You Don't Bug Me

Last weekend was movie weekend at the Rob and Pirate house. The Pirate and I wanted to watch this year’s Oscar hopefuls, but too poor, we snuggled beneath blankets, and bathed in the glow of previous Oscar nods.

“What about Dances with Wolves?”

“Naw, let’s do Avatar. The effects are better.”

Who said which? It doesn’t matter. It’s the same thing. Unable to find either movie, we settled for Return of The King--well, sort of. See, my queen doesn’t believe in watching series movies out of order. It doesn’t matter if it’s Indiana Jones, Star Wars, or Lord of the Rings: you can’t appreciate one movie without watching them all. That’s great, and I do agree in a certain level of elevated appreciation, but sometimes I don’t want to dedicate my whole weekend to a marathon of one movie. When it comes to Lord of the Rings, the only things more epic than Peter Jackson’s middle earth vision are the couch sores on the middle of my butt. I can’t sit still that long.

“It rubs the ointment on my butt. It puts the lotion on the coffee table.”

The queen refused, so we moved further down our epic quest for Oscar edification. Having nixed cinematic quality, we settled on Jerry Maguire. PQ and I cuddled in under our blankets, blurting famous quotes on cue. We both hate when other people do that, but when it was just us, we ramp up the dialog to melodramatic proportions, creating our own cine-sofa interpretation.

“Show me the money!” Screams the pirate queen jumping up on the coffee table, smushing my ointment tube under her toes. White ooze envelopes her toes and splurts across the table.

“I hated myself! No, I hated my place in the world.” I say bursting into tears.

“That was good!” The queen smiled wiping her feet. “I actually believed it. Baby? Baby? Aww, baby it’ll be ok…”

Some movie lines are too close to be funny. Both Jerry and I are redefining our place in the world. Dramatic shifts like that take tectonic efforts. My queen didn’t give me much time to dwell on it though, because our place in the movie had shifted. Jerry’s now in the middle of the man-hater circle chumming his guts over the waters, until finally he says, “I love you…You complete me. “

“Shut up! Shut up!” says Renee and my queen, then the movie freezes. I look to the pirate. She’s clenching the remote. “What a bunch of crap. Do you believe that?”

I always thought it was sweet. Right now I’m willing my tear ducts into reverse osmosis. “No. You’re right.” I sniff. “ It’s crap.”

“I mean, call me a cynic—“

“Cynic.” I mutter under my breath.

“…but that’s just not right.” She continues, “Who completes anybody? If you can’t be whole on your own—you can’t go looking to somebody else to fill your void.”

A dirty joke crossed my mind, but I let it go; the Pirate Queen was taking no prisoners.

“You complete me? Please! That’s not even realistic. That’s just a bumper sticker for people who think that love can be encapsulated and sold. “

“Uhm…” I’m a writer. I like bumper sticker speak…sometimes…”Well, ok… What would you rather he say?”

My queen leans back. Her eyes close as her head faces the ceiling thinking through love’s bumper sticker. This lasts three moments, when her neck snaps back and her eyes pop open like some creepy Twilight Zone doll. She says, “You don’t bug me,” and restarts the film.

“You had me at ‘hello.’”

Now it’s my turn. I snatch the remote, jab my thumb into the pause button and ask, “You don’t bug me? What does that mean?”

“It means we get along.” She sighs, scrunching her back into the pillows, my queen sits up. “What causes most divorces?”

“Cheating?”

“No, people don’t get along.”

“I think it’s deeper than that.”

“Is it? People divorce because somebody gets annoyed past the point of no return.”

“What about cheating?”

PQ nods. “If you cheated, that would really bug me.”

“No, the person who cheats, they’re obviously missing something at home, but not necessarily annoyed.”

“I think they are. They’re bugged. Maybe it’s because they’re not getting laid every day.”

Leaning back, I say “That would bug me.” It’s a bluff.

“Yeah baby, I know” she pats my leg, “not gonna happen.”

Now I’m bugged. But I’m not convinced. “It sounds so callus though.”

“You’re the one who wanted the bumper sticker. Some truths don’t make pithy slogans.” The Pirate Queen leans in, resting her head on my shoulder. “Love isn’t a neat package. It’s a bunch of little gives and takes. It’s about, after the big giddy fades, and somebody wants to watch Strange Brew, you love them anyway. “Rocking her head back, she kissed my cheek. “Like I love you.”

Leaning forward, the queen rubs a dollop of ointment from the table, “Now let’s watch the Lord of the Rings.”

And so we did. Why? Because I love my queen: she doesn’t bug me.