Trouble Me
O'Hare Session Twenty-one
"McGuirk is an Okay Guy"
The short business man enters the room, his small steps pattering against the gentle, pale yellow carpet of Dr. Pennington's office. He sits down on the grey couch-it did not fit with the room, but in an odd way, did. O'Hare sits there for a moment, almost grinning at his therapist.
"Well, Mr. O'Hare, you look as if you are going to burst. Is there anything you'd like to tell me?" He says, his dark suit such a stark contrast against the yellow wallpaper behind him.
"So...I may have made a friend-first time in my adult life!" Dr. Pennington smiles. He knew how lonely Mr. O'Hare was most of the time.
"Who is this friend?" he asks. Aloysius laughs.
"It's one of my own fucking body-guards! McGuirk! He's an okay guy, after all." he giggles. "You know, he's the one that always fawned over my mom. Spends most of his free-time watching fucking anime. I'm not really into anime beyond the first two seasons of Digimon, but he just sits around watching it. Not a lot of people would try to attack me, I don't think. It's just nice to have the two of them there. Morty...I don't know much about him-no more than his file says. He fucking majored in "Musical Theory". What the hell even is that? I guess that's why he's a body-guard. Not a lot of call for "musical theorists" or whatever the hell kind of job you'd get with a degree in that. I mean, what the hell? "In theory, that song sucks"; what a waste of time."
"Yes, Mr. O'Hare, there are a lot of foolish majors out there, but let's get back to your new friendship with McGuirk."
"Well, one day, he's sitting there watching some gunslinger anime, Gun Grave or Trigun or some shit like that, and I just lose it. I was in a really pissy mood that day anyway-had a shitty morning, already in a pissed-off mood. I'm sitting there, listening to it in the original Japanese-he's one of those anime purists-no dub ever. I snap and yell at him: "Goddamn it, McGuirk, why do you have to be such a fucking weeaboo all the motherfucking time!?" He just turns his cartoon off, gets up walks to me and says in flawless fucking Japanese: "My father worked in the Japanese part of town when I was a boy. As such, I lived in the Japanese part of town. I attended all the Japanese schools, from elementary through highschool. I grew up around anime, Japanese products, and Japanese music. You went to Japan every year for a month or two? I lived in a facsimile of Japan until I was 20 years old. That is why I am a weeaboo, Mr. O'Hare." Perfect fucking honorifics and all that shit. Earned a bit of respect from me that day. He's not just some turd-face Japanophile that thinks they know all about Japan from watching Naruto and One Piece. They piss me off. For a long time, after I found out McGuirk was a goddamned weeaboo, I thought he was just working for me because I am half-Japanese."
"So, how are the two of you friends?" O'Hare knits his brows, confused.
"Isn't that how becoming friends works?"
"No, sir. It seems to me that he more "showed you" than extended an olive-branch of friendship."
"Well, how does this grab you? I have him, just him, go to lunch with me and decide to chit-chat with him, shoot the breeze. It was nice to at least know someone else to talk to in Japanese since my mother passed away. He told me about how he always stood out in school, the only white kid and the tallest in his class. Plus, his fucking first name is Alaernic. Ael-aer-nik. Hell of a name. No wonder he goes by his last name. He said they'd try to translate it-you know, how my friends in Japan would turn O'Hare into Oharu? He said they'd try every which fucking way. Airuaruniku. Aruairuniku. Arureiniku. Airureiniku. It all just sounded too weird for him. The other kids just ended up calling him Niku. I told him that my grand folks and the kids in Japan had such a hard time with Aloysius that they just called me by my middle name. Aru-rei-shu. That's not a mouth-full, is it? He said a lot of girls fancied him once he hit high school, and it's where he met his wife, Toriko Nakamura. I didn't even know he was married, to tell the truth-he's got a kid, too. A boy. Just a baby. His name is Kin. "