A Skilene-Filled September
Scenario 8: "Glad You're a Guy"
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
A week after he had worn it as a bow on his head before fashioning it into a makeshift bullwhip, Skipper ran the long piece of pink ribbon through his flippers.
"I'm sure glad that whole misadventure is behind me," Skipper said to himself, remembering vividly how a misunderstanding had caused him to temporarily believe he was a female seven days earlier. "And my subsequent recurring nightmares of dancing on stage with the Rockettes have become less and less frequent."
Skipper then looked at the ribbon a little closer.
"Why am I still keeping this?" he asked himself. "It's not like I don't already have 31 other bullwhips of assorted sizes and pain-infliction levels. As paranoid as I am, do I really need a 32nd one?"
Astonishingly, Skipper came to the conclusion that he did not. Instead, he folded up the ribbon and tucked in under his left flipper, then left the HQ to pay Marlene a visit.
"Hello, Marlene," Skipper said cheerfully as he waddled into Marlene's habitat. "I have something I'd like to give you."
"What is it?" Marlene asked.
Skipper then pulled the ribbon out from under his flipper and presented it to her.
"Oh, the pink ribbon you cracked against my cheek last week," Marlene replied as she rolled her eyes. "Skipper, you shouldn't have."
"Come on, Marlene, I thought we were past that," Skipper replied. "It was all in fun. And you're not a moron either, though the jury's still out on Alice."
Marlene then took the ribbon from Skipper.
"I'm not sure what I'm going to do with this, but thank you," she said.
"You're welcome," Skipper replied. "I no longer need it, and pink's not really my color anyway."
"Um, don't you drive a car that's pink?" Marlene couldn't help but point out.
"Not by choice, Marlene," Skipper replied. "Our vehicle would still be black right now if Kowalski had done the paint adherence calculations correctly so we knew how long to let it dry before driving it out in the rain. I'm just playing the hand I was dealt."
Skipper then cleared his throat.
"Anyway, Marlene, please consider that ribbon/bow/bullwhip/what have you as a token of appreciation for helping me come to my senses last week," he said. "You can do with it whatever you please, whether it be to hold your curtains open, as a tripwire for some big beautiful explosion, to floss your teeth, or anything else you can think of."
Marlene smiled.
"Thank you for giving me an array of options that weren't all stereotypically female," she said.
"Yes, forgive me for all that last week as well," Skipper stated. "I just had no clue about what being a female was supposed to be like. I tried being a girl for just one day and couldn't cut it. How do you do it so well, Marlene?"
"How?" Marlene chuckled. "I was born that way."
"Ah, that would probably explain it," Skipper smiled.
Then, another thought suddenly entered Skipper's mind.
"After all the motivation you gave me in the course of saving the lemurs when I still thought I was female, I'd bet you were a bit disappointed when my DNA results showed that I was still a guy after all," he said. "You probably thought you had finally found another lady to hang out with around here, but now you're right back to where you started."
Marlene nodded her head slightly.
"Briefly, I was indeed a little disappointed," she acknowledged. "But it didn't last very long, since I'd actually be more disappointed if you really were a female."
"How so?" Skipper asked.
"It's complicated," Marlene replied.
"Complicated like Kowalski's science mumbo-jumbo, or complicated like you just don't want to talk about it?" Skipper inquired.
"It's just that I would have lost you the way I've always known you," Marlene answered. "Sure, it was fun when you were my 'sister,' but I'm so glad you turned out to still be a guy in the end. It makes things a whole lot less awkward for me, and still gives me hope."
"Hope?" Skipper wondered. "Hope for what?"
Marlene then paused for a moment. She realized full well the weight her reply would have on her friendship with Skipper from that point forward. She then answered.
"Hope for something more than friendship between us, Skipper," she replied. "That's why I'm so glad I didn't have to lose you last week – it would have truly broken my heart. Then I'd probably have to go out looking for some otter bachelor in the park or something, and I could never see myself doing that. I don't love some random otter, Skipper; I love you."
As he listened to Marlene's revelation of her true feelings for him, Skipper smiled as a tear ran down his cheek.
"You know, Marlene, you and I have a lot in common," he said as he wrapped a flipper around her. "You're honestly the first one I thought of when the DNA analyzer said I was female, and not because I would later need your help. No, it was because I had long had hope for us as well, Marlene, and I feared that coming to an end. I thought there would then never be a day that I could finally look you in the eye and tell you how much I love you."
Marlene then began to cry at Skipper's heartfelt words as well, but Skipper quickly dried her eyes with a flipper.
"But we no longer have to fear anything, Marlene," he said. "I'm 100 percent Antarctic macho, and you're 100 percent California beautiful. Together, we're 200 percent in love."
Publication note: I once again find myself at the library in order to post this installment a day later than I should have. Again I apologize for the delay, but the telephone company (which I will now identify as being AT&T) has yet to fix whatever error is causing my inability to connect to both their telephone network and the Internet from my house.
-GrandOldPenguin
September 9, 2010
