Riii-iiii-iiight.

Slim was already in our film class when I entered it. He was amongst the first, and he didn't look quite awake. It was eight in the morning, after all, and he looked a little groggy, slouching in the back of the class with his head resting on his folded arms, hair a little rumpled.

I dropped in the chair next to him with a tired, "Hey."

He blinked up at me, lips pulling a little up, unable to smile fully. "Yo."

We dozed off a little for the next ten minutes, waiting for the class to fill up. When it did, Slim shook himself ―and me, because his elbow accidentally hit me in the ribs― awake, mumbling that he wasn't ready for a full day.

"So tired," he groaned, sitting upright in his chair to look like something other than a sack of potatoes. "I mowed the lawn last night. It was, like, eleven thirty."

I snort. "Oh, your neighbours must have been thrilled."

He smirks. "Yeah, right. Check this out." He bends to open his backpack, which sits on the floor between our chairs, and pulls out two new bags of chips. He shows them to me with a big, toothy, excited smile. "More chips!" He cries. "I figured four hours of class would take their toll on us at some point."

I blink at him and laugh. "Oh my god, where do you get them all?"

He shrugs and puts them back into his bag. "Stole 'em." When I fix him with a reproachful look, he hastens to add, "They were on a table after our last soccer match. Nobody was taking them, so I pretended I was getting PB's and Rick's, and kept them instead."

"You're a horrible person."

"I know, I know. But what no one knows will harm no one."

"I'll tell them you stole their chips," I jokingly threaten.

"Yep, I'm shaking. See me?" He convulses. "Positively shaking." He convulses again, and we try not to snicker too loudly, since the teacher is about to start.

Turns out we need teams of six to eight people for the session-long project. The idea is to make a movie practically from scratch, and we need a team.

I glance at Slim, who purses his lips and looks to his right, where a girl and a guy are sitting. The guy is looking over at Slim with raised brows. Wordlessly, they shake hands, and the guy breaks into a broad grin.

"Slim."

"Dom."

Slim turns to look back at me. "We're with him."

I laugh. "Because you shook hands?"

"No," Slim says, patiently. "Because he's good."

Dom looks over Slim's shoulder and smiles at me. "Hey. Wanna join the team? We need a good writer."

I raise a brow. "How do you know I write?"

"Slim told me. You in?"

"Um," I glance at Slim, who is waiting for my reply expectantly, and we try not to snicker again at our previous antics, "yeah, I guess."

"This is Gen," he says, motioning to the blonde girl sitting next to him. She seems cheerful and no-nonsense at the same time. Yep, pleasant yet hard-worker. Excellent. "We've always worked together."

"Great," I say. "We just need two more people."

The guy who sits in front of Slim and I turns around. He's quite ugly, but whatever.

"Hey, can I join you guys?" He asks. "I'm Mac."

"For the name alone, bud," Slim nods enthusiastically. "For the name alone."

I whack him. He turns a laughing gaze on me and looks pitying. "Was that your weak attempt at a punch?"

"No," I reply in the same tone. "It was a whack. You're being stupid."

He looks thoughtful. "So I was thinking, for the movie, we should have zombies."

I pretend to look impressed. "Oh, wow, Slim. Really amazing. But what zombie movie could possibly be complete without a full set of pyrotechnics?"

He nods sagely. "And spaceships. So you pay and I watch, okay?"

I roll my eyes. Dom leans forward after chatting a little with Mac. "Hey, hey, hey, can I be director? Please? Please?"

I glance at Slim. He goes, "Hell yeah." So I shrug and nod too, but then Slim adds, "As long as I get to be editor."

Of course. If there's one thing Slim is good at, it's editing film.

"Okay. So in pre-prod, CM, you can be scenarist; in prod you can be..."

I shrug. "Sound check." It's a cool job that I know I'll be good at.

"Right. Mac, how do you feel about camera handling?"

Long story short, in spite of the fact that we still need a sixth crewmember, the task repartition is as follows:

Pre-production:
―Screenwriters: Dom and I
―Technical cutters: Mac and I
―Additional input: Slim and Gen

Production:
―Director: Dom
―Assistant, artistic director and verificator: Gen
―Sound checker: Me
―Pole-vaulter: Slim (or whoever else is available)
―Cameraman: Mac
―Stage-manager: Slim

Post-production:
―Director: Dom
―Editor: Slim
―Sound mixer: Me
―Additional input: Gen and Mac

It's a good team. I think we're going to kick ass.

"You know what I'm thinking?" Slim asks as we leaf through scenarios (suggestions which we're allowed to modify to some extent).

"No," I say, trying to make sense of what I'm reading.

"We should make a zombie movie."

"What's up with you and zombies?"

Dom comes up to us and shows us one of the scenarios, looking traumatized. "Not this one, people. Unless you want to abuse children in a twisted metaphorical context."

Slim and I stare at him, annoyed and confused by our own scenarios. I ask, "Another one of those pretentious scripts, huh?"

Slim chuckles and holds up the scenario he just finished reading. "It has to be better than this one. I don't understand it at all, and I've read it three times. There's like, a girl who looks in the mirror, and a crazy old lady, and a nurse, and at one point the girl hides in the bushes..." He can't sum it up, as it makes him laugh too much. Mirth is obvious in his eyes. "Yeah. This one's great."

"Bushes," I repeat flatly.

He hands it to me excitedly. "Here, you read it. I swear, whoever wrote this has a great concept idea. Bushes. We should use that."

I read it. As Slim said, it's incomprehensible. I can't read it through, because it's just so wacky that I'm laughing like crazy by the third page, until I reach the part about bushes. Yay, bushes, completely out of nowhere in the script. It's awesome, if you like to call completely insane "awesome".

"Isn't it?" Slim exclaims, excited. "The bushes part makes no sense, but it's just so poignant. We should use them."

Dom, flatly, looks between Slim and I and says, "No."

"Darn."

As Dom, Mac and Gen walk off to discuss something with the teacher, probably to argue about the fact that most of the scenarios offered make no sense whatsoever, Slim and I are left to talk about our past filming experiences.

There's a thing between two people talking that either clicks or doesn't. It's quite black or white, actually. Either you find a conversation partner with whom you can talk for hours on end non-stop and never run out of things to say (and both be disappointed when you eventually have to stop), or you find a partner whom you have to coax into conversation, one who will allow awkward silences and be unable to keep up with you, no matter what direction you take the conversation in (and I have a wide range of possible convo-starters, believe me).

Slim (along with PB, Karl, Eva and a few others) and I have category 1 conversations. We talked and talked and talked so much that at one point, as he was laughing to hilarity, Slim almost choked on the leftover bronchitis he's still suffering a little from. I stared at him wide-eyed as his eyes teared up and he choked, unable to stop laughing.

"Oh my god, don't die there."

He just choked a weak, chuckling, "It's fine. It's just coming out." And coughed again, the sound mixed with laughs. So I started laughing too.

Bass, it turns out, is a category 2 conversationalist.

... Needless to say, I can't stand 'im.

Especially, as Harry from When Harry Met Sally would say, that Bass is a number 2 who THINKS he's a number 1. The worst kind.

Long story short, after the short lunch we had today, if Bass ever asks me out again, he's officially a blind moron.

I combined many unattractive traits into one and half hours of pure torture: I was purposely boring, tired, unenthusiastic, and when he tried to grab me for a hug or hold my hand, I'd sharply pull away. I think I was even so successful that he was eager to get away from me by the end (openly mourning that I was being a bitch, to which I replied, matter-of-factly, "Yes, you're right. I'm a bitch. No secrets there." "You didn't mind me touching you last time." "I don't like people touching me in general." "When I hug you, usually you hug me back." "But you'll never see me initiate a hug. I'm not an affectionate person, and you're like a CareBear or something." "Yeah. No harm in that." "Well, I'm not really like that." and so on).

Conclusion: mission accomplished. If he ever tries again, he's a moron and I'll just say, "You know what, Bass? I don't think we should go out again. It just doesn't click." And you just can't take a hint. "So let's just forget about it."

Slim would not approve, but guess what? Slim has no say in how I deal with losers. Hell, he's even the one who, years ago, linked me to a page on the pathological Loser. At the time it was just for the joke of it, but I actually absorbed a large part of that article and realised it was a useful read when dealing with unappealing company.

As I desperately said to Slim (when, after class, he requested that I accompany him to the administrative offices for him to retrieve a certified attestation of his status as a student), "Slim, the only common point between Bass and I is you."

Which made him laugh, loud, until he was tearing and coughing a little.

"Okay," he wheezed. "Point taken."

Love,
CM

P.S. If the comments section doesn't work, please send me a mail with specifics, so that I can maybe try to see what's wrong. : )