Counter Waves

When you’re a kid and you walk in on your stepfather giving another dude a blowjob, nothing’s ever really the same again. 

He saw me, the other guy saw me, and as the other guy started to pull up his pants, I ran down the hallway and out the front door, leaving the door open. There was my stepfather’s car, but I didn’t see another car. That must have been a pretty uncomfortable drive back to wherever he had to bring the other guy.

I slept at Greg’s house. I didn’t tell him anything. I didn’t know what it meant yet. I kept seeing my stepfather’s face, that look of awful shame and guilt. I’ve felt that same look in my life. I think I sometimes must look the same way he did, but for different reasons. 

Greg and I got stoned. We blew the smoke through a toilet paper tube stuffed with dryer sheets. Then we passed out with the stereo playing Dylan’s Basement Tapes and the weed and bong and toilet paper tube sitting on Greg’s desk. I woke up with the lights flickering on and off and Greg’s mother shouting, “Couple of no-nothings, no-nothings, no-nothings!”

We hadn’t slept through the night. It was only midnight. I had to go back home. One time, when I