vantage point above the car, I could see everything. Where Harley’s adorably soft blond pompadour used to be, there was instead a crudely drawn image the size of a fucking dinner plate. It depicted a bird’s-eye view of Harley’s brain, as if his skull had been removed, like the lid of a cookie jar. The center of his brain appeared to be hollowed out into a spaceship-style cockpit, and there, in the center, manning the craft, was a tiny fucking penis.
A tiny fucking circumcised penis with little dick arms and a look of determination on his little dick face was jostling joysticks around inside Ding-Dong’s pickled brain. My parents were minutes away from finding out that their sixteen-year-old only child was dating a grown man with no job and no car and no brain cells and bad teeth and oh, by the way, he also has a fucking penis tattooed on his head.
Luckily, the empty shell of a body that I’d deserted in the backseat was incapable of forming coherent speech patterns, let alone demanding an explanation, because unlike the ARM tat, my consciousness pulled up the exact euphemism Harley had been going for with this piece, and quite frankly, the backseat of your mother’s station wagon is the last place you want to hear your adult boyfriend explain, I think with my cock! Get it?
The shock and dissociation I experienced after seeing that little phallus were so profound that my consciousness must have blacked out and tumbled to the side of the road. I barely remember anything from the moment we’d picked Harley up to the moment we dropped him back off.
The only images I’ve been able to mine from that evening are of my mother lurking behind Ding-Dong like a shadow while he and I ate our Domino’s pizza at the kitchen table. As he snarfed down his fifth slice of pepperoni, completely unaware of her presence, my mom made direct, searing eye contact with me over the top of his tattooed head. Raising one scarily pissed off eyebrow, she slowly and blatantly shifted her gaze down to Ding-Dong’s exposed scalp, drawing her mouth into a tight line of disgust. It was terrifying.
My mom doesn’t do pissed off, Journal. She’s usually too stoned to remember how feelings work most of the time, so this little demonstration was frighteningly out of character.
The only other memory that I didn’t completely repress from that evening was when my mom and I dropped Ding-Dong back off that night. Once he was out of the car and we were on our way back home, the panic set in, and I braced myself for my mother’s wrath. I literally curled up into the fetal position in the passenger seat and covered my head with my hands just in case she went full-on Mommie Dearest .
Although my mother was a hippie pacifist to the core and had only called me a bitch once in my life, I hadn’t exactly brought home a grown man with a penis tattooed on his head and zero high school diplomas before either.
All bets were off. And I was in survival mode.
Luckily, the months I’d spent trying not to become a crime-of-passion victim while dating Knight had made me a bona fide pro at scanning my surroundings for potential weapons. So, while my mom was busy looking both ways before pulling out of the neighborhood, I stealthily removed the cigarette lighter from the car’s ashtray and slipped it into the sleeve of my stud-covered hoodie. You never can be too careful. Now, all I had to worry about were her hands, that stabby-looking Celtic cross hanging from the rearview mirror, and that choky-looking strand of love beads hanging around her neck.
Shit.
After riding in suffocating silence with my knees up around my ears for a few miles, my natural tendency toward optimism took over, and I began to think, Maybe she’s just going to give me the silent treatment! Maybe she’s not actually going to disfigure me!
Then, her hand shot out in my direction.
Mommy, no!
Only, instead of smacking me in the mouth (which she’d probably decided against due to the
A tiny fucking circumcised penis with little dick arms and a look of determination on his little dick face was jostling joysticks around inside Ding-Dong’s pickled brain. My parents were minutes away from finding out that their sixteen-year-old only child was dating a grown man with no job and no car and no brain cells and bad teeth and oh, by the way, he also has a fucking penis tattooed on his head.
Luckily, the empty shell of a body that I’d deserted in the backseat was incapable of forming coherent speech patterns, let alone demanding an explanation, because unlike the ARM tat, my consciousness pulled up the exact euphemism Harley had been going for with this piece, and quite frankly, the backseat of your mother’s station wagon is the last place you want to hear your adult boyfriend explain, I think with my cock! Get it?
The shock and dissociation I experienced after seeing that little phallus were so profound that my consciousness must have blacked out and tumbled to the side of the road. I barely remember anything from the moment we’d picked Harley up to the moment we dropped him back off.
The only images I’ve been able to mine from that evening are of my mother lurking behind Ding-Dong like a shadow while he and I ate our Domino’s pizza at the kitchen table. As he snarfed down his fifth slice of pepperoni, completely unaware of her presence, my mom made direct, searing eye contact with me over the top of his tattooed head. Raising one scarily pissed off eyebrow, she slowly and blatantly shifted her gaze down to Ding-Dong’s exposed scalp, drawing her mouth into a tight line of disgust. It was terrifying.
My mom doesn’t do pissed off, Journal. She’s usually too stoned to remember how feelings work most of the time, so this little demonstration was frighteningly out of character.
The only other memory that I didn’t completely repress from that evening was when my mom and I dropped Ding-Dong back off that night. Once he was out of the car and we were on our way back home, the panic set in, and I braced myself for my mother’s wrath. I literally curled up into the fetal position in the passenger seat and covered my head with my hands just in case she went full-on Mommie Dearest .
Although my mother was a hippie pacifist to the core and had only called me a bitch once in my life, I hadn’t exactly brought home a grown man with a penis tattooed on his head and zero high school diplomas before either.
All bets were off. And I was in survival mode.
Luckily, the months I’d spent trying not to become a crime-of-passion victim while dating Knight had made me a bona fide pro at scanning my surroundings for potential weapons. So, while my mom was busy looking both ways before pulling out of the neighborhood, I stealthily removed the cigarette lighter from the car’s ashtray and slipped it into the sleeve of my stud-covered hoodie. You never can be too careful. Now, all I had to worry about were her hands, that stabby-looking Celtic cross hanging from the rearview mirror, and that choky-looking strand of love beads hanging around her neck.
Shit.
After riding in suffocating silence with my knees up around my ears for a few miles, my natural tendency toward optimism took over, and I began to think, Maybe she’s just going to give me the silent treatment! Maybe she’s not actually going to disfigure me!
Then, her hand shot out in my direction.
Mommy, no!
Only, instead of smacking me in the mouth (which she’d probably decided against due to the
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