Monologue #5
The Teenaged Boy. Are you listening to this? I mean, do you want to
a) slit your wrists,
b) poke your eardrum out with a knitting needle, or
c) kill the person playing that FUCKING song AGAIN.
Perhaps it’s d) all of the above.
My father has gone fucking insane. Right now I’m thinking my Dad is the one who needs therapy. Not me. His new girlfriend just dumped him. They weren’t that serious because we only did the dinners here at home and not the field trips we usually do when he’s getting super-serious. You know, like ‘let’s go to a Broadway play’ or ‘let’s go to the opera,’ or ‘let’s go to that new Chinese place on Springfield Avenue,’ or ‘let’s explore Ironbound.’ You know all the things we NEVER do unless he’s trying to IMPRESS a woman by PIMPING OUT HIS SON.
GET A DOG, DAD.
If I have to listen to Alexandra Leaving one more time, I’m gonna kill myself. Leonard Cohen, fuck. My friend likes Leonard Cohen. He plays ‘em at parties when he thinks it’s time for everyone to leave. DO YOU UNDERSTAND WHAT I MEAN, DAD? It’s a downer. YOU ARE BRINGING EVERYONE IN THE HOUSE DOWN.
But it’s only me, so why would he care?
My dad has played this song 121 times. 121 TIMES. And it’s really more, because the first few times he played it I wasn’t counting because I said to myself, “oh, Pops is listening to shit. He must have been dumped. AGAIN.”
Have you listened to the song? First off. We’re atheist. So when Dad comes to his senses I am going to point out that he is fucking with my fragile adolescent belief system by telling me that the Lord is going to take someone away. The Lord is as Casper my father used to say. Not that I fuck knew what that meant. But really, you are going to ROT IN THE GROUND.
Second off. My dad went out with this woman for a month. A MONTH. She hadn’t even slept over here yet.
You know how it plays out in the movies, where the teenaged son sees a sexy older lady coming out of the dad’s room with a towel? HA! Never happened. They are never coming out of the room with a towel. They are never sexy. Those movies LIE. My Dad’s girlfriends are fucked up single mothers who reek of low self esteem. He’s the high school science teacher for fuck’s sake; he wears tweed on purpose. I suppose he can’t attract much else. He plays up the whole I could-have-been-a-professor-but-I-chose-to-work-in-the-trenches-that-are-our-public-schools-thing. And that’s cool. Really. He can be cool. He’s patient, blah blah blah. He’s supportive, blah, blah, blah. He’s there for me, blah, blah, blah. And these women, they line up at his desk at Parent Night when they don’t even have a kid in his class. Only single dude in town, you’d think. Maybe he is, how the fuck would I know. Then he takes them on dates that makes me think he could be a player. You know, like Play-ya. Seriously. Like the zoo. He takes single women to the Central Park Zoo and buys them a lemon ice. Their little suburban panties get all wet. They see him as a man who knows how to yearn. It’s all Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre. They’re moon eyed on fucking moors. Even in fucking New Jersey.
STOP YEARNING.
Then something happens. I have to tell you, I don’t know what the fuck it is. But it’s something. These ladies see something soft in him, the underbelly of a kitten or something. Maybe they smell it—his softness. And then they’re gone. He just meets women, woos them and weeps. Yup. I meant the alliteration. Fuck my English teacher. Women, woos, WEEPS.
DO NOT. NO, DAD. NOT AGAIN. Fuck me, fuck me, fuck me. FUCK ME. Here we go, the woman’s head lying on a satin pillow. YOU DON’T HAVE A SATIN PILLOW. She never even had her head on your shitty cotton one.
I am going to be SO FUCKED UP. I have to tell you, I was okay when my parents got divorced and they told me I was going to live with my Dad. He was the funner parent. Emphasis on was. My Mom, she traveled too much to be primary caregiver. She’s a big pharma rep. She sells happy pills to doctors who don’t want to deal with their patients’ aches and pains. That’s what my Dad says. My Mom says my Dad is just mad because he flunked out of med school. They both laugh when they say this to one another. Ha ha ha. Tee hee hee. They’re teasing, they tell me. They have one of those healthy co-parenting relationships my therapist tells me. But this, THIS. How is this healthy for a teenaged son. If I don’t fall far from the tree, MY LIFE IS GOING TO SUCK AND I AM NEVER GOING TO GET LAID. DAD, TAKE PITY ON ME, YOUR ONLY SON. PLEASE. Please.
I have to tell you, I have a girlfriend, you know. I haven’t told my Dad about her. It would jinx it, I think. Her name is Annie.
I love it when she tucks her hair behind her ears. I’m working up the nerve to do it for her one day when her hair falls in her eyes. She likes the lemon ices my Dad keeps in the freezer. I have to tell you, I’m fucking trying not to yearn.
