What’s The Most Embarrassing Thing That’s Ever Happened
To You While Watching A Keanu Reeves Movie?
Place: Cosmic Hubble Conference Room NK2019/Middle-Deep Space
Time: Friday Morning/a little bit after 9:30
Cosmic Policy demanded that every 38 hours or so
its employees would clump together into their various
teams and departments in one of the many thousands of conference rooms
that the Company had graciously built for the purpose of meeting
and they would, shit. you know. they’d meet.
goddamn it.
every 38 hours or so
they’d just meet.
the agendas of these meetings were discorded and varied
and always began with something they called Privacy Breakers
During this Mandatory Sharing Activity each Control Guide
would pose a randomly personal question to their team
and then for the next 48 minutes or so everyone on the team
took turns mandatorily answering the goddamn question
most of the questions were sanity-cracking but predictable like:
how many times this week have you publicly felt grateful for working here?
or what’s your dog’s favorite color?
but this morning’s Privacy Breaker was something different
The Control Guide was playing hardball for Its own reasons again
This morning It didn’t give a shit about dog’s or their favorite colors
This morning the Control Guide, upon calling the meeting officially
to order, looked It’s laptop straight in the face and demanded
in a harsh verbal hue:
What’s the most embarrassing thing that’s ever happened to you
while watching a Keanu Reeves movie?
Nobody in the room had ever been asked this before
It felt so goddamn random and unnecessary and the nervous
Zebort, with her throat constructed of gravel and her entire body
made up of 80% throat began weeping instantly and it wasn’t even anywhere
close to being her turn to forcibly share
Drunbklilu sat directly to the left of the Control Guide
so it was Drunbklilu’s responsibility to personally confess
and holy fuck! she was terrified! “I’m not ready for this, but
I guess it would have to be, ha ha, I was watching Bill And Ted
with this boy I really liked at the time and I don’t know, at some point
just as the two chums jumped out of their time car I..” her head dropped
down in shame, “farted.”
Silence. And then The Control Guide spoke
“Out loud?”
“Excuse me?” Drunbklilu didn’t understand.
“You say you farted. But as our many trainings have taught us
there are different way of farting. Did this farting you’ve just shared with us,
YOU KNOW WHAT I’M SAYING?!! Was it compassionate or alarming?!
Was the farting ‘out loud’?”
“Yes Control Guide. “ Drunbklilu burst into tears. “The farting was verbal.
He broke up with me shortly after.”
The Control Guide appeared pleased with this answer
but Shadborg was pissed. He sat at the table
a few dozen chairs down from Drunbklilu fuming
because everyone else in the room seemed focused on the farting
and nobody seemed to give a shit
that Bill and Ted didn’t travel through time in a fucking ‘time car’
Drunbklilu had just shared a story about farting during Back To The Future
and the question posed had to do with humiliation and Keanu Reeves movies
and Keanu Reeves wasn’t even in that!
But fuck, what did it matter?
Shadborg’s repulsion towards the entire goddamn thing had gone unnoticed
and the Privacy Breaker rolled on. It was Xhdyoe’s turn to speak
Xhdyoe was the sort of Drondlick that tucked its shirt in religiously
and prayed its thanks
(as the bottom of its shirt flaps touched its penis and/or nuts)
every time it arrived to work several minutes before all those other slackers
who merely arrived to work ‘on time’
Xhdyoe excelled in tucking its shirt in and smelling smug
but when it came to knowing anything about movies
Xhdyoe was a dick
“I have no idea who Keanu Reeves is”
Xhdyoe admitted, “My hobbies exclusively include
taking pictures of myself with my dog while hiking
and accessing public transportation in hopes of winning
the favor of The Supreme Rulebots. I will say my dog’s favorite color
is indigo. Because she’s sensitive like this. But I have no time for film.”
The Control Guide had always admired Xhdyoe’s shirt-tucking
abilities but he’d failed to answer the question. Hell, he wasn’t
sobbing or feeling bad about himself or anything so the Guide
declared his answer ‘incomplete’ and Xhdyoe was instantly obliterated
Exactly 4 seconds after his obliteration, everyone sitting in the
conference room felt their work phones hum
as a Companywide email had just been sent explaining
Xhdyoe was no longer employed with the Company and the small pile
of dust that remained of him was no longer allowed in secure areas
the email was accompanied by a recent picture of Xhdyoe
post obliteration, in the picture Xhdyoe looked like a small pile of dust
“Who’s next?” The Control Guide was smiling. “We’re having so much fun!!!!”
like mouth herpies, the question made its way solemnly
around the room
Plankto admitted that one time during a drive in theater viewing of Point Break
he killed a male prostitute because in the brochure the prostitute had been
promised to look like Patrick Swayze but he didn’t look anything like
Patrick Swayze, the prostitute looked more like Jared Leto
and this discrepancy had pissed Plankto off
Lolo had suffered a miscarriage while watching Parenthood
Sexswing had understandably relapsed back into heroin
after his best friend made him watch Knock Knock
Brondlh began obsessively texting pictures of her husband’s genitals
to Sandra Bullock shortly after watching Speed
by the time the question reached Shadborg
the rest of the entire room was either secretly plotting
their own suicides or voraciously sobbing
“It’s your turn Shadborg” the Control Guide forcefully prodded
as Shadborg sat there, not immediately speaking
“Nobody’s said anything about John Wick yet, Shadborg.
perhaps you’ve done something embarrassing while watching
John Wick.”
“The only embarrassing thing that happened to me while watching John Wick,”
Shadborg told The Control Guide, the words falling out of his face before
he’d known they were even in there, “was watching John Wick.”
The Control Guide glared at Shadborg. His answer exposed more annoyance
than shame about anything. It demanded he pick something else
“I guess my favorite one would be The Watcher, because you know, he’s
doing all that watching. And while I was watching I was sort of like
I think I should grow my hair out like Keanu Reeves has his hair grown out
in this movie but I’m going to wait to grow it out like that until after I’m dead.”
The Control Guide was still not pleased with his answer.
He didn’t seemed humbled enough yet, so the Control Guide pushed on
“Shadborg! I need you to speak out loud the first thought that comes to you
as I randomly read off this list of Keanu Reeves movie!”
The Shadborg agreed, because shit it might be fun. And what else was he supposed to do?
Constantine!
I prefer the comics
Little Buddha!
I prefer the fat one
Dracula!
The book is way better
The Matrix!
Damn right. He’s good in that.
“What the fuck?!” The Control Guide was losing it
“Are you trying to tell me you don’t have one
personally traumatizing story about anything that’s happened
to you while watching a goddamn Keanu Reeves movie?!”
Shadborg pretended to think about this for a little bit before saying
“Nope.”
Just then the atomic buzzer went off signifying
that the time allotted for this morning’s Privacy Breaker
had been reached and it was time to move on
“Right. Privacy Breaker’s over.” The Control Guide admitted
“But I’d like it reflected in the notes that
Homework Assignment for Shadborg:
He will something humiliating while watching a Keanu Reeve’s movie
before our next meeting and verbally share this humiliation with the group.”
The request was duly reflected
and for the rest of the meeting Shadborg nodded his head
along with the others upon those occasions in which head nodding
was publicly acknowledged and thus necessary
but for the most part he spent most of the rest of the meeting
wondering what it might be like to fall in love again
and making up a brand new Keanu Reeves movie
that he could explain in ridiculous detail at the next meeting
where he would force share his made up confession
something like:
“There was a princess and a silo and we all know this thing’s
3 and a half hours but I fucking swear to you from start to finish,
that’s how long it took me to cum.”
Multiverse Johnson 