We’ve all noticed it.

Dad calling the power company a bunch of blubber-stealing sons of bitches.

Dad making jokes about seal-skin moccassins as if he’d had a pair that leaked in a snowstorm.

Dad telling Ernie, our Mexican-American dermatologist, that his people should stop making ice houses and start getting jobs.

Dad yelling at me for wearing my hood up like “some kind of wannabe Eskimo.”

Dad playing “polar bear” too rough with his grandson.

Dad saying things like,

“The Bering Strait is a two-way bridge,”

and

“Fucking sled-dogs drivers!”

and

“24 words for snow is 23 too many.”

None of us wants to approach him. Not even Mom.

You’re nothing but a shill for Big ‘Beetus.

Chrysthanthemum means stop.

Now, Jason, I know you’ve probably got your own safety word in mind, something literary like Pickwick or Portia. I understand that you would mine the pages of fiction and drama for the word you’ll use someday–someday soon, perhaps–to get the dominatrix to cease from pulling on your testicles.

But I’d like you to consider a few things before you settle on a safety word.

Take, for instance, the use of a small word like grapes. Grapes is a fine safety word, and trust me the dominatrix will not judge you on your word choice. These are trained professionals who will humiliate you in whatever way you choose, but they will not police your morals or mock your fragile psychology–not unless you want them to. Now I get a lot of mileage out of having my rear-end burned with cigarettes, but that has more to do with your grandfather’s expectations of me to succeed in an Ivy League school. That’s a conversation for another day. Sometime after you’re a Princeton man we can unravel this strange ball of string that is our friendship.

Grapes. A small word. It will bring you quick relief, which is fine if that’s what you want from your dominatrix. Let’s set the scene: she’s slapping your hands with her love paddle and you say grape and she stops immediately. But once she’s stops, it’s over. Madame Corsica becomes Sally Pederson, divorced mother of two who obsesses over which Hamburger Helper to make for her kids. And there you are wearing nothing but your black socks. A horse bridle in your mouth.

Here’s my suggestion. And I realize that this probably has more to do with my fantasies, my desire for a transference of power with a leather-clad woman wearing my mother’s shade of lipstick, than it does with yours. Unless we share fantasies, which is not so uncommon among modern heterosexual males. That aside, you should pick a safety word for its elegance, for its musicality. Chrysanthemum, for example. Say it with me. Chrys-an-the-mum. Archipelago. Ar-chi-pel-a-go. The more syllables, the more time you have to come out of the fantasy.

Prolong the ending. That’s all I’m saying here, Jason.

I wasn’t going to do this, but I’m going to tell you my safety word. It’s Adirondack. That’s Adirondack singular. I’ve used it with several women over the past 14 years, and if you want to adopt it too, well, I’d be honored. No pressure, of course, you can strike out on your own with a word like harpsichord or consanguinity or, knowing my son the lit major, Raskolnikov.

Choose something that it clearly unambiguous. And choose something that will always rescue you when your nipples are being twisted past your comfort.

That’s all a father can say.

More KD than KD

So, okay, you want to run this by me again?

Not particularly, Jake, no. But.

I knew it. I knew it when we were kids. You used to steal my tighty-whites and wear them yourself, didn’t you.

I found panties repulsive. And so yeah. Sometimes I did.

And now, what? What am I supposed to call you? Is it Brad, or Brian, or what?

Well, if you want to be cool, you could call me BT.

What’s that stand for?

Me, asshole. It stands for me.

So you’re a trans-man now. Is it cool if I call you Trans Am?

I’d prefer you didn’t.

It also sounds kinda Vietnamese. You and your friends all together. Trans Minh. You know–men, minh.

That’s terribly clever, Jake. So, are you going to be cool with this?

Me? Yeah. But dad. I don’t know about dad.

Dad’s blind, Jake. I don’t think he’s going to notice.

I thought, I don’t know, you’d sound different to him or something.

I’ll try to sound like myself.

Also, you might try going light on the Drakkar when you go see him.

I’ll keep that in mind.

And maybe gender neutral clothing, like jeans and a t-shirt.

I’ll leave the three-piece suit at home, then.

What are you going to tell mom?

I’m not. Not just yet. And you’d better not either. Unless you want me to kick your ass.

Man, aggro much? I guess those testosterone shots do their job, huh?

I don’t need testosterone to kick your ass, Jake. I never did.

Practice finger-style guitar picking

Read my friends’ unpublished short stories

Knit hats for my nieces and one of my nephews

Assess the windows; apply more tint when appropriate

Laugh about that one scene with the creepy van in Silence of the Lambs

Practice my Buffalo Bill voice

Repeat that line “Oh wait, was she a great big fat person?” in Buffalo Bill voice until I’m better than my friend Isaac

Sing “Take Me Home Country Roads” in Buffalo Bill voice

Laugh again when I’m singing and I get to the “mountain momma” part

Think about how gross cannibalism is

Talk about cannibalism in Buffalo Bill voice

Make some phone calls

"Life is old there, older than the trees..."

Father Mitchell: Go ahead men. Let’s hear it.

Roger Dawes: Two words, Father: Kevlar gossamer.

Father Mitchell: I’m listening…

Roger Dawes: Virtually indestructible–military grade netting. Complete ceiling coverage with zero visibility.

Dave Lewis: [laughing] Zero visibility, Roger? Zero visibility is a hoax. You know it, I know it. Father Mitchell here knows it and he’s, what, 92?

Father Mitchell:  86.

Dave Lewis: I’m sorry, Father. You know what has zero visibility, Roger? Air. And gravity. And shame.

Father Mitchell: But these nets have done wonders at Saint Patrick.

Dave Lewis: Have they, Father. Do you know that for a fact? Have you checked the ceilings? Have you double-checked the eaves? Because I have. And you know what I saw in Saint Patrick? Shit, Father. Pigeon shit everywhere. It’s a holy mess.

Roger Dawes: That’s  a lie, Dave. That Cathedral is clean!

Dave Lewis: It is since we installed the Sharpe 150 on every land-able surface the eye can see.

Father Mitchell: What’s this Sharpe 150?

Dave Lewis: It’s a strip of randomly placed fiber-obtic spikes, each one strong enough to support the weight of a pigeon as it pushes off in agony.

Roger Dawes: And I suppose they’re “thin as a needle,” these spikes.

Dave Lewis: Thinner.

Roger Dawes: Well, let’s see one.

Dave Lewis: [Pulling one from his mouth] I use these little guys like toothpicks. Can you see that, Father? Here, let me put it next to a piece of my hair to show you the difference. My hair’s the thick one on the right.

Father Mitchell: Impressive.

Roger Dawes: Father Mitchell, do you know what a yogi is?

Father Mitchell: Some Hindu thing, I suppose.

Dave Lewis: It’s what I call your mother, Rog, when she rolls off my face.

Roger Dawes: A yogi is the guy who lies on a bed of nails. And do you know why he can do that?

Father Mitchell: [Shaking his head.] No.

Roger Dawes: For the same reason that a pigeon can stand on the spikes: his weight is distributed evenly. This is why you see pigeons resting and defecating from spike strips all the time. It’s relaxing. Some would say therapeutic.

Dave Lewis: Are you gonna sit there and listen to this horse-shit, Father? Dave Lewis is a Lutheran, Father. And he couldn’t hang a net on his kid’s Nerf hoop. And what if he could? What would happen when if falls down during Mass and everyone freaks and starts clawing one another’s eyes out? What then?

Roger Dawes: Not gonna happen, Dave. Never lost a net. Not in 17 months.

Dave Lewis: Accidents happen. You just watch your back.

Father Mitchell: Mr. Lewis?!

Dave Lewis: Sorry, Father. It’s just…well…I care about keeping pigeons outta churches, and this sonofabitch doesn’t. That’s God’s truth.

The stage can be a lonely place, especially when you suck.

So, what about that war in Iraq? I mean, what’s up with that? WMDs? What’s that stand for, We Made Dat… up?

[silence]

Oh, and hey, what’s up with this social networking? I mean, Friendster, MySpace, you guys heard about this? So, this girl messages me–I mean, she could be a model, very attractive, very-classy looking lady, lots of cleavage showing–says she wants me to add her as a friend. Two days later my computer’s crashed because of a virus I got from her profile. And I’m thinking to myself: if I want to catch something from a hot woman, I go to a bar. I know this is virtual reality, but it doesn’t have to be that much like life.

[silence, polite cough]

The other day, I’m in the car at a stop light, and the kid in the car next to me keeps looking down. Now I’m figuring maybe he spilled something in his lap, maybe his shirt got caught in his fly and he’s trying to get it loose. Turns out he’s texting. I mean, can you seriously not wait until you get where you’re going to text someone?

[silence, sound of people adjusting in their chairs, the clop of heeled shoes walking towards the exit]

My girlfriend comes home the other day, she’s got what looks like a silver BB on her face. I go to flick it off–you know, like, here, let me get that for you–and she smacks me. It’s a piercing, she says. I just got it. I mean, in her face? I mean, are we all just going crazy? Is that what this is?

[sound of people coming towards stage en masse]

E-books? Have you heard? Working from home? Are they serious? Janet Jackson’s nip-slip? Britney?

[sound of bones breaking, screams, repeated bludgeonings with stage equipment]

It's a 1-and-1

MASS–A–KERR . . .

MASS–A–KERR . . .

MASS–A–KERR . . .

I always tell people that I won at three-card monte.

I tell them that the guy showed me the queen (of diamonds, I think) and two aces (clubs and spades), then shuffled the cards around on a cardboard box top (which is true), and then asked me to point to the queen (which I did).

Then I tell people that he asked me if I was sure that was where the queen was (I was pretty certain), and that he then picked up one of the cards I didn’t choose (he did), to “show everybody which card this man here” (his words, not mine) “hadn’t picked.”

What I then tell people is that he switched the two remaining cards on the box top while my eyes were naturally drawn to the card in his upraised hand (this is the only explanation I can come up with for what actually happened), and that he then replaced the card in his hand on the cardboard box (so far, so good, so far as factual accounting goes).

Then he asked me again which of the downturned cards was the queen.

In the version of the story I tell people (which isn’t true, this version), I was on to his clever ruse. Sometimes I even play it like I slightly menaced this thirty-something-year-old street hustler with the smell of liquor on him (not true in the slightest) when I said, “the queen’s right there,” pointing to the place where he’d moved her while he thought (in this version, I am quick-witted and observant, and maybe even somehow omnisciently hip to this con that I’ve not previously witnessed) my attention was elsewhere. In this version, he splutters a little and then reveals the queen where I’ve pointed. In this version, he gives me back my twenty with a matched twenty, after weakly asking if I want to “go double or nothing.”

Which I don’t. Not in this version. In this version (and offshoots thereof, wherein his boys–his muscle, or whatever–step to me and suggest that I let him go double or nothing, but they improbably back the fuck up with a steely eyed glare from me–a glare that mirrors the one I gave the conning three-card monte artiste) I walk away, twenty dollars the richer.

In this version, the not-real version, I don’t go double or nothing, and then again, losing eighty dollars at a time in my life when eighty dollars mattered. In the not-real version I don’t keep wondering how it’s happening, hoping impossibly that I will be able this time to bring the account to right. Not to win anymore, but just not to have lost.

And again, and again.

In the real version, the one I don’t tell people, I only realize what has happened after I’ve borrowed twenty bucks from a friend later in the evening to drink away my failure. And I don’t return to the spot where he was and demand my money back when this realization occurs to me (his muscle–his boys, or whatever–being pretty intimidating, if they even ever existed and aren’t just something I’ve told people about enough times to make real; the three-card monte artiste himself being pretty intimidating in his urban otherness).

In this version, the real version, it doesn’t even occur to me.

1. What did you learn?

I reckon I learned that puttin’ down a steer takes more than just firing some .45 between his eyes. I learned that my Pa don’t like to ask for help, he just wants it.

2. How well did you learn it?

Suppose I learned that I ain’t cut out for puttin’ down steers. Or if I’m gonna, then I shouldn’t get my heart involved by callin’ them steers names like Hornsy McHornsonrider. And I suppose I shouldn’t give him a rich history and imagine up all the names of the cows he mounted like Lou Anne and Big Jean and Marsha Brady and Cindy Brady and Carol Brady and Alice and such. And I guess I shouldn’t tell none of the other ranch hands–no matter how much they sympathize with me while passing around a bottle under the stars, talking about what tickles our souls.

3. So what now? What do you see as the next steps in your learning?

From here on out I’d say it’s best to probably just keep things to myself and practice having thoughts and not sharing ‘em and always making sure to anticipate my Pa’s needs. I should probably learn some good stories about men with freckles kickin’ the shit outta people who cross them.

·