My Cartoon Girlfriend

Chapter 2: Getting In Trouble Before My Date With My Cartoon Girlfriend

Title illustration by @faespacecritter.bsky.social‬

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To sum things up so far: I, an overworked 27-year-old type editor for a local film and animation magazine named Wright Tebelock, got drunk off my ass on a Friday night.  In a sloshed stupor, I asked a cartoon giraffe girl on an animated television show to go out with me on a date.  As it turns out, the not-so-fictional giraffe girl that I confessed to said yes.  As it turns out, there was a good reason the cartoon, that she happens to be one of the stars of, was so consistent with characters and storylines.  As it turns out, most of the clips and vignettes were actually slice-of-life stories. Because, as it turns out, all of the cast and the town they live in are actually alive and real, respectively... and/or both, in some cases.  Naturally, that included Genevieve Rafelle, my cartoon girlfriend.

I learned all of this thanks to Michael Strausser, the one who created the cartoon series "The Whimsical World of Brighthue," hereafter truncated as just "Brighthue" because the full title is a mouthful to say, and it's too obnoxious to type repeatedly, unless somebody specifically says the full name.  Mr. Strausser, by the way, was the one who visited me the next day (on Saturday) after my hammered confessional.  He somehow used a wall-sized projector screen to bring Genevieve physically into my apartment, where she proceeded to grab and smooch me in a very cartoon-like manner, dipping me like a tango partner and everything.  A little suffocating and surprising, but definitely more fun than a regular kind of kiss, if I'm being honest.

Then I remembered that Mister Strausser was still in the apartment.  And saw the whole thing.

"Oh-hohohoho, wonderful! All that's missing is an 'iris in' and a credit scroll!" He was clapping like the entire ordeal was just another episode of his cartoon come to life.

"Uncle Strausser, noooo!"

THUNK.

"If you release this as part of an an episode of the show, then people will think I'm going through a character reboot from back when I was a sassy preteen!"

"Oh, don't worry dear, I'm only playing around! Um, more to the point, did you happen to notice that you accidentally dropped your new paramour?  Hit his head rather hard on the coffee table, it seems."

"--!! OH, NO! Rightie, speak to me!"

Yep, that "thunk" from earlier was my head hitting the table. Don't worry, I've always had a thick skin when it comes to being bludgeoned.  Back in my teen years, I was a stocker in a retail chain, back when people were much less empathetic for how much work it took to perform the job correctly.  The end result of such a job was taking a lot of verbal and physical abuse from customers because I didn't know where to find products I was never assigned to stock.  Also the occasional stack of stock falling over atop of me, but that's not important.

That's probably why it wasn't as bad for my when Ginny tried to wake me up by violently shaking me like a maraca, right down to a "bo-yo-yo-yo-yoing" sound-effect and my head bobbing left and right like a coiled spring doorstop being played with by a young housecat.

"I'm good, I'm good!!" I managed to blurt that out despite of my headache getting progressively worse from the rapid movement of my body.  It managed to stop when I wasn't being shaken so hard that I was practically a living motion blur.

"PHEW!" Ginny used her left hand to wipe off a catoonish level of nervous sweat from her brow in an exaggerated manner.   She then took off the glove from that same hand and casually rang it out before putting the glove back on.  There were a couple questions I had at first about that, if I'm being  honest. Like "Why does her four-fingered hand suddenly have three cloven hoof-like fingers when she's gloveless," or "Why did the resulting waterfall of liquid from the glove not leave a pool of fluid on my apartment carpet?"  I mentally decided that it was just cartoon shenanigans and left it at that.