The Heterosexual Love Between an Urbanist Boy and a Car Girl

[Applesintime]

((Michael Goldstein continued from A Healthy Breakfast))

South Korea was seventeen hours ahead of Las Vegas. Or Las Vegas was seventeen hours behind South Korea. Take your pick. The result was that it took so goddamn long to wait for Michael and David schedules to line up so they could call. He’d be free and Michael’d be busy with baseball practice or some event at the old folks home, Michael would be free and David would be on some training exercise firing rockets at literally nothing. Or one of them would be asleep.

Eight PM in Las Vegas, one PM in Seoul. Or, uh, Dongducheon was it? Michael couldn’t remember the whole story but the brigade David was with were deployed in a city a bit north of Seoul, while everything else was down in Seoul. Apparently it sucked but they got an extra $150 a month for the ‘remote deployment’ or something. Didn’t seem very remote when there was a big train station that you could go anywhere with. He would do many things for that level of public transit in Las Vegas and the military was calling that remote? Jeez.

Anyway! He was sitting in his room, phone on his nightstand and laptop on his lap, half-watching a YouTube video while waiting for David’s call. Typical zoomer couldn’t keep his hands off his screens, all he needed was Subway Surfers and like, a video of someone cutting those square bars of soap and he’d be happy forever.

Or he could get notifications from Clarissa. That was nice too. It still felt really sudden, how their relationship pretty much went from good friends to lovers just like that, but he couldn’t imagine anything else. It just felt.. right. Good morning and good night messages, texting pretty much all the time. It was one of those things that, like, he just couldn’t imagine being without now. How did he ever live without a cute little voice message from his girlfriend? Michael knew David would mercilessly make fun of him for just how eager and happy he was, but he had a girlfriend and his brother did not.

That would win any argument.

Ring ring. The ringtone he’d set for David (a drive into deep left field by Castellanos, still so goddamn funny) came through loud and clear, so Michael snatched up his phone and shut his laptop. “Morning, bro. Uh, no, uh, afternoon?” Michael always forgot. Speaker mode turned on, phone down on the bed and settled down to chill. Hear all the juicy gossip coming from the 210th, even if he thought he had the win. “Afternoon, yeah.” He couldn’t help but smile at his brother’s voice.

“How was your week? Meet anyone interesting? Do anything interesting? Or was it, uh, let me guess… nothing of interest happened except the occasional training exercise, maintenance and getting drunk?” Michael astutely guessed, which earned a laugh from his brother. “Well, there was the alien invasion. They stole the commander and replaced him with like, an alien replica and we had to shoot down their space ship with the launchers to get him back. And our KATUS guy showed us this really fucking good noodle place, but yeah, nothing really exciting.” Another day as usual, it seemed. “Surprised you guys wanted him back.” Michael shifted a little on the bed. “Well, we had to put it to a vote, but we thought it’d be bad manners for him to be the aliens’ first experience with humanity.”

The two brothers giggled.

“My week was… usual.” Michael began, adopting a playful tone. “Running, baseball practice, uh… what else, what else… hmm… I did make out with a girl in her car, so that was pretty fun.” He could almost hear David’s eyebrow raising from nearly six thousand miles away. “Doesn’t seem like you, Michael. I mean… going into a car? Willingly? What happened to you, little bro? Did you get replaced by the aliens too???” There was a brief pause. “But, uh, all jokes aside congrats! Can’t believe you finally got there.”

Michael snorted. “Fuck you.”

“Right back atcha, bud. I gotta wonder, though… who’s the lucky girl? Was it, uh…” He could hear David clicking his tongue, something he always did when there was something on the tip of it that he couldn’t quite remember. “Ccccccclaire? Was that her name? The uh, cheerleader girl? Who has a mom and dad who run that mechanic business, Car Doctors or something?” “Clarissa.” “Close enough. Anyway, uh, I figured it was her the second you mentioned anything about a girl.”

Now that was a little annoying.

“What, just because she was the only girl I talked about? There are plenty of others I speak to, yanno.” He huffed gently.

“Michael, Michael.”

David’s voice was firm as if he was explaining something to a toddler, or perhaps a member of the Marine Corps.

“You don’t give a fuck about cars.”

“Honestly, I think you fucking hate them. So many times I have had to endure you telling me how lucky I was to have a train station like, five minutes away from the base. All this shit about living in a society not reliant on cars with good public transport… and yet you let this girl talk to you about cars - hell you engaged with her on it! You’d casually mention talking to her about some 2012 SUV that had issues with its radio or on-board entertainment or some shit, and I mean… it was, like, it was clear as day you were into her if you were willing to talk about an SUV without blowing a gasket.” David’s little speech slowly petered out into snickering. “Like, like, come on. Car hater talking to a car girl? Match made in heaven, apparently, pahaha!”

There were times when he missed his brother, wished they weren’t an ocean apart so they could chat face to face and do stuff that wasn’t online. Then there were times where he was very, very glad that David was far away enough but also was really annoyed that he couldn’t pick up something and throw it at him.

This was one of the latter times.

“Yeah, yeah, laugh it up. I’m the only one of us who actually has a girlfriend.” He could just feel in his bones, David was gonna drop that he was secretly dating like, Zendaya or something. Had to one-up him, always.

“Eh, true.” But that never came. Just a long-range shrug of the shoulders. “Can’t argue against that. If only the army hadn’t sent me to the dark and desolate wasteland of Camp Casey, I’d have babes on my arms every night.” Depraved wasteland his ass. It was like, thirty or forty minutes away from Seoul by train! He would do many things for a train that wasn’t basically just joining the Strip together!! Imagine if the state of Nevada had actual public transport instead of highways and Greyhounds!!!

Alas.

“Really though, congrats. Bit of a kick in the ass for me to get looking, I guess. Been a while since I got sorta-dumped.” Rose/Ruby, Michael remembered. Well, not really remembered, the exact name had been bugging him for a while but he figured that bringing it up now might be a little raw. Flexing. “I mean, hey, how long has it been since you shipped off? Like, uh, four years? Plenty of fish in the sea. You’ll be able to flex your generational wealth! A whole extra $150 bucks! The ladies’ll be all over you.” He snickered, David joining in with an exasperated sigh.

It was this kind of talk he looked forward to the most. No subconsciously worrying about fucking up like the thoughts that sometimes slipped in when he was with Clarissa - although he loved spending time with her. Just him poking fun at his brother, and his brother poking fun at him.

((Michael Goldstein continued in Jesus, Where am I?))