Godzilla explains chicks
He's ancient and he knows some stuff
Tokyo Bay was rough. Jake’s dinghy bucked in the chop, rain needling his face. His jacket still stank of old ramen. He tried to light a cigarette. It fizzled. Figures.
He thought he had rowed out here for quiet, but her silence was more than quiet enough. Three days. No reply. He hadn’t meant to drift this far, but here he was.
Then Godzilla rose from the water.
Huge. Barnacled. Steam rising off him. Jets circled overhead. Godzilla flicked one out of the sky. It crumpled into the bay.
Jake had heard stories. Seeing it was something else. The eyes were the worst—like bus windows, only bigger.
“I don’t know what she wants,” he said, mostly to himself.
Godzilla turned. The sea stirred around him.
“You talking to me?” His voice sounded like a landslide.
Jake froze. Not a hallucination. Real.
“I hear this all the time,” Godzilla said. “Every week, some guy floats out here whining about love. I used to wreck cities. Now I give advice.”
Jake blinked. “You... do this often?”
“All the time. Let’s hear it.”
“I tried everything. Flowers—daisies.”
Godzilla’s eyes narrowed. “Daisies are good. Thoughtful, but not too … emotionally big.”
“That’s what I figured. I also gave her space. Played it cool. Cried once, too.”
Water splashed in, soaking his shoes.
“Question is, little man, do you love her, or just how she made you feel?”
That stung. He thought back—one afternoon, maybe two years ago. They saw a guy juggling flaming toilet plungers. She laughed so hard she snorted. People stared. Jake held back his own laugh, thought it was cooler to just smile.
“She saw a version of me I liked,” he said. “Not the act. Me.”
Godzilla snorted. Steam hissed from his nose. “Then stop acting. She doesn’t want cool. She wants you. Messy. Stupid. Real.”
Another jet shrieked overhead. Godzilla knocked it out of the sky without looking.
“So I just tell her everything?”
“No… NO, you maniac. You show up. As you. That’s it. She’s a person. Treat her like a person.”
Jake nodded, chewing the end of his useless cigarette.
“And, man… grow a pair,” Godzilla said, “You’re honestly a soggy mess. Fire in the belly, and all that.” And with that, Godzilla dipped below the waves, causing the little craft to bob crazily.
Once the boat found its level, Jake picked up the oars and turned toward the city. Rain still fell, but he didn’t care. He started humming a pop song she used to sing in the shower. Off-key. Terrible.
It made him smile. He sounded awful.
But he sounded like himself.