The First Couple

When the sun came up, the light opened the eyes of a being lying on the fresh grass of a great hilltop. “Oh,” it began, “Oh, no. It’s happened again.”

   It crawled over to another being that looked nearly identical as itself, minus a few features. With a violent shake, the other being opened its eyes. “Oh,” the other being immediately said, before even taking the first breath of the day, “Oh, no. It’s happened again…”

   They both panicked and stood. The one being shouted, “What are we supposed to do? This keeps happening! We keep being alive! Every day! How long is this going to happen? Why do we keep being alive?!”

   “I don’t have any idea! I don’t even know why we’re making these noises from our faces, and why we can even understand what any of the noises mean!”

   “Why do we know what we’re saying?!”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know!” the other being started to run and sob. “I don’t know…” Its voice grew distant, “I DON’T KNOW!”

   “Wait, don’t leave!” The one being started after the other that was running.

   Both were naked, so, running too fast was uncomfortable. That made it easy to catch up. “Please, stop. Calm down for a minute,” said the one, not really out of breath. It had caught up and started to pace behind the other, gathering itself.

   The other looked like it had stopped mid-run, though, and was facing away from the one, matting down a patch of grass with urine. The one stared at the other, and said, pointing, “Why don’t I feel okay about that?”

   The other suddenly felt embarrassed.

   The one being decided, “You know what, I don’t care why, I’m just not okay with that. Will you not do that out in the open, please? Find a stream or something.” After saying that, the one being, looking at the other with a self-righteous snarl, started to squat and strain.

   “Um, excuse me,” said the other, “If you’re not okay with me doing this out in the open, then I’m not okay with you doing that, alright? Find a hole or something.”

   They both finished their business, staring at each other without another word. They resumed walking with their footsteps distracted and out of sync.

   After a thought’s worth of a moment, the one being said, “If this is going to keep happening, then how about we make some changes. I mean, if we keep having to do this same stuff, every day, why don’t we do things differently and make it a little better?” The one being looked at their bodies, again. “First of all, we should call each other something when we want to say something to the other. But, we should call each other different things, because I’m obviously different from you in, you know, a lot of ways.” The one being leaned on its hip. “So, I don’t know what to call you. What do you want me to call you?”

   “I’ve never thought of that…” said the other being. “Um, call me...ummm,” it continued ‘umm-ing’ as it kneeled, then crawled, then laid its face down on the ground. Umm-ing.

   “What are you doing? What is that supposed to do?” said the one.

   The other answered as best it could with a voice muffled by grass and soil, “I think better when I can’t see.”

   The one shook its head with a stretched brow and pinched eyelids.

   “Okay,” said the other, into the ground, “Call me mmmmmmaaaaa...nnn.”

   “Mmmmaaaaannn?”

   “No,” the other lifted its head, “Man. Call me Man, because it’s easy to say. And, I’m worried we won’t be able to remember anything longer than that.”

   The one being bent down and placed a hand on Man’s back, “Okay,” said the one, as it softly patted Man’s shoulder, “But, it does have three different sounds in it, though. Are you sure that’s not too many?”

   Man thought for a moment, then nodded its head and put its face back in the grass. “Yeah,” Man said as it sat up, exuding confidence, “Yeah, I think I can handle it.”

   The one gave exactly two more pat with its fingers, then stood up and looked pensively out over the field. “So, what should I be called?” the one being said, mostly to itself, because it was thinking for itself, only, and absent-mindedly said the words louder than it thought it did.

   “Well,” interrupted Man, “If you look carefully, you can tell that we have different things on our bodies, but we look mostly the same.” Then Man pointed between the one being’s hips. “That’s definitely called a womb, right? So, you look like me--I’m Man--but you have a womb and I don’t. Ergo: Womb-man.” Man pointed at the one being then gave a smile.

   “Woah-woah-woah, no. No,” began the one being, “I didn’t ask you for help, thank you.”

   “Oh,” Man said, its head slightly dropping. “But you did ask--”

   “Besides, you want me to use the same name you came up with just because you committed to the first noise you could think of, for yourself? How does that make sense?”

   “Because, well,” Man started to explain.

   “And, you see that I have other different parts, don’t you?” said the one being, using its finger to circle its chest and long hair.

   “Well, come to think of it,” Man said, after it ignored the last thing the one being pointed out because Man was fumbling for reason, itself, “It’s because, well, isn’t your womb where people are made?” Man kept its sitting position, but threw up its hands, exclaiming, “Yeah! That’s it! You make people. People, do you understand? If I’m Man and you’re not Womb-man, then what use is it to know what I am, at all? I don’t do anything!”

   “You could make yourself useful and build us something to stay in before it gets dark, so we’ll actually be warm and safe, for once.”

   “Fine,” said Man, beginning to feel a little irritated, “I will do that.” Man felt a wrinkle form in its brain, and a trapped thought broke out, gasping for air. “Since you brought it up,” Man started to say, giving the thought somewhere to go, “why don’t we just lay down close together, when it gets dark? We’re both lying down, anyway. Aren’t our bodies still warm when it gets dark, even though the air gets colder?”

   “I guess…”

   “Then, wouldn’t we be warmer if we were close together?” Suddenly, Man started to feel the beginnings of a keener interest in the one being’s different parts. “I mean, what other options are there?”

   “Uh, let’s keep thinking about that one,” said the one being, “I’m not going to do that unless it’s absolutely necessary. You smell really bad.”

   “You smell bad too, though,” said Man.

   “I don’t think that’s true,” the one being bent down, picked up what looked like a mushroom, and took a bite, “I can’t smell anything that smells bad until you stand near me.” The one being tapped its nose as it chewed, “That’s how I know it’s you, not me.”

   “That’s the same issue I have with you, though,” said Man, “Except, I can smell myself, it’s just I think it smells...kind of good.”

   “Ugh,” groaned the one being, dropping the rest of the mushroom-like thing.

   Man was still fixated on the conversation they’d had moments before, and it said “So, why not Womb-man? Please?”

   “How exactly do you know this ‘womb’, as you call it, is where ‘people’ come from? What are people?” replied the one. “How do I know that you know what you’re talking about? And, are you even saying words, or are these more of the first noises that come to your brain?”

   “Of course I know what I’m talking about,” insisted Man, thinking it was answering the one beings questions. “Please, why not just be Womb-man? Please?” 

   Exhausted from the persistence of Man, the one being finally said, “Fine, but just until we come up with something better.” The one being, now called Womb-man, sat down. “You know, I think we shouldn’t say ‘man’ in what I’m being called.”

   “But, you just barely said--”

   “We’ll still keep it close!” Womb-man promised. Just so you’ll stop whining about it, it added, to itself. “It’s just an idea to make saying it easier if we’re going to say it over and over, okay? So, how about Woomun? Woo...woomun. Woomun.” Womb-man continued this until its jaw was tired, so it relaxed and said, “Woo-uh-mun. Wuh-mun,” Womb-man looked at Man, “Wuhmun!”

   “Okay,” said Man, feeling deflated. That’s completely different than what we literally just agreed on, but whatever, I guess, it added, to itself.

   “Alright, so you’re called Man, and I’m called Wuhmun.” Wuhmun stood up, “What’s next?”

   “Hang on, hang on. I’ve noticed there are a bunch of different things that have the things on them that we have on us, so why not call them the same things as we call us?”

   “You want to call everything that has your parts Man?”

   “Yeah! Man for my parts and Womb-man for your parts! I mean, Wuhmun,” Man said. However, not wanting to seem uncreative, it backtracked a step. “I mean, maybe. Right?”

   “I think we can come up with some other words. They don’t look anything like us, at all, except for those parts--well, your parts, really.”

   “I’m on it,” Man said, then, again, announced the first guest that showed up in its mind-stage, “Maaaa...llll. Mal.”

   “That’s really close to Man.”

   “I said…..maaa-ayyyelll. M-mayel.”

   “Mayel?”

   “Yes.”

   “Everything that has your parts will be called ‘mayel’?”

   “Exactly.”

   Unimpressed, but eager to get this out of the way, Wuhmun asked, “Then what about all the things that don’t have your parts?”

   “...Wuh--”

   “And don’t say ‘Wuh-mayel’.”

   “...muh… I mean, fuh… no... … ...feeeeeeeee…”

   Don’t say it. Don’t say it.

   “...mayel.”

   “This is a waste of time.”

   “Then, we’ll go with my idea?”

   “I don’t want to decide.”

   “Then I will. And we will.” Man gave another proud smile.

   Wuhmun was already regretting sticking around Man this long, but Wuhmun instinctively understood that the chance of survival was better if Man was around. It wasn’t pleasant, but it was the truth. “Fine. Let’s move on.”

   “Actually now that I’ve got my creativity going,” Man said, “how about we keep thinking of things to call stuff that have our parts? And don’t worry,” Man looked dead into Wuhmun’s eyes, “I’m thinking of different sounds. Like, my parts will be ‘heee’ and your parts will be ‘sheee’.”

   “Moving on.”

   “Then we’ll go with that, too.”

   “Got it,” said Wuhmun, expecting Man wasn’t going to remember all of this, anyway. “What’s next?”

   “Well, I don’t like that it’s dark when it gets dark. I can make the shelter while there’s still light, when I can see, but how do we make it not dark when it gets dark, in case I still need to see?”

   “Okay, I thought about that, too,” said Wuhmun, “and, remember what happened to that dead tree that one time, when it suddenly started making cracking sounds and turned bright and felt really hot to stand next to? I think we should find another dead tree and try to make that happen on purpose, somehow.”

   “Oh, when it turned hot and bright, all of a sudden? That was bright,” Man said. Man had sold it well--Man was barely paying attention to what Wuhmun had said, because Man was preoccupied with Man’s own idea, yet it used a new tactic of restating what it thought it had just heard to make it sound like it had been listening, intently, and understood what Wuhmun had said.

   “How do you think we can do that, then?” said Wuhmun.

   “Do what?”

   “What do you mean ‘do what’? What I just said.”

   “Oh, yeah.” Man didn’t actually know what Wuhmun’s idea was. Wuhmun looked at Man like it was onto Man’s scheme, so Man scrambled its brain to save itself. Be vague, was the only thing that came to mind. “We can think about that,” phew, “but, I have an idea, too, that we could try. If you want.”

   Wuhmun could tell Man hadn’t been listening, but it felt bad about the strain on Man’s face, so it wanted to be fair and hear Man’s idea, just in case it was better. “Okay, let’s hear it,” Wuhmun said. “What do you think we should try?” Wuhmun kept her idea in the back of her mind to make room for Man’s idea, because there was enough room in Wuhmun’s mind to do so.

   “You know those bright things that show up when it gets dark, after that giant bright thing goes away?” said Man, and Wuhmun nodded, nervously. “Well, what if we grab a few of those from the air, since they’re just floating there, and use them as lights?”

   Wuhmun paused to give Man enough space in its mind to realize that that wouldn’t work, but there wasn’t as much space in there as Wuhmun was hoping. When Wuhmun saw Man wasn’t going to come to that conclusion, it offered, “Hm. Are you sure that’ll work?”

   “I think so, yeah,” Man replied, then stood up, finally. “I already tried grabbing the giant one, but I couldn’t reach it and--” man shielded both eyes, because it was staring at the giant one as it was saying all of this, not thinking to look away, “there was this bright spot in my eyes for a while after I kept trying to reach it.”

   “Well,” Wuhmun began to say, without much hope left, “Let’s try your idea, and, if it doesn’t work, we can try mine. Okay?”

   Encouraged, Man blindly looked away from Wuhmun and gave a thumbs-up. It immediately started making plans in its head to be sure they worked exactly as Man pictured they would. “Okay, deal.” 

   By this point, Man was so distracted in the moment that it completely forgot about needing to build a shelter before it got dark, unbeknownst to Wuhmun, who was also busy trying to figure out how to do its own ideas without Man’s help, or without Man seeing and offering to ‘help’.

   A little way off, a construction worker was sitting on the edge of a bridge, eating a burrito and watching two naked people walk around the landfill, early in the morning. Neither of them seemed to be totally ‘there’, but both were clearly invested in what they were doing.