It had been another week before I attempted to reach out to Chad and find out how mom was doing. I called him from a campus pay phone and shifted nervously on my feet as it rang. Just as I had been about to hang up, he answered in a groggytone.
“’lo,” hemumbled.
I looked at my watch; it was just past four in the afternoon. Was he just wakingup?
“Hey.” I could tell that he wasn’t going to say anything, or maybe he hadn’t recognized my voice. “It’s me.Ryan.”
“What the fuck do you want? Are you going to come over so we can do thevideo?”
“What? Are you out of yourmind?”
I was instantly in a bad mood and regretted calling. I had been concerned about Mom. God only knew whythough.
“Ry, I need money. Marie and I have fucked, and I put every one of those things online. They aren’t selling as well. Guy and girl videos are a dime a dozen now.” I rolled my eyes and leaned on the metal frame of the pay phone. “I had talked a chick from rehab into a video a few daysago—”
Rehab? He was finally inrehab?
“Rehab?” Iasked.
“Yeah, the fucking court ordered it for my second DUI. So, I talked this chick into a blow job scene. I thought it’d be cool to get one of those ‘caught on tape’ video scenes.” I frowned as Chad talked up this terrible sounding video. “I set everything up to record and catch Marie’s expression when she walked in on this other chick blowing me. Dude, I have to tell you, this girl was fucking horrible at sucking cock. You were even better than this girl.” I pulled the phone away and held it down to my side as his loud laughter echoed out of the earpiece. I took a deep breath and brought the phone back to my ear at the tail end of his burst of laughter. “Anyhow, so Marie walks in, and fuckingexplodes.”
“Gee, I wonderwhy.”
“She goes ballistic and yanks the chick off my dick. They’re arguing and swearing and meantime I’m trying to get the camera to catch all the great angles. It’s like those fucking commercials, man. Priceless, or some shit. But even after all of that, the video still didn’t sell as well. I uploaded it the night of the video, and it did okay, but not great. I need money and Marie is fucking pissed at me. She’s staying at some bitch’s apartment for awhile.”
It was lost on me how my brother thought this was acceptable behavior in any form. But, somewhere deep in me, I was thrilled Marie was pissed off and out of the picture fornow.
“Ry, I need money. I sold most of Dad’s tools. Mom doesn’tknow.”
Mom.
“That’s why I called. I wanted to see how Mom is.” I rolled the zipper pull between my fingers as I remembered Mom’s bizarre behavior last weekend. “She wasn’t acting likeherself.”
“Pussy, I need some money. Come over and let’s make avideo.”
“No. How isMom?”
“I’ve got it all figured out for some new scenes. You’ll come home from college to visit, and you’ll have missed your bigbrother—”
“Fuck! Knock it off!” I hissed into the phone and checked mysurroundings.
“We’ll make a bunch of these, and I’ll make them into a series. I’m going to call it ‘Breeding Bros.’” Fuck. “Get it, man? Like a business but also for being family. Like a family business.” His laughter at his own idea repulsed me. “That would sell, Ry, and you’d getlaid.”
“Maybe you should concentrate on getting a regular job that can get you a weeklypaycheck—”
“Don’t call me and feed me your fucking college boy mentality. Maybe you should stop fucking around with the baseball boys and come help me. Do you have to suck a lot of professor dick or eat out a bunch of hairy twats just to barely pass? School ain’t for you little bro. I hate to break it to you. I’m sure Mom and Dad told you that you were born for one fucking thing…to be fucked. So, get your ass over here and do what you were put on earth todo!”
I gripped the phone piece as hard as I could, and with every bit of control I could muster, I slowly hung the phoneup.
Chapter Nine
October2003
Now that thefall semester was well in swing, I was finding myself in a bind. I had been excited for the summer to be over with, but now that it was, my finances weren’t doing so hot. I was working less because of school. On top of classes, baseball camp had started, and that was eating into more hours for work. I had also been spending more and more time withTiffany.
Tiffany was the first girl that started to change my views on long term dating and being with someone exclusively. We had been out multiple times for dinner and just hung out with one another. While I liked her and was trying hard to make things work, we literally became one another’s friend with benefits. That role was comfortable for me. But I was starting to want more. I just needed to figure out how to win her over to be exclusively mine, rather than be the shoulder to cry on, or the hard dick to sit on when she broke up withboyfriends.
Maybe I was incapable of love like that, or being in a relationship. I could sit and talk to her about her boyfriends, and I could fuck. But beyond that, was I capable of being a boyfriend? I had seen marriages and relationships on T.V. Thinking of my parents, and seeing Chad and Marie, I realized that I didn’t have anyone with healthy or non-violent relationships in mylife.
