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| Quinoa tailors have tiny, nimble fingers. |
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| I give my office-mates plenty of reasons to ask each other, "What the hell is wrong with her?" |
I’m usually pretty awkward with men I’m interested in romantically. Unlike in the movies, however, this rarely leads to guys being charmed by my quirkiness and oddball flavor. Instead, it usually leads to them clutching a wound and me apologizing profusely.
In high school, I playfully pretended to punch Boy* in the face after he said some innocuous and teasing remark. Either because he moved or because I have faulty depth perception, my pretend punch landed right between his eyes. Whereas maybe someone else could have pulled this off by making it seem cute or by getting closer to him to administer first-aid, I just mumbled an apology and tried to disappear.
On one ill-advised occasion, I attempted to be sexy—something definitely not in my usual repertoire. I picked up a lit candle from a nearby table and held it up in front of Boy’s face. “Make a wish,” I whispered sexily, and then I sexily pursed my lips and sexily blew out the candle. I overestimated the breath necessary to extinguish the flame. Hot wax sprayed from the candle, right onto Boy’s face.
Not satisfied with simply inflicting physical harm, I broadened my portfolio to include property damage. Boy was showing off his track stand skills, staying upright and balanced on his bike without touching the ground. So I, of course, pushed him over. What I didn’t realize was that his feet were clipped to his pedals; therefore, instead of simply putting his foot down to brace himself, he went down with his bike. Both Boy and bike were unappreciative of my playful push.
Maybe I should embrace my ineptitude and make it my modus operandi. Some guys like taking risks, right? My motto will be ”You flirt with me, you’re flirting with danger,” or “If I have a crush on you, I will crush you.”
Yeah. That’s what I’ll do.
*”Boy” is not a single entity but represents a collection of past romantic interests. Names have been omitted to protect the innocent.
“Hey, Gary? Could you turn the TV off? We kind of have something we wanted to talk to you about.” Marcus and Josh shifted nervously on the couch across from Gary, who turned the Gilmore Girls marathon off and faced his friends.
“Yeah, sure, what is it?”
“Well,” Marcus began reluctantly, “it’s about Madeline. And it’s…it’s kind of serious.”
“What the fuck, dude?” Gary asked, immediately suspicious. “Is she cheating on me or something?”
“No, no, no,” Marcus quickly assured him, “not at all. It’s nothing like that. It’s more…” He looked over at Josh, who nodded encouragingly. “Wow, this is really hard to say, but Gary. Your girlfriend is a terrible person.”
Gary glared for a few moments at his friends. Finally he shook his head. “What? That’s ridiculous. She’s totally sweet. Everybody loves her.”
“No, Gary. Nobody loves her. Nobody even likes her. People are just scared of her. She’s actually pretty terrifying.” Marcus sighed. “I don’t know how you can’t see that.”
“You guys are full of shit. She’s great; she’s a good person. You just don’t like her.”
“Yeah, Gary. Exactly. We don’t like her. Because she’s a terrible person.” Marcus’s voice grew progressively louder. “Because she purposefully puts real ground beef in Lane’s fake vegetarian meat. Because she hides your mom’s keys to make her think she has Alzheimer’s when she can’t find them. Because she cackles with genuine enjoyment when those abused puppies come on TV, you know, in those SPCA commercials. Because she takes credit every time I do the dishes, and she never once replaces the goddamn toilet paper when she uses the last of it.” Marcus was shouting now and had jumped up from his seat. “I’ve been left too many times with nothing to wipe my asshole with, Gary. She’s a terrible human being.”
Gary waited while Marcus collected himself and returned to the couch. “You’re blowing everything out of proportion,” Gary said quietly. “She’s not that bad.”
“She told Dave’s brother he has a fat ass. To his face,” Marcus responded.
“Well, to be fair,” Gary countered, “Dave’s brother does kind of have a big ass.”
“Yeah, dude. But he also has Downs Syndrome.”
Gary, returning Marcus’s seething stare with a glare of his own, finally asked Josh for his opinion. “You’ve been pretty quiet over there, Josh. What do you think? Is Madeline really the terrible person Marcus says she is?”
Josh nervously looked back and forth between Marcus and Gary.
“Come on, it’s okay.” Marcus whispered reassuringly to him. “Don’t be scared.”
Josh took a deep breath. “So, do you remember that time we were driving back from that concert in New Jersey?” he began quietly.
“Yeah…” Gary prompted.
“And do you remember how I…” Josh hesitated, gathered courage, and continued. “…How I farted?”
“Dude, of course I remember. It was so rancid that Lane puked and then I had to pull over. And then Lane’s puke made me puke. And then that cop pulled up and started questioning us because he thought we were drunk, and then I almost got arrested. But yeah, I had to have the van professionally cleaned after that trip. God, what was wrong with your bowels?”
“Nothing was wrong with my bowels,” Josh pleaded piteously. “It wasn’t me, I swear. It was Madeline. She farted. But then everyone thought it was my fart, and she didn’t confess, and then she looked at me like she’d eat my face if I told the truth. I really think she’s capable of serious harm, Gary. Like, at least a broken bone. A major one. I’m talking, like…a femur.”
Marcus nodded. “Or tibia.”
Gary wasn’t convinced. “Alright, I’m not listening to this anymore.” He stood up to leave. “I don’t know what this is, if you’re jealous or something, but Madeline is—“
“I’m what?” Madeline walked into the room, eating a bologna sandwich. “What am I?”
“Nothing, we were just…it was nothing,” Gary said.
The three friends awkwardly shot looks at each other, while Madeline’s glare became more and more suspicious.
“No, seriously, what the hell is going on? If you guys have shit to say about me, I’d appreciate it if you said it to my face,” she demanded.
“Fine. These assholes were just saying how—"
“We were telling Gary how we think you’re a bad person,” Josh interrupted bravely.
“Yeah,” Marcus chimed in, gaining courage. “A really bad person. Like, evil. Yeah. We think you’re a heinous, evil, she-devil bitch.”
Again, awkward silence fell across the room. Madeline appeared frozen, her face a picture of anger and disbelief. Suddenly, she smiled. Then she chuckled.
“Shit, guys. I’m sorry, I can’t keep this up.” She smiled and laughed again. Marcus and Josh looked at each other in confusion. “See, the thing is, you’re right.” Still they looked perplexed. Madeline sighed in exasperation. “Alright, how to put this. I am a heinous, evil, she-devil bitch. At least, you know. I try. I work for Satan,” she explained. All three men eyed her in disbelief.
“Uh, Madeline?” Gary began.
“No, it’s okay,” Madeline stopped him. “I’m a she-devil. A devil. The “she” part is kind of beside the point. I’m a devil, and I work for Satan, and I’ve been trying to steal your soul for the past year and a half, Gary. Unfortunately, I’ve only been able to get about half of it so far. And now these silly chuckleheads have gone and blown my cover,” she looked over at Marcus and Josh. She smiled indulgently at their scared expressions. “Oh, it’s alright, you scaredy cats. It happens all the time. I’m not going to curse you or anything, so you can stop pissing your pants. I am curious, though. How’d you figure it out?”
Marcus found his voice first. “The dead kitten. Well, dead kittens. Josh kept finding them in the laundry room. We weren’t positive, but it felt kind of weird and cult-y, kind of Satan-ish.”
“Oh, shit, I left those down there? I’m so sorry. I am so forgetful. Oh well. I’ll probably be summoned at some point in the—“
Before Madeline could finish, a giant chasm opened in the living room floor. Madeline fell down into it, deep into the leaping, sulfuric flames that licked the faces of the amazed men, safe on the chasm’s ledge. In another moment, the living room reformed, and Gary was single again.
“I have a children’s book you should write.”
“Alright, what is it?”
“You know how people have bred dogs to be really small and cute; basically they’re suspended in puppyhood forever, with big eyes and little bodies? And they never grow up, and after like 10 years they die?”
“Actually, little dogs live longer than big dogs. The smaller they are, the longer they live, pretty much. Which really sucks if you consider that means the little yappy fuckers my landlady has will live longer than bigger, cooler dogs. Like Huskies. Or boxers. Or basically any other dog alive that doesn’t go through my bathroom trash and spread dirty tissues and used panty liners across my room and doesn’t puke on my floor just to spite me. But yeah.”
“Ew.”
“Sorry, go on. Little dogs…”
“Yeah, so dogs bred to be small. Well, in the future, they’re going to do that to babies too. Like, human babies. They’ll figure out a way to make babies stay small, so they’ll always be cute and always be babies. And then, when they reach a certain, like after ten years, they die. They’ll be like a cool accessory, like how little dogs are now.”
“Uh huh. And this is a children’s book?”
“Well, a book about children.”
“’Mommy, how long do I have to live?’ ‘Just a few more days, honey. Just a few more days.’”
“No, they wouldn’t ever be able to talk. That’d be annoying.”
“Oh, so they’d be perpetual infants, not like little kids, but babies. Babies forever.”
“Yeah, babies forever.”
“God, that sounds terrible. Who the hell would ever want that?”
“Well, that’s where you come in. You write the book, make it seem really appealing. And then I’ll make the Forever Babies, and we’ll both get lots of money. But first you have to write the book and create the demand.”
“Ok, yeah. Kind of like how Steve Jobs created a demand for tablets with the iPad, like before people even knew what a tablet was. They didn’t know they wanted an iPad.”
“Yeah…sure. Like that.”
“So I’ll be the Steve Jobs of disposable babies.”
“…Exactly.”
