I used to know Sisco.

I should be more accurate. In the online text-based fantasy role-playing extravaganza I frequented as a freshman in high school, he went by Sisco Deraden, a Drow (or Dark Elf) of the twilight persuasion — not good nor evil, but something in between — a "seeker of the balance." He, the man at the keyboard, told me he had been building his character for years through many a game of Dungeons and Dragons. In a game that was nothing more than text on an ugly brown-tiled background, we became brothers-at-arms: friends. I made a lot of "friends" back then, and at the time, I always felt a bit silly and ashamed. After all, I had a normal life. I didn't need to escape from my painful reality, my dreary existence, my shitty job. I didn't need a second life. I just liked to stay up late. But a lot of them…well, you know the stereotypes. They were true. So what was I doing then?

After months of playing together, Sisco disappeared for a while. When he returned, we chatted over AIM (I was using my second, secret, shameful screename that I reserved for "internet people"), where I filled him in on all the goings on he had missed, and he filled me in on his absence—and himself. You see, as it turned out, Sisco wasn't an overweight, long-haired, death-thrash-hardcore-metal loving high school outcast. He wasn't a computer science major in college with a fondness for Funyuns and Mountain Dew. He was 28 and a single father.

Six years prior, his long-time girlfriend decided she was ready for a child. Then their daughter turned two, and the woman suddenly realized that she wasn't ready to be an adult anymore—and took off. He never heard from her again. Without help and in need of money, Sisco left nursing school to work as a nurse's assistant instead. He had disappeared because he was working a temporary double shift, 3pm-7am. He was trying to save money to go back to school while still caring for his daughter, who he said meant more to him than anything.

He told me all of this as though we were brothers, as though I had earned the right to know the man behind the character after all of the late nights we spent online. He shared the secrets with me that he had kept to himself so that he could escape, for just a little while everyday, and live the life he could never get back. He spoke to me as though I, a 15 year-old with a superiority complex, deserved his respect and his friendship. And I realized that he was wrong.

Ben White has a BA in neurobiology from Harvard College and studies medicine in Texas. His recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Dirty Napkin, Dogzplot, SUB-LIT, and others. He promises that he is a mentally bigger person than he used to be and can prove it at benwhite.com.