Robert laboured.

Robert thought of gunfire and killstreaks as he washed yet another dish. Robert: fourteen and stuck in a crap job. His life wisdom? He learned on the fourth week of a four day a week job that someone had to wash these dishes. He may as well be getting paid for it.

His hand sunk into the near-boiling hot water drew another plate from the latest pile. His flimsy yellow glove was all the barrier protecting him from burns on his skin, one that didn’t cover the splashes that dropped down his wrist. With experienced hands he wiped the plates clean and gave them a quick rinse before leaving them out to dry.

Such work even in the hot, damp and noisy kitchen gave him plenty of space to think. He wasn’t an Einstein coming up with physics theories. Naw, not with one of the cooks moaning about the front service. Robert, like most poor folks, was worried about his life.

He turned over, in his mind, the fact that he sucked at getting killstreaks and enjoyed Roblox more than first person shooters only twisted the knife parting his young heart in two. He could be daydreaming his next game he could be creating in Roblox, but no.

His mate, Nawfal, had been boasting about the new cod game all week. The fact that he was an honest asshole only drove home the point that the new campaign was great and the multiplayer ‘fire’. Stuck him with the fact he needed to get it.

Mom couldn’t afford another full priced video game. Not when she had just gotten him it last year as well. The one he had was perfectly fine. He had kicked his door frame in frustration. She wasn’t wrong, but she didn’t understand. For Robert's friend group, playing the new cod was the difference between friendship and isolation.

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He wished he could blame them, but they were richer. They always covered him when needed, but paying for a brand new game went too far. If you weren’t playing then you were outside the conversation. Robert may as well have been an alien. He felt like one. His fat skin and manly curves just didn’t seem to fit right…

He silenced the thought and retreated into a less confusing if fake image of himself.

He was Robert, a dish washer who dreamed of first person combat. He dreamed of getting blasted from the back in more ways than one his if he was being honest with his horny imagination.

He remembered a line from Romeo and Juliet - he’d been reading it for school, “My poverty, but not my will consents.”

Now, he knew himself not to be in poverty, in fact, he laboured to play. Robert’s situation could be far worse. He knew it, but it didn’t take the sting out of the fact he had to do chores because Mom was too tired after a third job or that if he didn’t work he would feel even more alone than he already did.

His full belly didn't unbrand the affliction that he either worked, failed at his school studies or waited in patient silence for his next task as an unskilled dishwasher. He was young enough to still remember he hadn't been born to wait for, receive and carry out orders, but in another year's time constant labour would erase that feel and subordinate him to the sink.

He was a heavyset lad that to eye veiled with commonsense looked like fat, but was more functional muscle and a diet of cheap ready made food that his family could afford.

To play, in a world where labour brought no joy and a bitter humility, was his only source of joy and pride. He worked to fit in; how weird it was that he had to expend such effort just to be in the same virtual space as his friends who just got access because their parents could easily afford the yearly cod tax.

Unlike them, Robert laboured.