“All right, family,” I said to the crew sitting around in a tight circle of chairs in my 18th Street flat just north of Castro, “you may begin reading.”
They opened the manuscript and devoured the pages like vultures would feed on a pig carcass on a sun-scorched desert highway, tumbleweeds and all. My mother’s lips turned white when she turned to the second page. My brother scrunched up his forehead until it looked like a cinnamon danish. My sister let out a high-pitched squeak after she skipped ahead to the de-virginization chapter. How’d she know where to find it? Perhaps she’d read my blog, after all. And Dad popped his mouth open and groaned when he fingered his way to the end of the manuscript.
No surprise there. Dad always read the newspaper from the back to the front. I can remember him, sitting on the toilet Saturday mornings, reading the sports section, stinking up the whole house after French toast, bacon, and tomato juice.
And then it began. Mom pointed her index finger at me. “I did not have sex with my husband before marriage!”
“How’d you know about Beth Twiggles?” my brother said. “No one was home, I never told anyone. And those Cheetohs, you’re the one who stole them from my underwear drawer.”
My sister whimpered. “This is really insulting and disgusting. You’ve laid out our lives for the whole world to laugh at. I did not go around the world with Bobby Boulder!”
“Relax, everyone,” Dad finally said. “It ends happily. We all convene at the artist’s Noe Valley apartment and smoke a joint to celebrate the youngest’s smashing exhibition.”
Exhibition, indeed.
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