Killing Time

I died last Friday.

It happened just outside my doorway, in the long carpeted expanse of New Quincy’s third-floor hallway. My killer concealed himself in the room across from ours, and I can still hear the terrible popping sound his twin machine guns made as he burst out into the open and riddled the walls, doors and floor with with bullets—er, nerf darts. I spun, too late, and managed to get a shot off, but it sailed wide, and then my assailant opened up with a second round and I went down in a hail of darts.

And in such inglorious fashion ended my week of playing Quincy House Assassin.

Originally, before my death—and the subsequent deaths of my valiant teammates in Sunday’s final shootout—I had intended to write a column singing the praises of Assassin, that much-ridiculed and frequently-banned adornment of Harvard’s house life. I planned to point out how the game encouraged house spirit, how it expanded one’s circle of friends and acquaintances and how it encouraged a spirit of martial solidarity rivalled only, I imagine, in the fraternal order of final clubs and the rabble-rousing ranks of the Progressive Student Labor Movement.

I intended to point out, too, how Assassin offers the cosseted Ivy League Last Man a chance to experience what a real man should experience, albeit in an artificial, nerf-dart sort of way. I speak, of course, of the thrill of the hunt, the delicious paranoia that comes with knowing that every dark corner, every shadowy alcove might conceal a killer and that one’s life hangs by an ever-so-thin thread. I speak, too, of the great struggle for mastery, in which one establishes one’s superiority by force of arms, without recourse to the prissy methods of meritocracy.

But in the aftermath of my team’s defeat, I am beginning to wonder if the red-in-tooth-and-claw competition offered by Assassin is really such a good thing after all.

You see, I am angry that we lost—intensely, passionately angry. This is understandable, I suppose, up to a point. But the strength of my emotional response to this defeat seems wildly out of proportion to the actual significance of the game. After all, as countless people (most of them female) have pointed out, it’s really rather silly, isn’t it? All that running around with nerf guns and such, and all that pointless paranoia—shouldn’t I be happy to be done with it?

But I want to win, I would say to these doubting Thomases and sneering Susans. Or, just as often, but I want to beat those other guys!

We Harvardians are bred to be competitive, of course—to never settle for second best, to climb the ladder until we run out of rungs. We are valedictorians and salutatorians, merit scholars and varsity athletes whose entire lives have been defined by the quest for achievement and success. Here in Cambridge, surrounded by the crème de la crème of America’s future ruling class, we compete for everything—good grades, extracurricular offices, club memberships, summer internships, Law School acceptances, consulting jobs and of course, attractive significant others.

But our competition is civilized, sanitized and oddly quiet. We mutter to our friends about how so-and-so doesn’t deserve that job, office or girlfriend, when the same prize has been denied to us. We sit in coffee shops and carp about how everyone else has a summer job, or won a fellowship, and how terribly unfair it all is.

But we are also slightly ashamed of such talk and the competitive envy that it betokens —which is why, one might theorize, that people never talk about the real pillar of our meritocratic order, namely grades. In my high school, everyone talked about “what they got” on the last history test, or how they were doing in AP Bio. Here, though, save among the closest friends, daring to mention actual letters (B, A- and so forth) will win you raised eyebrows and shocked stares. People will talk about anything, from their sex lives to their private psychoses, before they even come close to mentioning their G.P.A.

It’s ironic, when you consider it. Grades are the arena of Harvard competition, the place where everyone can line up and see where they stand (you, in Group I! you, over there in Group II!)—and we pretend that nobody cares.

That’s why a game like Assassin is so dangerous—because it’s meaningless, because it’s just a bunch of guys and girls with nerf guns running around shooting each other, it suddenly becomes okay to care, to behave as if the game is life and death, rather than just “life” and “death.” The real, academic competition that defines Harvard life, and that we so assiduously sweep under the rug for the sake of social peace, spills out with a vengeance. And it isn’t a pretty sight.

In the end, even with the bitter taste of defeat stinging my gorge, I still think that everyone should play Assassin—for the thrills, the entertainment and the all-too-rare intoxication that comes with knowing that people are out there somewhere waiting to kill you.

But have a care, and remember that whatever the nitwits who run youth sports like to say, there’s really no such thing as friendly competition.

Oh, and watch your back.

Ross G. Douthat ’02 is a history and literature concentrator in Quincy House. His column appears on alternate Mondays.