For the past three days I’ve been living not in Manhattan, but in a place called Vice City. I boost Corvettes, outrun cops, slaughter gangbangers and punch the shit out of taxi drivers. I drop-kick people off Vespas and put Yamahas into the wall for no good reason.

My roommate’s even worse; he drives onto the beach for the sole purpose of running sunbathing pedestrians down with a Ford Bronco. People running everywhere, like in a Godzilla movie. Sometimes he has to back up to finish the job and it gets kind of gruesome.

Invincible, unstoppable. I cut corners like a temp, powerslide through hairpins and at speed I bang U-Turns like Oliver Stone. Killer ‘80s trash on the decks: Mister Mister, Foreigner, Cutting Crew. Night Ranger singing “Sister Christian” while bullets hit sheetmetal and I roll Firebirds like dice.

I’m not big into videogames, but a PS2 happened to fall into my hands. I picked up a copy of Grand Theft Auto 3: Vice City just to see what would happen when I slid the disc into the machine. It reminded me of when as a teenager I pulled the knob on a cigarette machine for the very first time. This game is bad, bad news.

For the first five minutes GTA horrified me (because I’m old and somewhat civic-minded, you see). They reward you for being evil, committing senseless acts of violence, and pedestrian lives are worth not a whit.

After ten minutes I was sufficiently inured to the imagined pain of others and I began playing in earnest. The thrill of escaping police roadblocks with much kinetic violence is not to be underestimated.

Videogames are like time travel. It’s 6pm, then you blink and it’s three in the morning. Ironic that I can get my youth back from a machine that actually steals it. Steals it like an unlocked Pontiac.