Requiem for a Meme

JANUARY

You and your girlfriend text your best friend to find out what’s happening this night. It’s Friday in the city. The banter spins loose and free. When it is revealed by your best friend that he plans to sit at home and possibly play with himself, you write,

“You SUCK”

Your girlfriend responds, “He can do that? To himself?”

You say, “Lots of practice”

Your friend writes, “Not going out go away”

After a few minutes of silence, your girlfriend writes, “Oh, don’t be such a pussy. Come out with us!”

Well, you know from experience that the word “pussy” brings up old wounds in your friend — especially when tossed at him by an attractive female. His response is swift.

“If you don’t watch out you’re gonna get in the mouth”

Of course, he means, “You’re gonna get IT in the mouth.” It’s one of his go-to phrases, meant to confuse the target with its old-timey twang of a threat. But that’s not what he wrote. Let the record show, he wrote something else.

Your girlfriend texts, “Get in the mouth? Get. In. The. Mouth? That sounds terrible.”

“Can you imagine climbing inside someone’s mouth,” you write.

“Can you imagine harboring someone inside your mouth?”

“Can you imagine being inside his mouth while he’s sucking himself,” you write.

“I’m not going out with you tonight,” your best friend writes. “Or ever again.”

When your friend doesn’t respond to pity-party follow-up texts or phone calls, you realize you might have gone too far. He was always sensitive, and he doesn’t have a love interest at this moment, so you know he’s probably down. Maybe you need to be a better friend.

You and your girlfriend decide to stay home. You make a black-and-white, quasi-artsy video. In it, you and your girlfriend are both dressed as stereotypical French people (berets, striped shirts), and you say into the camera, over and over again, in various poses,

“Get in the mouth.”

“Get in the mouth.”

“Get in the mouth.”

“Get in the mouth.”

You post it online and send it to your friend. He responds the next morning: “Ha ha you got me”

The whole thing dies. You all go out the following weekend and have a fine time.

JANUARY, ONE YEAR LATER

An Indiana college student (and fairly respectable DJ, it turns out), home on break, uses his free time to slosh through the backwaters of the Web, where he finds your video.

Soon, a remixed version is posted on the Internet. It’s a song with a nice dance beat, featuring you and your now ex-girlfriend.

“Get in the mouth,” you both rap/sing in the remix, “get in the mouth, get get get get get in the mouth.”

For reasons that will never be clear, college students start sending the video to each other as a joke. More college students send it to family members. It gets posted elsewhere. A cat is added, mouthing the words, “Get in the mouth.” Other animals are added.

It’s around this time that someone you know sends the videos to you. Beyond the curious shock and slight embarrassment this conjures, and under the pets and music, you find it’s surprisingly affecting to see yourself and your ex- together again, lost in another time, happy and dumb to life. You still don’t know what happened.

After some deep breaths and consideration, you text a link to the videos to your ex- and best friend, who has moved across the country.

“I guess we’re famous?” you say.

Weirdly, a text from your ex- arrives — just to you — right after you hit “send.”

“I guess we’re famous”

It’s unclear if she merely responded quickly, or if you were both having the same experience in the same moment and you responded in nearly identical ways. Maybe she wonders the same thing. After some awkward staring into your phone, you send a sunglasses-man emoji.

“How are you,” she responds.

You spend the afternoon catching up while also keeping each other at a safe distance. Later that night, your best friend finally responds on the group text.

“You dummies are famous not me”

The meme, meanwhile, is not beholden to the stilted physics of these relationships. It continues to blossom. Within a few days, people post new videos with “get in the mouth” edited in — Dirty Harry asking a criminal not if he feels lucky but if he wants to “get in the mouth.” Or Terminator saying to witnesses not a foreboding, “I’ll be back,” but instead a farewell, “Get in the mouth.” And so on.

One Saturday afternoon at the market, you are recognized as the “Get in the Mouth Guy.”

MARCH

A well-known celebrity appears on the Today Show in an interview with one of their anchors. The supposed purpose of the interview is to address something controversial and insensitive the celebrity said in a public forum. Prior imbroglios like this suggest that perhaps the celebrity will apologize, and we will be allowed to forget the whole unpleasant circumstance. But no, as it turns out, this is all about ratings. The anchor needles and pushes buttons. The celebrity blushes and fidgets and finally bubbles over:

“You know what?” the celebrity says. “Why don’t you just get in the mouth.”

APRIL

Spring. The city glows warm and yellow, and though you are both dating new people, you miss your ex- for reasons connected to the sensory nature of memory, as well as occasional texting.

By this time, “Get in the mouth” has graduated to the American pop-culture patois that also includes “Where’s the beef?”, “That’s hot,” and “YOLO.” It is now found on t-shirts, coffee mugs, bumper stickers; lawyers are working out copyright details. Rumor is, Oxford is considering it for its “meme of the year.”

And Jimmy Fallon’s people are calling. You, your ex-, and your best friend conclude the brush with fame seems like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. And so you three appear one evening, as talent, on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.

On the show, sitting between you and your ex- on the guest couch, your best friend explains to Jimmy the inspiration for the viral phrase.

“I was upset, and I made a typo,” he says. His hair is uncombed. Since moving out west, he has grown a beard. He is wearing a sweatshirt bearing his alma mater’s name.

The audience laughs — laughs at him. Your ex-, slumping attractively like she used to slump on your couch, puts a hand to her mouth to hide her smile. The way she’s tilting her head toward your best friend, you know she misses him.

A few moments later, on stage, you perform the “Get in the Mouth” song with Jimmy, the DJ kid from Indiana, and The Roots. There is a moment when you and your ex- are singing/rapping, “Get in the mouth, get in the mouth, get get get get get in the mouth,” and your best friend is standing between you both with his arms crossed:

You look at them, and you realize what love is. It is the original meme. It is energy borne out of creativity and attraction. And though it might fade or even disappear, it never goes away. It just comes back in different forms.

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© 2022 Jamie Allen