Page 36 of Flirtasaurus
“Yes! Dude! You’re totally speaking my language! Drives me bananas! There are supposed to be feathers! Velociraptors were feathered dinosaurs. Where the fuck are their feathers in Jurassic Park?”
“You call me dude a lot.”
“Well. Yeah. You’re a dude.”
“True enough. It just feels sort of…”
“Sort of what?”
“I dunno… emasculating?”
“It feelsemasculatingwhen I call you dude? Dude is like the manliest moniker there is.”
“Oh, so you think I’m manly, do you?” he asks with a somewhat naughty smile.
“Make up your mind, pal. Am I complimenting you or emasculating you?”
“Alright, so maybe emasculating wasn’t exactly the right word. It’s just that when you dude me, I feel like—”
“Did you just use dude as a verb?”
“I did. When you dude me, it feels like a metaphorical bro punch to my shoulder. Which, by the way, you also sometimes do literally. In addition to all the spanking, of course.”
“Allthe spanking.” I scoff. “There was one lifesaving swat, followed by a single encouraging pat.”
“Semantics.”
“Semantics can be important.”
“True.”
I notice his glass is almost empty. Mine is too.
“More beer?”
He hesitates, then says, “I mean, I will if you will.”
“WellIwill ifyouwill.”
“Well,willwe?”
“We will. Yeah.” I hesitate. “Yeah, okay, we will.”
We’re acting weird. And I’m pretty sure we both know it.
I head back to the refrigerator and grab the growler. As I pour us each another glass, I go back to the topic at hand.
“The bro punches, both metaphorical and literal, are a habit, I think. I’ve been surrounded by bros my whole life. First, my actual brothers and then all the many science bros. I’m just used to being one of the guys, I guess.”
“Gotcha.”
I sit back down beside him. Being positioned next to him at the table makes me feel as if we’re one of those cozy couples who opt to cuddle on the same side of the booth at the restaurant instead of sitting across from each other like normal people. Not that we’re cuddling. Not that I would mind that. But yeah, no, we’re not.
We get back into our assembly line flow. Suddenly, his body jolts and scares the shit out of me.
“Whoa!”
“What?!”
