towel, 25 business cards, an extra pair of shoes, and an extra jacket in case it got cold in Boston (which it did 😭), a sleeve of saltine crackers, some Chinese tofu snacks, and a few bottles of water. In other words, I packed light.
I come from Dayton, so first I filled up at a gas station (and paid enough for a fill-up to turn even the most ardent war hawk into a pacifist). Then, I went on I-70 East, towards Columbus.
In Columbus, I decided to visit a trans woman and drag queen centered fashion boutique called Glamazon Jayne's, because the friend I was visiting, Roxy, needed cute shoes. After suffering through looking for free parking (which will be a recurring theme this weekend), I was rewarded with a $39 pair of size 13 flats and some light flirting from the cashier. Afterwards, it was time to hit the road again!
I-71 and I-270 was boring, except for a brief and evil glimpse into a car-dependent future at a Petro "stopping center." It was like a shopping mall, but parked at an exit in the middle of nowhere known as Girard,Ohio so the only way you could get there was by driving. There was, of course, a small restaurant and a corner store. There was also a laundromat(?) barbershop(??), and movie theater(???). The people there were nice, but I knew I had to leave before I let my curiosity get the better of me and watched a movie.
Back on the road, and on the OH-PA border, I got stopped at a traffic jam. Boo!!! There was a light rain, too, which was kind of yucky. As I sat, however, the rain cleared up and I was met with a rainbows. It wasw so I could almost touch it, but as soon as I got close enough to the end of it, all I could see was what was there before - the damp earth, the near-green grass, the piss jugs that some truckers threw out their cabs. So it seems with every rainbow. The only proof it was ever there was the rain leftover on the blades of grass - that, and this picture I took.
After a few more uneventful turns on the highway, the rain stopped being cute and started being menacing, and it was at this point that I wished I had bothered repairing Misty's windshield wiper arm. Right now, the spring that keeps the arm on the car is gone, so all I could do was look out the passenger side of the windshield and pray that the rain would not overtake us. Fortunately, we weathered this storm and got to Scranton to meet up with my friend Roxy at her place in Scranton to stay the night (btw Mr and Mrs Roxy's parents, those Kenyan rice and beans and cabbage were really good!!!).
