Microscopic Grace
written by: Andy Marin
Robert Crackpipe and his bestest friend in the entire world were standing outside Dionysus, a club in downtown Arcadia. They passed around a cigarette and talked about the philosophical implications of giving your bestie a sloppy. She was fingering the cross at the end of her rosary and looking rather pensive.
“What the fuck are we still doing here?” she asked, changing the subject.
He checked the time. It was 3:23 a.m.
“I dunno, Jolene. Looking for love, I guess.”
“We won’t find it here.”
Some Romanian song blasted from inside the club. There was a Eurovision listening party going on.
“Maybe we’ll find something else,” he said.
“Like what?”
He grabbed the cigarette from between her fingers and carried it to his lips. And then, saying something Humphrey Bogart never did, asked her if she’d ever seen Neon Genesis Evangelion.
“Yeah,” she said. “Back in college. I don’t remember much. It was weird as shit.”
“Remember the Kaworu episode?”
“Vaguely.”
“Well, there’s this controversy with the translation because, in the original dub, Kaworu tells Shinji that he loves him. But in the Netflix dub, Kaworu just tells Shinji that Shinji is worthy of grace. And, to be fair, the word Kaworu uses in the scene is ‘suki,’ which is a pretty ambiguous Japanese word; it can mean both ‘like’ and ‘love,’ but the Netflix version definitely gives straight-washing.”
Jolene laughed and said, “They were definitely roommates, the West just tries to deny it.”
“Yeah.” He paused. “What I mean to say is, if we won’t find love, at least we’ll find someone who’ll make us feel worthy of grace.”
They thought about this together, and then Jolene took the cigarette and puffed it and flicked it away, and they walked inside. They cruised around the club and had a Cuba Libre, with Diet Coke, because they were intermittently fasting.
“See that guy standing in the doorway?” Jolene asked, pointing at a guy with multiple tattoos and piercings, clad in a Mayhem shirt.
“Yeah,” Robert said.
“I made out with him last week.”
“Cool.”
“I kinda wanna go make out with him again.”
“Okay, go make out with him.”
“Are you sure you’re okay with that?”
“Of course.”
She turned to walk towards the doorway hesitantly.
“Hey Jolene?” Robert said.
“Yeah?”
“I suki you in a straight-washing kind of way.”
“I suki you in an ‘and they were roommates’ kind of way.”
They hugged and kissed lightly on the lips, and she went to talk to the guy in the Mayhem shirt. He danced alone, whipping his medium-length hair around like he was painting the walls with invisible watercolors.
A couple of guys approached him. One of them wore his hair very short, almost militarily, and had farded his eyelids in purple. He put a hand on Robert’s chest and another on Robert’s back.
“You’re gorgeous,” he said, then walked away, followed closely by his roommate.
Robert smiled, feeling worthy of grace.
- Microscopic Grace - June 9, 2026
