A Song in Your Head

“Hey little buddy,” Gerard says, walking through the door and throwing his coat randomly at the wall where someone bothered to add a couple coat hooks that have been underutilized.

He likes to think that Seymour says something back in a vaguely German accent, even though that wouldn’t make sense. He’s a Chinese evergreen, you’d expect him to be Chinese, but Gerard has always gotten the German vibe off of him. Then again, Seymour is a fucking plant and has no accent at all.

Gerard thinks, if he were a real person, Seymour would be a German therapist with a love of fine brandy. He would insist on having leather furniture and probably smoke cigars. He’d be unmarried by choice, possibly asexual, with a profound interest in the building of the Panama Canal. Also, he would listen to Earth, Wind and Fire and smooth jazz.

Gerard walks over to the kitchen and he starts to make himself some coffee before he has the realization that he’s not drinking coffee anymore, and his heart sinks a little at the very idea of it.

“Oh fuck, I hate this,” Gerard frowns, looking around sadly at his small little house. He peers through his cabinets, trying to think of something he can make that would mimic the taste of coffee but isn’t coffee, but then he realizes, that’d be cheating. This is the dumbest resolution he’s ever made with himself, and New Year’s is still nearly nine months away.

Gerard doesn’t know what to do now, so he just walks over to the steps which are on the back wall against the kitchen, where he makes his way upstairs slowly so that he can take this awful tie off. Gerard hates ties. He hates things that go around his neck in general really, but a tie makes him feel too old, and he still likes to pretend he’s only twelve years old. Or at least, if you were to look through his Netflix account, he’d kid you into thinking that. It’s not Gerard’s fault that a large majority of animated Disney movies are listed. It’s also a complete accident that he’s watched Atlantis the Lost Empire seven times. Seymour really likes that movie. Seymour also really likes Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone because there are plants who try to kill people.

Gerard throws off his tie into the corner of his bedroom, the corner meant specifically for clothes throwing, not the other corner, that’s specifically for socks and only socks. He makes his way back down a few minutes later after changing into the proper Friday night attire which is his old Green Lantern shirt and sweatpants that haven’t been washed in a while, but he never leaves the house wearing these so they don’t need to be washed as often.

Gerard walks down the stairs, catching a glimpse of his neighbor’s kid chasing a dog down the road on a skateboard. The dogs not on the skateboard, the kid is, but Gerard now wishes that it was the other way around.

He finally pulls himself over the couch and collapses with his head on the armrest where he wants to stay for the rest of the year, ideally, but will probably have to get up at some point which doesn’t sound fun. He searches around for the TV remote, finding it in between the cushions, and then tries to find something that isn’t going to rot away his brain.

From this spot, Seymour is just above him because the couch is nearly pressed up against the wall where Seymour’s windowsill is, and Gerard looks up at him after each channel to see if he’s got an opinion. Seymour seems to nod a little bit when Gerard lands on a channel playing The Golden Girls, but Gerard democratically decides against it. The only channel that he has to pass by quickly is the HGTV channel, because, even though you’d think Seymour would like that channel, given that the G stands for garden, Gerard is often worried that he’ll get offended by remodeling shows where they pull out plants to make their yards look nicer. Really, Gerard worries too much about a thing that literally has no opinion at all whatsoever, but if you try to tell him that Seymour has no opinions, he is ready to fight you.

Gerard groans audibly five minutes later when someone knocks on the door and he’s trying to remember if he ordered anything in the mail when the door opens by itself. Gerard never has visitors, this is mainly because he doesn’t like to hang out with people all that much, and would really prefer eternal solitude. Instead of the most polite burglar ever however, the door opens to reveal Mikey standing there looking at him like he’s looking at a piece of gum on the sidewalk.

“I gave you that key for emergencies,” Gerard says with annoyance.

“This was an emergency, I didn’t want to wait for you to answer the door.”

“But still, you don’t just walk into other people’s houses,” Gerard replies, looking at Mikey upside down because this way he doesn’t have to twist his head around to look at him, he can just bend it over the armrest.

“I just like making a habit of proving that I’m not a vampire,” Mikey says walking in, and throwing the door shut ungracefully behind him.

“How would that prove you’re not a vampire?”

“Uh, duh,” Mikey says, looking at him like he’s an idiot, “Vampires have to be invited in. Jeez man, catch up on your Whedon.”

“I don’t think he’s the guy who invented that idea,” Gerard responds.

“Well, no, but he’s one of the only modern writers that I’m aware of who endorses that fact.”

“Fact? Is it really a fact? I mean, vampires are fictional creatures Mikes, do they really have any specific set of guidelines for ever form of mythology, because I think it’s all a matter of interpretation. I see no reason for why Lestat should properly need to be afraid of garlic any more or less than Count Dracula.”

“Okay, how about we set aside the conventions of vampirism for the moment and focus on something of higher importance.”

“Zombies?” Gerard asks, “because I’ve got notes on them too. I’ve got an arsenal of info on zombies actually, like Walking Dead, or Night of the Living Dead, or Shaun of the Dead, or even one of those vanilla zombie movies that people make now like that one with Brad Pitt.”

“Yeah,” Mikey says sardonically, “Zombies are much more important, what ever was I thinking?” He walks over to the kitchen so that Gerard can’t see him roll his eyes.

“Why are you here anyway?” Gerard calls over to him turning to look at the TV again.

“Dude, seriously? We made plans like two weeks ago, I said I was coming over.”

“What?” Gerard asks, not paying attention as the screen distracts him.

“We made plans weeks ago!” Mikey repeats.

“Seymour, correct me if I’m wrong, but Mikey’s completely making that up to see if it’ll make me feel guilty, but it won’t in fact do any such thing, because you and I both know, Michael, dear sweet Michael James Way, is lying out his ass.”

“Alright, you caught me. I didn’t know you had that good a memory. I just wanted to make sure you didn’t spend another Friday night watching reality shows with a plant. And dude, might I also add, why the fuck are you watching the Lindsay Lohan remake of Freaky Friday?” he asks.

“I’m not... I was just channel surfing,” Gerard says, changing the channel swiftly so that he’s now watching some boring Sitcom about some vagrantly sexist father figure making jokes about marriage being the same as death. That narrows it down to about seventy percent of currently airing TV shows.

“Yeah, mhm, sure,” Mikey says, grabbing a bag of potato chips and sticking his hand in them, which is a little rude considering that those are not his, and he really should’ve asked first, but Mikey is a very expecting sort of guy who usually doesn’t ask permission of things. He’s not a beg for forgiveness kind of guy either, because he’s smarter than everyone else, and never actually admits to being wrong, but it’s not in a narcissistic way, it’s in a you-could-only-understand-it-if-you’ve-actually-met-Mikey-Way way.

“Well, now that you’ve barged in unannounced and unwelcomed, what do you want to do? I don’t want to get up. I’ve already assumed the couch potato position, you’re eating my potato chips, and Seymour is closely related to the potato, so we’re all covered on the spud front.”

“Gerard, that thing is not related to a potato,” Mikey says.

“Yes he is, and don’t call him a ‘thing,’ it’s not very polite.”

“It’s a plant.”

“He’s a plant,” Gerard corrects.

“It’s not a he, Gerard, it’s a plant. It doesn’t have a sex.”

“Uh, excuse you, he’s a plant, he’s both sexes at the same time, everyone knows that. Seymour is both sexes, but he prefers male pronouns, and I wish to respect his life choices,” Gerard says, so seriously that Mikey is uncertain of whether or not he’s actually sticking up for the sexual identity of a plant.

Mikey opens his mouth a few times, trying to find the right words, because he doesn’t know how not to make Gerard angry, because he knows that Gerard will adamantly defend that plant to the ends of this earth and beyond. “It’s... not even alive, assigning a gender to it makes about as much as me calling my shoelace Stephanie.”

“He is alive! Are you kidding, he’s a plant, of course he’s alive. Plants are living things, you dumbass, otherwise they wouldn’t grow or need oxygen and shit like that. And for your information, he’s a very healthy plant too. I take good care of him, water him daily, make sure he sits in the sun, read him poetry, and give him the proper pesticides. He’s perfectly alive and very well, I might point out.”

Mikey decides not to address the poetry thing even though he’s now insanely curious as to whether Gerard reads him something like Shel Silverstein or more along the lines of T.S. Eliot, and then he has a weird image of Gerard reading The Raven to Seymour and he has to set that thought aside for the sake of his sanity.

Mikey nods, and says, “Okay, fine, sure, it’s alive. But it’s not actually alive alive, is it? It’s a plant. It doesn’t have feelings, or emotions or anything.”

“Can you be sure of that?” Gerard asks.

“What?”

“Can you be sure! Mikey, we’ve never communicated with plants directly, but maybe that’s because they don’t speak English. Maybe they talk to each other telepathically. There’s no way for us to prove that they don’t have big long conversations about us, but because of the fact that they can’t move, they’re a much more civil species than us, because seriously, we’re always fucking shit up. I bet plants take notice of it too. They probably talk so much shit about us humans, and I don’t even blame them. Humans are dumb. We’re stupid, I hate us.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“Well, listen man, plants have never outlawed specific humans, and yet we do that to plants. Plants have never fought wars over dumbass things. Plants are so much smarter and more highly evolved than we are, and yet we think we’re smarter just because we can walk around, yet I bet you that, if he could move, Seymour would be a fucking boss at solving Sudoku puzzles.”

“I... you’re defending the integrity of a plant, Gerard. A plant. A motherfucking plant.”

“Yeah, and another thing, plants never fuck mothers, many of them are even asexual, and they even help out their surroundings, unlike humans. What do we do? We liter, we release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, we contaminate water, and kill other animals, sometimes for sport. Plants are perfectly innocent though. Some plants provide pollen, and some provide oxygen and shit, or whatever. This is, like, eighth grade science, bro, you should already know this, but if not, get this down because it is test-taking gold.”

“Your best friend is a fucking plant,” Mikey says, emphatically throwing his hands up in the air, as if in defeat. “A fucking plant. A plant. You’re basically dating a plant.”

“I’m not, I’m in a relationship with myself at the moment.”

“Which is basically like saying you’re dating a plant,” Mikey replies.

“Nope. I’m spending time with myself so that I can hopefully get over my crippling self-confidence issues and all-encompassing fear of dying unloved. Besides, this way, my date and I never fight over the remote.”

“That’s the most depressing thing I’ve ever heard you say in my entire fucking life. You need a boyfriend. Or a cat. Or several cats. Or a boyfriend and a cat.”

“I need a lifetime supply of pizza and an Etch A Sketch,” Gerard replies, “oh, and maybe a plant voice translator so I can find out what Seymour is thinking. I really want to know what he thinks of me, but he probably just thinks I’m a fucking idiot. That’s fair though. It’s not unwarranted.”

“It’s a plant!”

“He’s a plant!” Gerard repeats. “Do not demean him, or I will throw this month old bag of corn flakes I bought when I meant to buy a box of frosted flakes but misread the label, that I, for some reason, keep underneath the couch.”

“That’s the weirdest threat I’ve heard all day, and to make it worse, you’re defending a plant.”

“Don’t listen to him Seymour, you are worth defending. I totally agree with you mate, human wars are stupid, but I would gladly build a giant horse statue for you.”

Mikey makes a strangled sound, kind of like a goose, but also kind of like a somewhat constipated donkey, and this summarizes his opinion of Gerard’s infatuation with a plant pretty sufficiently. In other words, Mikey’s pretty sure that Gerard’s receded into a full-on hermit.