You’ve been eyeing a beautiful man in the produce section at the grocery store.
The way he handles the avocados, the way he scratches his stubble, the way he… everythings. It’s too much! You have to ask him on a date.
That man’s name… is Scott.
During the last stream, we did a Chat Your Own Adventure story. I wrote sections of a story, and then chat voted on what happened next.
Since it was Valentine’s Day the story was about chat attempting to go on a date with yours truly. Will it end in delight or disaster? Read on to find out!
Watch the video of each vote here, plus me reading the full story,
or scroll down to read it yourself.
Here’s what we came up with: (Chat’s votes are in bold)
Today is the day you’re finally going to ask Scott out on a date.
Ever since you first laid eyes on him, you knew that he was the apple of your eyes. The spinach of your spleen. The raspberry of your respiratory system.
You remember when you first locked eyes with him at Shop A Lot, the local grocery store that you both share. Hopefully it would just be the first of many things you’d share together.
That day, Scott was standing in the produce section, squeezing some avocados to see if they were ripe. Even you have to admit that at first, you thought his Phantom Tollbooth shirt, pajama pants, and discount-haircut mop on his head were a tad funny. But there was something about them that drew you toward him. Something… primal.
As you wove your way through the cabbages and carrots, pretending to be interested in their Ten-Cent-Off Tuesday prices, you found yourself glancing back over at Scott, drawn like a magnet to the flame, and each time you noticed something that set your heart aflutter even more. The stubble that prickled his face and neck like beach sand, the sound of waves crashing as he scratched it while considering avocados. The way he handled the avocados themselves, softly yet in full control, squeezing them as if speaking to them with his fingers. The sharp brightness behind his eyes.
What was he hiding there? What was he thinking… about you? You had to know.
After mindlessly putting the eighth stalk of broccoli into your basket, you decided to go over and say something. Just strike up a conversation. But just as your heart swelled as much as your courage, Scott picked an avocado he liked, plopped it into his cart, and pushed it away whistling, oblivious to your agony.
You wouldn’t make the same mistake again.
Now, you have a second chance. You’re back at the Shop A Lot produce section, a week later, and Scott is there, walking toward the avocados. You’re ready. You’re determined. No regrets; you’re going to either soar up to the sky or crash and burn in a blaze of glory.
There’s only one problem: you have no idea what to say.
#2. Try one of the many avocado jokes you’ve prepared.
Actually, that’s a lie. You know exactly what to say. You’ve spent all week memorizing a list of avocado jokes from the Internet in preparation for this moment. It’s just like when you had to call the bank when they sent you a notice in the mail that you were 500 dollars overdrafted and they were coming for your cat, and you had to type and print out all the possible ways that the conversation on the phone could have gone and then place them in front of you on the desk and read off of them when you spoke to Mrs. Dorothy on the phone from accounting. If it wasn’t for all of those scripts you prepared, you would’ve never made it through the phone call.
But now, just for Scott, you’re going to show off your memorization skills. It may have taken seven days of nonstop staring at the computer screen, but you drilled those avocado puns and funs into your brain, and he’s going to be so impressed that you didn’t even need to print them out to remember them.
Palms sweating more water than a third-grade pool party in an above-ground pool in the popular kid’s backyard, you march up to him, forcing your eyes to dart back and forth between his beautiful face and the avocados that he’s touching.
Never before have you wished that you were an avocado. But soon enough, that avocado would be wishing it were you! You take a deep breath, and then let loose with your strongest ammunition:
“Hey,” you say to Scott. He immediately looks to you with his glassy, glowing eyes. You can feel your heart stopping with anticipation, but you swallow down the bile and force yourself to keep going. This is your chance! It’s time for the joke. “What do you get when you have 6.02×10^23 avocados?”
Scott lowers his gaze at you, confused. Perfect. He obviously hasn’t heard this joke before. He’s going to be so impressed that you’re about to tell him a new joke.
“I’m sorry?” Scott says, and you hear his voice for the first time. Its smooth yet crackly, like butter roasting over the stove, in preparation for the meal that will be cooked on it. Just like you are preparing him for the spicy meal you’re going to share later today. “Do I know—”
“You get a guaca-mole!” you yell, before he has a chance to say anything else. Your mouth is contorted into a ripe banana smile, and you wait for him to return it. Instead he just stares at you with one of his eyes cocked.
You start to panic. You didn’t even consider this. What if Scott had never taken basic chemistry? What if he didn’t understand the joke? You’d better do something about this quickly!
#1. QUICK! MORE AVOCADO JOKES!
Briefly, you consider explaining the joke to Scott, but that would be an inefficient use of time. It would take you at least 50 minutes to properly explain the mole unit of measurement, and you could accomplish so much more in that time by just pelting him with more avocado jokes.
It was time to show off your superior memory retention genes that Scott would have no choice but to add to his gene pool!
“Hey I know this might sound a little guac-ward, but I have a question. What do you do when you eat too many avocados? You have to work out by doing some ava-cardio! And the best way to work that body? By dancing to some guac n’ roll music! Although you should be careful which bands you listen to, because some of the musicians have hit guac bottom. Also, I have guac-oma. In my eyes.”
You’re out of breath, panting, half with the intensity from which you’d spewed forth avocado jokes, half from the passion bubbling within you. You can feel your face burning like hot dogs roasted over a fire on a stick, dripping with greasy juices all the way down your neck, the skin plumping and peeling and getting crispier by the second.
Scott stares at you, blinking. For a moment you wonder if he didn’t get those jokes either. Maybe you should’ve stuck to the plan of explaining them? Maybe you should’ve just jumped the gun and asked him out then and there?
But then, the skies part and the sun shines through. Scott laughs, and you suddenly know what the voice of angels sounds like. It’s the deep rumblings of his joy, erupting forth like soda burps—and not store-brand soda burps, but the real brand, with commercials and everything, the cans of Cherry Coke and Orange Crush that your dad used to hide under the bed where he thought you didn’t know where they were but you’d sneak a can or two every week because no one can tell when just one can goes missing—and it’s the only sound you want to hear for the rest of your life.
“Did you come up with all those yourself?” Scott asked, still smiling at you. Its like his lips are shooting red, luscious lasers through your heart, making it beat faster and faster.
“Um, n-not really,” you say, your voice quavering. This conversation isn’t going like one of your pre-planned skits, but that’s fine. Your cat told you it might happen like this, and you had to be prepared for something that wasn’t written ahead of time. You just had to trust Mr. PawPrints and do what he said: let your heart guide you. “I looked them up online and just thought they were funny.”
“Oh I’ve seen those before,” Scott says. “My favorite is this one. Do you want to hear it?”
It was like god standing before you, casually asking if you wanted to hear the meaning of life.
“Yes,” you manage to eke out.
Scott grins as he says the joke. “What carnival game do avocados like to play? Guac-a-mole!”
Finally, you understand the universe. You understand what all those stories and poems and songs written about love were truly about. You used to scoff at them, writing them off as pretentious or stupid or unnecessary. But now, with this indescribable sensation pulsing through you, the instinct to grab this man and never let him part from you ever again, is so strong you feel like it’s always been a part of you, and it always will be. Galaxies rotate around you now, for Scott is the new center of your universe.
You laugh at Scott’s joke, and then decide to go a step further. You reach into the box of avocados, and feel around for a ripe one. Your research this last week was not just limited to avocado jokes, but also the latest research in finding ripe avocados as well.
Thanks to the gripping methods taught to you by Abo-Sensei, the avocado master you hired to come live with you for the past week and teach his mysterious avocado-squeezing ways, you quickly find a fresh one and yank it out, presenting it to Scott.
“Here,” you say. “You can have this one if you want.” Then, remembering that gifts are often important parts of mating rituals, you add, “My treat. I’ll get it for you.” Then, remembering that you shouldn’t come off too hard at the beginning of the ritual, you add, “If you want me to.” Then, remembering that you shouldn’t come off as too easy either, you add, “Because I’m going to do it anyway no matter what you say! But it’s not because I like you or anything, it’s just because it looked like you were having trouble finding one and I didn’t want to waste any more time watching you struggle because it was annoying me!”
Perfect. Your speech is obviously successful, because Scott not only takes the avocado from you, but he also laughs.
“Hey,” he says. “Speaking of playing guac-a-mole, do you want to go somewhere after we’re done shopping here? I’m free this afternoon if you’d like.”
This is it. The moment you’ve been waiting for. It’s time to step up to the plate and score a touchdown for the team!
#3. Panic, push the avocado into his mouth and…
You grab another avocado from the box, grip it firmly, and then smash it into Scott’s mouth, like hitting a homerun right past the goalie and into the net.
Neon green mush splatters all around Scott’s lips as he groans incomprehensibly and you run away in the opposite direction as fast as possible. Scott is little more than a mumbling blur behind you as you dash through the automatic doors, crash through an old lady carrying her grocery bags, and hijack a cart full of cat food and litter bags that a young couple was unloading into their trunk.
“Hey, get back here!” the man yells at you.
“Thief! Thief!” the woman screams.
You pay them no heed and push the cart faster and faster, right up to the top of the hill. As soon as you hit the apex, with all the momentum built up behind you, you leap into the cart and ride down the glorious asphalt hill.
As the world whooshes by you, and you steer the cart toward home, you reminisce about what just happened. You were so close to asking out the love of your life, but then at the last second, panic took hold of you. You reacted instinctively, letting your fear take you over. Just like it always did.
The same thing happened when you had a crush on hot dog Harry. He was found unconscious in the park and lathered in brats. The same thing happened when you first spotted smoothie Susie.
You forced her to drink the frozen slush so fast her brain freeze made her head literally explode. And now the same thing happened with Scott. Why were you incapable of not physically harming people with food?
As the shipping cart succumbed to inertia, it slowly rolled to a stop in front of your home. You climbed out, grabbed the bag of litter and food, and then walked through the overgrown, crispy front yard and through the unlocked, moss-covered door.
From the darkness inside, Mr. PawPrints meows and waddles over, rubbing his large furry body against your leg as he sniffs the air hungrily.
“I’m sorry, Mr. PawPrints,” you say to him. “I tried to do better this time, but it just didn’t work out.”
Mr. PawPrints stops and looks up at you with his sharp cat eyes, and then he speaks in a deep, rumbling tone.
“It is okay, my child. You have returned with tribute. That is all I demand.”
You nod, sigh, and stroll down the hallway into Mr. PawPrints’s bedroom. On the bed lies his old human shell, deflated and empty, surrounded by brand-name soda cans that completed his human-to-cat transformation ritual.
Chained to the corner of the room is Abo-Sensei, covered in the blackened, hollow skins of avocados, looking up at you with desperate, emaciated eyes as he rattled his chains with his thinning limbs.
“Please,” he muttered in a dry, dusty voice. “Just let me go.”
You shake your head, bend down on your knees in front of Mr. PawPrints’s litter box, and start scooping out the poop.
“Sorry,” you said. “That’s not up to me, sir.”
Abo-Sensei nodded solemnly. “Well, could you at least open the window so I could see the sun… one last time?”
You figure you could at least fulfill that one small request. You walk over to the cardboard-covered window, and peel away the panel that was affixed to the wall with duct tape. Immediately, light comes pouring into the room, like a sparkling waterfall of luminescence into a dark, shadowy swamp.
Behind you, Abo-sensei mutters a thanks, but you can barely hear him. There’s another sound that is far more pressing. A thump, thump, thump coming from across the street.
You peer out, and as soon as you see it, you drop the pooper-scooper in awe. You walk closer to the window, just so you can be sure that what you’re seeing is actually real. You bend down to the ground, gripping the base of the window, sticking your face into the sweet sunshine, made warmer and more wonderful by what you see out there.
Although it’s not a what… it’s a him.
It’s a man, dressed in a jersey, playing basketball by himself in the driveway. He’s amazing at it, tossing the ball and sometimes even hitting the backboard. The ball only goes past the hoop, like, half the time. That’s incredible. You’ve never seen anyone so good at tossing a ball before.
From inside the house across the street, you hear a shrill woman’s voice.
“Logan!” she cries. “Get your butt inside! It’s time for dinner!”
“Okay mom, just one more shot.”
The gorgeous creature named Logan throws his final shot, and it soars over the hoop itself and into the front yard. You have to clasp your hand over your heart to stop it from beating straight out of your chest. You’ve never seen a ball thrown with such force and passion before. To go over the net! My god. You need to talk to him. You need to know more about him.
You need to make this Logan fall in love with you.
Be sure to check out the video for reactions to the prompt, see some different ways it could have gone, and get my thoughts on the full story!
After that, chat voted that we write these two prompts with a Valentine’s Day twist: Prompt #1: CIA Confirms Existence of ‘Secret Base’ directly under your Cousin’s Attic. Prompt #2: Threat Alert Level: DANDELION, imminent risk of the power of love, avoid travelling to Tartarus
Here’s what we came up with:
“How goes the monitoring of Tartarus zone, sergeant?”
“Very well, sir. We’re staying steady at Threat Alert AZALEA.”
“Good, glad to hear. Today is a dangerous day, so we need to make sure to stay vigilant. Keep an eye on the—”
“Sir. I’m detecting a disturbance. It seems as though there’s been an unauthorized entrance into Tartarus.”
“Impossible.”
“I’m just reading the scans, sir. I’m upgrading us to Threat Alert BABY’S BREATH.”
“Dammit. Figure out what’s going on in there! I thought we set up all the proper security measures to prevent this from happening.”
“It appears as though two people have entered Tartarus. One female, one male.”
“That doesn’t make any sense. Can we confirm their identities?”
“The male is unknown, sir. But the female… she’s your cousin.”
“But that’s impossible! She’s supposed to be babysitting my son right now. I specifically sent him there to distract her from the entrance to the infinite void located underneath her family’s attic.”
“Apparently she distracted your son by teaching him how to play rock paper scissors against himself. He’s currently upstairs doing just that. And he has a losing record, sir.”
“The idiot! Get the two of them out of there before—”
“It’s too late sir. The two of them… they’re holding hands!”
“No….”
“I’m upgrading us to Threat Level CHRYSANTHEMUM.”
“The fools. Don’t they know that the infinite void feeds off human emotions? If they express their love for each other while inside there, then who knows what will happen to us!”
“Scientists have only hypothesized the consequences. Our world might be covered in a thick layer of bliss.”
“Or we might all descend into debauchery, touching fingers and showing off ankles…”
“…don’t forget swapping friendship bracelets, braiding hair, and giving each other head pats.”
“I should’ve known something was up when she readily agreed to babysit on Valentine’s Day.”
“Sir! Their lips! They’re… on a collision course! I have no choice but to upgrade us to Threat Level DANDELION.”
“Do it. And may god have mercy on our souls. And on the tip that Brittany is totally not going to get after this fiasco.”
If you want to join us and help write a story by trolling in chat, or share your own writing for feedback, then we’d love to have you. We stream on Twitch every Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday at 6:30pm-10:30pm (U.S. Eastern Standard Time).
And you missed the stream, you can still watch them on the YouTube channel or watch the full stream reruns.
Hope to see you next time, friend!
Scott Wilson is the author of the novel Metl: The ANGEL Weapon,
forthcoming March 2019.
Featured image: