Anton Solomonik
Art by the author
When I was 14 I got into Magic: The Gathering. I only had one friend from the ages of 12-16 and we played Magic: The Gathering together. Although, Ilya wasn’t really a friend I “chose” for myself, our parents were friends and we were forced together due to having “no other friends” i.e., at school, as I mentioned previously. But, despite his shortcomings, Ilya was an adequate friend. I liked having a “friend’s house” to go to on the weekends, riding a lime green mountain bike that said “Huffy” on the side in huge letters, such as I had seen my betters riding several years prior, in 6th grade. Ilya’s parents seemed nice, unlike mine, and I liked to think that they thought we were romantically involved, which we definitely were not. I liked to think that they thought I was “good for” their son, that they thought I was better than him—which I definitely was. At Magic.
Magic: The Gathering is a collectible card game with attractive, fantasy-themed cards and a complex, evolving framework of rules. You try to put together a powerful deck out of the hundreds of different cards, and then you play against other people’s decks.
“So to be good at this game, you have to buy more cards?” said my mom, when I tried to explain it to her. “She has to buy more cards to be good at this game,” she repeated to my dad.
My dad didn’t answer and went outside.
“Shut up!” I couldn’t resist interjecting. “I wish I hadn’t said anything about Magic!”
As I said this, I watched my dad stand outside with a cigarette. I felt embarrassed for him that he had a daughter as his only child. It must have been so emasculating for him.
My mom often criticized me for my grades and appearance at this time. She also berated me for spending so much time with someone like Ilya, who was not an asset to me socially or intellectually. In the back of my mind, I thought she was probably right. I was just a passive person, she said, like my father. I thought she was probably right about that too. To feel better about this, I started trying to re-invent myself as someone who was good at Magic.
I went on the internet to read about deck building strategies. I read a lot of forum posts and got excited about Magic: The Gathering-related news, such as the release of a new expansion, an upcoming tournament, or a minor change in the rules. I decided that the type of deck that I needed to use was the “control” deck. Instead of attacking the opponent directly, it relied on cards that limited the options available to each player. This seemed extremely romantic to me, to win by exerting passive control of a situation.
This whole time, I did not play against anyone other than Ilya. He was somewhat lacking in imagination and, at times, annoying—always liking the obvious, powerful cards—but we shared a mutual love of trivia and rules, and we spent many fulfilling hours sitting on the floor of his room, going through the illustrated cards one by one. I enjoyed the art on the cards almost as much as I enjoyed contemplating each card’s role in the overall rules framework. The cards’ depictions of fantasy landscapes, pseudo-medieval people, and otherworldly beings looked both enticing and approachable. It looked like something I could replicate.
Ilya’s Magic strategy consisted of stealing rares from his ten-year-old cousin, who was the only person he ever played with besides me. Soon, I started to beat him easily with my control deck. His parents didn’t seem to mind that he spent all day in his room playing video games, rather than improving himself—maybe that was why he was not as motivated as I was to get good at Magic. For my part, I developed an elaborate fantasy of myself as a tournament-level player, even though I still never joined any tournaments or played against anyone besides Ilya. Ilya thought I tried too hard and was scared of my mom.
“I wish I hadn’t said anything about Magic!”
Then, during my senior year of high school, my life underwent a disruption. I joined an online fantasy art gallery, and started to put up a lot of carefully-shaded Magic: The Gathering-inspired art. I was sitting in an empty classroom, finishing a pencil drawing inspired by the “Marhault Elsdragon” Magic card which I kept prominently displayed at the front of my binder, even though it was not really a good card and not part of my deck. Its flavor text said: “Marhault Elsdragon follows a strict philosophy, never letting emotions cloud his thoughts. No chance observer could imagine the rage in his heart.”
As I was putting the finishing touches on the drawing—trying to correctly render the elven general’s strict, morose expression—a girl from my school, who I knew was in theater but who was not popular otherwise, deigned to address me.
“You,” she said.
I looked up from my desk, dazed. She acted as if we had spoken to each other before.
“You’re in my World History class,” she said, by way of explanation.
Yes, I had seen her in the class. She often argued with the teacher, complaining about how historic figures didn’t always conform to her exact standards of moral conduct (informed, no doubt, by sentimental modern musicals and plays). This was the one non-AP class I was taking, I reflected grimly.
“You have the most amazing facial expressions in class,” she said. “You’re just like—not even remotely present.”
She put a careless hand on my shoulder.
“Do you have autism?” she asked. “My boyfriend was saying you might have undiagnosed autism.”
“No?” I said.
The girl leaned over to look more closely at what I was drawing.
“That’s a pretty good picture,” she said. She pointed at the figure. “That actually kind of looks like my boyfriend.”
I tried to think of who her boyfriend might be. I didn’t think someone like her would have a boyfriend.
“It’s for my college application,” I said finally.
That night, I dreamt that the theater girl approached me sexually. She was very forward in the dream, taking her clothes off in the empty classroom and begging me to have sex with her right on the floor. I was shocked if not entirely surprised by this lurid turn of events; yet, I was reasonable in my rejection. I said I wasn’t a lesbian but that I would be happy to remain friends with her. I told her I still respected her as a person. When I woke up, I realized that I was in love with the theater girl and would do anything to have her touch me again.
As the year progressed, I became so focused on trying to make the theater girl like me, that even my obsession with Magic faded into the background. I followed her around school, expounding on philosophy, fantasy art, collectible card game design, and many other topics. I often went to her house, staying until the boyfriend came over.
I didn’t think the boyfriend looked like my drawing, but I envied his knowledge of computers. I briefly included “computer”-adjacent elements in my artwork, copying humanoid vehicle designs from manga and anime. I even affected a robotic, monotonous speaking cadence while talking to the theater girl, going so far as to assert to her—during a particularly charged conversation—that I was “more interested in computers than people.”
I liked that the theater girl seemed interested in what I was saying. She seemed to believe it and to take it seriously. She said that I was unlike anyone else she knew. That was what I liked about her. And she was right. When I saw Ilya at this time, I told him that he had an insufficiently romantic attitude towards life, and that was why he kept losing to me at Magic.
Later that year, things got worse. When I finally confessed my feelings to the theater girl, she rejected me, saying she wasn’t a lesbian, and seemed angry with me for “lying” about the nature of our relationship, as if my previous metaphorical statements about a lack of romantic interest had not actually been indicative of a special intensity of romantic feeling, as I had thought.
I also did not get into most of the colleges I applied to, contrary to my parents’ wishes. I got an “art scholarship” to an art school in New York. It was for one thousand dollars—a minuscule part of the annual tuition. My parents were, of course, angry, and there was an ugly scene where I tore up and physically swallowed some of my college applications. My mom ended up driving me to the emergency room against my will. Eventually, my parents said they would pay for the school.
My first year of college was also bad. I met a guy who introduced me to the writings of Ayn Rand. They were the only books I could focus on at the time. Their stern narratives of career and romantic success briefly stirred me from my mental suffering. Life marginally improved when I started dating the Ayn Rand guy, as did my relationship with my parents. My mom started telling people that I was “going to school in New York,” like it was a major accomplishment.
At the end of my second year of college, I became embarrassed by how much my parents were paying for my school, and did not submit the tuition for the following year. I used the money to rent an apartment with the Ayn Rand guy in Queens, where we began to live together. I signed up for an online figure drawing class. We would take the Roosevelt Island tramway to Manhattan every day. We would go to the library, where I would do homework for my online figure drawing class while he studied philosophy and history using the library’s free resources. We talked to each other about our projects and what we were doing. I was relieved not to be alone.
On Thanksgiving, I told my parents I could not come home because of how much I was “studying for finals.” The Ayn Rand boyfriend and I then invited two of our online friends from New Jersey to the apartment. We drank Wild Turkey bourbon and I briefly passed out in the snow. My sexual encounters with the boyfriend were stilted but seemed philosophically meaningful. I gradually started to feel better about my life.
In a sense, my greatest wish from my Magic-playing days came true. Over time, I came to believe that I really did have a special talent or genius that other people did not. It was hard to say what it was—a greater capacity, maybe, to want what I didn’t have, and to dream of the future. No matter how dubious my life might have become, I felt that I had a unique destiny in store just for me. And, actually, no one contributed to this sense more than Ilya.
I still went to see him whenever I came back to visit my hometown. Instead of showing him all my Magic cards, I regaled him with tales of New York life—eating a pizza someone left on the train, being sexually propositioned in public (more than back home), calling a landlord about roaches in the apartment, and other stories of that nature. The true significance of all these experiences seemed to show itself only during my conversations with Ilya, back at his parents’ house. In his sarcastic commentary, I could detect envy for the worldly knowledge I had acquired, at such great (I thought) emotional cost.
The next time I played Magic against Ilya, I had been out of college for a long time. I was using my parents’ remaining tuition money to pay for both mine and the boyfriend’s living expenses. Our relationship had also deteriorated by this time. I no longer felt relief when I talked to him about my projects. I ignored him and kept focusing on my art, turning some of my high school drawings into paintings that I could use to promote my as-yet inactive sales platform on Fiverr and Etsy.
When Ilya called, I was standing in a Long Island City parking lot. For my day job, I was working for a Liberty Tax franchise, wearing a green tunic and crown to advertise tax preparation services for the upcoming tax season. It felt good to hear from him. I thought it was funny that I was doing this job, but I was also scared.
“What’s happening my good bro?” I asked.
“You’re visiting in a week. Let’s play Magic?”
I reminded Ilya with a smirk that I had sold all my Magic cards several years ago.
“That’s quite all right,” Ilya said, chuckling in his annoying, semi-sarcastic way. “You do know who I work for now?”
“Uh—a different party supply store?”
Ilya used to work at the Party City in our hometown.
“Rachel my dear. You never listen to me—as usual. But that’s all right.”
“Maybe because your speech mannerisms are so painful to attend to, or process.”
“Dude. I took those game design classes. Remember?”
“Good for you?”
“I work for Wizards of the Coast. The company that makes Magic cards? Hello?”
It turned out that his friend Alex (from Party City) helped him get hired as a support rep for Magic: The Gathering Online, the sole internet-based version of the game at the time. This didn’t seem like an important job, but Ilya said it was, requiring an encyclopedic knowledge of the rules, a willingness to engage in online debates, and an in-depth understanding of how the brand was changing. When I went to his house, he had all kinds of Magic merchandise—pre-constructed decks, themed decks, and promotional sets related to fantasy-adjacent movies and shows.
Ilya was there with his two coworkers (including Alex) as well as the younger cousin I had once so disliked (now in high school). The former high school theater girl was also there. We were now on speaking terms, so I had invited her.
Ilya and the coworkers elaborately discussed the rules. They mentioned past games that they had played and talked about changes that negated once-popular but (in their opinion) unfair strategies. They chortled about cards that I didn’t know. For some reason, I began to feel agitated and angry. I did not like the new art on the cards. The male figures were overly glistening and muscular, and the female figures stood in conventional pin up style poses.
“Fuck the control deck,” I thought. When we started playing, I decided to make a red deck to express how I felt.
I listened as Ilya and his coworkers continued to talk and to laugh. I thought I heard one of them express surprise at the fact that Ilya “had so many female friends.” I ignored the former high school theater girl’s loud enthusiasm at “finally being among real nerds.” I focused on what I needed to do. The red deck had a simple strategy: to win as quickly as possible by playing the same types of cards over and over.
On my first turn against Ilya, I played a Raging Goblin and attacked immediately. On my second turn, I played a Goblin Balloon Brigade and attacked again. Then I used a Goblin Grenade to sacrifice the first goblin.
“Never flinch, never falter, never fear,” I quoted from an old website.
Then, Ilya played a card that made his friends glance up.
“Is that Stoneforge Mystic?” asked the other co-worker loudly (his name was John).
The illustration showed a pouting woman in a skin-tight costume, prominently displaying the two compressed spheres of her breasts. “You may search your library for any Equipment card and put it into your hand,” said the text on the card.
“What’s an Equipment card?” I asked.
“Don’t worry about it,” said Ilya.
“Okay, whatever,” I said, only mildly frustrated by his smug tone.
“Great advice for a new player,” said Alex, the first coworker.
“Your mom is a new player,” I protested.
On my third turn, I played the Angry Minotaur—another classic card from the old days, though, of course, it now had uglier borders (their high contrast made the copyright text easier to read). I attacked again with the Goblin Balloon Brigade. At least I was still doing damage each turn. Yet, to my displeasure, on his turn, Ilya played another unfamiliar card.
“Batterskull?” I read.
Ilya’s cousin yelped excitedly.
“They haven’t banned this?!” he shouted.
“Cliched, I know,” said Ilya. “I love being cliched.”
“That’s always been true of you,” I said, trying to invoke the old disdain.
I needed to concentrate. The card that Ilya had just played, featuring—again—ugly Photoshopped-looking borders and generic, overly busy, pop culture-inspired, vaguely-Gigeresque art (but without the sensuality of H.R. Giger’s actual work), was an “equipment” card. But normally such equipment cards needed resources to be equipped, and this card didn’t. It also had other features and abilities and it was threatening for other reasons.
“My ex-boyfriend used to play this game all the time,” said the former high school theater girl, irrelevantly. She said the name of her high school boyfriend.
I played Lava Burst, ignoring her. I had to get rid of the inauspicious equipment.
“I’m playing Lava Burst,” I reminded Ilya.
“Sorry Rachel,” said Ilya.
He countered the Lava Burst, using another one of his blue cards. The former high school theater girl looked on skeptically.
“Spell Pierce,” she said, reading the name of the card that Ilya had used. “Attacking people with lava... I guess fantasy can be cliched.”
Ilya’s cousin jumped up off the floor.
“Well she wasn’t really playing Lava Burst to attack a person,” said Ilya’s cousin. “The keyword ability for Batterskull states that it’s a ‘living weapon’—so not a person. So yeah, she wouldn’t have been using lava to hurt ‘a person,’ even if she had succeeded.”
“Fascinating,” said the former high school theater girl.
“And anyway, fire isn’t the only type of damage you can do,” said Ilya’s cousin.
He had suddenly become very talkative.
“There are cards that do, like, psychic damage. Negate, unsummon—"
“Those tend to be blue-aligned spells,” put in Alex.
“Shut up everyone,” I said.
On his fourth turn, Ilya proceeded to attack with the contentious Batterskull. I had no choice but to sacrifice the Angry Minotaur.
“RIP to the original chump blocker,” boomed John, the louder of the two coworkers.
Ilya’s cousin leapt up to play bagpipe music on the computer to mark the death of the iconic creature.
“Really funny,” said Ilya after a few measures of the bagpipe music.
“I know,” said Ilya’s cousin. “I’m gonna beat your cliched Stoneblade deck.”
“Can you please turn off the music?” said Ilya.
He waited for the cousin to begrudgingly comply.
“Okay, so I play Hexproof Angel,” he announced. “Remember, it can’t be targeted by spells or abilities.”
The remainder of the game went on like this. Ilya always seemed to have better cards than I could remember previously existing, or powerful creatures, or equipment, or cards that were invulnerable to the repetitive direct damage effects that comprised the bulk of my strategy. I finally lost after seven turns.
“That was fun I guess,” I said halfheartedly.
The former high school theater girl moved closer to me.
“I’m really impressed by the people who care enough to master this game,” she said, “But it’s kind of underwhelming? I can’t believe there used to be a moral panic about it.”
“Yeah, but—" I said.
I looked at her. Maybe she still liked me? It looked like she was waiting for me to say something.
“But, like, what happened to that sense of mysterious possibility the old cards used to have?” I asked.
Maybe one day—years from now—I could leave the Ayn Rand boyfriend for her, I speculated.
“They were like something an old civilization might make. They had the look of art made by naïve, self-taught people. You know what I mean?” I asked.
“Well, I’m going to be helping design the cards pretty soon,” said Ilya.
He started to talk about the workplace politics at Wizards of the Coast.
"Oh yeah," said his coworker, John, loudly.
Spring / Summer 2025
Anton Solomonik
Anton Solomonik is a writer and illustrator living in Brooklyn. He’s the co-host of the World Transsexual Forum, a discussion panel and open mic series for trans writers and artists. His first book, Realistic Fiction, will be published in April 2025 by LittlePuss Press.