This is a series in a short story about dumb shit I did when I was younger. If you want more, do tell. It’s an experiment in actually being a human being.
It took me 15 years to live. It’s a humbling yet mortifying prospect.
The irony of this statement is that I count living dodging (to varying degrees of success) the various pots and pans being hurled at me by my very pregnant girlfriend while tiptoeing through the minefield of cat feces and cigarette butts that litters her floor. That’s right folks, I’m 15 years old and I’m living the American dream. I dare you to do better.
Not sold yet? Neither am I, I’m fucking lying. I’m not living, I’m dying. But as far as anyone else is concerned, I’m living, so shut your gob and nod a very cautious “yes sir, I understand, you ARE living” to me.
My name is Dan. I work at McDonalds, I go to highschool, I drive a beat up Cadillac and I’m keeping the fact that my girlfriend is, again, _very_ pregnant from my parents. I’m fairly sure no combination of this is socially acceptable or healthy but I’m going to go ahead and continue doing it because I’m fairly sure that my newfound life will come to a very swift end if any of those carefully balanced items falls to the floor.
I’m a liar. More accurately, I’m a good liar. I realize that calling myself a good liar is a recipe for disaster, but like most things I will pretend I don’t see the obvious “DANGER” signs until the problem goes away. And at this particular moment, I’m lying to my girlfriend by telling her that I have indeed told my parents.
“How did they react?” she asks me. It doesn’t take a genius to see she doesn’t believe a word of my bullshit. I’m thinking to myself that I’m some kind of super-sleuth detecting the tinge of dryness in her voice.
“They reacted! My mom yelled at me. My dad sat there with a ‘I’m going to fucking murder my son’ look in his eye. Were you expecting a hanging at dawn or something?” I shoot back.
“Well I don’t know! Why couldn’t I be there?!”
Because… they don’t like you, you fucking cow?
“Because you know what happens when you and my parents are in the same room. Tears and shouting and all sorts of unpleasantness.”
At this point I’m just begging for an out.
Meanwhile, she’s squinting at me as if she’s waiting for that one telltale drop of sweat to form on my brow—the Benedict Arnold of sweat that will villify her and make my lies absolutely transparent.
So I gather up all my wits, open my mouth and quietly say “So… is the fat slob working with you today?”
Whatever she says next goes in one ear and out the other. From my limited understanding of the situation, a rather rotund girl named Jenine makes her life a living hell at Hungry Howies, or as I like to call it, ‘Please, Filter More Grease Into My Mouth So I Can Launch It Out of My Bowels In One Greasy Spurt Hours Later…. LTD.’ I personally think it’s the most clever name I’ve ever come up with.
I realized I was dazing off right about when she yelled “DON’T YOU THINK?!” in a screechingly loud voice. Admittedly at that moment all I was thinking about was the number of ways to trip her down a flight of stairs and make it look like an accident. It sounds harsh—and it is. I hate her with a passion so deep that if properly converted, I’d probably be the greatest lover or musician or artist of all time. However it’s not, nor ever will be, so instead I’ll daydream about a large angry dog chewing out the inside of her skull instead.
I hate her because one bright and shiny afternoon, after I had discovered she was pregnant and was feeling fairly good about myself for actually being competent enough to knock a female up, I stroll into her home and came upon her on her knees servicing another man. He was a little skinny redheaded twerp with freckles on his arms and chest that made him look like the sun was trying to bake him slowly. I look at the two of them and I probably said a few angry words that rhymed with “ducking bunt” and I may or may not have threatened to castrate the man with what may or may not have been a dull pocketknife. Needless to say, the 5′4″ redheaded twerp ran out the door with his pants around his ankles while I stood in the doorway possibly brandishing something that resembled aforementioned knife.
Now the intelligent 15 year old male would likely tell his girlfriend of 18 to go fly a kite (gosh, pardon my French) after discovering them in the throes of something I like to call smiling like a donut. I, however, did not. You see, I loved my child. He or she was unborn, but a collection of cells swimming in a sea of fluids and organs and whatever the fuck else was swimming in her womb… but I knew that if I were to walk out now I would never be a part of its life. So in my infinite wisdom, I smiled and forgave her right on the spot and thought nothing of it.
Until it happened again.
And again.
Aaaand again.
In fact, it happened so many times that I stopped counting. So one day I gave up. I started LIVING. I stopped threatning her or the men that she was with. I simply walked past them and turned the television on and, like many things in my life, I pretended I didn’t see and hoped the problem would simply solve itself. And now here I am, fingering cold Hungry Howie’s pizza and daydreaming about a world where she is dead but my daughter may live. My name is Dan and it took me 15 years to live.
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