Looking for Love in Alien Places
by Raymond Lane
“What do you think you’re doing! On our planet ‘no’ means no!”
Petunia’s first date with an alien had actually been civil but deadly dull. He had gone on about the intricacies of his native language, with observations like, “There are fifty-one different words for ‘black’ on my planet.” To which she had responded, “Oh, that’s umm... very dark.” They parted with neither making a pretense of seeing the other again.
Her second alien date, however, was anything but boring. Admittedly, she had been mildly annoyed when this short male from Proxima ate far more than his share of their bucket of popcorn at the movie theater, and she felt a bit uneasy when he slipped one of his green tentacles over her shoulder without asking, an act that she hoped was rooted in affection rather than a carnivorous appetite. But she was totally unprepared for what came next, as several tentacles suddenly began to grope her in some very personal places.
She had to confess that she found it a bit stimulating, though altogether inappropriate. Grabbing two of the tentacles and tying them together, she pulled tight until he emitted a noise like a whale in distress and crumpled to the floor.
* * *
The Proximen’s appearance definitely took some getting used to. They were rather short and wide, nearly square in their dimensions, with jade-green skin. Not a bad color, Petunia thought. They had three legs and five tentacle-like appendages that functioned as arms. A small patch of fur graced their necks. Their faces had the same general design as human faces, but with thicker lips and circular, coin-like eyes.
When the idea first occurred to her, Petunia had asked her best friend Stuart, “What do you think about me dating an alien?”
Stuart rarely spoke without considering his words for hours, if not days. Petunia felt that he possessed great wisdom. It was always worth waiting for that reticent egg to hatch.
“There are just too many unknowns,” he said.
But then, did her dating experiences with the aliens really differ from those with humans? Both tended to fall at one end or the other of the spectrum: either boring or frightening. Unlike many men she’d dated, at least the second alien was straightforward about his goals. She had long ago developed an acrid cynicism about the word “relationship” leaving a man’s mouth. Men held to a very ambiguous definition of commitment.
“Men are more like animals,” her mother had told her, in one of her more cogent moments.
Then again, Petunia wondered about her own motives. She wanted love, of course, and felt herself worthy of being loved, despite its absence from her life. But she realized that ninety-nine percent of a man’s interest in a woman was inspired by her physical attractiveness.
And Petunia was not attractive. Not her face, which was pinched and long, with a tiny nose and ghostly gray eyes. Nor her body, which was heavy and rectangular. Even her blonde hair, which should have been a magnet for male attention, was a problem. Oddly thick and tangled with barbs, it was daunting enough to frighten off any fingers tempted to run themselves through it. She was not a flowering plant with a few dried blossoms to pluck off. No, she was more like a weed.
* * *
“Stuart, what do you think of me?” she asked. She realized that it was a bold question, but she needed to know.
Stuart was silent for several minutes. The minutes became an hour. His upper lip grew sweaty. The waitress at the coffee shop stopped by their table three times to ask him if everything was okay.
“Let me think about it,” he said.
“Are you answering my question or hers?” Petunia asked. The concerned waitress leaned over him.
“Both,” he said.
Petunia and Stuart had met years ago at a sci-fi book club. They were compatible enough, sharing an interest in all things foreign: films, books, and games. Their concept of “foreign” extended to outer space; sci-fi was their preferred genre. Like her, Stuart was rather unattractive, with wispy remnants of hair on his scalp and a jowly jaw.
“Look.” She held up a magazine article she was reading. “It says here that people tend to pair up with partners of similar attractiveness.”
Stuart peered at her over his e-reader. “Is that so?” he said, and returned to his book.
There was no spark with Stuart, and she yearned for a spark. Stuart showed no signs of being interested in her. His passion seemed to begin and end with science fiction.
Her mother had told her, “There’s someone out there for everyone.” Petunia inferred the missing “even you.”
* * *
When she was born, Petunia spent several months in the hospital. Multiple surgeries were required to correct her numerous congenital anomalies. Not that she remembered her experiences from that age, or course. And Petunia’s mother had displayed surprising tact in never having provided her with the grisly details. But the scars remained.
There were emotional scars as well as physical ones. She learned too much about herself at a young age, watching people’s faces when they looked at her; even her mother’s face, though her mother’s reaction eventually decayed over time.
Petunia knew that her mom had been diagnosed as schizophrenic shortly before becoming pregnant with her. Apparently nobody knew that she was pregnant until her water broke while sitting in her psychiatrist’s waiting room. Dr. Stottlemeyer, focused as he was on finding the best combination of psychotropic medications to quiet the voices in her head, had neglected to notice the swelling developing in her abdomen. And she, being unmarried and alone before the disease struck, was destined to remain unmarried and perhaps even more alone afterward.
The medications were blamed for wreaking havoc with Petunia’s embryonic development and creating her deformities.
* * *
“My gametes and good looks are out of this world.”
Petunia sipped a blond espresso, scrunching her face as she swiped through photos and profiles on Yonder, the new interplanetary dating app. Frank Ocean’s comforting voice crooned in the background. The cafe reeked of intimacy and caffeine, the perfect place to be alone without feeling lonely. And it provided a convenient place to meet. She worked right across the street for Dr. Stottlemeyer, the director of the Sedar Falls State Psychiatric Institute.
Sitting at a booth with Stuart, her silent security blanket, she waited for her third alien date to show up.
“It’s nice to meet you,” the Proximan, Bardo, said in flat, accented English as he approached. “Very nice.” He was taller than her previous dates, his skin a darker shade of jade, and he had a very symmetrical face that — to her surprise — she found to be fairly handsome. He wore a purple Sedar Falls Lakers jersey, altered to accommodate his numerous tentacle arms.
“And I find you very, very attractive,” he added. “Much, much more attractive than most Earth women.”
That felt good.
“So, how long have you been on Earth?” she asked.
“I have been here for six Earth months,” he said. “The economy on Proxima is bad. Very bad. There are not enough jobs for the machines, let alone the people. Many of my kind are coming to Earth hoping to find meaningful work and a better life. I had been without a job on Proxima for almost two Earth years. But now look at me.” He extended all five of his tentacles and stuck out his chest. “Dressed for success.”
Petunia had heard about the recent uptick in migration from Proxima. While the aliens were filling many jobs that Earth people found distasteful or physically onerous, there had been a backlash. The green Proximen were too easily identified as being different. Petunia and Stuart were among those who viewed all people as deserving equal treatment and respect, even those that weren’t technically human beings.
Bardo smiled at Petunia, revealing two rows of small sparkling teeth, dozens of them evenly spaced on each row.
“It is the time in my life for reproduction,” Bardo continued. “I am looking for an Earth woman to reproduce with.”
Here we go again, she thought. But at age forty-two her biological clock ticked like Big Ben. Maybe she really wanted the gametes.
Petunia found his candor refreshing. And being called attractive definitely stimulated her neurochemicals. She thought he was cute in an exotic sort of way. She looked toward Stuart for guidance. He stared silently into his coffee mug.
“I see you brought your listener with you,” Bardo said, flipping a tentacle toward Stuart that nearly encircled him like a cowboy flinging a rope. “A very, very good idea. Listeners are greatly valued on my planet.”
Stuart lifted his eyebrows. Petunia noticed a smile blink across his face.
* * *
Over the next month the three of them met almost every day. They went bowling and played miniature golf. Bardo excelled at darts. Bicycling with three legs was a challenge.
Bardo seemed to be sensitive to Petunia’s feelings and needs. She noticed, however, that affection was not part of his repertoire. His concept of relationship seemed more utilitarian.
One day at the bowling alley, after Bardo scored a pair of strikes by rolling two balls simultaneously down adjacent lanes, Petunia threw her arms around him and tried to kiss him. Bardo turned his head at the last second — her lips landed on his cheek.
Petunia was frustrated. “Bardo, why won’t you kiss me?”
“Kiss?” he said. “I feel bad. Very bad. I should have explained before. You see, on Proxima the oral cavity is regarded as something of a cesspool. While on Earth kissing is a sign of affection, to kiss on Proxima means you are attempting to inflict harm on the other person. Here, this is how we express affection on my planet.” He touched Petunia’s left hand with the tip of one of his tentacles, then wrapped the tentacle in a spiral around her arm. He repeated the gesture, spiraling another tentacle around her right arm.
Petunia felt electricity running up and down her spine. Inside her mind, rays of sunshine mingled amongst butterflies and hummingbirds. She smiled, feeling a pleasure and joy that she’d never previously known.
* * *
The time came to introduce Bardo to her mother. She, Bardo and Stuart drove to her mother’s small apartment on the outskirts of Sedar Falls, in an old four story brick building with a patina of dying ivy.
“I am nervous,” Bardo said as they walked toward the front door. “Very, very nervous. Sometimes I talk too much when I’m in this state.”
“Don’t worry, Bardo,” Petunia said. “Just be yourself. I’m sure Mom will love you.” But Petunia was anything but sure.
“What do you want?” her mother’s voice cried through the door when they knocked.
“It’s me, Mom. I want you to meet somebody.”
The door creaked cautiously open, a pair of frightened blue eyes meeting theirs.
The threesome entered the living room, surprisingly tidy though it smelled like last week’s milk carton.
Over the years, her mother’s disease had settled like dust in an old house, no longer in constant chaotic flight but quietly coating everything. It had been years since Petunia had last been woken in the middle of the night by her mother calling about furry creatures crawling across her ceiling. Other than a few fixed delusional thoughts that refused to part ways with her, the psychotic symptoms were gone.
“Mom, this is my friend, Stuart.”
The corners of Stuart’s mouth angled up slightly as he shook her mother’s hand.
“Nice to meet you, Stuart,” she said. She turned to Petunia, holding her hand next to her mouth as she whispered, “Not much of a looker, this one.”
Petunia took a deep breath. She wasn’t sure how her mother would react to her having a boyfriend, let alone a green one.
“And this is my boyfriend, Bardo. He’s... well, he’s from another planet.”
“Boyfriend? You have a boyfriend? It’s about time! Hmmm, not bad-looking, if you ask me.”
Petunia exhaled and smiled.
“It is a great pleasure to meet you, ma’am,” Bardo said. “I can see where Petunia got her favorable genetics.” Petunia’s mother blushed. “Your daughter represents a tremendous step up in socioeconomic status for me. I in return provide her with my extraordinary looks. I am very, very much looking forward to reproducing with her.”
“I’ll bet you are.” Petunia’s mother chewed her lower lip and looked past her daughter. “There’s something I never told you. I suppose I should have.”
“What’s that, Mom?”
“I had sex with an alien once.”
“What?!?!” screamed Petunia. The implications of her mother’s confession hissed and crackled along her synapses.
Stuart’s eyes widened.
Through the mental pea soup of antipsychotic medication and years of disordered living, Petunia’s mother told them about the day long ago when the green alien first emerged from its cigar-shaped spaceship and invited her to go for a ride.
“We met every day for weeks,” she said. “He took me high above the thermosphere in his ship. The world was so beautiful from up there. I fell in love. But then he stopped coming. I told the Sedar Falls newspaper about it. I told everyone I knew, but they didn’t believe me. No one but kooks had ever seen an alien in those days.”
Then someone at the police department pretended to believe her and escorted her to Dr. Stottlemeyer’s office.
“Mom! Why didn’t you tell me? Didn’t you think I would want to know?”
“Everyone seemed to be mad at me, or else they made fun of me. But then you were born, and you had all of those extra things on you.” She pointed to Bardo’s tentacles. “They made me promise not to tell you.”
“Of course,” Bardo said, slapping his forehead rat-tat-tat with three tentacles, “It makes complete sense. I understand now why I was drawn to Petunia; there was something very, very familiar about her features.”
Stuart cleared his throat. He turned to Petunia, looking directly into her eyes. With calm dominance he said, “You know that I love you.”
Her brain purred. “Bardo, I’d love to see Proxima. But can Stuart come with us?”
“Of course,” Bardo said. “You may have noticed that I am a bit of a talker. A listener such as Stuart would be a tremendous fit. Triadic relationships are far, far more common on my planet than dyads. Though there has been growing tolerance for dyads, I am more of a traditionalist.”
As the three friends strode off, arms and tentacles linked, into the brilliant dusk of the approaching Sedar Falls night, Stuart spoke. “In some ways, I feel I’m going home. By the way,” he added, looking at Bardo on his left and Petunia on his right, “I’ve given this some thought. I’m definitely sleeping in the middle.”
Copyright © 2021 by Raymond Lane
