Tim\u2019s new step dad owned a Cadillac.\u00a0 His name was Bob and he looked like Corbon Bernsen.\u00a0 Bob had a daughter named Bonnie and I loved her.\u00a0 Bonnie smelled like coconut and wore bikinis at the beach.\u00a0 When Bonnie walked along the ocean, strands of her long blonde hair pinched off in the clasp on her back and trembled in the breeze like kite string.<\/p>\n
Bob drove me, Tim, and Bonnie \u2013 and Tim\u2019s mother \u2013 to Fenwick Island where he\u2019d rented a house for the week.\u00a0 Bob\u2019s son, Peter, showed up two days late, drank gin and tonics with the grown-ups, and one night took a dump on a lifeguard tower.\u00a0 Peter bragged about it over breakfast.\u00a0 Bob said, \u201cWild child!\u201d and Tim laughed so hard he coughed up his Apple Jacks.<\/p>\n
Tim thought Peter was a rock star.\u00a0 Peter named me \u201cSmear the Queer.\u201d\u00a0 Bonnie said I needed \u201cculture assistance\u201d and demanded I listen to Tori Amos on the Cadillac\u2019s Bose speakers.\u00a0 I owned two cassette tapes: Sports <\/em>by Huey Lewis and Kenny Loggins’s\u00a0Best of Friends<\/em>.<\/p>\n In the middle of the week I lost my glasses in the ocean.\u00a0 Tim called me a douche.<\/p>\n \u201cNow now,\u201d Tim\u2019s mother said.\u00a0 That evening at the house she laid her douche kit on the kitchen table.\u00a0 \u201cThis<\/em> is douche,\u201d she said, and she explained it in scrupulous detail.<\/p>\n On our last night in Delaware, Tim \u2013 who also loved Bonnie \u2013 snuck into Bonnie\u2019s room and stole the stuffed gorilla that Bob had won her in a game of ring toss at the Go-Kart Park.\u00a0 Tim punted the gorilla into the ocean.<\/p>\n \u201cA sacrifice,\u201d Tim said.\u00a0 \u201cFor the gods of love.\u201d<\/p>\n I squinted into the wavering darkness while sounds from the boardwalk married with the noise of the surf.<\/p>\n \u201cMaybe the gorilla will find my glasses.\u201d<\/p>\n Tim, shoving a clump of wet sand down my pants, said, \u201cDouche<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Tim\u2019s new step dad owned a Cadillac.\u00a0 His name was Bob and he looked like Corbon Bernsen.\u00a0 Bob had a daughter named Bonnie and I loved her.\u00a0 Bonnie smelled like coconut and wore bikinis at the beach.\u00a0 When Bonnie walked along the ocean, strands of her long blonde hair pinched off in the clasp on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":13925,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13600","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiction","writer-brian-phillip-whalen"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13600","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13600"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13600\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13924,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13600\/revisions\/13924"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13925"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13600"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13600"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13600"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}