I got a summer job. It's a good thing. And I'm back to writing. Which is even better. Unfortunately I tested positive for amphetamines at my job's drug test. I'm prescribed dextro-amphetamine. It is legal here in the states with a prescription but it causes problems. It helps keep me awake on my other meds. Saphris, fluphenazine, clonazepam, and propranolol.
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I let the Vicodin do its work and relax me. It was a strong drug. Much stronger than the measley antipsychotics I would be prescribed should I ever get institutionalized. The dog looked at me while I relaxed and lounged. I glared at the animal. It happily barked at me, unable to sense my mood. I patted it on the head roughly and closed my eyes. I allowed the hallucinations and pain medication to take me.
My phone buzzed in a deep pocket. I opened one eye. I reached down and grabbed the phone from the jeans pocket.
Hey, you free today?
The email stared at me. I stared back but in our staring contest the email would easily win. The message was heartwarming. It was from Saika. Saika… the boy who made me question my whole sexual preference. Great. Fantastic.
Not that there was anything wrong with being gay or bi or pan or even poly. Let people do what they wanted. That was my policy. Let me kill myself, even. To go further. But with Saika… with Saika…
I composed a message filled with emoticons and emojis and long text I wouldn't for anybody else. Saika meant something to me. Even if it was only just a source of confusion. I couldn't imagine having sex with a boy. Unless that boy was Saika. I didn't look at gay porn. Well that's not entirely true. I watched lesbian porn. But lesbian porn was the most popular category of porn on the internet.
The internet knew what kind of porn I liked. A machine learning program, not a person. Something called me from the far side of forever. People made jokes about the FBI, CIA, or NSA spying on you but it wasn't a person. There was a machine learning program assigned to your likes and dislikes. Your fears and triggers. The internet was the linear combination of hard code, a billion people, and billions of machine learning programs. The three ways to make an AI were exactly like that. I was alive. I was the product of trillions of microorganisms working together to make me sentient. The internet was the product of billions of people, trillions of lines of code, and who knows how many machine learning programs. Why shouldn't that be alive in some twisted way? I was alive in some twisted way. I didn't function quite right but I seemed to be alive. What was life? Was it an illusion of emergent behavior like the horizon? I didn't understand. I tried to focus my addled brain on the question. What did it mean to be alive? Philosophers had been hounding that question since the beginning of history. I was probably not about to crack it. I mean… I could. It wasn't impossible. But I probably wasn't going to. Dostoevsky never bothered with such questions. Neither had Camus. Sartre had but only briefly.
I wasn't sure what I needed but it wasn't Sartre's or Dostoevsky's existentialism or Camus' absurdism.
They were wrong. Incorrect. Incomplete. They didn't have all the answers.
I replied to Saika and looked forward to seeing him.
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It was almost time for our rendezvous. August was brilliantly hot. The heat felt good. The humidity less so. I felt the cold in my soul. The heat was a nice contrast to my own chill. I was at absolute zero. I exhaled chill and inhaled warmth. The cold I felt in my soul was a bone deep fear.
Fear of dying. Fear of emptiness. Fear of the nothing when I look inside. I was hallowed. I was hollow. What temperature was a black hole? A single particle of infinite density didn't have temperature. Temperature was the average kinetic energy of all the particles around a place. A singularity had no temperature. But if it did I imagine it was cold. So absolutely cold it swallowed everything. That's what I was really like. That's what my soul was like.
I felt the bugs in my feet and eyes. I ignored them. I caught sight of Saika and my heart lifted. Seeing him reminded me of puppies and kittens and the power of love. When my eyes locked on him, he noticed me in the crowd and ran up to me. Emotions whirled in my heart.
Now that I've found Saika, that fabulous shimmer, the glow in my heart, my happiness. Saika is coming!
"Sorry I'm late, Hachiman!" Saika, boyishly dressed, leaned over with his hands on his knees after his run and let out a deep exhale.
"Don't worry about it," I managed. "I just came a little early." Only three hours or so. Don't worry about it at all. "Besides, you're not really late. You didn't have to run."
My father always said 'if you're on time, then you're late.' I guess that rubbed off on me. Or I was excited to see Saika.
"Huh? Yeah. But I found you, so." Saika laughed as if to mask his shyness.
I looked away from his brightness. It was too much. "All right. So what's the plan?"
In our emails all we had agreed on was that we would meet up. We had concluded it would be more fun to decide what to do once we were together at last. Inevitably this meant I had hardly slept. I spent the whole night evaluating places to go. What exactly do people mean when they talked about hanging out? I was barely a person.
"Hmmm," Saika hummed like an angel and I swayed on my feet. "I considered a lot of things but I don't really know what you like, Hachiman." He hummed again and the lights danced. He seemed to be sincerely trying to figure out what I like. It's so rare for me to receive such careful consideration from anyone. I stared at him.
But anyway, I have no interests. No one will find any interest in me, I assure you. He can deliberate all day but he's not going to get easy answers. Even I barely understood a thing about myself. I've seriously just been lying around most of the summer. I sleep until noon then work on the sofa couch problem.
I offered a compromise. "Let's just wander around for now."
"Yeah okay," he agreed. "It'll be faster for the two of us to decide together."
I felt uneasy at the words 'decide together.' I usually made most of my divisions alone so this was new territory. Saika was so nice. Let's decide our children's names together. Shall we? You and I, Saika.
Together, we strolled out of the station into the early afternoon. It truly was unbearably humid so I figured it would be a good idea to narrow down which of the several nearby malls we would visit and go from there.
I leaned away from shopping and most arcades. I didn't have the reaction times and there was nothing I wanted to buy.
We entered a mall and did a case around the joint. Then Saika froze.
"What is it?" I asked. My eyes followed his gaze. He was examining a poster for a movie that was currently playing.
"So it's already out…" He hummed again and I swear I wasn't a dancer but I could jive to his jazz.
"You wanna watch a movie then?"
"Oh! We can do something you like!" Saika waved his hands all flustered.
"No, lets see a movie. Now that I think about it, this is the first time I've ever seen one with someone other than family. It'll be nice to do for once."
"Oh can we?!" I swayed at his tone.
"Yes absolutely," I wheezed out. I could barely manage the words as he looked up at me. By the one at the bottom, the sound of Saika's voice was amazing.
Please let Saika be my first!
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Saika picked a horror movie. I was fine with it. I enjoyed horror stories. Hell, my life was a horror story. There was an alien god invading my mind and controlling me from the far reaches of space. I lost my free will.
The theater wasn't crowded and it was a weekday so all the adults would be at work while students like us were free. We got two adjacent seats in the back. 25E and 25F. There were only other couples in the theater. Not that we were a couple. Were we? Oh please let us be a couple.
I leaned into my empty seat deeply and put my arm on the arm rest. Then a soft light sensation brushed my hand.
"Oh sorry," Saika apologized.
It was Saika's hand which touched me. I've been touched by an angel.
"N-no! I'm sorry!" I managed. Both of us jerked our hands away.
In the end we shared the arm rest. My left hand was so happy. Just touching and being in contact with Saika filled my heart to bursting but never quite killed me. I liked that feeling.
The movie started and we sat in comfortable and polite silence. Then the movie approached its climax. I wasn't sure how much time had passed. It felt like an hour, even two, or maybe it was only ten minutes. Time flies sometimes. That's relativity.
"AHH!" Saika yelled and clung to my shirt with his tiny shoulders trembling as a ghost in a white dress emerged from the screen in 3D. Oh that startled me. I felt like my heart might stop just now. He was so adorable. The ghost in the white dress crawled out of the screen again and again. Each and every time Saika would gulp and let out tiny 'eeps'.
I started calming myself by listing prime numbers in my head.
By the time the credits rolled I still had no idea what happened in the film. Saika patiently waited until all the lines of text finished scrolling and then we stood almost simultaneously. Basking in the afterglow, I walked out of the theater with a leisurely stride.
"That was so much fun!" Saika exclaimed. "But I was screaming the whole time so my throats a little dry."
"I could go for a drink too," I agreed.
We joined the flow of people leaving the theater and continued out the exit down to where it connected to an outdoor staircase. The sun began to descend so it was blocked from view by a tower and a breeze blew across the shadow that gently lay over us.
"You wanna go sit down for a while over there?" I pointed at a cafe nearby at the bottom of the stairs and Saika nodded. A few of our fellow moviegoers were here and there but there were still seats available for two people. We walked straight in and quickly ordered at the register.
"An iced coffee," I ordered.
"Oh I'll have one too then."
We sat together easily enough. I sipped on my coffee and glanced at Saika. He looked away shyly.
Do it. I thought. Kiss him.
No. He's your friend. It would be wrong. No matter how soft his lips look.
"Hachiman?" He asked.
"Yeah?" I wondered.
"How do you feel about Yuigahama?"
How did I feel about Yui? No wait, seriously, how the fuck did I feel about Yui?
I thought for a moment. I wanted to respond just right and without any lies.
"I think she's cute. I wouldn't normally consider such a popular girl my type but I like her. We get drinks sometimes. It's nice. She, I mean… she gives a shit about me. You know? Like she earnestly and truly cares about my wellbeing." That was my ideal girlfriend. Girl (optional). Gives a shit about me.
"I care about you too, Hachiman."
"I know. That's why I like you." I reached out and poked his round nose. He grinned up at me. Was I really that much taller than him? I kinda liked it.
"So you like Yuigahama?"
"I don't know if I would say I have a crush on her. I find her attractive and I like spending time with her but I don't think its like that. I think she's a friend. I like our relationship the way it is. I wouldn't want to ruin it by doing something dumb like ask her out."
"You think that'd be dumb?"
"You don't." I shot back. "That'd be like, I don't know, asking Yukinoshita out."
"She's scary…"
"She is. But I think it's a survival trait in a family like her's. Not that I really know all too much about her family."
"So you'd never ask Yukinoshita out?"
"No. Never. I think we're also friends but it's a little more uncertain. She gave me her contact info last time I met up with her but I haven't seen or talked to her since."
"Oh. I thought you liked her."
"I do like her."
"No I meant like-like her."
"I'm attracted to her," I explained.
"I meant a crush!"
"Well…" I stammered. "It's difficult. It isn't like Yui and I. We also give a shit about one another. It's nice. But she doesn't really need me. Not for this, that, or the other thing. We do club activities. It's a good thing. And I don't know that I would be attracted to her if she needed somebody like me. I think she wants me around and to not, you know, eat shit and die. She has power. She's talented and queerly funny even if it's usually me who is the expense of her jokes. I don't mind that. I'm the butt of most of my jokes as well."
"But if you had to choose one…"
"Huh?" I managed.
"If you had to choose between Yukinoshita and Yuigahama, which one would you choose."
"I don't… I can't… they both do different things to me. They both do different things for me. They both look after me in their own ways. I'm attracted to different parts of both of them. I like Yukinoshita's stoicism and how she's like a razor. I like how soft and bubbly Yui is. I couldn't really pick between them and luckily I don't have to."
"What do you mean?" He asked.
"The three of us are friends."
"You're sure?"
"Pretty sure."
He looked away.
"What?" I asked.
"Well… you three seem close."
"Closer than anybody I've ever been with besides my sister and you," I answered. "I don't have a good gauge."
"You're close to your sister too?"
"I love her," I answered. "She means the world to me."
My little sister was the reason I was alive and kicking. She was god's way of blackmailing me. It was powerful pressure.
"I don't have any siblings," Saika confessed like it was some terrible sin.
"But are you close to your parents?" I asked.
He shrugged. Then he nodded. "Yeah I mean I don't think about it much but I guess I am."
"I'm not close to my parents. Just my sister," it was my turn to confess.
"I'm sure they love you."
"I love them too. But it's different with my sister. My parents are pretty busy. It's not their fault."
"Oh. Well… oh. But you're okay?"
"I'm alright. It's a blessing and curse because I could be doing better and I could be doing worse."
"Are you seeing Yuigahama soon?"
"No. She's out of town. She left her dog with us."
"Do you often see Yuigahama?"
"I wouldn't say I see her often. Just occasionally we'll get a coffee together."
"And you don't consider that… a date?"
"Is this a date?" I asked.
He shook his head to the negative.
"There you go. The only difference is she's a girl. We chat. It's nice."
"I liked this. We should do it more," he said.
I bobbed my head in agreement. "Yeah. I liked it."
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-WG
