Alien Life Forms

John (in the corner, wrestling with the champagne):  Damnit!

Everyone Else (screaming along with the TV): TEN…NINE…

Me:  You OK over there John?

John (visibly panicked):  I can’t get it open!

Everyone Else:  SEVEN…SIX…FIVE…

Rocco:  Where’s the remote?  Somebody pause it!

Yup.  It’s like THAT already.  2010 will officially be known as the year we tried to postpone with a DVR.

Coincidentally, it will also go down as the year an alien slept in my guest room.

We had a surprise house guest for the holiday.  I’d met her once or twice before, but I’d never spent a significant amount of time talking to her.  In fact, I could count the number of things I knew about her on a single hand: Her name is Krista.  She’s minuscule in stature.  She used to work in theater.  She lives in Chicago.  Oh and she’s studying astrophysics.

I think that last “Krista Fact” should have been my first hint of her extra terrestrial tendencies.  It’s my theory that studying the universe keeps her from feeling terribly homesick.  If I was living on a foreign planet, I think I’d keep a picture of Earth on my cell phone, or in my wallet, or wrapped around my sixteenth tentacle.  Hell, she actually used the phrase “annihilating dark matter” in a casual conversation while watching one of the 492 Bowls televised on New Year’s Day.  To be fair, Rocco might use the same phrase watching football with a mess of friends – but it would be a euphemism for one of his bodily functions rather than a commentary on the anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background.  (Boy will this post be a ginormous disappointment to the guy that ends up on this site by googling those search terms.)

But wait, I’m not done.  Krista and another gal started chatting about defending their theses.  Is it really possible for humans, specifically human friends of Rocco that have consumed several alcoholic beverages, to have the following conversation without giggling even a little?

Krista:  …and then you have the oral?

Abigail:  Yes.

Krista:  You’re going to feel like total shit coming out of your oral.  I did stellar on my written, but then I totally fucked it up because my oral was so bad.  How long is your oral?

Abigail:  Three hours.

Krista:  That’s a LOT of oral.

Yes, I’m thirteen years old.  We established that a LONG time ago.  That does not make the evidence any less substantial.  I won’t even touch the part of the conversation where they discussed collecting and studying yeast.  Obviously they speak with brain waves and consume nutrients through osmosis on Krista’s home planet, so there are no mouths to help little teenage aliens remain technically a virgin while still sexually active.

My last and most damming piece of evidence involves her expulsion of waste.  The girl alien DOES NOT PEE.  Each night, we’d say our Goodnights in the living room, and she’d curl up in bed without that one last pee of the day.  I slept lightly each night, waiting to hear her pad across the floor, the creak of the door hinges, the flush of the toilet…nothing.  Then in the morning, I’d wake up, head to the living room, and write my morning pages while waiting for the other two to arise.  Krista would open her door, smile, then innocently plop right down in an armchair, yawning.

I don’t know about you Interwebz, but 90% of the time it’s my bladder that wakes me in the morning.  Occasionally an alarm clock or Rocco sleep-smacking me in the face will happen first, but it only takes an instant for my bladder to protest its overnight load.  Every night my very last conscious action is one final trip to the loo.  If it takes me more than 30 minutes to fall asleep, I have to get back up to pee again…just for good measure.  Yet every morning the urge to pee is overwhelming.  I MUST PEE before anything else happens in the morning.

Krista was here for about 36 hours.  By my math, she went in the bathroom three times.  Each of those times, she had other reasons to visit the room: showering, brushing her teeth, etc.  I saw her eat and drink things, but I have no idea where they went.  Maybe her host body has been modified so that her excretory system converts her bodily waste into those weird gelatinous bubbles that are then harvested and used in bubble tea.

Don’t get me wrong, she was absolutely lovely and I had a wonderful time hanging with her.  You might even say she’s out of this world…