Sasquatch to the Moon

29: Fathers and Sons, Sticks of Butter and Boyfriends

HÅKON

"Do you ever just... look at a stick of butter and think: man, this looks like it would feel amazing to eat?"

Rocket is standing in my kitchen, holding a stick of butter, trying to make a scrambled egg for himself. His ADHD is showing.

I'm sitting on the counter, watching him. "No, I can't say I've ever had the urge to take a bite out of a stick of butter."

He frowns, looking at the label on it, then back at me. "But you have to admit, it looks like it would just feel good to sink your teeth into."

"No, well, maybe, but again it would be gross."

"But it looks good."

"Sure." I say, watching him rearrange his hair. That's something he does a lot, now that I'm noticing. He fixes his hair once every five or so minutes if it's not under a hat.

"You know, but I just want to bite it." He holds it up to his mouth, wrapper still on.

"I'm going to tell you right now that it's going to be gross." Sometimes I'm a little bit in awe that this guy is the one trying to teach me how to grow up a little more.

"But it would feel good. People do gross stuff all the time because it feels good." He glances back at me, a devilish little glint in his eyes.

"Rocket-"

"I'm just saying! I'm just saying!" He puts his hands up in surrender. "Nobody in their right mind would put their mouth on a dick but here we are, doing it for fun. There's hundreds of examples of people doing gross stuff because it feels good."

I'm just staring at him, mouth wide open, re-realizing how incredibly vulgar he is. It's not like I didn't know that before, but every time he says something like that I can't help but be surprised again.

"Take kissing for example." He points the stick of butter at me, leaning back onto the counter. "That's, conceptually, disgusting. I mean, it's sloppy in the first place, it's basically all about sharing saliva with another person and who was the first person to initiate a french kiss? I mean, what psychopath was like, 'you know what would make this better? Feeling their teeth.' seriously, think about it."

"Rock-"

He interrupts me with another thought. "Plus, they invented kissing long before they invented the toothbrush, they invented that in 1930. Actually no, hold on." He thinks about it for a couple seconds and I just get to sit there, watching the gears turn in his head. "Prehistoric people used sticks and stuff, chewed on them and stuff, and then it was actually invented in China using hog hair but of course people don't like admitting that China did something first so the given answer is 1930."

"Why do you know this?"

"Don't ask me hard questions." He turns back around to the skillet and lops a chunk off the butter, tossing it in. "But seriously who, before toothbrushes were commonplace, decided that the one thing they wanted to do most was shove their tongue into their partner's mouth."

"Instinct." I respond. "I mean, they probably weren't thinking too hard about it before they got there, considering kissing someone does a really good job of shutting your brain off all the way. They probably didn't realize they were kissing with tongue until after they were done with that kiss."

"Point made," he mumbles, cracking an egg into the skillet. He adds a splash of milk and then gets to work. "But their teeth were gross as hell, you know? Ever seen old skulls? How worn away those teeth were? It's because they used to grind all the flour by hand and little bits of the grindstone and the flour would still be hard and it would basically mean bread was tooth sandpaper."