How Rock Band saved my marriage

For those of you who haven't yet experienced the unmitigated joy of the must-have video game of Christmas 2007, I will explain. Like Guitar Hero for people with social skills, Rock Band is a game in which you pretend you can play instruments: a plastic guitar with color-coded buttons, a microphone and a set of "drums" consisting of four round motion-sensitive pads. A motley collection of preselected, pre-licensed songs from a variety of artists -- Weezer, Deep Purple, Metallica, Radiohead -- have been translated into a series of blinking colored bars that appear on the screen and serve as notes. Hit them, and you are rewarded with stars, fans and new, more challenging songs; meanwhile, sloppy, incompetent playing earns surprisingly real (and traumatizing) jeers of contempt from the tattooed, pierced and computer-generated audience.

Ben bought the game over the holidays, lugging the huge box home on foot through the New York winter slush. I knelt beside it on the floor, brushing the beads of oily precipitation from the damp lid.

"I thought we should have something to do, while we're stuck at home with no one else around," he said.

"Together?"

"Yeah." He forced a tight smile. "You'll like it."

I had my doubts. Apart from an episode of Tetris-induced mania in 1992 that went on for weeks and could have cost thousands of lives, I have stayed away from video games. I'm not good with technology in general -- my iPod has stayed dormant for years, so terrified am I of unplugging the charger from the computer at the wrong time and accidentally erasing all I hold dear -- and the Xbox and I have been engaged for some time in a cold war based on the doctrine of mutually assured destruction: If I touch it, I'll break it, and then Ben will kill me.

"What should I do?" I ask, fingering the Xbox control gingerly. I half expected it to explode into a million pieces at my touch.

"You like to sing," he says, slinging the nylon guitar strap around his neck and stroking the keys. "So sing."

Singing along to a video game isn't like singing in any recognizable way -- that is, in a way people would want to listen to. No points are given for tone, expression, emotion or the ability to actually carry a tune. All that is required is to make a sound of the correct frequency, for the proscribed amount of time, and you can howl like a German shepherd with a bladder stone. But try to bring a little variation, a little soul to the table, and you get the net.

"Why don't you try the drums?" says Ben, after I am booed off the stage for the fourth time for my rendition of the Rolling Stones' "Gimme Shelter."

"I don't know," I say, discouraged. Can't I ever be good at anything? "I've never done any drumming before. It looks hard. I don't want to mess it up for you."

"Just give it a shot," he says. "It'll be fun."

I often fantasize about sitting down in front of a musical instrument and magically being able to play it, but I have accepted that this would probably require some kind of unusual brain injury, like that episode of "House" in which Dave Matthews gets into a bus accident and becomes a piano prodigy. So I'm not sure what happened, if I had a small stroke or what, but when I sit down at those fake drums something transforms in me. All my fake-hate melts away. I am more than adequate -- I am good. Really good. It's as if all of those nights standing patiently in the corner at gigs, wondering if I was ever going to get to take a shower again, had taught me how to play the drums through osmosis. I know instinctively what to do, and miraculously, so does Ben. Note after blinking colored note on the screen explodes with our rock. The fake crowd roars. I fake drum faster. Our fake band, Sex Baby, embarks on a fake world tour on our fake jet, playing fake stadiums in all the fake capitals of Europe. Our fake selves grace the covers of fake magazines, and our fake fans number in the millions. When our fake manager calls to tell us we've been invited to play the fake Hall of Fame showcase in fake Stockholm, my real husband turns toward me, and smiles.

"So what do you think?" he asks.

"I love it," I say, tired but exuberant. "My hands are killing me." Still smiling, he reaches for me, and gently kisses my blistered palm. "Let's take a break."

"No!" I cry. "I need more practice on 'Enter Sandman'!"

Ben cocks his eyebrow. "Well, I'm going to bed. I guess you can borrow my headphones if you want."

Life is filled with unpleasant realities. We have to watch what we eat and go to the dentist; we have to control our spending and unplug our electrical devices at night, lest we become obese and toothless, drowning in a sea of consumer debt and glacial melt. None of us can stay 18, and very few of us will ever be rock stars. It's important to acknowledge this; it's healthy. But sometimes we need to escape into a daydream in order to face what we've become, and what we will be. And if once in a while you can escape with someone else, then that's about the best you can do.

I figured Metallica could wait until tomorrow. For the first time in a long time, I had a real live husband who was taking his headphones off. I wasn't going to be the one to put them back on.