Page 30 of Intoxicated
That’s all she says before she goes back to her meal. I’m inclined to join her, although I’ve swallowed so much water I need to get up and refill the pitcher. Grandma barks at me to make sure the faucet filter is turned on. I wave that I was about to do that.
When my waist hits the counter, I remember what it was like to bend that brat over my bed and fuck the fight out of her.
I also remember what’s so embarrassing about it now.
“You’ve got a look on your face that says you’re a big ol’ idiot, and you know it.” My grandma points her fork in my face before shoving it back into her potatoes. “What did you do? It was that girl you were telling me about, wasn’t it?”
“Something like that.” I keep my nose pointed to my food.
“Didn’t knock her up, did you?”
“I sure hope not, Gram.”
“I wouldn’t put it past you. You boys are more careless today than you were back in my day. You have all these birth controls and STD tests at your disposal, but do you do anything to protect yourself? Noooo. You keep leaving it on the women, and God knows half of them are too stupid to know the way to the nearest clinic these days. At least my generation can take the flak for some of that. You should’ve seen what your mother was telling your sister back when you were teenagers. Did you know that her big safe sex talk amounted to‘Don’t do it, you hussy!’Worked really well for your sister when she was dating three boys at once. That’s why she came to me when she thought she might be pregnant and didn’t know who the daddy was.”
Wow. I learned a lot more than I ever wanted to know about my sister. Gross, Gram.
“You wrapping up your Johnson, boy?”
My fork clatters to my plate. “Come on, Grandma! We’re eating dinner.”
“I’m not going to your funeral in ten years because you contracted some incurable disease. I don’t care how much money you’ve got. You’re an idiot if you think you can inject your Benjamins into your bloodstream and fight off viruses like that.”
“Sometimes I can’t believe the things you say…”
“Sometimes I can’t believe I raised such a stupid boy.”
“Did not realize that was an admission of guilt,” I almost snap at my grandmother.
“You wouldn’t be handing your grandma so much snark on a platter if you didn’t have something to hide. Jesus. Did I not raise you better than your father could? I know that dolt was telling you to keep your willy to ‘good girls’ but I had half a brain to give you the condoms I knew you weren’t carrying in your empty wallet. Come on! If you’re not out there knocking up some girl and getting your life in a tizzy, you’re ending up in a coffin because the syphilis rotted out your useless brain!”
“I don’t have syphilis!”
“You know that for a fact? Because I know what syphilis does to a person. I’ve seen it for myself. Ask me what I was doing in 1973. Go on. Ask.”
I’m not going to ask her what she was doing in 1973. I’ll probably get a long, drawn out, dramatic story about living in some Californian city full of STDs like syphilis, gonorrhea, and the clap. You know, wholesome stuff. My grandma has a little history in nursing, so I bet it was at a clinic where she got these first-hand accounts of syphilis and the like.
Good gravy. Did I really think about the wordsyphilisthat much in so little time? That’s a great way to kill the hard-on that keeps popping up every time I think about Cher.
“Wrap it up,” my grandma says with finality. “Think of it as giving your lucky lady a very special gift shemightget to unwrap one day. For the both of you.”
Whatever food I was about to put into my mouth now ends up on my plate. We’re lucky the stuff in my stomach doesn’t chase it.
