Of course she asks me to ask her to get married. Of course I oblige. I’m a ten year old with the spirit of an eighty year old schizophrenic who thinks he just turned three. I don’t want to hurt her. I just don’t want to love her. Force myself to want to. This isn’t how these things should operate. It’s like the mechanics you learn about when you’re in grammar school. Or younger. Multiplication tables and long division. Soul mates and excuses like ‘lets just be friends.’
      I don’t even remember how we met. I can almost guarantee it was something boring. Introduced by friends of your friends. Newspaper clippings that headline white young female seeks mate. Nothing she reads about in trashy romance novels and gets ideas about.
      Being engaged to someone this insipid is like shaving with a street cleaner. You have to find new ways to do the old things better. But way more harmful. Like when you and your first love break up. Nothing hurts as much as that. You two were destined to be together forever. Sixth grade romance is as strong as super glue. The kind you use on the back of cardboard paper for making valentine decorations around the classroom. Be mine.
      So she just got back from her night class and says to get naked and meet her in the bedroom. I’m an honor role student. A brown nosed teachers pet. Then I wonder what exactly it is she’s trying to teach me and I get lost on that road because it leads to something quite irksome. I’m a human sponge. Soaking in my own complaints and apprehension.

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      Don’t you kind of wish you were a bird? You want to just go higher and higher. Your shadow underneath (only when you directly look down towards it) gets smaller and smaller. You want to jump off and see if you’ll land on all fours like a cat that might eat this bird one day. You don’t. You slow down and scrape the dirt with the soles of you high-top shoes. A brand name that doesn’t matter when you’re that young. No one makes fun of you because of which company enslaves little kids, like yourself, to produce them. Makes them for you to wear in public. That’s how bad it gets when you get older but you don’t know that yet at this particular age. Imagine if someone wore high-tops now-a-days? Or god-forbid those shoes with the pump button on the tongue? The ones that light up when you take each new step?
      You keep saying many years passed this age that “when you’re that young you don’t even know what the word responsibility means.”
      You keep saying “today is pizza day.” Dimes and nickels pay for chocolate milk. When you’re a kid, recess and the cafeteria chatter about video games and dumb jokes are all that matters. It’s a lifetime of kickball and remembering when the bell is going to ring and getting sent to the principal’s office for when you spit on someone or a fight is started. It’s a brawl on the courtyard with fists instead of guns. Someone might end up with a broken nose or arm. Scrapes are an almost guarantee. On the spots where you always usually get them just by accident. Knees. Elbows. Shoulders. The tender spots where band-aids never stayed on passed a day. Maybe two.
      Nosebleed stains spell disaster. A phone call to your mother that day spells it even faster. That’s when you start wailing. Whining. Screaming. Mutilation to your dignity and spirit. You’re grounded without television every day until notified otherwise. No allowance. No after school activities. You go to your room and finish your homework until sunlight becomes moon spread and your eyes collapse when your body flops on the bed.

she)(what were you like when you were a kid
he)(i dont really know kinda weird i guess i mean wasnt everybody
she)(i suppose i remember i cried on the first day of kindergarten
he)(was that a way of kinda foreshadowing the next twenty years of your life
she)(is that supposed to be an insult?
he)(i suppose

      When I say we decided to get married around next Christmas I really mean that she tells me we’re going to get married next Christmas. I accept because I don’t want to get into an argument this late at night. I just got through with my first tutoring session of intercourse and now I just want to go dream about dying next to her forever. I actually think I was the one who cried the first day of kindergarten. I vaguely remember it and I’m almost a hundred percent positive that I told her that story on our very first date. Maybe second. That’s how boring this is.
      I actually have to resort to past trauma and/or humor to keep myself entertained now. I should have multicolored hair and invade little kids nightmares. What is the fear of clowns, anyways? It’s not just plain clownophobia, is it? Wondering just how paranoid you are going to be for the rest of your life is something way worse than being terrified by someone with a red honking nose and over-sized flapping plastic shoes. Now, put yourself in my position and start imagining having that conversation when you’re screwing your partner. What do you say to something like that when you’re trying to orgasm? You’re not trying to impress anybody. Not even her. You’re just trying to get off. So is she.

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