“It’s like you don’t respect the spiritual views of my culture!” she screamed, tearing down my teepee.

“I don’t even respect the spiritual views of my own culture,” I said. “Why do yours get a pass?” I reached down to pick the teepee up.

“But I’m indigenous. You’re a colonizer,” she said, knocking the teepee from my hands.

“This is the worst thing that ever happened to anyone!” I cried to the heathen gods I had no faith in. “My teepee! I worked on this for, for, for hours!” I hugged the rumpled carcass of my teepee.

She smacked my arms. “Drop that teepee, cracker!”

“But I haven’t even colonized,” I said between sobs, “in, like, months and months!” I fell to the floor, clutching my teepee close to my chest, barely able to keep from wailing. I settled on a petulant pout and a loud sigh. Her halfhearted blows landed almost firmly on my prone form.

I was saved when an alarm went off. She whipped out her cellular phone.

“Oh, it’s time to influence.” She removed her traditional garb from the 18th Century to reveal a scanty bikini. I could not ascertain whether this was appropriate to her tribe. It seemed to my eyes to be more Shanwnee. Or was it Pawnee? I have trouble keeping the -nees straight.

She selfied herself saying, “Hi, guys! You should totally buy stock in energon cubes. It’s like the only way to save the environment. Our people used to live in perfect harmony with nature, until the white man showed up, bought us a Coke, and told us to smile like the misogynist he is. From that moment on, we vowed to live only in disharmony with nature until our one true king was returned to us from his heavenly sky-voyage.”

“Is that why you are always watching those UFO documentaries?” I asked weakly.

“Click like and subscribe. Follow me on Inst-o-Picture. Ring the bell. Push the button. And hold the elevator, because we are going up, up, up, up. Tune in tomorrow for accidental nipslip and more rumors of war.” She pushed the DONE icon, and the clip was instantly glamorized by an AI into something similar to pink-hued, candied pop-porn.

“This is not our way,” I whispered, attempting to rise.

She quickly redonned her skins and beat me about the head and neck with a rolled newspaper. It was The Indigenous Times, adding insult to injury.

“Overall,” said our therapist, poised cautiously on the arm of a nearby recliner, “you two have one of the healthiest relationships I’ve seen in a while, all things considered.”

She ceased with the languid trashing, and I rose, leaving the teepee on the floor, and took my seat beside her on the sofa.

“How did you two meet?” the therapist asked.

“She was my war bride.”

“Can you expand on that?”

“I was colonizing her people’s land, and I decided to bring her home with me. I gave her her first cellular phone and told her about TakTuk.”

“And you don’t see why she might be resentful of that arrangement?”

“She’s got, like, 450K subscribers,” I explained.

I looked over at her, but she would not make eye contact.

“Don’t you think,” she said, “I’d rather be on Indigenous-Space?”

“Is that even a thing?”

“See!” she threw up her hands. “He doesn’t even understand the basics of my culture.”

The therapist made a note on a pad of yellow paper.\

“He never even learned my language,” she said.

“Now, that’s not fair,” I said. “I’m much older, and white brains aren’t made for learning languages.”

“My advice,” the therapist injected, “is to move to Africa, where you are both foreigners, and start a bed and breakfast.”

“We aren’t paying you for financial advice,” she said.

“Besides,” I said, “I’ve already put all my money into a new form of currency. It’s like crypto, but you dig it out of the ground.”

“I can tell when I’m not wanted,” the therapist said, clutching the notepad, and leaving through the gaping hole in the sitting room wall.

She embraced me tightly.

“Let’s never let anyone come between us again,” I said.

“Sure, we have our problems, but the world is full of emotional vampires. Of course they would go into fields like therapy and guidance counseling.”

“That’s where they find the weakest minds. But not us. If we put our minds together, we have one perfectly formed whole mind.”

“I’m still not going to let you erect that teepee in the house,” she said.

“Goddamit!” I shouted. “You never let me do anything fun!” I ran around screaming and shitting my pants.