I pulled up my pants, took a sip of beer, and snuffed out my cigarette before walking onto the little back porch of my trailer in a t-shirt and bare feet.\u00a0 There, parked in a Chevy Cavalier on the cracked cement pad, was my daughter making out with some buzzed cut kid, an empty plastic shot bottle of Fireball on the dash.<\/p>\n
What the fuck is this?<\/em> I thought.\u00a0 I moved my hand to my mouth to take another drag and touched my rough lips before realizing I\u2019d finished my last stick.\u00a0 I puckered my lips and sucked in the untainted air, which left me feeling unsatisfied and which is probably the reason I acted how I did.<\/p>\n I walked carefully to avoid cutting myself on any broken glass bottles.\u00a0 The sun was just coming up, and I was tired, but not too tired.<\/p>\n The kid saw me and looked terrified.\u00a0 That\u2019s how it was supposed to work.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know how I would\u2019ve explained it to him if he wasn\u2019t terrified: \u201cHey, look.\u00a0 This is how it\u2019s supposed to go\u2026\u201d I would have to say, knowing the whole time that if he didn\u2019t know already, he would never know.<\/p>\n He jumped off of her, as much as you can jump off of someone in the front seat of a Cavalier.\u00a0 She still had her clothes on.\u00a0 I\u2019m glad for that.\u00a0 I\u2019m glad for a lot of things.\u00a0 That\u2019s what I\u2019ve learned after 42 years.\u00a0 You can be grateful or you can be ungrateful, whether you got a lot or a little.\u00a0 I got a little, and I\u2019m grateful for the little I got cuz I\u2019ve seen ungrateful people with a lot, and they ain\u2019t no happier than I am.<\/p>\n I used my new wedding ring to knock on the glass.<\/p>\n The boy was digging around her for his shirt.\u00a0 He\u2019d taken it off.\u00a0 I might\u2019ve, too, if I still looked like he did with the six pack and the delts and whatnot, but I didn\u2019t like the way he was making her squirm out of his way.\u00a0 It seemed undignified.\u00a0 It seemed like he cared more about his shirt than he did about her, and that struck a nerve.<\/p>\n Later that day, after every sign of him had left the trailer, I tried to tell Jenny about it in the back bedroom with another lit cigarette and a can of beer.\u00a0 She said I was justified.\u00a0 I doubt I was.<\/p>\n You see, I get upset sometimes.\u00a0 I don\u2019t even know what I\u2019m upset about.\u00a0 I think I know.\u00a0 Like in this case here.\u00a0 This kid\u2019s trying to bone my daughter, so I get hold of him.\u00a0 But it\u2019s like that kid was just an accident\u2026 just a roll of the dice\u2026 and I don\u2019t have ahold of him so much as I have ahold of something slippery and fine and tapering away to nothing, and I never can quite get ahold of it in the morning after getting head from my new wife in the back of an air-conditioned trailer.<\/p>\n Nothing calms me down at all, except a drink and a cigarette and a good fuck, but just right in the middle of it, you know, right when you\u2019re lost in it.\u00a0 Ideally, you\u2019ve just finished a cigarette and thrown back a shot of tequila, and your eyes are closed and your hips and her hips are rolling like a little boat out on the ocean and they\u2019re moving together because they\u2019re both being controlled by waves bigger than both of you, and just in that moment, you\u2019ve got it all figured out because you realize there ain\u2019t nothing to <\/em>figure out.<\/p>\n So I get hold of this kid and I spin him around and throw him up against his Chevy, and he still doesn\u2019t have his shirt on, so it feels like an episode of cops, and because of this, I start acting like a cop, which I hate, and I wish I hadn\u2019t, but it is what it is, so there I go with that self-righteous condescending talk, and I\u2019ve got one of his arms pretzeled up behind him, and I\u2019m reaching for the other one, so my belly is pressing into the middle of this kid\u2019s back because he ain\u2019t too tall, which allows me to man-handle him despite his well-defined delts and whatnot, and the kid\u2019s sweat is soaking through my t-shirt, and I\u2019m thinking to myself that this kid got all sweaty trying to bone my daughter, and that thought made everything go black.<\/p>\n And when it was all over I looked over and saw my daughter.\u00a0 She was standing nearby in the hazy morning, and she was leaning all the way forward on the balls of her feet, and her hands were all balled up and thrust straight down at her sides, and I realized she was the one that had been beating on my back with her fists\u2014that I felt and didn\u2019t feel at the same time\u2014and I looked at her, and I thought she could stand to calm down, too, but she\u2019s 16 years old, and what is there for a 16 year-old girl to calm down with?<\/p>\n If anyone needed a drag or a shot or a good fuck, it would be my daughter.<\/p>\n She gets up before I do, and she\u2019s at school all day, and she\u2019s doing homework all night.\u00a0 She works harder than I do, and I pour concrete.\u00a0 I\u2019d rather pour concrete than have my daughter\u2019s life, and how is she rewarded?\u00a0 By having everyone up in her business telling her, don\u2019t do this, don\u2019t do that\u2026 And what do they tell me?\u00a0 Don\u2019t nobody tell me shit.<\/p>\n Jenny will say things like, \u201cThis isn\u2019t even what you\u2019re angry about.\u00a0 You\u2019re dragging up some shit from the past.\u201d<\/p>\n And that\u2019s true.\u00a0 The past is always with me.\u00a0 How can it not be?\u00a0 I\u2019ve tried to remember what it is exactly that I\u2019m angry about, but I don\u2019t remember shit no more, and even if I could, I doubt I\u2019d be able to pin it down, exactly, the thing that bothers me so much all the time.\u00a0 Sometimes it\u2019s just a minor irritant, like some chemical that\u2019s got in your eye that you should probably flush out, but you don\u2019t cuz you can take it.<\/p>\n It\u2019s like there\u2019s this happy kid, and he\u2019s running around playing under some big old trees that reach across and touch each other from each side of a shady street and no one can hear no 18 wheelers blasting down the freeway, and this kid is having a good time and is free to do whatever he wants and doesn\u2019t stop at any particular time and isn\u2019t confined to any particular place.<\/p>\n It\u2019s like no one has told him a damn thing about anything, so he\u2019s got fuck all to think about, and he\u2019s got a little friend, a little boy or girl, it don\u2019t matter, we all know that now, and they\u2019re best friends, and they hold hands.\u00a0 And they go skipping and dancing around their neighborhood, where there\u2019s no goddamned pedophiles and even if there were and the two of them got picked up and thrown in the back of a van, they\u2019d be looking at each other and laughing, not knowing the danger they were in because nobody ever showed them no cardboard cutout depicting grave danger.<\/p>\n Hell, they wouldn\u2019t even know enough to stay out of a hole six feet long and six feet deep.\u00a0 They\u2019d just hop right in it, holding hands and laughing and smiling, and I hate the little bastards.\u00a0\u00a0 I hate people who have someone right by their side all the time, through thick and thin.\u00a0 You\u2019re born alone, and you die alone, and any love in-between is just some fairy tale bullshit that\u2019s not even real.<\/p>\n So what do I do?\u00a0 I ruin the only chance my daughter has of throwing off the weight of the world.\u00a0 She ain\u2019t too pretty.\u00a0 I think she\u2019s pretty, of course, like fathers do, but I have mind enough to know that not many would want her.<\/p>\n I walk over to her, then, and she\u2019s so pissed off she can hardly contain herself.\u00a0 Her bottom lip is shot out like a plate some waitress shoves in your face at IHOP, and the food on it looks good, but the waitress and the smell of the place make you want to just tilt your hat down over your eyes and pass out right there in that booth.<\/p>\n And I ask her.\u00a0 I say, \u201cWhatchoo gonna do?\u201d\u00a0 I never wanted to tell her nothing.\u00a0 Let her figure shit out for herself.\u00a0 That would get her ready for whatever was gonna come.\u00a0 She wasn\u2019t gonna have me there all the time by her side, telling her what was right and wrong, helping her sort out the good ideas from the bad.<\/p>\n She said, \u201cI\u2019m gonna kill you.\u201d<\/p>\n I said, \u201cYou talking late or soon, cuz if it\u2019s late, that gives me a little time to make things right.\u201d<\/p>\n She said, late.<\/p>\n I said, \u201cOkay then, pay attention.\u201d\u00a0 And I walked over to where the boy lay on the ground, and slid my hand real gentle under his head and I took ahold of it like I was holding Samantha\u2019s head when she was a baby.\u00a0 I named her Samantha after a girl I had a crush on on a TV show when I was growing up, always planning to call her Sam, but the longer I held her in my arms after she was born, the more she felt like a full-on Samantha who had nothing to do with Television or with anything in the world besides me and her.<\/p>\n And then I reached my arm under that boy\u2019s hamstrings, and with one knee on the ground, I propped him up against my other knee.\u00a0 Then I got a little momentum going and rocked up into a stand and carried him on inside the trailer.<\/p>\n I laid him out on the couch and Jenny said, \u201cWhat you got there?\u201d but I didn\u2019t answer.\u00a0 I went to the master suite bathroom and got everything I needed. \u00a0Samantha and Jenny were standing over the boy when I got back.\u00a0 Samantha was sniffling, and Jenny was running her fingers through Samantha\u2019s hair, calling her \u201chon.\u201d<\/p>\n The biggest cut was over the boy\u2019s right eye.\u00a0 I looked at my wedding ring, and a piece of flesh was mashed against the sharp edge.\u00a0 I knelt down, poured some hydrogen peroxide onto a cloth I cupped in my hand, then wiped the gash clean.\u00a0 Blood crept out of it.\u00a0 The curtain was pulled shut over the window above the couch.\u00a0 I ripped off a piece of tape, twisted it in the middle and affixed it to his face in the middle of the cut.<\/p>\n \u201cYou ready to try?\u201d Jenny asked.<\/p>\n I felt a hand on my shoulder, and it was Samantha.\u00a0 \u201cLet me do it,\u201d she said.\u00a0 I got up off of my knees and gave her the bottle, the rag, and the tape for the butterfly stitches.\u00a0 She taped up his eye on the left and right side of her dad\u2019s initial piece.\u00a0 The sun had burned through the haze by now and the orange curtains over the window above the couch cast an orange glow on everything in the trailer.<\/p>\n Samantha wasn\u2019t sure if she could use the hydrogen peroxide on the boy\u2019s cut lip, so I took the bottle from her, tossed back three or four swallows to let her know what killed you and what didn\u2019t and handed it back to her. She nodded, and instead of using the cloth this time, she held the boy\u2019s lips together with her forefinger and thumb and very slowly and gently poured the contents of the bottle over his shut lips, hydrogen peroxide bubbling over the cuts and flowing down the side of his face, disappearing into the rough plaid couch.<\/p>\n After she got him all cleaned up and bandaged and butterflied, I reached down and undid his button and fly and pulled his jeans and drawers down and told my Samantha to go on and do what she was set on doing that morning when I found her.<\/p>\n She cocked her head to the side and reached up and in the same way that she had pressed the boy\u2019s lips together she grabbed a piece of hair that she twirled around her finger.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I get back,\u201d I said, \u201cif you still want to kill me, you know where to find my piece.\u00a0 Just catch me \u2018fore I get inside, so we don\u2019t make a mess of the trailer.\u201d<\/p>\n With one hand, she ran her fingers through her hair, scratching her scalp as she went along, and with the other, she pointed at the limp member. \u00a0I shook it for her till it hardened.<\/p>\n \u201cYou know what to do?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n But she looked at me like I\u2019d just taken the escalator down from a spaceship made out of lollipops.<\/p>\n I reached into the kid\u2019s bunched up jeans pocket and fished around till I found the plastic.\u00a0 I tossed the square package on the boy\u2019s bare belly near the short and curlies.\u00a0 \u201cWell, if you need a little something to take the edge off,\u201d I said.\u00a0 \u201cIt\u2019s right there.\u201d<\/p>\n I thought about taking Jenny back to the bedroom to take more of our own edges off, but I was hungry and didn\u2019t want to be frying eggs while my daughter got laid, so I told Jenny to throw on some shoes, and I did the same before we walked out to the car to grab a bite.\u00a0 But before I could get the car door unlocked, here came Samantha.<\/p>\n \u201cHey,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n I turned around.\u00a0 \u201cEverything going okay?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ll do what I want,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n \u201cYes, I know.\u00a0 That\u2019s what we decided. \u00a0You do what you wanted to do.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWell, maybe I don\u2019t want to no more.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s your choice.\u00a0 Suit yourself.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s right.\u00a0 It\u2019s my choice.\u201d<\/p>\n I moved my fingers to my lips, again finding no cigarette from which to draw tainted air.<\/p>\n She went on: \u201cI don\u2019t need you telling me what is or isn\u2019t my choice\u2014It\u2019s my choice\u2026 what my choices are.\u201d<\/p>\n I turned that one over in my mind. She said it was her choice what her choices were, and I knew that was wrong.\u00a0 There\u2019s plenty of things a man or woman, especially a child, especially a woman-child, has no choice over, and you don\u2019t just get to decide what you have a choice over and what you don\u2019t.<\/p>\n You can\u2019t just decide that you have a choice over love or happiness or loneliness, or even life itself.\u00a0 You don\u2019t have no choice in the matter of death, and you can\u2019t choose to have a choice in matters about which you have no choice.<\/p>\n And even if it were so, who would ever choose not to have a choice?\u00a0 Who would ever give that up, if they had the choice to give it up at all?<\/p>\n Samantha looked like she was reconsidering, too, like she was doubting what she had said\u2026but she stopped her reconsideration and doubled down on this choice of choice business.<\/p>\n \u201cI choose\u2026 what I choose,\u201d she said. \u201cNot you, not nobody else.\u201d<\/p>\n So, I started trying to figure out how she might be right, because I love her, and I trust her, and sometimes I think she might save me when I\u2019m in the mood to think I need saving, and then it was the opposite of when things go black.\u00a0 Everything flashed up in color before my eyes, and all of the possibilities of the world opened and closed before me in order, out of order, and all at once, overlapping like the pieces of magazines we\u2019d cut out and glued to poster board in grade school, and one moment I was king of a great kingdom\u2026\u00a0I choose, she said<\/em>\u2026 and the next I was stroking that boy\u2019s cock and my own like two men on a railroad handcar\u2026\u00a0I choose when<\/em>\u2026 and the next I was deep in the earth in a tunnel mining for the remains of aliens\u2026\u00a0I choose how<\/em>\u2026 and the next I was floating in space with satellites and ships falling within my gravitational pull\u2026\u00a0I choose where<\/em>\u2026 and then flowers blossomed into vaginal lips with lubricated assholes at their centers\u2026\u00a0I choose who<\/em>\u2026 and then we were all resuscitating each other and my breath was in Samantha\u2019s lungs and her breath was in Jenny\u2019s and Jenny\u2019s was in the boy\u2019s and the boy\u2019s was in mine\u2026\u00a0I choose who<\/em>\u2026back and forth, round and round, and I believed her, though she was wrong\u2026\u00a0I choose who<\/em>\u2026 and I told Jenny to get in the car\u2026\u00a0I choose who<\/em>\u2026 to leave Samantha be to choose to choose.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" So, I started trying to figure out how she might be right, because I love her, and I trust her, and sometimes I think she might save me when I\u2019m in the mood to think I need saving…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":13998,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13776","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiction","writer-steve-lovett"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13776","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=13776"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13776\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14000,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13776\/revisions\/14000"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13998"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}