Poetic Justice

Every time my father asks me to get him a beer, I want to spit in it.
I don’t.

“Getting drunk again?” I ask, thrusting the beer at him.

“Really?” he replies, “What a f*ing coincidence, so am I!” I watch as he pops the aluminum top off with his front tooth. I turn to leave but am hailed by his catcalls.

“Son! My boy! My scrawny little man! How much ya weighing now? 110 pounds?”

“Something like that,” I mutter, one foot in the doorway the other poised to climb the stairs.

“Well don’t run away, sit sit sit.”

I laze over to the love chair across from him and feel the horrible irony of the seat radiate into my heart.

“When I was your age, I was ripped – like the Hulk. I mean, I had muscles this big, as big as your head.”

“Oh,” I say.

“I could lift 200 pounds with my biceps. Ya hear that? 200. Everyone feared me.”

I survey his wrinkled frame, his defeated, debilitating beer belly.

“Son, do you know how to throw down?”

“What?”

“Ya know, to fight. Put em up or shut up. How to rumble and roll. Do you know how?”

“I guess… I try to avoid-“

“See, that’s your problem. You just talk talk talk talk and can’t preform. In high school, everyone knew I was the guy who could lift 300 pounds. They all knew. Any cat that looked at me cross eyed, well, lets just say HULK SMASH!”

He pounds his fists for emphasis.

“They stayed cross eyed.”

“Oh?”

“And you know where that got me son?”

“A job working construction?”

His wheezy laughter fills the room.

“Oh you bullshitter! No NO! You know what lifting 400 pounds got me? The ladies. Tell me son, do you have a Main Hoe?”

“A- a what?”

“Do you have a woman in your life?”

“…Mom’s cooking dinner right now.”

“No, no someone other than your mom. Bitches, son, bitches. I had a whole gang of them. Everyone knew I was ripped up the ass so I had them by the dozen. I mean I was bangin them like pow pow pow-“

“TOM!” The shrill voice of my mother roars through the steam of the kitchen. I watch my father’s eyes shrink in their socket.

“Anyways,” he continues at a whisper, “What I’m trying to say is… is son… you need to stop being a son. You understand?”

“So I don’t have to get your beer for you anymore?”

“What? Don’t be stupid. I have a bad back. I used to be able to lift 600 pounds!”

“Right.”

“I’m saying – what I’m saying – I’m saying is… well, what do you want to do with your life?”

“My life?” I inquire.

“Yah your life? You wanna put up houses like your old man don’t you?”

“Not particularly.”

“Not particularly.” He mimics. “Come on son, don’t pull my leg. How are you gonna get a woman if your not putting in a god honest days work? Like a man. I used to have armloads of them. I mean more than I could put to bed in one night. They were all over me, brown on bean, they called me, the Trojan Explosion-“

“TOM GODDAMNIT!” My mother’s disembodied anger forces my father to flinch.

“Anyways, what do you wanna do?”

“Well, I was thinking… I like to write.”

“You like to ride!? Well hot damn, well make a man out of you yet. What do you ride? A Harley no doubt. My son is not going to riding round on a goddamn japense made flashy piece of –“

“No dad. Write. With a W. Poetry for instance.”

“POETRY!?” My dad’s face strains as if he actually was lifting 500 pounds.

“What are you, a faggot?!”

I study my toes.

“Jesus. My own son. Make yourself useful and get me a beer why don’t you.”

I shuffle in to the next room. The smell of warm tortillas hits me in the face as I spy my mom bent over the stove surrounded by a cloud of steam. Her face is dark and passive, the imaginary chains rattle as she moves about the flame.

Every time my dad asks me to get him a beer, I want to spit in it. This time I do.