A Small Misunderstanding of Epic Proportion

So we’re at the mall, you and I, and I see this guy I fucked. I can’t remember when. That’s no big, but he sees me, and starts walking toward us.

“Ah, fuck,” I mutter.

At least that’s what you hear. (See below, play procedures.)

I push on the bridge of my sunnies as though I can somehow push them up higher or on tighter and somehow mask myself effectively after he’s already seen me.

If you know me well, you might be wondering why I don’t just ghost.

He’s ready seen me, I think. (See below.)

“Teresa?” he says. He says it like a question, but dude knows it's me. I mean, he came inside me calling out that name.

I smile, but it’s a polite, friend-ish one. “Hey, you,” I say and mock like imma touch his arm, but my hand doesn’t reach him.

He smiles then and leans in for a kiss. It’s not like a Frenchie, like, he wants a cheek, so I let him have it and do that thing some of my aunts do where they kiss the air? It’s some weird lady shit; I dunno. But it happens, lika reflex.

He looks at you, and—depending on the youness of you—either looks threatened or maybe kina hopeful he could somehow manage to see us eat each other out.

I introduce you, and you say whatever you say, assuming you say anything.

Irrespective of that, he turns his attention back to me. You know, unfortunately.

“So I never heard from you,” he said. “I was thinking maybe I typed my number in wrong.”

He chuckles, nervously, obviously.

On the one hand, I get it. I’ve been this dude. I mean, haven’t we all, in our own way?

But on the other hand, I am tired. I’m bereaved. I’m lowkey overwhelmed, like, in perpetuity. This book is taking forever and keeps restarting like my old car, Vengeance. It's a mini-hellscape kina sitch, and this dude's cluelessness isn’t really my ish.

So ordinarily I would be sweet about it and maybe say we'll grab coffee sometime—and, I mean, we might. That’s not like a total bitchy lie.

But today is, well, today, and I ain got the bandwidth.

“Morgan,” I say, and his eyes light up immediately, “lemme be real with you, bro. It was kind of a snack.”

His brow furrows. “A what? A snack? What does that, mean?”

“It means I was hungry, you were hungry, and we had a nice little snack together.”

I am—foolishly, I know—hoping this will be sufficient for him to get it.

It isn’t cos of course not.

“But, wha … I don’t understand. You seemed like you had a good time. I mean, you,” he becomes aware of you again, censors himself, “seemed to have a really good time.”

“And I did,” I explain, “but it was just kind of a good time thing we did together, right?”

He looks from me to you and back again quickly a few times, puts his hands deep into his upper middle-class slacks, and nods. “Oh, okay. Yeah. All right. Yeah, I get it.”

His feelings are hurt, which sucks, you know, I didn’t want that. But we’re also here together, you and I, doing, I dunno, whatever people in the 21st Century do in malls post panini.

A normal person would think we’re done and about to be relieved of all this.

But ima half-Tauran weirdo with burned out cybernetic and genetic mods, so I sense what’s coming before it happens, and raise my mental defenses. If I were in better form, I would have timed it better and met his attack. But instead, being out of shape, tired, and perhaps a bit over the hill, I raised them a split second too early, which invariably worsens things.

“You know, you shouldn’t treat people like this,” he says, and he says it loudly. It isn’t a yell or a scream—not even a shout, really—but his voice is definitely elevated.

It's my turn to sound clueless, “I’m not sure what you mean,” I say. I mean, I kina know what he means, I think. But I wanna be sure.

“A snack?” he says, his face contorting. “A snack? I’m not a snack. People are not snacks, Teresa.”

I know that. “I know that, Morgan,” I say. “It was a poor choice of words, okay? I didn’t mean to dehumanize you or anything. You just aren’t really getting the hint.”

“The hint?” he says, face bunched up like he bit into a shit. “The hint? What the hell is the matter with you, Teresa? Do you think this is a game?”

I sugh internally. I hate that line. Screenwriters use it way too much.

“No, Morgan,” I say. “I don’t think this is a game.” I mean, I do because it literally is a gamified novel, and he’s a character in it, but he doesn’t know that, and I couldn’t possibly explain it to him, so.

“You think this is a little puppet show where you can shove your hand up people’s asses and make them sing and dance?”

“I mean, to be fair, it was your hand up my ass,” I say.

He ignores it, and says, “And then, show's over. We’re done. Good little puppet.” he mocks patting an imgainty puppet on the head. Presumably he’s me, and the puppet is him.

I sigh aloud, and say, “Okay, dude, look, I’ve tried to be subtle and nice about this and I can see that’s my mistake, so let me lay it out for you. We fucked. That’s what happened. Okay? We met at one of those stupid Hills-y parties. You were into me; I was into you. We flirted. We went out by the pool, the into that little grotto thing …”

“It was a pergola with a koi pond,” Morgan says.

“Sure, yeah, that,” I say. “We made out a little. It was nice. You sacked my tits, which was nice. I blew you, which was nice. You fingered me, which was nice. Then you fucked me in the ass and came inside of me.”

He turns his head expectantly.

“Which was nice,” I add. “Sorry. Thought that went without saying.

Morgan looks to you, and asks, “Does she treat you like this? I mean, is this just how she is?”

You correct the pronoun, which is sweet, but I shake my head, and say, “Let’s not worry about that right now.”

“They?” he goes. “You’re a ‘them?’”

I sigh. Again. “Dude, like, one, I thought that was kind of obvious from, you know, the equipment, as it were, and two, that’s not super relevant right now.”

“Oh it is,” Morgan says, nodding quickly. “It explains a lot, actually.”

That gets my hackles up. “What the fuck’s that supposed to mean?” I ask.

“It means, you know, you got the virus.”

The ‘virus?’ you may wonder.

I look at you and say, “He means the,” I use air quotes, “‘woke virus.’” I look back at him, “Which, you know, is just another way of telling us that he’s a racist asshole.”

“What?” he says and points both hands at himself. “I’m racist? I’m half Black and half Mexican. I can’t be racist, remember, wokie?”

I put my hand on my forehead, like literally facepalm myself. “Dude, let’s just leave it, okay? We had a nice time, but clearly we're not compatible.”

“Yeah, well, I thought we were,” he says. “But I guess you’re right. I can’t mess with some woke ‘them’ girl.”

I wonder how I even end up at the same parties with folks like Morgan. But that’s interrupted by him throwing his hands up and leaving.

There’s a palpable release of tension, and I sigh once more and say to you, “I fucking promise you that dude is gonna text me later wanting to hook up.”