How to Piss in Public (14 page)

I’m not talking about one of those stupid Hindu gods where an elephant with eighty arms is dragging a panda man through the ocean on a flying carpet made of sousaphone-playing cobras. I mean an incredibly pretty East Indian twentysomething with perfect tits and a face so cute, it made Bambi look like an abortion who got thrown in the garbage during a heat wave. You see, I’m not into “handsome” when it comes to beauty. Michelle Pfeiffer can keep her enormous cow-catcher chin. She looks like Dick Tracy to me. I like cute chicks who look like
cartoons. This girl was a brown Sandra Bullock without the man chin. She had eyelashes drawn by Disney, a ski-jump nose, blow-job lips, and a big, huge smile that looked like its sole purpose was to baffle Alice during her stay in Wonderland.

Being the suave motherfucker that I am, I responded to her furtive glance by dashing my eyes to the floor and not looking up until she was gone. I had just disowned my parents and “switching my mind back into freak mode,” as Nate Dogg put it, was too difficult. My brother and I brought our drinks back to our estranged family members and I sat there furiously trying to think of a way to get out of the wimp hole I’d dug for myself. As my brother stared at my now-sleeping father, my disgusted mother threw down her napkin and went back to her room. A curiously enthusiastic voice came over the loudspeakers and told us to adjourn to the Fiesta Club, which was a huge parking lot made of paving stones and filled with lawn furniture and a fake stream. It was actually kind of nice and the gentle breeze on the tiki torches was making this seem like a classy resort. I was also drunk.

Kyle and I dragged our
Weekend at Bernie’s
dad over to a table at the Fiesta Club and watched with bated breath as the camp counselors assembled on a makeshift bamboo stage to begin what turned out to be a cruel, racist pantomime. Hard-hitting house music was pounding in the background and it became very clear, very fast that these entertainers were about half a century out of date. The counselors went into the audience and began dragging up volunteers for a competition. They managed to get half a dozen Canadians up onstage and began blindfolding them. Then they said it was a banana-eating competition. But wait, there’s a twist. While they brought a banana to the first guy, they unblindfolded the others and quietly walked them off the stage. He had no idea he was now all alone. At the shout of “Go!” our hero devoured the banana in a few embarrassing bites. When the blindfold came off, I couldn’t help but notice he was Asian. “You win, China!” exclaimed the host. Then he turned to the uncomfortable audience and said, “But he also loses.” He was expecting a huge round of applause but Canadians are way too polite to enjoy public humiliations so they chose to writhe in their seats instead. My dad’s sense of
justice startled him awake and he yelled, “Oh for fucksakes. At least give him a bottle of rum or some’ing!” before falling back asleep. I noticed the huge can of beer he was holding was full of warm vodka, and so did my brother. Then I realized something even more bizarre. The dance music they were playing was a very family-unfriendly song called “Fuck U in the Ass” by the aptly named Outhere Brothers. My brother and I had already gone into our heads and flicked the switch from “terrible” to “awesome” so all the trash being flung into our faces was just more grist for the mill and we were ecstatic. Could this night get any better?

Just then I looked over and saw my Paki was still smiling. She too had a brother who was about thirteen and she was sitting with him, alone. I came up with a plan that only a drunk man could come up with and headed over, brother in tow.

“Can we sit here?” I asked like a good buddy not trying to get laid.

“Sure,” she responded with that Cheshire smile. “I’m Sonya,” she said.

“I wanna fuck you in the ass,” I said, realizing how risky an intro it was. She seemed concerned but I pointed out the background music and she burst out laughing. So did her brother, Rajiv. I was in.

Onstage, our oriental countryman was still being abused. “Where are you from?” asked the host. The victim replied, “Toronto,” and the host came back with, “I donnnn’t thiiiiink soooooo,” to the crowd. He was making his Cuban eyes all Chinesey by pulling them sideways with his forefingers. We were in awe.

Sonya didn’t care that I had avoided her gaze earlier but I was consumed with it and needed redemption. While Kyle and Rajiv considered trying cigarettes, I took Sonya aside. “I have to tell you something,” I said with a face so serious I couldn’t believe it. “You know earlier when I walked by you?” She didn’t really know what I was talking about. “Well, I ignored you over by the buffet table,” I said. She did one of those drawn-out “OKs” that means, “Where are you going with this?” and then I said, “My mother’s dead.”

“What?” Sonya and my brain said in unison.

“Yeah,” I began like a blind man in a drag race, “that woman you
saw with my dad is not my mother. It’s his new girlfriend. She’s real overbearing and wants to replace our mother even though it’s barely been a year. It’s driving me crazy. She even invents stories and tries to write herself into our family history. When I saw you earlier she had just insisted I call her ‘Mom’ and I was so fucking mad. Besides, it’s ‘Mum’ in Canada.” Sonya put a consoling hand on my leg as I told her about my mother’s abrupt passing and what a wonderful woman she was. We later went for a walk along the beach to talk about it. Our cockblocking brothers followed us into the dark.

As we walked along the white sand, the moon lit up my bullshit like a giant lie detector in the sky. Sonya pointed out that my brother was surprisingly carefree for someone who recently lost his mother. I came up with this …

“He didn’t react at all when the doctors told us there was nothing more they could do,” I told her while blinking slowly. “At the funeral he was the same way—stoic, stone-faced, emotionless. This went on for weeks. He barely spoke. Never got angry. Never complained but more importantly never cried.” Dramatic pause. Glance at the moon.

“A big part of mourning is going through the pain,” I told her knowingly, despite not knowing what I was talking about. “And I knew he could never move forward unless he confronted his pain.” Sonya gave an understanding nod. “Then, one day, we went bowling. He asked me if I wanted a drink because he was getting one and I told him to get me a Coke. When he came back, he had two Diet Cokes in his hand and he gave me one.” Yet another dramatic pause. “I looked at him and I said, ‘Kyle, what are you doing? I don’t drink Diet Coke. I’ve never had a Diet Coke in my life.’ Well, you know what he did? He collapsed and began crying his eyes out. He cried and he cried and he didn’t stop—for three days.” At this point, Sonya was also about to cry despite the fact that, to this day, I’ve never gone bowling with my brother. I like bowling about as much as I like Coke, which is not much.

Sonya stopped and let our brothers catch up. She kissed Kyle on his forehead and he gave her a “What the fuck?” look. “Come on, Rajiv,” she said to her brother before turning to me and saying, “We’ll see you guys tomorrow. I had a really great time tonight. Thank you.” As they
walked away my brother asked me what all that was about. I brought him up to speed and he said it made him feel nauseous.

Wait, wait, wait. Stop the book …

At this point, you might be thinking, “This guy is obviously a liar, so who’s to say this whole book isn’t full of lies?” This accusation is very serious because the whole book is based on the idea of the stories being true.

Therefore: I hereby swear that every story told by me in this book happened. I am offering a $1,000 reward to anyone who proves otherwise. That obviously doesn’t include “Oh, there were five guys there, not four” or “It was a redhead named Lola, not a blonde named Lisa.” You get $1,000 if a story told by me in this book is made up, not if I get an irrelevant detail wrong.
*

I never lie. I may pull the occasional prank but I always make it clear it was a prank within the week. Otherwise it’s a lie and as I said, I don’t lie.

So, enjoy my dead mother while she’s gone because she will rise again in a few days.

The next day our newly formed foursome snuck around the compound making fun of people. The horny hosers had bombed with Sonya and we spied on them as they tried to figure out a way to actually meet someone who was going to fuck them. Later, we ran into my parents by the pool. It was early afternoon but they were already pretty gone. I was worried my mum was going to blow the whole part where she’s not alive anymore but her attorney Mr. Booze had advised her to speak gibberish. After being introduced to Sonya and her brother, Mum went off on a bizarre tirade that involved me, “or was it Kyle,” smearing shit all over my crib and saying, “Look at me, Mommy.” I’ve never heard that story before or since and not knowing which kid it was really sealed Mum’s fate as someone only pretending to be my mother. I looked at Sonya and she looked back at me consolingly.

Later on, in our room, my brother begged me to stop the charade. “I can’t take it anymore,” he said. “Today Mum asked me to do something and I caught myself thinking, ‘Who the fuck are you to talk to me like that? You’re not my mother.’” I assured him the cat would be out of the bag as soon as it started to get boring, which it showed no signs of becoming, so he should hang in there.

We spent the better part of the trip hanging out with the Pakis but no matter how well I played my cards, I could not get in her pants. I don’t know if it was because her father kept checking in on us or our brothers kept botching the deal, but I didn’t even get a kiss on the lips. Talk about bros before hos. Then my brother really blew any chances of my getting a blow job. He told us about a rape that was happening right then.

We were all lounging in the pool, riffing and shooting the shit as I stole glances at Sonya’s unbelievable body. We joked about how stupid the word “restroom” is. Someone is so ashamed of going to the bathroom they pretend they’re just going there for a break. “What a spot for a time out,” I said. Then Sonya told us about a reality show where some junkie said, “And when I awoke, I saw I had gone to the restroom all over myself.” We all died laughing. This inspired a recurring joke that I continue to deploy, using the word “restroom” in a stupid context, like, “No matter how well you shake your dick, a little drop always goes to the restroom in your underwear.”

Kyle’s confidence was up after all our bonding and he was starting to talk about his life back home. He told us about his girlfriend Tammy and how hot she was. It’s weird hearing this kind of stuff from a sibling fourteen years younger than you because as much as he’s your brother, you’re also kind of his dad. Even today I carefully enjoy his drinking stories only after I’m sure nobody in the story was driving.

“Has she got big tits?” Rajiv asked.

Sonya and I said, “Ew,” and my brother proudly said, “Oh yeah. Huge ones. She’s really developed for her age.” We heard about what it’s like to be a kid, which I had totally forgotten about, and then he accidentally dropped a Hiroshima-sized bomb on the whole pool. “Her stepfather’s a total dick though,” he said.

“Aren’t they all?” I added, referring to our fake mom.

“Yeah,” he said. “He’s always telling her what to do and bossing her around.” I rolled my eyes but didn’t really care because that’s adolescence, right? “Yeah,” he said before adding, “then at night he’ll come into her room and grab her tits and shit. He’s an asshole.” I nodded knowingly until I realized what I’d just heard. I leapt off my inflatable chaise lounge and stood in the shallow end dripping with incredulity. “WHAT!?” I said at him so loud he immediately regretted saying anything. It was too late. The cat was out of the bag. Kyle’s girlfriend was getting molested. That’s called rape. She had a live-in rapist. That’s a felony. We had to do something. We told Kyle he had better handle it the second we got back or we would. He was bummed.

The trip back was relatively uneventful until the hosers, who were rumored to have been taking cabs back and forth to the city to fuck prostitutes, started drinking heavily on the plane. “Who hates Cuba?” hollered the drunkest one, expecting a huge chorus of “Hell yeahs” from the Canadian families around him. He was forced to settle for his friend halfheartedly yelling, “Cuba sucks,” and that was that.

A few days after getting back, I gave up on Kyle handling his girlfriend’s situation and told my mum the story. She immediately ran to the phone and dialed 911 while staring at me like I was a pedophile. I immediately felt like a shitty idiot. After a very quick transfer of lines,
Mum put me on the phone to Detective Weiss. “Start at the beginning,” he said.

“I live in New York City,” I said, “but my parents are still here in Canada …”

I don’t know if you’ve called the cops on a child molester but holy shit do the police ever move with the quickness. Within a few hours of the detective hearing my story, the police were at the place where this dude worked and escorting him to the station. This makes sense. When a criminal lives with his victim, there’s plenty of room for coercion. Without a chance to test out his lies, he came up with some bullshit about Tammy and Kyle making the whole thing up because the night before he told Tammy she couldn’t go to a party. According to him, the accusation was their revenge.

Do you see what just happened there? The story Kyle told in Cuba went from a depressing anecdote to a crucial piece of evidence that blew the rapist’s defense out of the North Atlantic Ocean. How could the accusation be revenge for something the stepfather had done the day before if it was being discussed in Cuba a week before? The detective called me up and we went over the Cuba conversation several times. It wasn’t the kind of evidence that would land someone in prison but it would definitely rattle things up and maybe lead to a confession.

The police took Tammy and Kyle out of school the next day and interviewed them both for hours. Obviously everyone in his school went into a gossip frenzy but my fourteen-year-old brother never gave up the ghost. I’m still proud of him for that. The truth would have ruined Tammy’s junior high life so he bit his tongue and made up something about the two of them skipping school and almost getting expelled.