Don’t Judge Me By My Google
By A. Nugent
If you want to see me behave like the hungry lioness, crouching in the African brush waiting to attack her prey, try and borrow my laptop. I’ll warn you first, you should probably protect your jugular, because things are about to get ugly. I see you ‘friend.’ I know you came over my apartment under the guise of watching some Real Housewives — forty minutes of the kind of women who can afford Klonopin legally and have no sense of irony when saying something like ‘I spent 2,000 dollars on sunglasses but my marriage is failing.’ I love it, you love it, it’s why we’re friends! I also don’t mind that you have generously poured from my stash of vodka I keep in the freezer, casually asking me if I have any chasers. Don’t you know that nobody has chasers in their house and when they do they call them juice? What am I, a functioning adult? I don’t mind that you put your grubby sneakers on my futon, on account that my futon is some Craiglist trash heap on the last screws of its noble life.
I still don’t trust you, ‘friend.’ Any second now, probably when I go to the bathroom, your sticky jam fingers will reach over and grasp at the only thing in my apartment worth more than fifteen dollars — my laptop computer. There are two ways I will handle this — like a dead girl in a horror movie who moves her head 180 degrees and goes “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.” Two, I’ll act like the last action hero, and you are the Russian guy who wants to blow up America, back when Russian people were portrayed poorly in movies. Let me make it clear for you — no, I do not care about the hilarious link that you are about to blow my mind with. No, I do not care about the brunch place that you want to look up, or how you desperately need to check your Twitter to see if Jonah Hill finally responded to you. Right now, you are my gravest enemy. I will scratch you with my nails. I will laugh maniacally in the kind of ‘mad scientist’ way that will make you realize you are dealing with an insane person. You should hand the computer back now.
It’s not so much the computer itself I’m protecting. And no, I don’t have porn on my computer — that joke is stale and old and Lord, we all know how to use the incognito window. What I don’t want you to see is what I Google.
There’s a story behind this, anyway. Senior year of college, and I’m inviting the kind of guy over that I want to make out with, although I’m not sure yet. I’m never sure if I want to make out with anybody, fantasy is better than the eventual reality of ‘in the end, he used too much tongue.’ He sits in the corner nook of my kitchen, the only part about my 3BR Grt Views 2400 a month that was kind of cute. I go to get two beers, big cans that will break the tension and are six dollars at the bodega. That’s the case with most things — you turn your back for one second and everything goes to hell. He wanted to find something on the internet that started with the letter B, but I would piece this together in the aftermath of it all. Immediately, up comes Baby Covered In Blood. It was this Sesame Street clip I liked that became a meme of Elmo yelling at a kid covered in chocolate but it looked like blood. I found it funny, it’s really kind of funny. Not anymore. How do you explain that? No, you can’t. I watch him leave, with two tall boys in my tiny hands to comfort me, and my inability to find that damn video. I still can’t find that damn video. I’m not the kind of girl who wants to see babies covered in blood, I whisper into the empty and lonely night.
You lay off my Google, friend. My Google searchbar is filled with some of the creaky and disturbing haunted house hallways of my mind, none of which you need to see. It is not me on the outside, maybe. But it is me on the inside, and it’s kind of as private as the things I do when I’m alone in my apartment. Hint: no utensils, no pants, singalongs to Alanis Morrisette.
The one person in the world truly upset about Kim Kardashian’s Marriage
Can one buy a bedazzler
Do you think that there is a ghost in my house?
I always ask Google very conversationally, kind of like we are old friends. I want him to feel like he can trust me as much as I trust him.
If my ex-boyfriend is more successful than me, how can I ruin his life?
Rubber baby buggy bumpers… a THING?
Better looking Adam Scott
The Grudge 2 plot lines
MCRIB MCRIB MCRIB
I won’t go on. Okay one more:
How can I find out where flash mobs are and destroy them
You could also discover that I Googled the lyrics to the song I told you I knew, or that I was wondering what was going on with my left breast. I want you to look away now, you’ve seen too much. Truth is — friends that we are, or lovers we could be? You don’t need to see what I’m searching for. We’ll never be that close, on account that I’ve already tried to punch you in the face when you touched my computer. Sigh. Alone again, back to the tall boy and the search for the baby, floating through the Internet covered in chocolate.
How can I maintain friends even though I never let them touch my computer?
How can I keep them finding out who I am?
Who will love me?
Answer me, Google. Answer me.
Maybe one day, he will.