The Adventurer's Son(26)
Chapter 12
Dungeons and Dragons
Hulahula River, Brooks Range, 2004.
Courtesy of the author
Roman was more than just my adventure partner and research assistant. He listened to what his mom and I said, but challenged us, too, unafraid to speak his mind. “Dad, you’re pretty smart, but Mom”—he grinned—“well, Mom’s wise.”
Even as a kid he shared Peggy’s circumspection. He shared her hairline, too: a widow’s peak. He kept his straight hair short, buzzing it himself. Sure, he had a mohawk when he was eight, but by high school he had discovered that girls went for his clean-cut, Harry Potter looks with his wire-rimmed glasses and high cheekbones like his mother’s. He not only resembled a young wizard, he was also smart enough to be authentic, sans tattoos or piercings.
While other kids watched television, Roman read books—we didn’t have a TV. He read fantasy, entomology, the dictionary, even crappy books where he’d skip every second page. At nine in Borneo, he read Tolkien’s The Hobbit in a single day, then the Lord of the Rings trilogy the next week, a binge that left a big gap in his journal. Later, he and his friends passed around Frank Herbert’s Dune series, H. P. Lovecraft, Stephen King, Mark Twain. He read so much I wondered if it was why he needed glasses.
In high school he read science, history, economics, and texts on the world of Dungeons and Dragons, a role-playing game based on imaginative narratives and magical scoring. For years, he spent each Friday evening at a friend’s immersed in DnD. Roman was a renowned dungeon master, the game-play creator, storyteller, and guide. All Peggy and I knew about it was that he left home excited to cook and share meals with a group of all ages and backgrounds. Roman cheerfully joined us for natural history and packrafting trips, but knowing that he’d developed his own identity comforted us.
Roman belonged to a creative, gregarious circle of friends who met in grade school and stayed close. At the group’s center was Roman’s best friend, Vincent Brady. Charismatic, athletic, artistic, Vince painted and drew, played music, and wrote poetry. The two met in kindergarten when Roman found Vince belly-down on a lawn pushing dandelions into his face, dusting his nose, lips, and cheeks with pollen. Roman asked what he was doing. Vince replied he was a bumblebee, pollinating flowers. In that moment, a beautiful lifelong friendship bloomed like the yellow weeds around them.
Starting in middle school, Roman threw solstice parties for this sometimes rowdy crowd, who came over, stoked a backyard bonfire, barbecued meat, and stayed up all night in the endless light of summer. A young woman from Vince’s circle once wrote that Roman was known for his storytelling of surreal adventures, his sharp wit and humor, for contributing to late-night conversations, drawing pictures, wrestling and laughing, waxing abstractions into the wee hours, and joking with everyone in cuddle puddles.
Roman could handle himself on his own, too. When he was sixteen his grandpa paid for a month of Spanish language classes in Mexico’s artsy San Miguel de Allende. Payment for the course included a driver who would meet him on his arrival in Mexico City. But Roman’s flight from L.A. was late and the driver left without him.
Roman called home. It was late in the evening.
“Dad, my flight out of L.A. was delayed, so I missed my ride in Mexico City. I bought this phone card but it’s only got five minutes. What should I do?” We had to solve the problem under the time constraint of his card.
“Hang up and call the school. Ask them what their advice is. Then call me back and tell me what they say.”
He hung up and I waited. A few minutes later the phone rang again. “Dad, they said that there’s a hotel in the airport. I wouldn’t have to leave and they’ll send the car in the morning. Or I can take a bus. There’s one more tonight and it leaves in less than an hour. It goes to another town where I get a second bus to another town and then I get a taxi. They said the whole trip is three or four hours.”
“Where do you get the bus?”
“Outside the airport. If I leave the airport, I can’t get back in for the hotel.”
“Do you have all the directions written down?”
“Yes.”
“What do you want to do?”
“I want to try and catch the bus.”
“Okay, Son. Good luck. Call the school and tell them what you’re doing. And then call me back when you get there.”
Of course, he made it. And so began his first Mexican adventure. He grew up on that trip and came back a young man full of rich, humorous, self-effacing stories. We were still close; he still wanted to do things, but there was a noticeable shift toward independence.
SOON AFTER, AS a junior in high school, Roman was selected to participate in the school district’s gifted mentorship program. Genetics had interested him since middle school when he had read the Cartoon Guide to Genetics and pronounced, “I’m just a genetic enhancement of you, Dad.” I introduced Roman to a colleague, the lead scientist at the U.S. Geological Survey’s Molecular Ecology Lab. She would mentor him his junior year, beginning a ten-year relationship with the lab. Running polymerase chain reactions, sequencing genes, and reading gels helped Roman pay for college and graduate school.
Working in the lab, he often listened to NPR. I asked him what his favorite show was. “Marketplace,” he said. “I like hearing about how the economy works.”