Genghis & Me

I met Genghis in the fall of 2007, as a cocky college junior who thought he knew everything about the world.

Unbeknownst to me, I hadn’t yet learned the true meaning of the word 'friendship.'

Back then, I thought 'friendship' was the one with wings and like a tuxedo--like a bird, but unable to fly. A penguin, yeah. We'd be at the zoo and I'd say, "Look at the friendships." Then my buddies and I would laugh and laugh at their sliding, or maybe because I confused the words 'penguin' and 'friendship' again.

At any rate, I didn't know the true meaning of the word friendship until the day I saw Genghis passed out on the little patch of lawn outside our apartment, his lined, taupe face resting among hundreds of cigarette butts. It was never my way to help vagrants, but I knew there was something different about this one. And also I really liked his fur coat. I helped him into my apartment and Clay was mad, either because of Genghis, or that I accidentally vomited on his X-Box the night before.

Genghis woke up and growled something and I asked what he was majoring in. He growled again, so I just said, "Oh, yeah, cool." After some more growling, I figured he wanted some food, so I ordered a pizza and challenged Genghis to a game of Mario Kart. I would have challenged him to Madden, but, for some reason, our X-Box was covered in vomit. Genghis stared at the controller and, at first baffled, he came to the conclusion that it was a weapon. So he swung it around his head by the cord, and I took cover under the coffee table, all the while giggling about my new pal. “Oh, Genghis,” I squealed. "You smell awful."

And he did.

There was a knock at the door and Genghis leaped behind the sofa and grabbed Clay's guitar. When I realized I had no money, I asked Genghis if he could cover it. He swung the guitar at me and growled and stomped off to the door.

When Genghis hadn't come back for some time, I began to get worried, and really hungry. Right as I picked up the phone to report him missing, though, he came out of Clay's room carrying the pizza. "Stay the hell out of there, Genghis," I said. "That's not your room."

We sat down to eat, but I guess Genghis wasn't very hungry. He did seem to love the show "Coach," which was nice because I love that show, too. Oh, me and Genghis sat there all day laughing and grunting at one another. He'd get up every once in a while and go into Clay's room, and I'd scold him again, and so forth throughout the day. We must have nodded off at some point, because I woke up to a dark apartment and Clay hovering over me, angry still.

"What the fuck, dude?" he growled, like Genghis, but more intelligible.

"Is this about the X-Box?" I groaned.

"No, actually not," Clay said. "It's about the dismembered pizza guy in my bed."

Clay led me into his room and turned on the light. Sure enough, the delivery boy had been bludgeoned to death, and partially eaten. "This actually explains a lot," I said, and I reached into the corpse's front pocket.

"I'm fucking out of here," Clay said. "You can find yourself a new roommate."

"Genghis," I said sternly, after Clay had left. "Did you kill and eat the delivery guy?"

Genghis put his head down and refused to look me in the face, which betrayed his guilt immediately. "Genghis," I said again, and he jumped off the couch and hid under the coffee table. "You see what you've done--now I'm going to have to find a new roommate." Genghis pointed at himself hopefully, and I said, "I'm afraid not, Genghis. I draw the line somewhere between murder and cannibalism."

As I watched him walk through the parking lot, his club dragging behind him in a forlorn march, an airplane flew low overhead. He looked up in terror and rage at the plane as if to say, "What the fuck was that thing?" I hoped he'd be alright, and held my head to hide the tears.

We'd learn later that the pizza delivery guy, named Alonso Moore, was an aspiring writer, which explained the pocket dictionary I found in his front pocket. Alone in my apartment, I thumbed through its worn pages and found the "F" section:

Friendship
Pronunciation: \ˈfren(d)-ˌship\
Function: noun
Date: before 12th century
1 : the state of being friends
2 : the quality or state of being friendly

That's nothing like the tuxedo bird, I thought. How silly.