Silver, Part 3

Continued from part 1 and part 2:

Fact one: Humans are the only mammals that exude no experimentally verifiable sex pheremones. Fact two: there exists no woodland species whose male is willing to continue playing video games in the presence of a female in estrus. Though no link has been satisfactorily demonstrated in a peer-reviewed journal, and though full fault cannot be ascribed to Brian as it was still within his refractory period from their last mutual satisfaction, these two facts are clearly related. This typical Saturday night of the still-young relationship found Brian and Tony on the couch poking frantically at their controllers while Cindy flopped on the loveseat in her sweats. In a subconscious nod to the history of handling sexually aroused and arousing women by placing them in a societies composed exclusively of other women and castrati, Brian had tuned their second TV to a showing of her favorite musical, Aladdin.

The second television of their household was a relic from an ex-roommate's ex-roommate, a 60 cm job allegedly from France but of questionable enough workmanship that ex-Soviet Republic lineage was not out of the question. Most households would have junked in a second (several, in fact, already had). But Brian and Tony kept it not for its color, not for its vertical hold, certainly not for its necessitating an obscure electrical converter, and not for what its measurements were, but for what its measurements were given in. This Cold War relic was the centerpiece of their living room simply because it was measured in System Internationale Units.

Brian and Tony's house had originally been two marginally historic whose combination, so went the thoughts of one urban developer, would open up one of the lots for a 24-hour gas station/mini-mart. It was only when the houses had been uprooted and resituated that it was realized that one house was built to Imperial specifications and the other to Metric proportions. What this meant was that while the windows, doors and ceilings were of similar height, eventually the rounding error caught up and the home assumed a leitmotif of "not quite right". The architect behind this contraption of a living space came out of his drunken stupor long enough to reveal the move was a minimalistic retelling of a dialogue between prescriptivists that mimicked the something something of who cares. The art was promptly entered into the state's register of historic places and permanently saved from the demolition that passers-by perpetually wished upon it. The upside for a video store clerk and roommate of similarly moderate
ambition was that it was rent-controlled not by fickle legislators but by humanity's innate desire for consistency in aesthetics.

Many a weaker pair of decorators would have attempted to hide the disparity that comes with having a footed kitchen/dining room but a metered living room. This is roughly as intelligent as attempting to draw attention away from a hunchback with vertical stripes. Instead, Brian and Tony highlighted it. Objects were only allowed on the side of the divide where they belonged according to their primary unit of measurement. So while all their comfortable seating surfaces (couch, loveseat, a smattering of easy chairs) were on the upper, metric half of their common space, Brian and Tony, being true to their vision, kept the 30", flat screen beaut of a television that was their pride and joy just over the border of the seven-eights of an inch minus 2 centimeters (each half had been meticulously constructed and they spent one night calculating the difference) dip in the floor.

"Look, you're not going to be able to make up this deficit," said Tony.

"I've come back from worse situations."

"What? When I was drunk? As long as I'm sober, this kicking of your ass will continue. And I think we both know it."

"*WE* don't know anything. We have to wait and see it--"

"Brian, honey, are Jasmine's tits nicer than mine?" Cindy broke into the conversation.

"She's a cartoon."

"I'm not going to get mad, I promise. You can tell me what you honestly think."

"I honestly think she's a cartoon."

"You're no help. Tony?"

Tony glanced over at the Sonyski. "I'd say maybe. But I think that's just because her wardrobe is very to her advantage."

"Guys, she's a cartoon. She doesn't have tits. They're lines of ink."

Cindy weighed her bosom in her hands. "Do they bounce more naturally?"

"They can't! By definition, whatever your breasts do are natural as it can be."

"What would you say she is, Tony, D-cup?"

"Oh, at least."

"But back in those days they didn't have push-up bras. How much could they really amplify her cleavage? Maybe they're just really buoyant, like, double-Es."

Brian couldn't stand the horrible combination of inanity and insanity. "Back in those days? You mean 1994? Or are you implying that Disney, the commodifier of all that was holy, drew period costumes? Considering that half the things that came out of Robin Williams's mouth in that movie were anachronistic at best, I'm pretty sure historical fidelity was not one of their primary goals."

Tony and Cindy ignored him. She continued, "Man, this is the hardest part for girls, when we're comparing. Trying to guess how much of that is real and how much is underwire. I wish I could just," she motioned, "see them, and really know."

"There are websites," Tony said, faster than he probably should have. The conversation faded into laughter, embarrassment, and eventually embarrassed laughter.

Cindy got up from her reclined position and wandered over to behind her boyfriend. "You're so focused on your race car or horse cow or whatever that is, I feel like you're not paying attention to me."

He continue jabbing and lunging at the plastic in his hand, leaning it in the direction he was already pushing, in the shared unconscious hope of every man who was a teenager since the 80's that the game console has some hitherto undisclosed way of sensing and responding to ferocity of motion and purity of intent. "Probably true."

"You're impossible!"

"No, what's impossible is making this... jump... right... here. Oh, and I made it. How you like that, Tony? Don’t call it a comeback, I was never out of it."

She cozied up closer behind him. "You sure you wouldn't rather... play another sort of game. I know how we could involve electronics." While she said this, his head was nestled between her Golden Globe-winning golden globes.

He was affected by the temptation, as his race car or horse cow or whatever crashed and ignited into a heap of polygons ablaze. But he would not succumb to it and turned to face Tony. "'Nother game?"

"Why do I put up with you?"

"Because I don't respond to rhetorical questions?"

Cindy had little to say to that, and went into their kitchen. She looked through the cupboards, the refrigerator, and the freezer before finding what she wanted. "Anybody else want ice cream? With whip cream? Maybe some chocolate sauce?"

Tony spoke up first. "This is really cool, having a roommate who dates a movie star."

"What do you mean?"

"I learn new stuff every day. Apparently, in some cases, the camera doesn't need to add ten pounds!"

"Brian, are you going to let him talk to me like that?"

"Tony."

"Sorry. 4.5 kilograms."

Cindy playfully tossed a stuffed animal Brian and Tony had distributed around the kitchen the morning after a drunken friend had found the only throwable object in the kitchen to be a tea pot and in their drunken frame of reference thought that with the correct lobbing motion such a flight could be considered playful, resulting in a broken window and a missed tea time. She situated herself and her Haagen Dasz between the them on the couch. "Hey, Brian, can we talk?"

He didn't take his eyes of the screen. "Is this like a breaking-up talk?"

"No, no, nothing like that."

"Is it more important that, say, what we're doing for dinner tonight?"

"What is this, twenty questions? Yes, it's larger than a bread box."

"OK, based on my priorities, and the knowledge that it's less important than breaking up and more important than what we're doing for dinner, it's not important enough to end this game early, but important enough to not start another one."

"So I have to wait till the end of this game?"

"I don't think you know it well enough to help me win."

She sat for a moment, and the only sounds in the apartment were of clanking metal and battling animal-hybrids over a soundtrack of futuristic apocalyptic rock. While the boys jousted virtually, she mulled her thoughts and replayed in her mind the conversation. She contented herself to watch Aladdin (which was her favorite musical) for the next few minutes. But, really, how did they stay so pert? She asked, quite simply, "Would you enjoy it if I wore a bra while we made love."

Both of the race cows blew up at the bottom of ravines simultaneously as Brian and Tony looked at her.

"Oh, good, we can talk now. What are you doing three weeks from Sunday?"

"Umm, I think I have plans with Tony."

Tony tried to help his roommate. "Dude, that's the night of the Oscars."

Brian didn't get the message. "See, we do have plans. And I can't just bail on him."

"You can just bail on me. You must. I'd sell you to go the Oscars. Unless we were in prison. Then I'd sell you for a carton of smokes."

"Hey."

"Sorry, 20 decacigarettes."

"So, Brian," she paused, biting her lower lip, and as Brian looked at her he damned Ansel Adams for applying his photographic talent to the pale beauty of nature when faces like this existed, "will you be my date to the Academy Awards?"