From the Vault: Communist Pillow Talk

continuity: Originally set in Chapter 27, as a separate scene directly following the first/now-only scene. However, this fluffy scene could be read anytime after Chapter 22 but before Chapter 28.

content warnings: some PG-13 heavy petting (no more graphic than anything in the book)

“This doesn’t make sense.”

Never have I ever been so tempted to hit someone with a pillow as I have while watching Nuclear Seasons with Efraín.

The union meeting’s long over, our fellow workers long gone. Efraín and I have decamped to the corduroy couch at the far end of the studio. He told me he was finally ready to give NS a try, so I switched on the the TV that looks like it belongs in the NSX silo right alongside the Spectors’. Then I made the rookie mistake of asking him which episode he wanted to watch, which was always going to be the wrong call because the Correct way to watch Nuclear Seasons for the first time is from the beginning, but it was a particularly stupid question to ask considering the TV in question is only attached to a VHS player, and the stacks of NS VHS tapes are just reruns recorded on Syfy back when it was just the Sci-Fi Channel in the ‘90s. Uncle Brian’s scrawl on the masking tape is pretty much illegible, if not completely faded. I’m sure I could’ve found any a specific episode if Efraín had one in mind, but instead he handed me a tape at random.

Because pure, stupid luck is the only possible reason that I would let Efraín watch episode seven, “An Atomic Orange,” as his first voluntary foray into the Spectors’ universe. It’s not a bad episode, by any means. It is, however, really fucking weird as the citizens of fictional Egan’s Creek start coming down with zombie-like symptoms, until almost everyone is infected except for our heroes and the town hypochondriac hermit, who thinks he’s infected but ends up with a scurvy diagnosis, leads to the slightly convoluted revelation that the mystery parasites originated at a diseased orange grove. The episode can be viewed as an allegory about both the public health and environmental consequences of chemical runoff and industrial waste, radioactive and otherwise. Thematically, it should appeal to Efraín’s sensibilities. Or, it would, if he could get past silly little details like how the hypochondriac hermit has supposedly eaten nothing but Reese’s Pieces for the past six months for reasons that were definitely not product placement, no siree.

“No, seriously,” Efraín’s saying, sitting up in the dim. “How does this make any sense?”

I grab his arm and gently pull him back on the couch. His shoulder makes too good of a pillow. “Just go with it, okay?  Suspend your disbelief.”

“Let me get this straight. The guy who’s always judging the world on the criterion of whether something makes sense, is telling me to suspend my disbelief right now. Do I have that right?”

So much for my pillow. I sit up to face him. I need my full lung capacity to have this argument.

“No, because it does make sense within the diegesis, and they spend the entire show trying to figure out—” I take a breath. “It’s not about the logistics, okay? It’s about what serves the narrative. And, yes, it’s a little bit about how fallout shelters and duck and cover and everything about nuclear preparedness didn’t make sense, but that’s just emblematic of the systemic problem. It wasn’t just the Spectors’ world—the one they left or the one they woke up in—or Egan’s Creek as a topsy-turvy liminal town that defied the laws of physics and nature alike. It was everything. The whole world, the culture of paranoia, the Cold War mentality—the complex whole of their lives. If, say, Dr. Strangelove uses satire to expose the absurdism of the Cold War, then Nuclear Seasons uses the surreal. In other words, it’s a feature, not a citrus-loving-parasite.”

He looks at me for a moment, serious, considerate—and then snorts.

“What?”

“Nothing, I was just thinking what Marx would say, from a materialist perspective—”

“I swear to God, if you say the word ’superstructure,’ I’m going to kick you out.”

He hums and pulls me closer. “I’m guessing ‘opiate of the masses’ is out too, huh?”

I shift up onto my knees so I have the height advantage for once. “Total verboten.”

“What about… Oh, wait this is a good one. What about”—he leans in close and whispers in my ear—“‘commodity fetishism?’”

“Sounds kinky.” Except I can’t say it without giggling, which he takes as an excuse to kiss me. And I should probably care that the TV’s on, that we’re missing my favorite show, that he’s missing the best part, but it’s also very hard to care when he is so infuriatingly beautiful—and beautifully irritating, in equal measure.

“You know,” I murmur, “sometimes I feel like I’m making out with your Marxist audiobook shelf.”

“Sometimes I feel like I’m making out with your Netflix queue.”

“I think that’s why they call it ‘Netflix and chill.’”

“Right.” Efraín stifles a laugh against my neck. “Nuclear Seasons and chill.”

“Damn straight,” I reply, a hitch in my breath as his chuckles turn to kisses.

“There’s nothing straight about this.”

The horror, the horror. If I shudder, it’s everything to do with that and nothing to do with the way Efraín’s touching me. “Damn gay, then. Or, technically, since we’re both bi… damn bi? Is that a thing? Should we make it a thing?”

“Elisha?”

“Efraín?”

“How about a little less talking?”

“You’re one to talk,” I squawk. “You’re literally one of the most talkati—”

Then he bites down, just so, and it turns out, given proper incentive, we’re both capable of shutting the fuck up.