July 3, 2016

Jerome:

Fifteen. Fifteen minutes. I get fifteen minutes. I tell Siri to wake her ass up and start counting and I run to the bathroom as fast as I can, snatching the ice cold Monster off the hallway floor on the way back and chuggin' it like a big rig. Awww... He really does care. I step back out in the hallway and look around for the Mythical Mitch real quick but he's nowhere in the cheap ass apartment, not even on any of the three pieces of furniture. Can't really expect him to be here. Fuck knows how many other people are watching my livestream and keepin' an eye on me. Can't expect him to always be around.

Probably went out to get more food.

Figures - there ain't nothing here.

I've checked.

Shame Dondo ain't that good a servant.

I gulp down another throatful of sugar high and I can feel the Giving a Shit reset and flow back down through my veins. We're officially at the halfway point through the six hour streaming marathon and I can't tell if I feel alive or dead right now. But we can do this today just like we did it yesterday and I can't fucking think about tomorrow or anytime after that or I'll have a goddamn existential crisis. I'm like a NASCAR driver in a neverending race with my own ass, just a few more minutes, a few more tens of minutes, a few more hours, for a few more days, and those turn into a few more couple-days, then a few weeks and months and how many fuckin' years will I be able to do this?!?

But it's okay because I still have half my break time left. My life's turned into an endless third grade math test, just sitting here calculating and recalculating how much more fractions of a Give a Shit there are until I can call it a day. I'm solving for F. But it doesn't matter if the time left in a stream is divided in half to smaller and smaller pieces until it reaches decimals to Infinity if all I can see stretching in front of me is a recording schedule draggin' itself limb by limb to Infinity.

I have my own damn secretary now to schedule my shit. And it ain't Mitch. If I didn't have a secretary, I'd forget half the shit I promised to do.

I lose myself like Eminem in the shiny side of my black Monster can and I'm angry and disappointed at myself when I snap back out of it.

Now I'm at quarter-time left and I missed some of my break. Fuckin' great. I look up and see my droopy ass tired face glaring back at me in the empty, black computer screen I turn off between streams so I don't hafta see the insane number of people laughin' at me dancing to the death for them. I bet there's at least six thousand still here from the last stream. Everyone used to tell me how YouTube isn't a real job - and they still do! - but for something not being real or not being a job, this shit's fuckin' hard. And stressful. And time consuming. And draining.

I just wanna go home. But I can't because the damn house is fallin' apart and the only ones dumb enough to live in there while they're tryin' to find and fix shit are the damn roaches. I know why they call 'em cockroaches now: they have bigger balls than me. I'm not living in that swampy shitstorm no more. After the ceiling in my actual room caved in and my carpet started turning grey, I told Mitch I was leavin' until it got fixed for good and I packed my shit in the car and drove until I found a not-old-bitty-only apartment complex and I signed myself up for more pretend adulthood we can barely afford. I told him I was tired of living a goddamn meme - always lookin' around at the house going up in moldy, juicy flames around us and saying it's perfectly fine and sipping on a cup of coffee that tastes just like the rotten air around it. That shit ain't fine. I'm not gonna get lung cancer because he thinks playing hide and seek from grown-up-ness works. It doesn't.

It only took four hours for him to join me. That's a new record for Bitchy Mitch. That's only two Give a Shits.

Siri starts bellowing the song of doom and I tell her to shut up again so I can get back to work. I carefully set the newest pet up on top of the last thirty and turn my monitor back on, still glowing in pride at my can sculpture when the screen starts glowing in angst.

*Click.*

"Hey, what's goin' on everybody! Jerome here, and - "

'I'm just trying to make up for my own dumbass mistakes.'

---

July 3, 2016

Mitch:

I can hear him howling in pretend rage at something down the hall as I silently shut the front door behind me and struggle to turn the stiff lock. I give it another day before we have a noise warning on our front door; there was a reason we didn't move into an apartment together. I start unloading my armfuls of crap food on the couch, quietly taking the white and purple boxes of deep fried mush and hiding them around the apartment one by one until seven of the eight boxes are nowhere in sight from the living room. I put the massive sodas and the gallon of ranch cups in the basically empty fridge next to the family-size pump bottle of ketchup on the shelf above the army of identical cans of Jerome's liquid cocaine. The last bag has enough fries in it to have put half of Idaho to work, and I put it inside the toaster oven we have never used and that I still don't understand why Jerome would want to save from the water damage. Finally, I sit down on the couch with my box of nuggets and wait, listening to him make empty threats about turning someone into a Tootsie Roll. I guess the Tootsie Pop threat with the compulsory stick up the ass is too PG-13 for his channel now. Oh, how the times have changed.

He auto-pilots his usual advertisement-heavy outro and I can't ignore the deep, heavy sigh that comes after he turns the camera off. There is a long silence before his ancient gaming chair creaks back from the desk and I make sure there's a nugget halfway out of my mouth when he rounds the corner. His eyes narrow in suspicion and he leans on one arm against the wall.

"Where're my nuggets?"

"What nuggets?"

"Oh, ya know, just the ones where if I mush a box of 'em together I get a block of fake happiness. That kind of nugget, Mitch."

"Good ol' budder."

"Nuggets."

"One of these days, I should tape eight nuggets to an apple and call it a Notch Apple. Maybe then you could eat something healthy."

"No. No Nooch Apple. Nuggets."

"What do you think would - "

"Nuggets. Now." I nod toward the pillow at the other end of the couch with the very top of the brown paper bag poking out and he lunges at it, scowling when it collapses in his hand to show there's nothing in it. He turns and looks around, stopping when he notices the side of a nugget box in plain sight on the editing desk. "MINE!!! M-mine?" He opens the box and sees that it was my empty box. The sad face doesn't last long before he notices another box and sprints after the unmoving clumps of greasy chicken carcass, and in a moment of weakness, he plunges his face down into the barely warm nuggets, cramming as many into his mouth as he can. He can only fit four and a half. "NNNNN!!!"

"You should have seen the cashier's face when I ordered fifty bucks' worth of nugget deals. There are still sixty more after that, plus all the fries." He shoves another handful of nuggets in his mouth before he pulls himself up from the floor and starts searching again.

"I need more. Gimme more." He looks at me for a hint and I just blink back at him. I wait until his squirrely ass is planted back on the floor by the empty dining room before I get up and grab the box of nuggets hiding in the cupboard under the sink and a cup of watered-down and nearly unidentifiable Coke from the fridge, more as a defensive weapon than as a drink. He watches to see if I'll reveal any secret hiding places, but no such luck. Nugget chess is the closest thing there is to war.

"There's enough buttermilk ranch in the fridge to fill the wok."

"Good. I know what I'm havin' for breakfast tomorrow." He smirks at me with his puffy, nugget-filled chipmunk cheeks. "Goes real good with PopTarts."

"That's just more proof that Death Cups weren't my idea. I came up with it after living with you on and off for ten years, you sick fucker." He gives me a creep smile and proceeds to try to fit a foot-shaped nugget up his nose. The sad part is that it almost works. Words can't express how grateful I am that that isn't a thing.

But fries are. Damn it.

Less than a minute passes before he's up looking for more food, and I can't tell if his nose is going to be saltier when he slides the fry inside it or afterward when we realizes it stings and pulls it out. Either way, it's beyond my control now. When he returns with a third box of quickly hardening nuggets, the expression on his face isn't natural and I know he's up to something. I already know what he wants when he opens his mouth.

"So about that new branding scheme..."

"No. For the tenth time, we aren't getting a dog. No."

"But Mitch! Ryan did it!"

"You sniff your ass enough as it is. You don't need a new mascot." He makes what he hopes is a sad face. "No. Dog."

"But if I'm payin' the damage deposit on the apartment, why can't I have one?"

"Are you going to pay me a damage deposit for that piece of shit house, too?"

"Are you gonna pay me a damage deposit for when your evil ass Rose Red house eats my dog?"

"Can't you get something less destructive and horrible? We have enough of that between us as it is."

"But Miiiitch..."

"No Nooch, no dogs, no badgers. You're hard enough to deal with on your own."

"I'm gonna get something. And don't even say a fuckin' fish. I'm not gonna buy a nasty ass slimy fish. Last time I had one of those fuckers, it jumped outta the bowl and died trying to get away."

"Do I want to know why your fish was suicidal?" I wish he would hurry up and find the fries... Those were the only reason I left to get food.

"I mean, he seemed to like the saltines..."

"Was it a saltwater fish?" He chews for a minute before he gets up to start scavenging again.

"You might be onto something there. What about like a python or a parrot or a capybara or a monkey or something not nasty like a damn fish?" He reappears with yet another box of chicken. I want those cold fries more than I want daylight right now.

"Three of those are probably illegal, and the last one would repeat all of the stupid shit you say off-camera on camera."

"Yeah, and I could name him Captain Ass-Uh-Fuh Underpants and he could do all the cussin' on camera all the ASF fans always bitch about missing. But I didn't say it. So the parents can't yell at me anymore. Best of both worlds."

"I don't know what would be a better comedy act: your hypothetical bird or you trying to persuade Alex to clean up bird shit." Jerome's eyes light up mischievously and I start to think that maybe I should be worried about this. How long has he spent dreaming about getting a cussing bird?

"All you gotta do is put a diaper on him. That's why his name's Captain Ass-Uh-Fuh Underpants, dumbass."

"If you hit five million... then maybe." He isn't even finished chewing before he starts waving a nugget at me furiously.

"It's gonna happen. Mark my words, Mitch, it's gonna happen. And pretty soon, too." I can imagine him going to an animal shelter one day and picking up a giant, badly behaved bird and trying to hide it in my house without buying a cage. He has a strange, bleeding heart fantasy about the happiness of free range animals that makes the internet conspiracy about how he is secretly a furry more believable every time I hear it. After this little chat, I'll probably have a nightmare about him walking around with a feathery, diapered chicken nugget on a leash every time I close my eyes until it actually happens. My poor house. "So for realsies, though... Can I get a hamster or something? Like one that doesn't run a porn website? It'll be fun and it'll pay for itself in no time with views. And I won't even feed it Doritos."

He's so overworked from streaming and recording that I can't even begin to say 'no.' But that doesn't mean that I'm excited about the mess that will undoubtedly follow. Maybe I should get him a red-eyed rat; a red-eyed rat for a screen-addicted, red-eyed pack rat. When I don't say anything, he grins an evil grin and tosses the massive, greasy bag of cold fries he has been hiding behind the countertop at me.

"Fine. But you're buying air fresheners and it isn't going in our room. Or Alex's room."

"Got'eem."