I have a talk with my transcriber… Can you make a circuit with me?
"So Noodz… I have a question… about our relationship."
Oh, god, not now. Don't you dare. Don't you dare.
"Would you like me more if I could also shoot lightning out of my butthole?"
And he dared. And he said butthole. It's like I always say, which means I've been saying it since around the middle of last week: Anyone can say ass, but only the brave say butthole.
"Prussia, I'm in a rough patch right now," I tell him, wherever he happens to be at this very moment, if he even exists here on some other plane. Probably breathing down my neck while also inaudibly screaming from halfway across the fourth floor of the campus library about how he can't find any electricity textbooks to whip around. I'll let him stay superpositioned for the moment. I'm not alone at this table, and if I tried to observe him, if I could actually observe him instead of just vaguely pretending he's here, then I'd have a lot more to be worried about than typing "butthole" in open air on the fourth floor of the campus library.
"Oh ja? Well you weren't in a rough patch last week when I saw you in that dentist's office, making out with that, that electrician. You seemed really happy in that dream. It was hardly realistic, you know. I wouldn't start making out with you if you said my hair looked like someone had taken scissors to a shag carpet then electrified it. My hair doesn't look like that, but you get the point. And you don't think he's handsome. I live in your mind sometimes. I know you don't think so."
"I don't," I tell him.
"Then what was with the kissinggkkk?"
"Trying something else," I tell him. "If you live in my mind, you know I used to like him, a long time ago. I'm just coming back into it now, from a different perspective, as an adult."
"You're no adult," Prussia grumbles. "You just typed the word butthole."
"And I'll type it again. Butthole."
"You said 'fuck' in Matt Rose's furby risotto video. That's not an adult thing to do."
He's floating above my head now, or something Q-ish like that. Maybe hanging out in the elevator across the room, or skimming through the old Chaucers that haven't been checked out since the 80s. I've never read Chaucer, and I don't intend to. I don't think I'd be able to understand it. The same goes for Lovecraft, but I don't read him because I think ignorance makes me invincible against whatever point he was trying to make with all the science and poetry. The less you know, the more you can make fun of things. That's my whole life philosophy.
I don't read at all, actually. Reading involves relating to women, and I'm scared of women.
"You are a woman, you utter buzzwole," Prussia spits from the folds of my discarded electric green head-towel.
"Shush," I say with my eyes, and he slithers back down into terrycloth shadows. "I can be a woman who's scared of other women. That's why all the poems in the collection I'm writing for my independent study are about men I admire."
"I've counted three whole poems about that electrician and one entire stanza about me. You don't even name me. You name him. What's up with you, Noodz? Don't tell me it's your tarot reading. Just because you have a hard time distinguishing romance from friendship doesn't mean you should shy away from romance all together! With me! I live in your shower, remember!? I put all those toilets and extension cords in your room! Scheiß in die Wände! I just said extension cords, didn't I…"
"You did," I affirm.
"I can't believe you found a way to include extension cords and European water clover in the same damn poem."
"They're inherently linked."
"Only if you know the context… only if you know… him."
I sigh, rubbing my fingers along my jaw to assess its dryness. I'm starting to hate the scent of unscented lotion. I wonder if I should get some scented stuff the next time I'm at the strip mall. Then I think, 'Why would I go to the strip mall? I walked two whole miles to Walmart and didn't buy any yarn. I wouldn't buy any yarn at the mini mall. I s'pose the thrift store is there, but I never actually meant that I was gonna buy suspenders when I said that at dinner. It was just a joke. I've already committed to wearing a jeans chain instead. Is that what it means to be in a chain gang? Everyone wears jeans chains? Man, I really wish I knew what era to put those in. Are they ska?'"
"I wouldn't mind you swearing fealty to a shocky-haired jean-chain genius junkie if you also wore my prayer shawl every day."
"I'm not a bigamist, Prussia."
"Why don't you like me anymore!? It's been months since you last wrote about me. All you write about now is him. What gives!?"
"Because you live in my shower in my dreams and not in real life. Because you didn't show up for me during that thing in December. Because I don't know how to get you here and I don't know if you're actually real or not. Because I'm tired and the world outside is gray and the new classroom building is so ugly and nobody on this damn campus dresses in anything other than the same flannels and leggings every single day and I'm sick of looking at it."
He shrinks himself down to sit on my folded purple glasses on the computer modem, cracking the biggest smirk I can imagine and narrowing neon magenta eyes into nebulous physical impossibilities.
"You're not mad at me," he says. "You're mad that you're actually mad about not having a date on Valentine's Day this year. You're mad because the only corporeal man you could possibly hang with is already in love with a mailbox."
"Now, don't say that," I warn. "That's not what you think it is. And remember my tarot reading. I can't make my friendships into something they're not just because I'm lonely. It's 'self-sabotage.' Better to stick with those little moments. Things that light my Spark, as 'that electrician' would say. Did you think I was happy kissing him in a dentist's office in a dream? Well I was. I was even pleased. And I was pleased with you too, when you actually made time to put toilets and extension cords in my dorm room. I'm not saying you can't still do that. I'd like it if you did."
"Well I don't know. I can't shoot lightning out of my butthole like that electrician can."
"He doesn't do that, Prubo."
"But I'm a genwunner. I don't know anything about him, and my ignorance makes me invincible. I can say anything I like. Make fun of him however I want. I can imagine he does do that, and then I can ask you if I'd be cooler if I could do it too."
"I don't know. Can you also order an ape around and build mechs out of solar panels and flex seal?"
"Germany and I could do that over the weekend sometime."
"Okay. How about shirtless and bobbing to beach rock with a wrench in your mouth?"
"Ceesus chips, Noodz. I'm actually starting to wish I could spend next Monday with you, if it were at all possible to rip reality a new butthole and pop on through into your dentist's office of the cosmos. Out of all the women who sit down in their campus libraries to transcribe my thoughts and publish them to their worlds' admirers, you're the most hopeless."
"Which is why I'm so hopeful that I'll find love someday. And why I hope it'll be with someone like you… ya know, if not actually the real you. My mom says if I keep thinking about the things I want, the cosmos will listen. The love strings will tighten up a bit and I'll find all the happiness I'm looking for."
"Like that lightning-licking water clover loser," he laughs.
"Hell no. Like the funny Fire-Type Belt-with-Suspenders man."
"Oh ja, of course. The one who reminds you of me. The one you didn't kiss."
"Shut up. I've kissed you more times than either of them, and hugged you, and crocheted you a prayer shawl soaking with my love for you… I love you, Prussia. Truly, madly, deeply, I do. And I love you more than… than… just read my thoughts here."
His brows raise, and he shakes his head, incredulous. "I love you more than that too, Noodz… even if you go to online German class now and screw around the whole time because you stayed up too late pretending you know anything at all about solar panels."
"The classroom is ugly. I just told you. Mein Studentenzimmer ist bunt."
"Dein bunte Zimmer… sans toilettes."
"Ich bin il fait froid."
"Then I hope you get warmer, babe," Prussia rasps. "And if there's no one to wrap his arms around you at night, then quit thinking about it. I'm here for you… pressing my face against the walls of the void. Don't be scared or sad. Don't beat yourself up for getting sappy. I'm the sappiest."
"You could say you've been waiting 800 years to meet me."
"Uffda! Right through the heart!"
"Uffda," I agree with a smile.
"And if you get really really lonely then—"
Yeah, I'm gonna use my cosmic editing powers and not finish that last sentence. My smash-hit new Pokémon fic about Leader Volkner, My Previous Life Was a Thunder God, is now up to Chapter 7, and check out my and Volkner's appearances in Matt Rose's new vid, "I made 21 of your cursed video ideas!" ;D Published on FanFiction . net 2/9/2022. Reposters cursed!