Chapter 10 Introverted Weirdo Nerd
ten
introverted weirdo nerd
Bitte and Danke are early on Saturday, interrupting our dinner merely a few bites in. Gram wastes no time in rushing to the kitchen to get the cat food, and even Mom seems eager to see them, going to the window to scratch their heads.
I maintain my usual indifference, knowing full well that one or both of them will show up at my window later, expecting even more treats. And given that I am a huge sucker, they will get said treats, despite the fact that they are spoiled rotten.
Once we are no longer in the presence of royalty, Mom and Gram wash up and return to their seats to continue eating, though I now have quite a lead on them and I’ll be ready for dessert in no time.
“How was your day?” Mom asks me while Gram fumbles with her chopsticks—she still hasn’t gotten over the novelty of them, but watching her eat fettuccine Alfredo with them is mildly amusing.
“It was good,” I say with my mouth full of balsamic roasted asparagus. I swallow and then gulp down some wine. “Hung out with a friend for a bit.”
Mom doesn’t finish chewing before responding—runs in the family. “You mean Victory?”
“New friend, actually.” I play with my fork to try and hide my nervousness. I’m hesitant to elaborate; part of me doesn’t want my mother knowing all this stuff about my life, but I share almost everything with her. “He’s another gamer. We met at the SOA4 release.”
She nods, at least pretending to know what I’m talking about. “And this friend is a he?” she asks with a lilt in her voice—because heteronormativity is still a thing, apparently, so there must be something going on if he’s a he, right?
I shrug and act like I don’t know what she’s implying. “Yeah.”
“And…what sort of things did you do with this friend today?”
“Hard drugs,” I say dryly without even looking at her.
“Well, as long as you do it safely—” She’s not talking about drugs.
“Oh my god,” I grumble. “We play video games together, okay? We are gaming nerds. That’s it.”
“I thought you only liked single-player games.”
“Yeah, we just play our own games and chat at the same time,” I explain. “And today I went over and we took turns with his N64. Though we were able to play Super Smash Bros together, which was fun.”
Mom frowns at me. “How old is this guy?”
“I dunno.” Maybe that’s something I should know. “Twenty-something? Ish?”
“I just don’t know who would still have an N64—”
“It’s refurbished. It’s like a vintage thing.”
“Vintage?” Mom clasps a hand to her chest like she’s having an overdramatic heart attack. “Are the late 90s vintage now?”
I shrug my eyebrows, which she can tell means yes.
She sighs and holds her hands together in front of her. “I pray that one day you will know this pain.”
“Thank you.”
“Just wait ’til you’re my age,” Gram says, pointing at Mom with her chopsticks. “Everything you like will be in again and hipsters will love you.”
“Hipsters are old now too, Gram,” I tell her, and she looks over at me like I just shot her, her eyes appearing extra wide behind her thick glasses, with her bright turquoise eye shadow that matches the polka dots on her blouse.
“Why do you insist on hurting us?” she deadpans.
“Speaking of ungrateful children,” Mom adds, turning her attention back to me as well, “have you heard from your sister recently?”
I frown at her. “Why would I have heard from Marie?”
Mom shrugs and picks up her glass of wine. “Usually she lets us know if she’s coming back for Thanksgiving and I haven’t heard from her yet. So I thought maybe she’d told you.”
“Thanksgiving isn’t for two weeks.”
“I know, but…” She takes a sip and sets down her glass.
She’s clearly not telling me something, but I know she’ll crack before I even have to ask.
“Last I heard, she and Josh were having some troubles, but she hasn’t said anything about it in over a month now and I’m wondering whether we should be expecting both of them or—”
“Why don’t you just ask her?” I take another sip of wine, trying not to grimace as I do.
“I don’t want to seem nosy,” she says, and I nearly do a spit-take.
“Since when?” I ask with a laugh once I successfully swallow.
“You think I’m nosy?” She looks more amused than offended. “I’ve hardly asked you anything about your new he-friend.”
“Please don’t call him that.” I rub my temples. “And you basically asked if we were having sex, which is completely inappropriate and way off-base.”
“Well, you never tell me if you’re seeing someone—”
“Because I’m never seeing anyone!”
Admittedly, I never told my family about the whole asexuality thing, partly because I didn’t want to have to explain it to them when I could barely explain it to myself.
Especially given the fact that Mom knew I’d dated Shawn—I didn’t want her to think I was stupid or wrong or confused.
Even though I was probably all of those things.
“That’s a shame,” Gram says, though there are fettuccine noodles hanging from her mouth as she speaks and it makes me think of an Ood from Doctor Who.
“Why is that a shame, Gram?” I say with a sigh.
Gram finishes chewing and takes a swig from her wine glass before answering, still holding the glass up. “While I think it’s important for every woman to know how to give herself great orgasms—”
“Jesus.”
“—it’s nice to have someone else do the grunt work once in a while.”
“Oh my god, cut her off!” I plead to Mom, who just shrugs like this is perfectly fine dinner conversation.
“I’ve spent over fifty years listening to her,” she says nonchalantly. “You don’t get a free pass.”
“You’re lucky,” I say, glancing at my second monitor where I have a video chat window open with Damien. We’ve never been on video, outside of streaming, and it’s weird to see his whole face in this context.
“Why’s that?” he asks, though his attention is clearly still focused on his game in front of him. His brows furrow in concentration when he’s in combat, but he has no problem chatting right through it, whereas I tend to get pretty quiet during battles.
“You don’t live with your family,” I tell him. “Must be nice.”
“You technically have your own place, right?”
“Yeah, but I still see my mom and grandma all the time. And we have dinner every Saturday.”
“Wow.” He doesn’t say anything else for a minute, frowning more deeply at his monitor, before turning his attention to our chat window as well. “I’m hoping you at least like your family more than I like mine.”
“You seemed to get along okay enough with your sister.”
“Yeah, she’s fine.” He shrugs. “The rest of them, though. Bunch of conservative assholes.”
I laugh and then clamp my hand over my mouth and shake my head apologetically. “Sorry, just—My family is like the furthest thing from that. At dinner my grandma was talking about orgasms.”
“What?” He laughs. “I don’t know if that’s badass or mortifying.”
“Both is good dot gif,” I say flatly, and he laughs again. “They drive me crazy, though. I think my sister is the only normal person in our family, which also drives me crazy.”
“If she’s normal then what does that make you?”
“Oh, I’m completely bananas.”
“Yeah, what a party animal,” he says sarcastically as he continues his game, though his forehead is relaxed enough that he must no longer be in combat.
“I didn’t mean in a fun way,” I say, a laugh undercutting my defensive tone.
He shrugs. “I think you’re fun.”
I try not to beam at that, as if it’s the best compliment I’ve ever received. “That’s because you are also an introverted weirdo nerd.”
“Those three words seem kind of redundant.” He adjusts his huge headphones with one hand.
The motion nudges his glasses slightly askew, and he straightens them as well, eyes still focused on his game.
“Actually, my last girlfriend was an introvert, but she was not weird. So obviously that didn’t last.”
“Girlfriend?” I’m not sure if my voice pitches up in curiosity or jealousy. Either way, I regret asking immediately.
He turns his attention to our chat again with an awkward smile. “Um. Yeah, maybe that wasn’t—It was a couple years ago,” he says, shaking his head. He sounds like he’s trying to assure me of something, though I’m not sure what. “And very short-lived.”
“So, you haven’t dated in years?” I try not to seem too relieved to hear that, but it’s nice to feel like we might have that in common.
“Uh, well…” He looks back at his game, brow furrowed again, but I don’t think he’s in combat this time.
“I went out a couple times with this guy about a year ago, but he was an extrovert, so that didn’t last either.
” He laughs half-heartedly. “Besides, I’d rather spend my time playing video games than trying to get to know someone. ”
He says get to know someone like it’s a form of torture and it makes me laugh. Because I get it.
“Yeah, I definitely prefer video games to dating,” I tell him, though I don’t bother mentioning the whole ace thing yet.
His attention is back on his game, but he nods. Even though we’re not the same, it’s nice to talk to someone who gets it, too.
Before I can say more, I’m startled by movement out of the corner of my eye, and I look over at the window to see a cat perched outside patiently.
It’s too dark to make out more than the basic shape of it, but I can tell by the fact that it’s not trying to shred my window screen that it’s Bitte, not Danke.
“Hold on a sec,” I say to Damien as I reach over to slide the window and screen out of the way to let the cat in.
She does a little hop onto my desk and sits right next to my mouse, so I won’t be able to play anymore until she’s got her treats. She knows how this works.
“You have a cat?” Damien asks as I walk over to the kitchen to get the cat treats, still wearing my headphones.
“Not mine,” I tell him when I return, holding out a bit of dehydrated chicken for my uninvited houseguest. “The neighbourhood cats around here just think they can waltz in whenever they want.”
He laughs. “Maybe because you let them in.”
I look over my shoulder at the chat window as Bitte licks another treat pinched between my fingers. “If you’d been raised by my mother and grandmother, you would have the compulsion to feed every cat you meet, too. It’s genetic or something.”
“I’m not sure if I’m a cat person,” he says, squinting his eyes pensively. “In theory they seem cool, but my sister has one and every time I’m over there I think he wants to murder me.”
“I would still try to feed him.” I laugh but return my attention to Bitte right before she decides she’s had enough and wants to leave.
“You know, I think you’d like my sister,” Damien says after I shut the window. “She’s an introverted weirdo nerd too, or whatever, but in a different way, I guess.”
“Stationery nerd?” I say as I get back into my game. “Like my mom.”
“Stationery, cats, knitting… She basically can’t wait to be a grandmother, which I’m sure her fiancé is thrilled about.”
“She’s engaged?”
“Yeah…” He doesn’t sound very enthused about that. “He’s fine, just kind of boring.”
“Bleh.”
“Yeah, but—” Something behind Damien suddenly distracts him, and when he turns to look, I can see Malcolm strutting into the living room behind him, although the mic doesn’t seem to pick up whatever he’s saying.
Damien pulls off the headphones, but I can still hear him say, “We’re kind of in the middle of something. … Not like that—”
Malcolm swoops in all of a sudden and swipes the headphones from Damien’s grip, squatting down until he’s eye level with the computer monitor and shoving the headphones over his ears.
The glitter nail polish on his right hand twinkles under Damien’s desk lamp; he’s still wearing the flouncy shirt but now he has a deep blue brocade vest over it.
That’s what he wears on a date, I guess.
“Hello, Adorable Audrey,” he says with a grin, and it makes me laugh.
“Hi, Malcolm.” I give him a small wave. “How was your date with Evan?”
He sighs dramatically—wistfully, even—putting a hand over his heart. “She is the most incredible person I have ever known.”
I can vaguely hear Damien arguing with him, trying to get his headphones back, but Malcolm holds him off.
“And how was your couch time with Damien today?” Malcolm asks, keeping his hands over the headphones so Damien can’t yank them off.
I can feel myself blushing, but I hope it doesn’t show on camera. “Playing Mario was fun.”
“Just go easy on him, okay? It’s been a while—”
Damien manages to wrestle the headphones free and get them back on his head. “Sorry for all—”
“I think his virginity is growing back!” Malcolm says, leaning close enough to shout into the built-in mic on the headphones, and then plants a kiss on his cheek before Damien pushes him away.
“Go write Evan’s name on your notebook with little hearts or something,” Damien grumbles, holding him at arm’s length.
“Goodnight, Adorable Audrey,” Malcolm manages to shout into the microphone before standing up and whirling around to leave the room.
“Oh my god,” I say with a laugh.
“I know, he’s the worst,” Damien replies, though there’s laughter in his voice as well.
“I love him,” I say, and he breaks into a grin.
“Yeah, me too.”