Mime Spent Apart

Part 16

Menhaus woke up and looked at the calendar on his phone. It had been nearly two months since he and Tina had started going out. Since then he had barely any sleep at all, they both seemed to have a voracious appetite for each other and couldn't stay awake. He figured if he ever got himself a 'proper' 9-5 job he would need to put in some sort of boundaries so that he could actually get some sleep. Not that he minded the endless rumpy-pumpy, he loved it, but he also needed sleep. Overall, though, things had been going amazingly. Neither of them had many complaints with the other, though Tina thought he played computer games a little much and that he didn't really need to talk to strangers online when he had his own friends circle in "the real world" that he talked to. He argued that these were just people he talked to as an intellectual exercise and that he had met a group of them a few nights after they got together and that went fine. In fact, one of them, Calliope, had given him the details of her agent and told him to try sending some of his stuff over to him when he felt the work was ready. Tina really couldn't argue with that but at the same time didn't really think it was that big a deal. Maybe it wasn't. In any case, the almost argument was always forgotten pretty quickly.

He re-focussed on his phone. Two PM? Was he meant to meet with anyone for lunch? Tina was at work (she seemed to be able to function on no sleep with no problems, at least for now. He wouldn't be surprised though if eventually she started making her own rules for bed time to herself), Peter was at work. Actually, most of his friends worked. He wished he had more friends who worked for themselves so they could meet for power breakfasts, or power brunches, or power lunches... actually, they'd need to invent something between lunch and dinner so that he'd actually get to it. Power Luner? Sounded like a spacecraft. He got out of bed and showered to clear his head then opened up his laptop and checked his email. One of his usual clients wanted him to go back over some of the copy he'd already submitted and rework it to fit a different demographic. That was fine. He got himself a bowl of cereal and ate it down, then began work on his copy.

A couple of hours later, after a near disaster where the laptop nearly turned itself off because the cable had somehow gotten disconnected from it and his battery barely held a charge, he was done and emailed it off to the client. He got an OK a few minutes later so he started browsing through his normal sites around the place. Once he got bored he loaded up IRC to see who was on. He was happy to see Calliope still the operator for the night as sometimes she left it to other people. A few people said hello to him and he said hello back, though most of them he barely knew. It was just because it was the custom to say hello to anyone that joined. It was a nice custom, but it could make things confusing or tedious. He said hello to Calliope in the main chat, she said, "Hey M how are you doing?"

"I'm not bad, just bored. I've basically finished my work for the day."

"Lucky you, I've still got to grade a pile of papers before I can go do anything 'relaxing'"

"Shame. Well, my relaxing is coming into this chat channel really."

"Not your pretty girlfriend? ;)" She used a winking smiley face to indicate they knew what they got up together. Well of course she did. Everyone did. He thought to himself, I mean, most couples get up to that stuff right?

"Haha yeah well that's relaxing too but it pretty much means everything else is off for the night."

"And it can be hard work too, right?"

"Totally." He wasn't lying, he was pretty sure he nearly dislocated his hip the other night trying to twist into a new position they had found out. He wasn't sure why they got so frantic together but it always felt like it was the last time they'd ever get to make love. At least she turned out to be telling the truth about her pill, they hadn't had any pregnancy scares.