Excerpt from “How to Construct a Relationship for Dummies”
Scratching at his beard, he wandered around like a lost little boy in a larger than life candy store, overwhelmed and drooling over all the ideas and plans lurking in the back of his brain. This place was like a labyrinth, only there was no glittery glam rock god taunting him, unless you counted his conscious, which he often personified by envisioning some 80s hair band lead singer waggling his finger at him, telling him to rethink whatever idiotic thing he was about to do. If anyone knew when something was going to be a mistake, he’d imagine that the rock deities would be pretty high on that list. He wished Roger Daltrey would saunter up beside him and help him out a little. It seemed like he would know what kind of girl to work towards. He was sure that good old Roger would have this all figured out in a snap, and he would just sit back and give the thumbs up.
He had acquired an arm somewhere along the way, and was walking around, clueless, twirling this limb like a drumstick. People were staring and he’d just hold the hand up to his forehead and give a little salute with a smile. He wondered if you could just purchase pieces, because that arm would make an awesome backscratcher. He imagined taking the arm with him to bars and getting his buddies in trouble by using it to lift up girl’s skirts and then point to his friend when the girl turned around, startled and pissed. His friend’s would get over it. Getting drinks thrown in their faces wasn’t new to them, and it was all in good fun.
The body parts were dwindling down and he was approaching an aisle of computer stations that were glowing with a bright blue screen covered in blocky white text. Despite their desperate need of updating, he walked over to the closest one and starting poking at the screen, not really seeing any other way of inputting information or controlling the program. Poke, after poke, after poke, the screen didn’t budge and all he had was smudgy fingerprints overlaying the outdated typeface that was welcoming him to the EZ Build System.
Feeling a presence near him, he turned around to see a girl standing a few feet away at her own station, trying to hide her fascination with his baffled state. He gave her a wave with the arm.
“There’s a keypad on the side.” She reached up and twisted her hair back out of her face and walked over to show him. She put her hand under the corner of the screen and a small touchpad shot out of the side of the machine. He nodded and mumbled a thanks, a little intimidated by her unconventional, natural beauty and embarrassed by his stupidity. She smirked at him, pointed to her own computer, and left him to work on his own creation, giving him a good luck over her shoulder as she returned to hers. He sniffed the air, taking in the faint smell of cake batter and paint that she left behind, and preceded with the task at hand.
© 2007
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