Chapter Four – What I’m Thankful For

Well, since I decided to be a little prolific on the writing side over the past two days, Chapter four is ready for public consumption. I will warn everyone that it is a long chapter. But with the length comes some amusement. At least, I hope that people find this chapter amusing. Some awful jokes I’m sure, but still amusing. If you haven’t gotten around to reading chapter three, please do so now because otherwise the first paragraph of this chapter will not make much sense to anyone.

Also, don’t forget to hit that wonderful donate button on the side so that I can continue to produce wonderful content for all you loyal readers out there. Remember, it works like PBS. The more you donate, the longer and better the content will get over time. I’m hoping to have chapter five done by the end of the weekend, and chapter six on rolling out by Tuesday or Wednesday. I should now be at 17,394 words alone for this book, and chapter four makes up about two fifths of that figure.

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Chapter Four

So the good news is that the kids never ate the cookies. As I suspected, they threw the cookies in the trash and their mother never thought anything of it. And then I called the mother, Andrea, and oddly enough she asked me out on a date. It was kind of interesting, because we went to a pizza place with the kids. Being a gentleman, I paid. Nothing more was said of that. And as I walked her back to her apartment, she asked me if we could see each other again. And being the idiot that I am, thinking with parts that are south of my brain, I said something along the lines of yes. And so we’ve been going out every once in a while.

Thanksgiving rolls around, and my mother calls me two days before to ask if I’m coming home. I’m not sure what to tell her, because Caroline has invited me to have Thanksgiving upstairs with her, her mother and her boyfriend whom mom found with Caroline on the couch. Apparently she calmed down.

So I don’t know what to say to my mother.

“Well, are you coming to see me and your father or not?” she asked.

“I got invited to a dinner upstairs, and I don’t want to be rude to them.”

My mother just sighed. “Fine, go to that Thanksgiving dinner. But you’re coming for Christmas, right?”

“Yes, I’m coming for Christmas.”

“You better come for Christmas. I’m not buying you a sweater for nothing.”

“Mom, you’re not really going to get me a sweater, are you?”

It’s a running joke in our family that all we would buy each other for Christmas was a sweater. It seems to have started with my father one year getting a sweater from my mother when I was fifteen. He complained about that sweater for a solid month. It was a horrid looking sweater, a combination of colors that would get you shot down by the fashion police if you wore it in public. And since he made a big deal out of it, we decided to carry it onward through the years, and now we joke about buying each other sweaters.

“I might if you don’t come for Christmas,” she said jokingly.

“I’m coming for Christmas then. I don’t want to get killed by the fashion police.”

I get off the phone with my mother and realize that maybe she isn’t joking about buying me a sweater this year. How do you shop for a son that has everything that he could ever want? You can’t necessarily buy your son a sports car, even though he wants one. A convertible would be nice though, even though the cost to park it in the city would be utterly ridiculous.

The days roll by, and things become increasingly hectic at work. The mail room girl apparently got fired for testing positive on her random drug test. I need to be a little more careful at this point, and remind myself that I’m not invincible when it comes to the random drug screenings. At least she was nice and didn’t rat me out. But after she leaves in disgrace, I feel the need to keep a low profile at work and decided to stop making my bi-weekly trips outside for my smoke break, and maybe take a break from smoking so much to begin with. I think that this was all brought on by handing the kids the cookies by accident. That could have been the worst situation in the world, but instead turned out positively with a regular dating partner who actually has some pretty cool kids. Andrea is pretty cool though, and I think if I behave myself this relationship might actually go somewhere.

The thing I can’t believe is that she is only 30 years old and already has 6-year-old and 8-year-old kids. I mean, she had to be 21 when she first got pregnant. And I haven’t brought up the subject of the father yet, but it kind of interests me for some reason. I’m only 25, and I can’t imagine being a parent. I think I’m too self-centered to be one. I can’t see how my parents raised me, since I’m exactly like them.

The day comes and I head upstairs to Thanksgiving with a bottle of wine and a pie I bought from the store. Apple pie, mainly because it’s a safe food. Everyone likes Apple pie, don’t they? At least, I like Apple pie, and I don’t know of any sane American who doesn’t like Apple pie, much less apples. They’re tasty. The elevator, for once, is completely empty. Apparently the old lady who lives downstairs takes a break from riding the elevator when Thanksgiving rolls around. Maybe she went out of town to visit her children, or some relatives or something.

I walk down the hallway, listening to the noise of music coming from behind people’s doors, or the yearly Thanksgiving pro football game that is always on TV. Isn’t it the Dallas Cowboys and the Detroit Lions the teams that always play on Thanksgiving? I can’t ever remember. Anyhow, I get to the door after listening to many happy people eating their Thanksgiving dinners with their relatives and I knock.

Rachel comes to the door with an apron on over a v-neck blouse and oven mitts on her hands.

“Hi Josh!” she says excitedly. She hugs me, tightly. I begin to feel a little awkward.

“Honey,” she yells back into the apartment, “Josh is here!”

Caroline comes sauntering in from the couch with her boyfriend in tow. Her boyfriend is a tall and slim black man with oddly enough, a Mohawk. A blue Mohawk. Wow. Is he what I think he is?

But my thoughts are interrupted as he stuck out his hand. “Hi, I’m Marcus.”

“Hi, I’m Josh.”

“Oh, you’re Josh! Caroline has said good things about you.”

Can we say awkward? Caroline told her boyfriend about hanging out with me? What kind of bizarre world is this that I’ve stepped into? It’s as if I’m stuck in an episode of the Twilight Zone Thanksgiving Special. I’m about to enter another dimension when I step through the door frame, one where it bends time and space and suddenly I see myself in the mirror as one of those weird looking alien people from the show. And the turkey is actually a cooked dinosaur. Yummy, I thought I just had a craving for Pterodactyl. I wonder if that comes in both light and dark meat?

I was finally allowed inside of the apartment after handing over the bottle of wine to Rachel and having a seat on the couch. I felt kind of dirty sitting down on the couch where I know Caroline and Marcus have been making out. About ten seconds after getting comfortable on the couch, Rachel calls in from the kitchen asking me to come open the bottle of wine for her while she finishes cooking.

So I get up, because I’m a gentleman, and head inside of the kitchen. She hands me the bottle of wine and the corkscrew, and I open it with ease. I’ve done this sort of thing before, helping out in the kitchen when I’m needed. She tells me where the wine glasses are, and I take down two glasses and pour. I fill my glass about halfway, and she tells me where to stop on hers. And so I hand her a full glass of wine, and just as she sits it down everything is apparently done. Fortunately, it’s turkey and not pterodactyl. I think maybe I wouldn’t have liked the dark meat so much.

And we all sit down at the table. There are all sorts of Thanksgiving food, like mashed potatoes and a green bean casserole, and of course turkey. Then there are rolls, cranberry sauce from the can that is sliced but looks awful because I can’t stand cranberry sauce, and gravy. Another thing I can’t stand, and maybe it has to do with not understanding the appeal of gravy. It’s just some liquefied fat or nastiness that I don’t quite get, and don’t like to eat. Liquid and solids on the same plate should never be mixed. I’m really not one for traditional Thanksgiving food to begin with, so I just take the turkey, mashed potatoes and a couple of rolls on my plate and begin to eat. Rachel looks over at me a little disappointed.

“Sorry, I’m just not huge on Thanksgiving food. I like turkey and all, but you know, I’ve just never really got into cranberry sauce or gravy.”

“Well, have you ever tried it?” Caroline asked.

“Yes, when I was younger. And I ruined Thanksgiving by getting sick at the table. Well, actually, my whole family got sick. Apparently the can of cranberry sauce was out of date or something, and the store hadn’t taken it off the shelf.”

“Well,” Marcus said, “that must have been a revolting experience.”

“Yeah, you could say that.”

The conversation sort of died with that, and Marcus and I stared back at each other. He reminded me of a character from Mad Max, when he was being chased by all of those crazy people over a tanker full of gasoline. The Mohawk specifically made it seem like that. His appearance was that of a punk rocker kid who had missed the fact that the 1970s had come and gone, and was living in a time warp. But then again, I didn’t know they made punk rockers in black, or any other color than white.

The conversation drifted from family to school, and finally landed on music. Marcus started off the conversation by asking me what kind of music I listen to.

“I listen to all sorts of music, really. I’m currently listening to a lot of Common right now, and my usual repeat of Bruce Springsteen, The Beatles and….”

“The Sex Pistols,” Caroline interrupted.

“You’re a fan of The Sex Pistols?” Marcus asked.

“Yeah, I’m a fan of The Sex Pistols. Why?” I asked, not sure where this was going.

“I love The Sex Pistols. They’re like, so incredible. I wish they were still around.”

“Who doesn’t?” I replied.

“See, I told you he was cool,” Caroline said to Marcus while looking at me. Rachel was eyeing me from the head of the table, also unsure of where this was going.

“So what do you do for a living?” Marcus asked.

“I’m in PR,” I said, and then went into a lengthy explanation of why my job was quite possibly the most horrible job that God could have ever made in the history of the world.

“See, in PR you have to be overly polite all the time. Like for instance, I could have made some horrible off-color comment about how you were a punk rocker, but instead I found out that we had common interests in The Sex Pistols.”

“What?” Marcus asked, not sure of whether or not to be offended by the comment.

“No dude, I’m not trying to offend you or anything, I just didn’t know that you were into punk rock or the lifestyle. Caroline doesn’t exactly talk about you that much.”

“Umm, Josh, you need to be quiet now,” Caroline said.

“Who said anything about me being a punk rocker? Is it because of the blue Mohawk?” Marcus asked.

“Well, I just naturally assumed…”

“No, you’re wrong about the Mohawk,” he interrupted. “My brother thought it would be a funny idea to dye my hair while I was sleeping, and then shave it into a Mohawk as a joke. My mother is still pissed off about it because I won’t finish shaving my head completely.”

“Oh dude, that’s not cool,” I said.

“Yeah, I know. My brother didn’t even get into trouble for it, because my Dad thought it was the funniest thing in the world.”

“Damn.”

“Hey Josh,” Rachel slurred, “Where is that apple pie you brought with you? I’m still hungry!”

Rachel had a little too much wine.

“Josh,” she began again as we all stared at her getting up, “come help me cut the pie. I think I’m going to need some assistance with the cutting of the pie.”

“Um, sure Rachel,” I said back.

Before she got up from her chair, she slipped on a dropped piece of cranberry sauce and fell face first into the gravy. Her face was covered in the nasty brown concoction, and Caroline and I grabbed her and took her over to the couch. Caroline left to go find a dish towel to wipe the gravy from her mother’s face, as I crouched on the floor in front of the couch making sure Rachel wasn’t about to die. Instead of crying because she had gravy all over her face, she was laughing.

“Oh Josh,” she slurred, “Did you see that? I just fell face first into the gravy!”

“Yes, I saw that Rachel.”

“Isn’t that hilarious?” she asked, slurring a little more pronounced now.

“Mhm,” I replied, not really sure how to answer.

Marcus came into the living room after he apparently disappeared into the bathroom with a safety razor. His Mohawk had disappeared.

“Hey Josh, how does this look?” he asked, wiping the little bit of shaving cream that was left on his stubbly head.

“Holy shit,” Caroline said coming back into the room. “What the fuck did you do to your hair Marcus?”

“I shaved it. I thought that maybe I was making people uncomfortable by not sticking to the stereotype. Isn’t that right, Josh?”

Damn. First a drunken woman falling into the gravy, and now an angry young man who thinks that I’m a racist. This dinner is much more entertaining than I originally thought it was going to be.

At some point, Rachel had moved her hand to my backside, and began to squeeze, kind of hard.

“You know Josh, I’ve always found you attractive!”

Awkward.

“Josh, you think that black people only listen to Snoop Dogg and smoke weed? Do you think we drink 40s down on the corners while we deal drugs? That we all smoke crack in flop houses and we’re raised not by our mothers, but our grandmothers?!?”

“MARCUS, YOU STOP BEING MEAN TO JOSH!” Caroline yelled.

“Josh baby, I think I’m going to be sick,” Rachel said.

Oh crap. Where’s a trash can.

“Someone please grab a trash can, and quickly,” I asked.

“How dare you assume that I’m nothing but a typical black stereotype. I’m not what you think I am Josh, not one bit,” Marcus said.

Caroline, having the foresight and a clear head, grabs a trash can and places it by her mother just in time for her to be sick. Apparently, Rachel can’t handle her wine.

“Marcus, shut up,” Caroline said.

“But baby, he’s being such a WASP!”

“Look honey, I’m sure he didn’t mean anything by what he said. Remember, he’s had a little bit to drink. And why did you shave your Mohawk? You know I liked it!” Caroline shouted at Marcus.

As they argued, Rachel was still groping my butt and I decided that maybe it was time for me to leave. The butt groping sealed the deal, but the awkward argument about my apparent WASP racism just made matters worse. I removed Rachel’s hand from my bottom with some force, and then went towards the door.

“Wait, Josh,” Rachel slurred, looking up from the couch. “Don’t forget to take your pie with you!”

I was about to walk out of the door when Caroline noticed I was trying to make my escape from the Twilight Zone Thanksgiving Special.

“No, you’re not leaving yet Josh!” Caroline shrieked. “We have not yet watched the movie. Marcus, apologize for calling Josh a WASP racist. Mom, go back to your bedroom and go puke in the toilet there. Josh, you get back here and sit.”

Caroline, it seemed, was now in control. We had carried Rachel back to her bathroom because when she tried to get up, she fell down on the floor. Caroline and I put her in the bathtub so that she could get sick in an environment where it could easily be cleaned up. A Haz Mat team wouldn’t be needed after all. We were extremely lucky that she decided to get sick in the trash can too, and not on the carpet. That stain would never have come out.

Caroline and I went back into the living room where Marcus was sitting on the couch with his arms folded over his chest.

“Now Marcus, I believe you owe Josh an apology for offending him,” Caroline commanded.

Apparently, the argument they had begun before after he accused me of being a racist was about to continue.

“But baby, I haven’t said anything that I don’t believe to be true. He basically tried to make me into some kind of weirdo.”

“Well, I don’t think he meant to, ok?” Caroline said.

“But baby,” Marcus started, but she silenced him quickly with her finger pointing in the air.

“No more from you, Marcus. Now both of you will apologize to each other. I’m not going to have my Thanksgiving ruined anymore by two boys who can’t control their words well enough to form complete sentences half of the time.”

Damn, Caroline was on a roll.

We both apologized, and we sat down on the couch. I really wished I had smoked a cigarette before coming over here, because now I was in dire need of nicotine and I had no means of getting any. Caroline noticed my twitching, and asked me what was up.

“Oh, nothing,” I said.

“Don’t start with me. You’re not allowed to smoke yet. We’re going to sit down together and watch a movie. Aren’t we, Marcus?”

“Yes ma’am.”

Apparently he had gotten smart and decided not to argue with Caroline anymore.

“Good. Now Josh, would you like to watch Monty Python or James Bond?”

Oh man, decision time. I don’t know, both Monty Python and James Bond have their own positives and negatives. But what Bond? Connery? Moore? Which Monty Python? Holy Grail or Meaning of Life? This is a tough decision. So I ask what she has, Connery Bond or Moore Bond and which Monty Python. I was let down to know that she had the Timothy Dalton “License to Kill” Bond, but at least she had Holy Grail. We went with Holy Grail.

Three hours later, we were all in a good mood again and Marcus had let up on his theory that I was a WASP racist. I’d seen Holy Grail so many times from when I was a teenager that I could quote it by heart, especially the scene with the Black Knight.

Once the movie was over, I decided to go home and maybe get some sleep. I shook Marcus’s hand and Caroline hugged me and thanked me for coming. She apologized that her mother got trashed and required help. Caroline told me that she’d let her mother sleep it off in the bath tub to remind her not to get drunk in front of company anymore. I apologized for bringing the bottle of wine.

I rode the elevator back downstairs, and walked down the hallway listening to the music of my neighbors celebrating their day off with tryptophan-laden meals and lots of leftovers.

I got to my door and found a note from Andrea, asking me to call her when I got back home. So I called her, and apparently her ex-husband had the kids for Thanksgiving, and she wanted some company for the rest of the evening. So I went down, like the good pseudo-boyfriend that I am, and we hung out and watched TV together for a while. This could have been a disastrous night if it had not been for Caroline’s aggressive command of the situation between Rachel and I, and then the apparent misunderstanding between Marcus and I. I told Andrea what had happened, and she got mad at me for not bringing her along.

“Well, I thought you had Thanksgiving plans?”

“Well, I did go to Thanksgiving at my parents place uptown, but that is always boring. All they talk about is how my dad is making so much money in the stock market and how my mom just got the nicest new dress. There’s only so much of that I can take. Watching someone else get drunk and grope you while an angry young kid accuses you of being a racist would have provided at least a little bit of variety to my Thanksgiving.”

“I’m sorry, I should have thought about inviting you,” I said apologetically.

”You’re forgiven just this once. Next time you’ll tell me when you’re going back upstairs for an event? Apparently this Rachel has a bit more than a crush on you, and that would be amusing to watch.”

Oh Andrea, you kidder.

“Don’t even get me started on Rachel. I’m not even sure what the hell to think about her to be honest with you Andrea. It’s weird. I get this creepy stalker vibe from her. And there’s something else there that I can’t quite put my finger on.”

“What do you mean, ‘creepy stalker vibe’? Guys don’t get stalked by women, do they?”

“This will actually be woman number two who has stalked me,” I said.

“Wait, you’ve had this problem before?” Andrea asked, astonished that I would even be around women like these, the stalkers who have unrealistic crushes on me.

“A girl named Melanie I dated in college started stalking me when we broke up. I finally called the cops when she actually accosted my new girlfriend, who just happened to be her next door neighbor that she never met in her entire life. Actually, I didn’t know the lived next door to each other until I picked her up on the first date. Isn’t that crazy?”

“Yeah Josh, that’s a little weird. You’re not going to turn into a crazy stalker on me, are you?”

“You have nothing to worry about from me Andrea, I can say that much. My mother taught me better than to pursue women who show no interest in me, myself or I,” I said.

She laughed, and we cuddled on the couch with each other for a while. At some point, and I think it might have been after the first kiss, we ended up rolling around half-naked on the floor, doing adult things amongst the action figures and the sharp Lego blocks and the toy cars and the Barbie dolls that for some reason were kept in the living room on the floor near the television. I felt a little uncomfortable to find the 8-year-old girl playing doctor with her little brother’s G.I. Joe and her Malibu Barbie in the backseat of Barbie’s Ford Mustang Convertible with the top down so that everyone could see clearly what they were doing up on Lover’s Lane. But the thing that really started disturbing me about the whole situation, was the fact that G.I. Joe wasn’t even fully naked, and just had his pants around his ankles showing off his plastic legs. And man oh man, look at those grapefruit calves. I wish my legs were built like that. Actually, I think G.I. Joe is still holding his gun. But what really amuses me is that Barbie really looks like a dirty slut in the backseat of her Mustang, her legs slightly spread wide and the mini skirt hiked up above her hips so that there was a full view of the non-biologically correct crotch. I wonder what Ken must be doing while Barbie is away having sex with Sergeant Survivor Steve. Maybe he’s banging the black Barbie doll because Ken might have jungle fever. He likes his coffee like he likes his women – black with lots of sugar. Or maybe he’s off getting the Barbie friend Midge pregnant again. They actually make a pregnant Barbie doll. Can you believe this? I’m sorry, pregnant Barbie friend Midge is just not right. And who in their right mind names their child Midge? Or a doll even? I think Mattel needs to reevaluate their position on the naming of Barbie’s friends, especially Midge. And I think that Midge is a bad example for the young girls of America. Because where’s the father at in this whole pregnancy situation? It can’t be Ken! He’s basically Barbie’s man whore!

I get distracted as I feel a few Lego blocks stab me in the back and a plastic hand reaching inside the crack in my nonexistent backside region. I let out a whoop and then she got off of the top of me.

“What’s the matter Josh?”

“I think G.I. Joe might be following the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy of the U.S. Armed Forces,” I say as I pull the action figure out from underneath me, and hand it to Andrea.

“Oh, Sergeant Steve, who do you think you are trying to get fresh with my man? I don’t think you’ll be doing that again, now will you?”

She tossed the action figure aside, and it landed perfectly on top of the G.I. Joe who is on top of Barbie in the convertible. Now it’s a threesome! A plastic THREESOME! This could be a great “Toys Gone Wild” video if that was ever made. I’m thinking of this and finally start to giggle as Andrea begins to kiss me again and she pushes herself above me a little bit like an angel overlooking a child in the night, and asks me what the hell is so funny?

“Well, it’s just that… oh nothing,” I said.

“No, tell me what you’re thinking,” she says, rolling off of me and landing on a pile of Lego blocks that had been scattered around.

“Ouch!” she yelped.

“Are you ok Andrea?” I asked.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” she said. “Now tell me Mr. Funny McFunnerson, what’s so hilarious that you just had to laugh and giggle?”

I hesitated, squirmed uncomfortably on the floor seeing that Barbie and the G.I. Joe’s are still enjoying themselves in the backseat of the Barbie Mustang.

“What,” she asks again, as I burst into a fit of giggles.

I regained control of myself. “It’s just that… well, look in the Barbie convertible over there. I think your little girl likes to play doctor with Barbie and G.I. Joe, or Joes in this case.”

“Oh my god!” she exclaimed as she saw what I was looking at. “I can’t believe that she did that!”

“Well, at least Barbie and G.I. Joe, well, both of the G.I. Joes, are having a good time,” I said.

“Samantha’s only 8-years-old! SHE SHOULDN’T KNOW ANYHTING ABOUT SEX! She hasn’t even seen a PG-13 movie yet,” Andrea continued onward in her rampage.

“Well, it is ‘Toys Gone Wild!’” I said.

“She can’t stay up past 8:30, and we only watch cartoons… wait, what?”

She just figured out what I said.

“’Toys Gone Wild.’ Barbie hooks up with Sergeant Survivor Steve, while Ken gets jungle fever with Barbie’s black girlfriend. And Midge, well… who wants a pregnant Barbie doll?”

Andrea laughed and crawled over to a Rubbermaid container, sifted through it, and tosses over a doll while chuckling at her find in the box. I catch it in a dive on the floor, being stabbed by a G.I. Joe assault rifle in the side. When I get back up into a sitting position on the floor, I look at what I’ve been tossed. It’s a naked pregnant Midge.

“You bought this for your daughter?” I asked.

“Yeah, she asked for it, and so I bought it.”

“Well, this explains a lot on why Barbie is in the backseat.”

“Yeah, I guess this does,” she said.

Just for the hell of it, I check between Midge’s legs to see if she is anatomically correct. Obviously not, and I should have known it. But I think it’s worth it, just to see. Does this make a dirty man? Maybe. Way too curious about a doll? Definitely. Andrea sees what I’m doing.

“There’s an OBGYN Barbie for that, you know. They even have a Barbie O.R. scenery for the birthing too. Just no Ken in scrubs with a camcorder.”

“Is there?”

“Yep. But I don’t really see the point since Midge isn’t anatomically correct anyhow, do you?” she asked.

“Not really,” I said. “But you know, it’s really no wonder that Barbie is cheating on Ken with G.I. Joe. She’s jealous that Midge gets to have the baby!”

“Yeah, that or my daughter figured out how babies are made. That thought scares me more than anything. Now she’ll end up being freaky or something,” Andrea said with a little bit of sarcasm.

“Well, it could be worse. She could be totally unprepared to go out into the dating world. There are lots of dangers out there now.”

“Yeah, like AIDS,” Andrea said.

“Teen pregnancy,” I added.

“And then bisexuality and gay bars.” She looks over at the G.I. Joe on top of the good old Sergeant Survivor Steve. She giggles.

“Drugs,” I say, adding to it. Then she gets a little serious again.

“Sex toys!” She exclaimed.

“Gonosyphillaherpalades!” I say excitedly, and she laughs at me.

We both fall on the floor half naked, laughing at our silliness. We both are no longer in the mood to fool around with one another, so we decide to just lay on the floor with each other for a while. Then at some point we both get uncomfortable spooning on the floor and move to the couch, and she finally falls asleep up against me on the couch with HBO in the background, with movie after bad movie coming on in the middle of the night. She slept in my arms, and it felt wonderful. It was comforting getting to hold a wonderful woman like Andrea, a beautiful woman. A woman with wonderful children, regardless of whether or not Samantha knows about sex and Jake’s rambunctious nature, they were still good kids. And for some reason, she likes going out with me. I don’t see why she likes hanging out in the park with me, and cuddling on the couch half-naked with me. I’m having trouble understanding exactly what it is about me that she likes so much. It might be because I see myself differently than others might see my character and personality. Or maybe I’m just paranoid. I should probably just consider the alternative of telling my brain to shut up and go with it, and consider the opposite of this relationship. That opposite is sleeping with Rachel. And just thinking about that makes me want to shudder.

I finally fall asleep next to Andrea, thinking about how lucky I am to be next to her right now in this cozy little apartment on this cold November night instead of laying in bed alone in my apartment. This is definitely a better option than being by myself.

I wake up the next morning bright and early realizing that I am alone on the couch. I look over at the clock and see that it is 6 a.m. What time did we go to sleep? 1 a.m.? That is definitely not enough sleep for me. Then I look to see what’s on TV. It hasn’t been changed to the news yet, and a bad 1980s comedy starring Roseanne Barr is on HBO. It’s called “She Devil,” and the only reason I know this is because one afternoon while I was stoned it made me laugh, so I kept it on. Then I saw it sober and reminded myself of why I disliked Roseanne in the first place. I swear, this woman has a voice on her that I just can’t stand. It’s just so whiney and unattractive. Then I stop to think about it, and wonder where Andrea has move along to.

I get up and head to the bathroom first, and come out after washing my hands and face. Then while walking towards the kitchen, I smell coffee. And then I get a whiff of bacon cooking, and pancakes. And finally I recognize the sweet smell of maple syrup. Someone has been making breakfast. And it smells just right. Thank goodness they haven’t been sleeping in my bed. Yet.
I succeed in finding her over the stove in the kitchen, making pancakes and cooking bacon on one of those special plates in the microwave. She’s hold a cup of coffee in her left hand, and a spatula in her right. She looks over when she hears me entering the room and a devilish little smile lights up her face and replaces the early morning frown.

“Good morning sleepy head,” Andrea greets me from the stove. She sets her own cup of coffee down on the counter and grabs a cup from the cabinet to the left. “I assume you drink coffee, right Josh?”

“Besides Coca-Cola and nicotine, it’s the other component of what my blood is made up of,” I tell her. Even groggy and tired, I still have the ability to be sarcastic and amusing. I wouldn’t call myself a morning person, per se, but I’m definitely not an evil man in the morning. I was a little stiff in the small of my back, so I leaned backwards far and stretched. I yawned and spread my arms wide. My eyes were still slits, and my contacts were completely dried and stuck to my eyes.

“Well then,” she said, handing me the cup. “Follow the smell to the coffee.” I nodded, and she continued, explaining where the spoons and sugar and cream for the coffee is placed in the kitchen. Cream is obvious though, because it’s definitely not the dried powdered cream, but the nice milky stuff. I don’t use cream though. I hate cream in coffee. Cream kills the taste of coffee, and sugar is a close second but a necessary evil.

I just stood there, even with the knowledge of where everything was, and noticed that it was sort of light outside. I can’t remember the last time I was awake at this hour. The last time I was up at this time must have been during high school.

“Oh, can you make me a new cup of too sweetie? Two sugars and cream,” she said, handing me the cup while she flipped a pancake.

I shuffled over to the coffeemaker and yawned, and made coffee. I placed her cup on the counter next to her. The pancakes were done, and so she asked me to take the cup into the living area where the table was. Her “dining room table” was an Ikea affair, made out of particle board that looks like maple. The chairs are solid and are the same color.

So this is domestic life? Waking up half past the ass crack of dawn? Eating pancakes and bacon for breakfast? Making coffee for my partner in crime and I? Watching the Today Show on NBC? Watching Network television in the morning to begin with? Something doesn’t seem right about this situation. I think I should be more like my parents and continue my self-centered lifestyle, no kids whatsoever. Kids are just another complication in life that I don’t need to deal with when I’m trying to watch football on ESPN. I like being able to do what I want to, so kids are probably not on the agenda.

While we were eating breakfast, about an hour into The Today Show while Katie Couric was interviewing Kurt Vonnegut (an interview I was watching with a more than mild interest) a knock comes at the door. And then I understood what all the food and the good breakfast were made for. The kids probably hadn’t eaten yet this morning, and their Dad brought them home. Andrea ran over to the door and flung it open, and pulled her children towards her as they stood at the door.

“Oh, I missed both of you so much!” she exclaimed as she hugged her children tightly.

And then I see him. HE walks in behind the kids after Andrea gets up off of the floor and the kids run into the room. He surveys the apartment, all over. You can tell by his eyes that he’s admiring the wall color, and the carpeted floors. He’s looking at the bookshelves and the living room. He notices the smells of breakfast in the kitchen, and then he looks right at me, sitting down at the table.

“Hello, Ben,” Andrea says politely, taking the two small suitcases that she sent with the kids. The two stare at each other for a few seconds, directly into each others eyes. Andrea looks as if she could strangle him right here and now, and the stare is finally interrupted by Jake tugging on her blouse that she wore the night before.

“Mommy! Mommy!” Jake yelped. “Guess what? I got to ride on a four wheeler with Daddy!”

“Really?” Andrea said with surprise, the way that you say really to small children.

“Yep. And I got to see a big old bear too! He was really big and tall!”

“Show Mommy how tall he was,” Ben said. Jake stretched his hands up as far as he could, and said “This tall!”

“Wow!” Andrea said in the same way she said ‘really’ earlier. I haven’t learned how to talk to children like Andrea is able to. Maybe one of these days I’ll finally figure it out, but probably not.

After paying attention to Jake for a moment, both Ben and I turn our collective attentions back at each other. He’s a tall guy, about 6-foot-2 and around 200 pounds. And he’s thick, but not fat. Yet, he’s not muscular either. He looks like his muscles at one point had been toned and he could have destroyed a man with squishing a head in between his elbow while flexing his bicep. If I were a betting man, I’d say that Ben is probably in his mid-30s. He had slicked back jet black hair, and decidedly wore Gucci. Even when dropping his kids off back here at the apartment, the man was vain enough to dress up and wear his Gucci shoes, suit, shirt and tie. He is the kind of guy who wears large gold rings on his fingers, and a cross concealed around his neck.

“Ok, Daddy has to go now kids,” Ben said, and the two children ran over and hugged him quickly and ran back off to play with their toys in the living room.

“Oh, before you go Ben, meet Josh. He lives upstairs and is a friend of mine.”

A friend of hers is the polite way of saying that I’m sleeping with her, I guess.

“Oh. Hi, I’m Ben Rochester. It’s nice to meet you.” He said, sticking his hand out with a little bit of force. I took it, and he shook my hand hard. He squeezed it a little bit, but I squeezed back, and hard. I could hear one of his knuckles crack under the pressure. I was angry at him.

“Well, it was nice to meet you Josh. I need to get out of here and go to the office. Bye Andrea.”

“Bye Ben,” Andrea said politely, and he walked out. She shut the door and locked it behind her. She took in a deep breath.

“I’m guessing that was your ex-husband?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said, and took our plates to the kitchen, and put them in the sink.

Already I don’t like Ben. I couldn’t see how he could have allowed himself to lose a wonderful woman like Andrea and wonderful kids like Samantha and Jake. It didn’t make any sense to me why a man such as himself, one that sees himself as being “nearly perfect” would decide to abandon this great family of his for well, whatever reason that Andrea and he broke up. It could be her fault that they broke up, true. But I don’t see her as the cheating kind of woman. I do see Ben as the cheating kind of man.

I shrug though and walk into the living room with the kids and proceed to sit on the floor by a big pile of Lego blocks and see what they are building.

“Can I help?” I ask Jake.

“Yes.”

“Ok.”

And we sat there for two hours building a fort, watching cartoons and doing silly things. I’ve always been a little boy at heart, and getting to play with Jake on a school day was really great. I should really do this whole “hanging out with the kids” thing more often.