"I feel like I just walked out of a cemetery," I said to G. as we left the Strong Museum of Play, squinting against the haze and natural light of the outdoors.

"I know. It was weird," he spoke in a low voice. He looked like he wanted to say more, but didn't.

I stared for a few moments at some butterflies playing around the side of the building. "In some parts," I said slowly, "I almost felt like crying."

"Yeah. Me too." He draped his arm around my shoulder. "But the arcade was cool, right?"

The longer I reside in New York, the thicker and more aggressive my Southern accent has become, congealing into a soupy, lazy drawl, punctuated by the occasional "y'all" and "ain't." I listen to bluegrass now and wave to complete strangers, and I lust after collard greens with primal urgency. King of the Hill makes me giggle. William Faulkner makes me cry. And when the nights get sticky and hot, and the frogs sing just outside our windowpanes, I become so desperately, achingly homesick I fear my heart will burst.

Of course, when I actually lived below the Mason-Dixon, I sneered at fiddles and considered collards to be vestigially racist, like blackface and the word "colored." Never would I ever have been caught dead dropping the word "ain't" in polite conversation.

But the longer I'm away from home and the culture I grew up with, the more I've come to embrace it, even—especially—its most minute or once embarrassing characteristics. I've taken my memories and inflated them to staggering proportions, with the subconscious hope that if I exaggerate them just enough, maybe, just maybe, I won't forget the South—and the South won't forget me.

Lately, I find myself doing the same thing with videogames.

Last week, Time Warner Cable announced Phase 2 of its new broadband pricing model, a tiered billing system that would charge internet users based on their monthly consumption. The company will soon begin metered pricing in four cities: Greensboro, NC; Austin and San Antonio, TX; and my current hometown, Rochester, NY.

Understandably, the news has sent the internet into a tizzy, which is why I thought it might be a good idea to break down the facts and put things into perspective.

But make no mistake: As gamers—many of us with families—we're the ones most affected by Time Warner's new pricing structure. This is a direct warning shot across our controllers and keyboards: a sign to wake up and smell the profiteering.

Inside the studio, it's dark and cave-like. Twenty worn, once-yellow stationary bikes wait patiently, like horses in a stable. Despite the whirring fans, the air is thick with sweat, musk and stale cleaning solution. Once the class starts, the pungency will become heavier and self-sustaining, as the ten or fifteen of us pedaling furiously in the darkness ride off our sins in one short lunch-hour. Nobody ever said spinning was pretty. But it's effective.

Most of the regulars are here today. Mr. CEO, a dour, white-haired man who only wears t-shirts advertising various East Coast beaches. Ms. Something-to-Prove, a slender mom with green camo shorts and Madonna arms. Mrs. PINK! Pants, who owns a seemingly inexhaustible supply of sweats with various pithies embroidered on her behind.

But the instructor—he's one I haven't seen before. Usually this timeslot is taught by a scrawny, serious blonde, or a perky dancer. But this man, this hulking mass of human, is no dancer: He's an eight-foot tall collage of veins and sinews, muscles and chest hair. On his wrist is a tattoo of a snake; on his bicep, a grinning bulldog. He looks like the kind of guy that likes to shout, who will sweat freely and copiously and, on the harder hills, grunt like a distressed bear.

"Not much survived the flood," says Grandmom, looking back at me as we trundle down the creaky stairs. Her lips are thin and pursed. "The thing burst while we weren't home. By the time we got back, pretty much everything on the floor was gone."

In the basement the cement floor is mostly dry, but I can still discern a faint, toxic damp lingering in the air. Plastic toys, vintage upholstery and paintings have been upended, heaped together like towering, abstract sculptures. Against the walls lean stained cardboard boxes, brimming with wallpaper scraps, old shampoo bottles, nativity ornaments, half-used paper towel rolls. The piles stretch back into the darkness.

"Most of this is trash. But I did manage to save a few things," she says, smirking faintly.

Inside the gallery the air is heavy and smoky, warmed by the heat of thirty-odd bodies and the gently flickering candelabras. I pace the third floor landing, just out of sight from our guests, desperately trying to quell the lightness in my stomach and the rat-pat-pat in my chest. My father and bridesmaids watch me, wordlessly. Even up here, I can hear the murmur of voices, the creak of floorboards, the hum of anticipation. I swear I can smell something burning.

Sometimes, when I'm feeling lost or lonely, I retreat to Fiction/Literature, Letter N.

Fingers tip-tapping across unbent spines, I meander the stacks at my local bookstore, eyes myopic and wandering, searching for his name. But mine is a ritual of habit only, because who am I kidding? I know exactly where Vladimir Nabokov is: fourth tall row, third rack in, fourth shelf from the top. There his books wait, sometimes twenty-five of them, sometimes twenty-three, always slightly dusty, their ranks inflated by four different versions of Lolita. Old, familiar friends. Some I haven't read yet. Some I never will.

As my hands graze the soft covers, I'm a pilgrim, kissing the painted feet of saints as I pass by. The Vintage typesets, the pastel covers, the jackets featuring chess pieces and butterflies -- they whisper together in an indistinct language, a lullaby just out of reach. Sometimes I'll pull Pale Fire or Ada down from its pedestal (or, if I'm feeling really bad, Lolita) and skim the first few pages. Sometimes I just read the titles, as I've done hundreds of times before, each name a well-practiced whisper, a silent, familiar Om.

Four months ago, I donned my best suit and snazziest heels to attend "Eyes on the Future," a local economic summit held in a college gymnasium that smelled vaguely of feet.

It was here that hundreds of Rochester, NY business execs and entrepreneurs gathered to whine into their Tim Horton's about the dreadful state of the Upstate economy. No jobs. Vanishing credit. Young college grads fleeing the state in record numbers. It was a real sobfest. The panelists on stage prattled on and on about non-issues like "attracting Millennial workers" and "how to better brand Rochester," all the while studiously avoiding the real elephant in the room: The economy sucks because we made it so. The only way to make it better is to tighten our belts. To be fair, this is not a message that we New Yorkers are used to hearing.

Which is why I was so impressed with Governor David Paterson, who dropped by that day to give a surprise, impromptu speech. The same Governor Paterson who just declared war on the geeks.

The coffee's cold. It's always cold. And the bagels - not much better. Bland, palate-shredding hardtack, dusted with enough stale poppyseeds and salt to give the appearance of flavor. The cream cheese could double as wall putty. Plastic is everywhere: plastic knives, plastic stirrers, plastic barrels of creamer marked with the warning, "For best use, do not refrigerate."

I left my apartment this morning before the sun rose, forsaking a warm bed and a fragrant pot of chicory coffee just to chug glacial joe and rend my gums on bagel bricks. And I don't regret it, not one bit. After all, nobody comes here for the food.

Let's get this out of the way: Portal is brilliant. You know it. I know it. Consider this admission our common ground, a way for us to circumvent 1500 words singing Valve's praises that would've normally filled this space, which you've already read a dozen times over, to which you would've nodded knowingly and I would've smirked and we both would've walked away from our computers not much smarter and hungry for cake.

But when I finished Portal, I didn't ponder its brilliant play mechanics or physics engine; all I really thought about was calling my mom and telling her that I loved her. Because as good as Portal is, what's more important is what the game's about: Mothers. Daughters. Women.