I wish I smoked, so I would have a lighter, as I would give very real consideration to lighting his ridiculously tiny swim shorts on fire. I tell him as much. He responds that he wishes I smoked as well, because then I would probably have tiny little burn scars down my arm where I’d burned myself because I have so much angst and that I have the emotional maturity of a twelve-year-old. I laugh and contemplate out loud how much it would hurt if I decided to punch him in the mouth. He laughs along with me, pointing out that if I were to decide to punch him, he probably wouldn’t feel it because my arms are desperately lacking any sort of muscle definition. I demur, reminding him that I’d lifted weights (failing to bring up that I was super bored by the whole concept and lasted only five minutes, in which I spent the majority of that time wondering why people spent an inordinate amount of time in the gym when they could be off doing much more productive things like curing cancer). He did not fail to bring up how I’d only gone the one time, reminding me that I’d complained loudly the whole time, all the while lifting the pink five-pound barbell weight above my head like I was some kind of soccer mom attempting to get that stubborn sagging in her front to disappear so her husband would stop looking at the secretary with the bodacious breasts from his office. This, of course, leads to a discussion that one, the barbell weighed more than five pounds and that it was most certainly not pink (it weighed seven pounds and was purple) and that two, no one in their right mind should ever consider using the word “bodacious” in any kind of conversation, as it brings a complete lack of civility to the proceedings and therefore shows that any point the user of the word might have attempted to have is totally without merit and will not be considered.
“We have a very odd friendship,” he tells me.
“We’re very odd people,” I remind him.
“I love you, Tyson.”
Aw. Warm fuzzies. “I know. I love you too.” I’m not mad anymore.
“You know I’m right.”
Warm fuzzies gone. Stupid bitch. I’m so pissed off. “I know nothing of the sort.”
“Tyson.”
“I know!”
“You don’t have to spend the rest of your life wondering.”
“I wouldn’t.”
“You would.”
I really would. “I don’t even know how to start.” How does one repair years of idiocy when one still wants to act like an idiot? This is not a question I’ve had to ask myself before. I don’t normally play the role of the idiot. That’s not conceit, just fact.
Well, maybe a bit of conceit.
“Knocking on his door would probably be a good way to go.”
I laugh nervously. “I can’t call him first?”
“Where’s the fun in that?” he asks with an evil gleam in his eye. “And you’d chicken out.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I know you.”
Well, that’s a super bummer. “Shit.”
“Pretty much.”
“This is probably the worst idea you’ve ever had.”
“Probably.”
“This is probably going to set me back at least three years, and if you think I’m emotionally stunted now, then just you wait.”
“Probably.”
“This is probably going to be my tipping point, and I’ll lose it completely and end up in a psychiatric ward, rocking in the corner of my room, and the only times I’ll be let out are when I have to go to electroshock therapy that will do nothing but further send me down the cavernous black hole that is my decimated psyche.”
“Probably.”
“Won’t you just feel so guilty at the sight of me?”
“Probably.”
“You’re still going to make me do it, aren’t you?”