At the Sound of the Beep
an excerpt

"Layla."

"Try again."

"Roxanne."

"My parents didn't name me after a hooker, Alex."

"Roxanne is a nice name!"

"But it's not mine. Try again."

"Ugh. Lola."

"Ew, no."

"Susie?"

"…I told you that you'll never get it."

"Give me a week, and I'll ask Mark and we'll probably have a comprehensive list of every single song that has a girl's name in it ever and we will totally figure it out."

"No, no you won't. Can we quit the name game for a minute, please? It's getting a little boring."

"Fine. Hey, if I figure it out, will you explode or something like Rumpelstiltskin?"

"He didn't explode. He stomped himself into ashes or somethin' like that."

"No, he totally exploded. That's the one I remember my teacher telling me."

"Your teacher sounds like a potential pyro. Maybe he just spontaneously combusted?"

"I don't know. Wonder why Disney hasn't made a movie out of that yet."

"Hey, they haven't made one for Rapunzel yet. Don't underestimate 'em yet."

"You've got a point there. Which fairy tales have they done?"

"A lot of the Grimm Brothers ones. Snow White, Cinderella,… actually, that's Grimm by way of Perrault, Sleeping Beauty… okay, those are the big ones. Then they did The Little Mermaid, which is Anderson, and Beauty and the Beast, and I don't know who did that…"

"How do you know so much about fairy tales?"

"I… was kind of obsessed with 'em when I was a kid. Didn't help that my parents bought all of the videos before they started doing that whole ridiculous 'vault' thing, so if I wasn't watching Nickelodeon, I was watching one of the movies. I even had the picture books that had stills from the movies as illustrations. Oh, Disney, how you gave me unrealistic expectations about love."

"That sounds kind of familiar."

"It's the name of a Facebook group: 'Disney Gave Me Unrealistic Expectations About Love'. It's possibly one of the best things ever. But some of 'em are fairly reasonable. Like, say, if a beast gave me a whole library, I think I might love him too."

"…that happened?"

"In the movie, yeah! Belle's all miserable and everything, and the Beast gives her a library 'cause he's starting to fall for her. I was so impressed with that. I mean, he gives her a library. That's major. Beauty and the Beast isn't my favorite, but it's so pretty, and it's got great songs and Belle's got the best princess dress ever."

"This is suddenly veering into unfamiliar territory."

"What, girl territory? Like any kid growing up in the early and mid '90s didn't watch an assload of Disney movies. Especially the good ones, man."

"But I didn't watch that one. I mean, I liked The Lion King and Aladdin, the ones with action."

"There was this one part where the wolves were after Belle, though."

"Like I said: I never saw that one."

"Right. So: which princess do you have a thing for?"

"'Scuse me?"

"I'm pretty sure that every guy in our age group has a thing for at least one of the Disney princesses. Marcie—that friend of mine that I told you about before—thinks that the princesses unconsciously contributed to the sluttification of our generation. She was all, 'Ariel's kind of purposing bestiality, plus she's only wearing shells over her boobs, and Jasmine's all, "Lookit my navel!"', but Marcie's kind of not right in the head. But anyway—which one do you secretly want to bang? Ariel? Jasmine? Do you like Belle? Cinderella? Aurora?"

"Which one's Aurora?"

"She's the one from Sleeping Beauty."

"Oh. Uh… I kind of liked Mulan, actually."

"So… you like Asian cross-dressing girls, then."

"That's not what I meant!"

"It was implied!"

"Right! Well, it's between her and Ariel. I like redheads."

"Ariel had the best princess song, I think. 'Part of Your World' is amazing. Look at this stuff, isn't it neat? Wouldn't you think my collection's complete? Wouldn't you think I'm the girl, the girl who has ev-ry-thing?"

"You didn't mention that you could sing."

"Yeah, well, I don't usually do that. Sing over the phone, anyway. Go ahead, you try it."

"What, singing songs from The Little Mermaid?"

"No, singing songs in general, but I'll give you bonus points for singing a song from a Disney movie."

"What the hell."

"You don't know any?"

"Boys don't learn songs from Disney movies, Wendy. We watch them with our sisters and sometimes with our girlfriends, but we don't watch them and discuss whose dress is prettier or who sings the best songs…"

"I bet you know 'I'll Make a Man Out of You'."

"The captain of the track team in high school used to sing that sometimes when we'd go for warm-up sprints."

"Oh my God, what?"

"Seriously! It was funny as hell."

"Do you remember any of it?"

"Uh… Let's get down to business to defeat the Huns! Did they send me daughters when I asked for sons? You're the saddest bunch I ever met, and you can bet that when I'm through, mister, I'll make a man out of…"

"WHAT THE FUCK, CHAR—"

"SHIT."