(Throughout Act 1 you will see numbers in double square brackets. These numbers are citations which you can use in conjunction with the chat logs to confirm that I’m not fucking with you.

Throughout this doc, the names of all innocent or even arguably innocent parties are censored.)

[trigger warnings: suicide references, (in citations: abuse references)]

July 14:

I had too much to drink at a karaoke bar the previous night to cope with an observation I’d made. An observation that, in tandem with countless other quiet observations made or remembered over the last couple of months, lead to a single inescapable conclusion — Joey had been cheating on me.

I wake up hungover the next morning and look around the hotel room, but can’t find Joey. I check my phone to find he’s sent me a message to meet in Japan Town, so I take a quick shower and order a cab, but the driver almost immediately takes a wrong turn — at which point I remember the previous night.

Wait. Right. Shit.

I ask him to bring me back to the hotel, grab all of my stuff, and have him drive me to the library instead. Eventually Joey messages me to ask where I am and why I ditched him, and I tell him he lied. He plays dumb, and I ask him what happened between him and Natalie Gleason, and — realizing what I’m most likely to have found out — he admits that he lied about not having had sex with anyone while he and I were sort of broken up between May and June, and that he had in fact been fucking Natalie for some portion of that time.

Friggen Natalie Stupid-Cat-Tights-Wearing Kotaku-Writing Gleason.

He gets super remorseful and says how awful he’d felt about it and how not telling me was the most fucked up stupidest thing he’d ever done and how sorry he is and how he doesn’t know how I can ever forgive him for this one single thing he did wrong and is so wracked with guilt about.

Except that no — this ain’t amateur hour and just because Natalie was at the same bar last night doesn’t mean I’m limited to whatever she was most likely to have told me. Fuck, we never even so much as said hello. We just stood inches from each other with little tropical mix drinks in hand like a couple of imbeciles pretending there ain’t nothing awkward at all going on there.

No, that’s not how this works. How this works is I’ve had two possible pictures in my head for the past month. One that looked like some ransom-note collage of letters Scotch-taped over a cum-covered canvas spelling out “Joey Wynn is the best person. Best possible person. You are a bad person if you think Joey is not the best person.” And another in the form of a precision-carved jigsaw puzzle, for which all of the pieces I wasn’t missing fit perfectly into what seemed to be a subtly-worded message to the effect of “lol, ur an idiot, he’s a jerk, flip me over for list of dates and names of people he’s cheated on you with.”

How this works is I’ve been telling myself “Nah, that can’t be what the jigsaw puzzle means. Look, this cum collage Joey gave me says so.”

How this works is Joey gave me one more piece at the bar the previous night, because his only other option was to risk my getting a bunch more pieces from Natalie. That piece contained some fine print which read “The cum collage may not be entirely accurate.”

So I ask Joey what happened between him and Natalie before we were broken up, and he gives me some PR-laden “I was probably getting emotionally closer to her than appropriate. Right at the end of things with us.”

Okay: some context here regarding “at the end of things with us.” Right at “the end of things with us” he canceled the game we were co-developing and stood me up a bunch of times during the travel-free month’s worth of time we were looking forward to spending together, as a result of which I had my first ever panic attack [April 29th], because I was worried the one person I’d ever managed to fall in love with might be breaking up with me for some reason I couldn’t figure out. When I related these worries to Joey, he assured me the relationship wasn’t in danger and that he loved me and was even happy that I cared enough to worry. This was part of a fun little emergent two player power / head game he decided to play with me. The gist of the rules seemed to be as follows:

If girlfriend relates observations that lead to a correct belief, boyfriend is to make up false reason to explain observations. If girlfriend backs down, boyfriend wins. If girlfriend doesn’t back down, and notes boyfriend’s reason conflicts with other observations, boyfriend must get angry and demand girlfriend trust him unconditionally. Girlfriend must then choose between trusting boyfriend, or trusting her own ability to so much as reason clearly. If girlfriend chooses to trust boyfriend, boyfriend must demand she trust him about something that contradicts something else he demands she trust him about. When girlfriend cannot possibly act in any way that doesn’t violate one of his principles or claims, boyfriend must establish she is going insane. If girlfriend succumbs to additional bouts of anxiety spent questioning her own sanity — boyfriend wins: multiply points by number of hours longest panic attack lasts. If girlfriend does not back down, and decides instead to trust her own ability to think clearly, boyfriend must threaten to break up with girlfriend. If girlfriend backs down, boyfriend wins. If girlfriend continues trusting simple reasoning, boyfriend must actually break up with girlfriend (for a period of time no shorter than 1 hour and not exceeding 2 days). If girlfriend does not bring up the subject again, boyfriend wins. If girlfriend does not back down, and figures that since the relationship is over, she might as well try to get the universe to make sense, boyfriend must figure out some way to break up with her *even more*. If girlfriend drops the subject, boyfriend wins. If girlfriend does not drop the subject, repeat step 6 — point multiplier for number of times step 6 is repeated until boyfriend wins. If girlfriend calls bullshit on the whole thing and breaks up with boyfriend, girlfriend wins. This is the only winning condition for girlfriend.

We played this game quite a number of times [up until around May 29th], and he won in every conceivable way the game allows. With any luck, knowing the rules in advance will be helpful to the next contestant; I had no such advantage.

In effect, what Joey preferred to just telling me the truth, was to convince me I was going insane [[7]], pretend he had no idea why, say he just didn’t have time to hang between work and the three friends from Texas he was letting crash at his house for a week [May 4th – 10th] and ostracize me for the duration of his newly truncated stay in Boston — all the while Facebook-messaging me nightly to tell me how much he loved me and was concerned about me — unless I tried to figure out anything that would make things make sense again, in which case: see game rules above.

What the jigsaw puzzle says, is that he made two of the friends up, and only Natalie was staying at his house that week. And he made every effort to avoid seeing me so he didn’t have to be in the awkward position of hanging out with both his girlfriend and the girl he was cheating on her with. But we’ll get to that.

I press him and ask what happened physically. He says “we cuddled a little.”

The story so far then is that he avoided me for a week to have a girl sleep at his house, and they got “emotionally closer than appropriate” and the only result was that they “cuddled a little.”

At this point I remind him of how just a few weeks ago he brought up the topic of trust, and went on for some time about how he would never be so irresponsible as to lie in a relationship, because, he said, a single breach of trust could break the whole thing.

So now I ask him why he would go so far as to even start that conversation if he had in fact been lying to me almost constantly for months, and all he can respond with is “I don’t have a good answer for that.”

I figure that reminding him of this thing he said would make him less likely to lie again, and ask him “who else?”.

“no one.”

Okay, there goes that.

I ask him again.

“no one else.”

What in the actual fuck? WHAT IN THE ACTUAL FUCK HOW HAS HE NOT CAUGHT ON THAT I ALREADY KNOW AND AM GIVING HIM A CHANCE TO COME CLEAN. I make it clear and tell him we can’t fix this if I can’t trust him, and he finally seems to get it.

“roslin.”

Okay good who el– wait, what the fuck? Roslin? Roslin Bernit?? SHE’S NOT ON THE JIGSAW PUZZLE LIST WHAT THE FUCK MAN I LIKED ROSLIN! I showed her how neural nets worked at IndieCade back in February. What the fuck Roslin, why you gotta be like that? You knew we were dating the least you could’ve done was tell me.

I poker face and ask him “who else?” I tell him to list them all, not one by one so he can determine which ones I do and don’t know about. I ask him to do it because he wants this to work between us. He ignores that and continues listing one at a time.

“Blue, once during the break, while we were drunk.”

“Obviously.”

“Turquoise, during the break”

Blue and Turquoise were on the jigsaw list. He definitely did both of them way more than once [throughout mid May to June], but in any case their names get censored because they presumably only had sex with him during the break, so unlike Roslin Bernit, Jennifer Biggs and Natalie Gleason, they weren’t slimy enough to sleep with someone they knew was in a relationship. Though to be clear, Joey and I agreed (minimally for STD concerns, but also because we both just kind of wanted the assurance) that we would tell each other if we slept with anyone during this break — Joey however, thought it would be more fun to spend it playing a new game. Here were the rules:

Player must convince ex-girlfriend that player can’t even entertain the thought of having sex with anyone but her. [[10]]

Player must bring up strong principled stances to prevent player’s ex-girlfriend from sleeping with anyone but player.

Player may secretly have sex with as many people as desired.

Player gets one point for every person player secretly has sex with.

Point multiplier per hookup for each time player misleads ex-girlfriend into having unprotected sex with player (by telling her player has not had sex with anyone else).

Point multiplier per hookup for each time player goes on a long vocal tirade about how unethical that sort of thing would be.

Point multiplier per strong principled stance brought up to convince ex-girlfriend not to sleep with anyone else.

He won the hell out of that game — but I want to take this opportunity to point out that we’re not talking about some remedial course high schooler still figuring out how to not treat people like turds here. Joey’s 27 years old, and has 19 thousand Twitter followers and his own Wikipedia article touting him as a voice for all that is right and just and good in the world. And he’s fucking smart.

“Who else? Everyone.”

“Jennifer.”

Jennifer Biggs was also on the jigsaw list. Jennifer Biggs knew he was in a relationship. Jennifer Biggs is his boss. Jennifer Biggs is married. Jennifer Biggs is a total dick.

“Everyone. List them”

“I think that’s everyone.”[[1]]

. . . what? He thinks that’s everyone? How does that even? What? Was he just being skeezy so nonchalantly that he’ll just forget a few people here and there? Like, for whatever reason he just remembers those five women?

And I keep thinking back on this and I’m like “Five girls. Man. He cheated on me with five women? Five women.”

It would be so fitting if Five Guys had a chicken place…

But it’s okay, I will likely get past it so long as I remember it was very very probably considerably more than five girls. Thank god for that.

The conversation continues (paraphrased):

“And how long did it go on?”

“With Roslin it was once during game jam [late March]. Everything was fucked up and I was drunk and lonely and fucking miserable. Jennifer was a few days later. Similar reasons”

“What was the nature of the relationship with Jennifer? How long did it go on?”

“A few days because she told me he had a husband”

“you’re failing here.”

“what?”

“you are lying.”

“no?”

“it’s over I’m sorry”

“What?? wait shit no I was misremembering. It started during GDC before you arrived I think? As well as later in LA” [March 16th – June 2nd?]

Okay first: the last two quotes are verbatim and the “I was misremembering” line is hilarious. [[2]]

Second: I got to GDC just the day after he did. Which means they had sex the night before I arrived. Which means he probably ate her out like 12 hours before I kissed him. Which — I just don’t want to think about — but in any case, when he casually introduced me to Jennifer at a bar that night, she actually struck me as precisely the type of person with no reservations about sleeping with someone’s boyfriend given the chance. Though at the time, I hadn’t realized she’d been given that chance, and took it, just the night before.

Third: Holy shit hypocrisy — after we got back together [June 26th], Joey more or less forbade me from associating with a male friend I’d been discussing some problem I was having trouble with (not even personal; about mapping vector fields onto non-orientable manifolds in n-space or some shit), who vaguely showed a tentative interest in me during our break-up.[[11]] Joey was afraid that this friend, an immunocompromised fellow nerd with trauma problems, would try to sleep with me. On his own end, though (again, after we got back together), Joey had no problem continuing to be friends with Roslin and Natalie, both of whom not only showed an interest in him, but he actually screwed while we were dating. And — despite his strong principled stance against women who cheat on their husbands— he had no problem working for Jennifer after he found out she had a husband.

Fourth: At first I’m thinking “How was her having a husband the motivating factor in terminating that affair? How is that more important to him than his own girlfriend?” Then I’m thinking “Oh, it had nothing to do with me, he just didn’t want to do anyone skeezy enough to cheat on their significant other. Okay, yeah, I can totally relate to that. I can relate very well to that, actually.”

(In advance of any trilby-wearing e-sleuths, allow me to save you some time — yes, that means he was having sex with Jennifer Biggs right before she hired him. No, that doesn’t mean anyone’s going to risk their game’s success on an unqualified narrative designer for side benefits. Joey is in fact a pretty solid narrative designer. And if there’s any significant fault to find in his narrative design, it’s that he never stops doing it.)

Anyway, amidst a lot of lying and a lot of being backed into corners and a lot of shows of remorse, he goes on to admit that he also cheated on me with Natalie way before we broke up [Apr 1st – 6th], and that right at the end of things with us [May 4th – 10th] they did considerably more than get cuddly, and he did in fact ostracize me and convince me I was going crazy simply so that he could fuck Natalie and that he did in fact make up the other two friends staying over his house that week so it would look less suspicious.

Yeah all of that stuff is super fucked and I should cry about it later — but seriously who the fuck just makes two people up??[[5]]

Just — what?

Somehow, his reason for all of this was that I had told him I’d never been in love with anyone before, and that while he told me he was in love with me two months into the relationship [February 15th], I didn’t say it back until a month later. And when I finally did, apparently I used the wrong tone [[6]]. So yes, obviously that means he should cheat on me with three women for that month [he had sex with Jennifer, Natalie, and Roslin throughout mid March to early April], and then continue adding women to the roster every month thereafter. That’s obviously the thing someone should do.

I ask him if he even meant that argument he made about consent, and he says he did. I ask him how he could agree with that and do THIS (a ton of times with a bunch of women), and he says he’s going to barf [[3]].

I don’t let him know how disgusted or disgusting I feel — it wouldn’t be a worthwhile conversation — and at this point I don’t know if he actually cares; or at least I’m certain he didn’t care enough to not do it.

I ask him how he could be willing to have sex with me without protection despite sharing my concern about STDs, how he could be selfish enough to do that woman after woman simply because he didn’t want me to find out. I try to figure out how all this could have come from the unflinchingly righteous and honest person I thought I fell in love with.

He tells me he got tested.

I ask how he got tested in the timespan between having sex with me at GDC, and Jennifer the previous night.

He admits he didn’t get tested[[4]]. And says I never deserved any of this.

I ask him how he can say he believes all of these things. How he can say that convincing your partner they’re going crazy just to enable your own fucked up behavior is intolerably painful — and then go on to do just that. [[7]]

How he can talk about how horrible being ostracized was for him as both a child and an adult — and go on to ostracize people whenever it suits his interests (he did this to Natalie as well).

How he can be so vocal about something as important as sexual consent and establish that infidelity violates it — and then go on to cheat.

How he can talk about how confusing and awful dishonesty can be — and lie through an entire relationship, to enable all of the other behaviors he criticized.

How he can keep lying even as I’m giving him the chance to fix what he now says is the most important thing in his life.

He says he doesn’t know how he can live with himself. He says he just tried commit suicide, and I tell him I’m coming back to the hotel to keep an eye on him. [[8]]

Citation Images: VERY LARGE.

[[1-8]]

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Also do not open if you don’t want a giant wall of chat logs.

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