by Will Stanton » Sun Mar 17, 2019 5:41 pm
Will stirred his drink for a moment, contemplating his next words.
"I don't have a real purpose here, which is frustrating. You made that quip about the mop bucket, but you're not wrong; it has a function and a job to do, and I don't, despite being able to do a better job at it. You might have an old pair of shoes you never wear anymore, or a phone that's two generations out of date. Leaving them in the back of a drawer to gather dust is, well, a little negligent. At least, if they have feelings, which the jury is still out on.
Back home, you know? We don't own a vacuum cleaner. When Sara -- that's my wife, you know -- when she wanted to vacuum, she just came and grabbed me. When Sam and Nailah's drain inevitably clogged -- fur isn't fun, apparently - they knew they could just come get me and send me down the drain to fix things. I enjoyed that; I enjoyed helping out when needed to help out.
It took a long time to get there, of course. Sara broke up with me on a couple of different occasions because, you know, I'm weird. But eventually, we found our happy medium. On days when I was just overloaded, or depressed, or just needed to unwind, I could spend it as a chair or a tattoo or a television without being judged. And she would treat me as both her husband and that television, which is a very...difficult skill to learn.
Like, let's say that you, for some reason, wanted to serve as your...madame's chair," Will said, being careful with his terminology. "She probably would be very careful when sitting down, trying to make sure she didn't put all her weight on you, asking if you were OK on a regular basis, and so on and so forth. All of which is super nice and polite for most people, but for me, it's missing out on some of the, you know, primary experience. And, conversely, if I were to just disguise myself as a chair and have people sit on me unknowingly, they would be much more normal in how they sat down or dragged me to a different table or whathaveyou -- but they also wouldn't ask me about how my day was, or joke about the guys at school or talk about what to have for dinner.
I'm selfish, and want the best of both worlds, all at the same time. And, short of the impossibility of going home, I wish that I could recreate that vibe here. Our headmistress, of course, only has digital feelings and is fine with me just standing off to the side gathering dust. So I guess that's what I mean by that.
The fact that I've felt less like a person since I've been here probably does not make that any easier."