Social Blunders Read Free Page A

drugs can’t take it, and finally you start to hallucinate your ass off.
    I heard hoofbeats; the buffalo snorted and blew steam and red foam from his nostrils; the horse screamed as its back was broken. The wall framing the painting thrummed with the low breathing of a sleeping beast. Hallucinations can be cool, or they can scare the living bejesus out of a person.
    Women’s faces swooped at me—Lydia, Maurey, Shannon, Gus. Then bodies—beautiful bodies with elbows, shoulder blades, the backs of knees, necks, feet, and fingers—all the parts that I love. Like bats, crotches began swooping out of the buffalo’s head, straight at my own. Here came the wispy blond tufts of Leigh, the stiff-as-a-hairbrush bush of Janey, Wanda’s crotch shaved smooth like a volleyball. Darlene, Karlene, and Charlene. Sweet Maria. Linda the raw oyster.
    Before Wanda, I was rarely able to hold a woman longer than two menstrual periods. Rejection came soon after copulation, but there for a while copulation came with rapid-fire regularity. Call it the conquest-and-loss syndrome. It was nothing I did or deserved. Any non-jerk who is young, fairly well off, and single—and has a beautiful daughter—can find short-term romance. Plus Maurey taught me how to get the girls off every time. That helps.
    I leaned forward with my eyes closed, sweat dribbling off my chin onto the handlebars, concentrating on the parade of crotches. I could taste each woman’s juice on my tongue and the back of my mouth. A sound came like water on concrete, and I opened my eyes. The Indians had been replaced by five men who stood in a circle with their penises out, aimed at the buffalo, who had turned into a woman I couldn’t recognize. She lay on the floor with her dress torn and her back bare and bleeding while the men urinated on her.

3
    “I found every last one of them,” Shannon said as she blew into the kitchen the next morning. She was wearing white shorts and a teenage wench top that reminded me of Paw Paw Callahan’s undershirts. A boy followed several paces behind, assuming the demeanor of a well-trained spaniel.
    “This is Eugene,” Shannon said. “Eugene, my dad.”
    The boy stepped around Shannon to shake my hand. I stayed seated in front of the red beans and biscuits Gus insists I eat every morning of my put-upon life.
    “Pleased to meet you, sir,” Eugene said. His hand was the texture of deep-fried tofu. In my day, we didn’t go around touching the fathers of girls we boffed.
    I looked past him. “Where were you last night, little lady?”
    Shannon ignored my question as she poured herself and Eugene mugs of coffee. Eugene had that classic psych major look—receding hairline, dribbly chin, canvas shoes. Shannon put Sweet’n Low in his coffee without asking. She wrinkled her nose flirtatiously at him, then turned to me and said, “It only took four hours at the library. You could have done it years ago.”
    “Forms must be maintained,” I said. “If you’re going to stay out all night I demand the courtesy of being lied to.”
    Shannon reached in her day pack and pulled out a nightgown. I scowled at Eugene, who hung his head and grinned. If he said “Aw, shucks,” I meant to plaster the kid—red beans right up the snout. Beneath the nightgown, Shannon found what she was looking for—a letter-size envelope and a larger manila envelope.
    She came over and dropped them on the table next to my Greensboro News . “Names and addresses of all your fathers.”
    “What?”
    “Greensboro only had three high schools in 1949. All we had to do was find the yearbooks.”
    “Your black father took the longest,” Eugene said.
    I lifted the letter envelope and four photographs fell out. “Where did you get these?”
    Shannon opened the refrigerator and peered inside. “Don’t be dramatic, Daddy. Where do you think I got them? You were moping around like a wounded bear over Wanda the witch, so Eugene and I decided you needed something to do.