"So, uh...you wanna borrow her? It's OK, dude, she totally won't mind."
I just stood there staring. It wasn't that I hadn't gotten used to Troy being a total pig, pretty much ever since puberty; I mean, this was a guy who outright said that he preferred porn to girlfriends because he could switch porn off when he was done. But offering to share his Girl with me? I didn't know which was worse, the fact that he offered or the fact that she seemed totally fine with it.
Even buying a 'Girl(tm)' was...well, alright, when you thought about it, it wasn't really that surprising at all. (Except that he didn't have a job then, and I didn't even know how he came up with his half of the rent most months, let alone buying a sex robot.) But surprised or not by finding out that he had a sex robot, I was still pretty squicked out by the thought of borrowing it. For a lot of reasons.
(And I know what you're thinking. Why did he call me 'dude'? Trust me, that's just how Troy talks to everyone, male or female. I think if you removed the word from his vocabulary, he wouldn't know how to address people.)
"Samantha? You okay?" He had that look on his face that he gets when he's trying to decide if he's just said or done something stupid. He gets that look on his face a lot. Mainly because he does and says a lot of stupid things before thinking about them. And I know, guys like that are obnoxious and irritating and I'd probably have a lot more friends if Troy wasn't always hanging out with me, but...we've known each other since we were babies. I'm used to him. He can be a funny guy, if you can put up with his thoughtlessness. He's a nice guy, if you don't count the stupid stuff he does. And I'm his best friend and he needs me, or at least someone like me. Someone more sensible than him, who can keep an eye on him and make sure he's not fucking up.
"EWWWWW!" Right then, I had definitely decided he'd fucked up. "No, I don't want to...ewww!"
He rolled his eyes. "Oh, come on. It's not that bad. You've got a vibrator, and I don't freak out about that being in the apartment. This is the only reason I didn't tell you sooner, Samm, because I thought you'd lose your shit over it."
I threw up my hands in frustration. "You know what? I don't even care that you've got a hot pink naked robot in your bedroom. It's your life, it's your money and if you never want to have a girlfriend ever again, that's your own business. But the thought that I'd want to rub myself all over your used sex toy? Saying it again now. EWWWW!"
"No, dude, it's fine, she's totally self-cleaning!" He looked like a kid with a new toy. Which I guess he kind of was, in an 'emotionally stunted man-child' sort of way. "She does this thing while I'm asleep that just whooshes it all away."
"Is that why the apartment's been so clean lately? You've been having your sexbot do the housework while I was at school?" I didn't know whether or not to be upset about that, to be honest. We'd been fighting about the chores ever since we'd moved in together--it wasn't even that Troy was lazy, it was that he was just a total slob. He just didn't think about why it was a bad idea to leave his half-finished Chinese food on the end table for a whole weekend while I was visiting my parents...for example...and the place just turned into a pit. If he was really having his Girl do the housework, it probably justified having the thing around the place.
"No!" Troy actually looked hurt. "I've just been, you know, trying to do a little more around the apartment, since I'm here more often than you are. It just seemed...fair." He actually sounded sincere, too.
"Oh. Well, um...thanks. Still not sleeping with your sex toy, though." I tried not to get unnerved at the way his Girl just kind of watched the two of us argue over her...in fact, I tried not to think of her as a her at all. But it was kind of hard to tell myself she was just another household appliance when she was sitting there on the bed in a seductive pose, smiling like the Mona Lisa as she fixed those glowing yellow eyes on me and shifting position from time to time just enough so that I could see that she really was anatomically correct. "If they really wanted me to get one, they could maybe make a Boy(tm)."
Troy shrugged. "I heard something about that, how now they're established, the new ad campaigns are targeting women really heavily." He leered. "I guess they want to get market penetration."
I rolled my eyes, but I laughed, too. "If they want that to penetrate women, they're going to need more than a new ad campaign. It seems to be missing some essential equipment, if you know what I mean." I made a circle of my thumb and forefinger and slid my other forefinger in and out of it. (What can I say? Troy brings out the pig in me, too.)