December 23, 2015

Jerome:

"We should really get back on the road," he laughs as he pulls his shirt back on and squeezes through the little space between the two front seats of the rental SUV. I didn't wanna keep driving before and I definitely don't wanna drive now. I wanna sleep for like seventeen hours and wake up and eat and do this again. We'll spend Christmas in the goddamn cold Jeep, steamin' up the windows from the extra-spacious back end. Sounds like a merry fucking Easter to me. We need to get us one of these so we can put the back seats down and have a portable sex studio. It's like doing a porno but twenty times better because it's not fake as fuck. I try to get a hold on him again but he just pries my hands off like a Machamp. Not the kinda Pokemon battle I wanted to have. "Come on, dood. We're almost there."

"But M-iiiitch..."

"But Jer-oooome..."

"I don't wanna sit up there. I wanna stay back here where it's warm and toasty and smells like cimmanon cake." He just smirks at me and climbs back over the center console to get in the driver's seat. He cringes real nice when his ass hits the ritzy handmade leather seat. Mission accomplished.

"You can stay back there if you want, but you should pull your pants up before you fall asleep. I don't think that's how you want your parents to find out about us."

"They've seen worse things. I'm more worried about the frostbite. I'm gonna freeze my balls off, it's so cold back here." He doesn't take the hint.

"Put a couple of hoodies on and take a nap. I'll tell you when we hit the city limits."

"But you're not back here."

"Someone has to drive."

"No, they don't." Then he buckles his seatbelt and turns the keys in the ignition, glancing at me in the rearview mirror as he pulls outta the parking lot of the abandoned gas station. He wants to get there early as shit to put the plan into action but right now the plan can just go fuck itself. "But I don't wanna go... Mitch. Mitch. Mitch. Mitch. Mitch. Mit-ch. M-iiitch. Meeetch. MEETCH!"

"What the fuck do you want, dood?"

"You."

"You just had me."

"But that was only for like ten minutes. Fifteen, tops. Can't we take another rest stop?" He raises his eyebrows at me in the mirror and the look on his face tells me I'm not gonna win the cuddle battle. Dammit. I pull my fluffy Spongebob jammies back up and glare at him real good while I climb up to the passenger seat and finish my gross ass zero-calorie Monster from our last pit stop in the middle of nowhere. I'm just about done chugging the last six or seven ounces of the nasty overpriced Sprite when I hear it. I'm half choking on my drink as I try not to laugh at the record-breaking fart and the unapologetic look on his face. Then I smell it. Then it's not funny anymore. I wish I had energy drink up my nose. "Holy shit. Why'd you do that?! That's nasty!"

"You want to talk about me? You have no fucking idea. You should hear you when you bottom. It sounds like a jackhammer."

"I don't know about that, but at least I don't do it in tiny little enclosed spaces! You can't do that in a car!"

"Oh, yeah? Watch me." He screws up his face like he's gonna nuke the car again and I'm out. Not gonna push him and test my luck.

"I hate you," I honk around my pinched nose and he just grins and keeps on driving down the empty, snowy interstate.

"I love you, too, sweetness."

"That ain't sweet. That's salty as fuck."

---

December 23, 2015

Jerome:

"Here. You need this." I dig out a spare hat and slap it on his head before I re-zip my suitcase and start grabbing bags. I wasn't supposed to be here for another three hours and they don't know Mitch's coming at all, but we've gotta be prepared just in case someone's lurking around. The house's supposed to be empty and they're supposed to be at work and Angie's supposed to be at her friend's house so it gives us the perfect opportunity to pull one over on all of 'em. 'Course it isn't gonna be as good at the one we pulled on his parents or the pink, cherry-flavored condom with milk residue we left for Marley to find, but it isn't too often you get golden opportunities like that. Good times. "You know the plan?" I hand him my laptop bag and he looks at me like I'm a cockroach that just crawled in his Cheetos.

"Yes, Jerome, I know the plan that I helped you come up with. I'm not as stupid as you think, I promise."

"Yes." He raises his eyebrow at me and slams the trunk shut before he takes off for the door. I find the ancient ass house key on my keyring and unlock the door for him, watching as he peels off the extra-thick jersey he got at our hockey game and hangs it on the back of the coat hanger tree where they won't see it. It pulls his shirt up just enough that I get a nice view of his lower back and the top of his underwear. Hips don't lie and neither does that ass. I hurry up and shut the door before he can catch me staring at him again and I head upstairs with our heavy fucking rolly suitcases. How'd he get outta carrying these motherfuckers when he's stronger than me? It's all jokes until a Bac almost falls backwards down the stairs - then he thinks it's hysterical. I walk past Angie's room and it still looks like a can of blue paint exploded all over everything – how'd she make all of it the same color? Or is it the same color? I don't even know anymore. I hear him stomping his way upstairs like a horse and he joins me in the guest room that used to be my room, then he puts everything down on the bed and bends over and starts rifling through his suitcase. That ass, though.

"I'm going to take a shower while you fondle the booby traps. I feel like Lachlan after one of his Aussie flights."

"I'm gonna order food first. You want pizza?" He looks at me with a face somewhere between disgust and disbelief but I just shrug it off and hand him the Mario t-shirt I got last Christmas and the threadbare banana pants I've had since high school. He looks down at the holey fruit pants and back up at me like they're gonna turn to dust in my hands. "You take good care of those nanners. They're gettin' a little ripe."

"No kidding, dood. Please don't get that five-meat shit again. I wouldn't feed that to Shadow." Speaking of which, someone's gonna be waiting for him with a big, wet, slimy slurp when he gets his ass back downstairs. I've gotta let the poor kid out. He heads off to do his thing and I dig out a clean-er set of clothes from my bag and toss the hat on the floor in front of the bathroom door so he won't forget about it. If you're gonna have two Bacs in the house, you hafta do it right. And since we don't have an endless supply of victims at my house and because Mom and Angie can't take a joke, we're way past the halfway point on our prankathon.

I order our usual supreme pizzas and I stop by the sis's bathroom to see what I can fuck with real quick. All we've got to work with is shampoo bottles. And the wig we bought at Wally World. But that's for when she's asleep. Nothin' better than waking up to the sound of a teenage girl screaming about how you cut all her hair off. I grab the mostly-full bottle of shampoo from her shower and pour almost all of it down the drain in the sink, then I fill the bottle up with the nice, icy cold water until it's the same weight it was before. This's about as good of a prank you can pull on her before she puts on the waterworks about how mean we are to her. If she was in Marley's shoes, she'd be in court suing for damages and psychological harm. I stop by the 'rents' room even though I know there's nothing good to screw with in here that's in-bounds. I pop a pile of fake dog shit in the corner of the walk-in closet, turn the jacket on Dad's book upside down, and plant a pair of pink plastic handcuffs in the top drawer of their dresser under a couple pairs of too-lacey underwear. What the fuck do these people get up to? Don't wanna know.

My last stop is the office - the room where dreams come true and are immediately crushed by bills. I tap into Mom's computer, which she still somehow thinks I can't do, and I run a color photocopy of the cell phone bill with a couple extra zeroes added where it really counts. I fold it in perfect thirds before I pop it back in the middle of the bill pile and I stash the real one in the front cover of the dusty ass dictionary no one's touched since the nineties. I stop by my old desk that Angie took over and I slip the prehistoric issue of Playgirl that Mitch pilfered from Kyleigh's room in the top drawer where they keep all the pens and highlighters. Pretty soon she's gonna be blue just like her room. I head back downstairs and stop by the kitchen to let the hairy slobber bucket out and she almost tackles me to the ground with her gigantic fucking puppy paws. As big as she is, she's still just a big baby. She gets it. She knows how stupid growing up is.

Now there's nothin' left to do but play the waiting game. Wait for Mitch to gallop downstairs, wait for the noms to get delivered, wait for the fam to get home, and wait for them to find our little surprises. I plop down on the couch downstairs and pull out my phone, wondering how things're going for Rob and his little lava derp. Shadow puts her giant head on my lap and starts nudging me with her cold, wet nose to give her some love and we just chill. The quiet's really nice. Then she hears the bathroom door unlock and open upstairs and she's off like a rocket with her hackles up. I hear Mitch yell for sympathy upstairs but we both know she's still gonna jump up and stick her tongue up his nose. She's really got a thing for him. Not like I'm one to talk. She's still wiggling and waggling her ass off when they make it to the living room and when he sits down next to me, the big ham crawls up and squirms her way across our laps like she thinks she's one of our French girls. Two minutes from now I'm not gonna be able to feel my legs, I guarantee it.

"It looks like someone missed you," he laughs while she tries to get her big, long leg up on his thigh but it keeps sliding back down. Her tail's thumping on the couch to a beat and I know we're gonna get yelled at for letting her sit on the furniture, but you only live once.

" 'Course she missed me. I'm a missable guy. I missed you, too, baby girl." She nudges my hand to go back to scratching behind her bat ears and Mitch grabs my phone off the couch and takes a picture of the three of us all squished together. That was unexpected.

"There. Now you can't cry about how we don't do selfies."

"We could do even more if we took her with us." I put on the biggest smile I can and he just blinks at me and goes back to petting Shadow's ass.

"I don't think she'll fit in your bag, dood."

"I'll go buy a bigger bag."

"You would put your dog in a body bag?"

"No. She's not Preston." He chuckles but he doesn't make a comment. He knows how I feel about the whole Poofless debacle. "Plz Mitch. Plz. She rates it ten outta eight, look at her." She's floundering around on us like only a wired puppy can and I can see his life flash before his eyes as he imagines all the nail scratches on the hardwood floors at our house from her motor-scootin' around all the corners downstairs. She'd break so much shit but she's so cute...

"No way. You barely feed Alex, and he comes up to you and whines for food. This poor dog would weigh a hundred pounds in a month from you feeding her pizza and ice cream and Monsters and fried chicken."

"You're mean, Mitch." He opens his mouth again, probably to make a comment about my hideous sad face, but the doorbell rings and Shadow bounds off of our laps and up in the air like a fucking reindeer. She takes off for the door to bark at the pizza person and Mitch curls up and clutches his gut where she kicked him. "That's what the baby thinks of mean people."

---

December 23, 2015

Jerome:

"Jerome? Are you here, buddy?" Well, here goes. Let's hope for the best. I leave the door of the hall closet open just a crack so I can watch it all go down. I hear Shadow doing her happy little clickity-click dance by the front door before she comes bounding in to show him who showed up while he was gone. Mitch's sprawled out on the couch in the clothes he borrowed from me with a hat on, scrolling through YouTube comments on his phone with his feet up and pretending to be me. Can't say he's too far off the mark. I hear Dad creepin' down the hallway and I see him peer around the corner to look in the living room. His worried face breaks into a big grin and he tries to sneak up on the fake me, all happy when he sees Mitch has headphones in, thinking he can't hear him. But there's nothing playing on the headphones. He creeps up and stands over him and swipes the hat off to try to scare 'me', and when Mitch just calmly looks up at him he gets the damnedest look on his face.

"Hi, Dad."

"Hi... When did you...?" I take the opening to sneak out of the hall closet and I walk up behind him and throw my arms around his shoulders.

"Boo!"

"AAAAHHHH!" He almost jumps out of his skin, just like Courage the Cowardly Dog. We get him every time.

"Hi, Dad. How's that déjà vu?" His eyes are all wide when he turns around then he breaks down into his usual good-humored laughter. I wish Mom and Angie had half as much of a sense of humor as he does.

"You two are gonna be the end of me, and I love it. How's it going, bud?"

"Pretty swell. Where's the Mama?"

"She was pulling in the driveway when I unlocked the door. Any time now." He turns to look behind him before he looks back at us with a conspiratorial grin. "Are you gonna do this to her, too?"

"Somethin' like that. Don't think the jumpscare'd go over too well." We hear the door open and I creep back over to the closet just before the noise from her high heels starts echoing off the walls. Dad sneaks around the corner and watches in the hall mirror. She walks up behind the couch and looks over at the fake me around the brim of the hat, expecting him to be asleep since he isn't on his phone. But he's layin' there looking back at her with a big, nutty grin. She gets this look on her face like she just watched the universe implode on itself. One of these years, I'm gonna get reactions like this on camera so I can Photoshop their faces on an old family picture and make Christmas cards. I can taste the salt already.

"Hi, Mom." She just keeps looking at him like he's a mirage or something out of a nightmare. Maybe he is something out of her nightmares. When he's around, that can only mean two things: an empty fridge and pranks.

"Hi, Mitch. Where's Jerome hiding?"

"Jerome couldn't make it, so he told me to come instead. Merry Christmas, Mom." He holds out his arms like he's asking her for a hug and she just stares. That wasn't scripted but the look of semi-belief on her face is totally worth it. She actually thinks I'd Rent-a-Mitch? If anything, he owns me. I walk out of the closet and stand next to her until she looks over and almost falls over in her heels.

"God dammit, Jerome. Why do you always have to do that to me?!" She slaps me gently on the arm before she pulls me into a tight hug and just about chokes the life outta me. Mitch stands up and comes over to stick the hat he borrowed on top of my other hat and Dad wanders back over to join us, throwing an arm around Mitch's shoulders in a side-hug. They don't test his patience like his parents do. "It's good to see you two again. You should've told us you were coming, Mitch. We could've set up the air mattress in the game room."

"Come on, Ma. I'm not gonna let him freeze to death."

"He wouldn't freeze to death." She finally lets go and I head over to say hi to Dad. Mitch just sits there on the back of the couch like his usual stoic, awkward self and he goes back to petting the still amped up Shadow. Her being wired like this's killing any chance I had of being able to kidnap her and take her with us. Dammit.

"So now that everyone's here, I say we do some introductions." Mitch raises his eyebrows in annoyed amusement and Mom and Dad just look completely lost. But what's new there? I walk over to sit next to my doppelganger and Shadow descends back into the wiggles when she sees her two favorite people can pet her again. Even she ships it. She wants to be our baby. "Mitch, these lovely people are my parents. Mom 'n Pops, this is my boyfriend, Mitch. Pleased to meet you, pleased to meet you."

" 'Boyfriend'? What happened with Helen?" Okay. Mom doesn't seem too thrilled about it. Didn't want things to be like this but I was half-expecting this to happen. It took a lot of persuading from Dad and me to even convince her to let me stay friends with him after he came out. Can't really expect her to jump on this bandwagon right away. Really can't imagine if we'd showed up and I introduced him as her son-in-law. The in-law wars are already starting, and my mom's the worst of the whole goddamn bunch.

"Helen and me were never really back together. We had an agreement to 'date' online so the peeps on YouTube wouldn't get suspicious." Now she really doesn't look happy. Dad's in his perpetual state of amusement and he just sidesteps around Shadow's wrecking ball tail and comes over and throws an arm around each of us. And the Benj says I'm the sappy one.

"We're happy for you two. Took you long enough, but we're happy for you." He doesn't have to say it - we already know she doesn't like this. He steps back and looks over at Mom and she hesitates for a second before she puts her heavy briefcase purse down and comes over to hug us. She's been tolerant but not particularly supportive, and I can already hear the interrogation that's gonna start the second I'm alone with her. So many awkward fucking questions no one wants to answer. And I can't imagine what she's gonna tell poor Angie when she gets home. She thinks he's using me like she thinks I was using Helen. She's always thought that. I really don't wanna start a war with her over this but if I have to, I have to. She gives us a strange smile and she looks... sad? What about? Dad rubs his hands together loudly and the moment of silence is over.

"So when's the wedding?"

"Hell no. I'm out." Mitch puts his hands up in surrender and heads to the kitchen, probably to drink the rest of the orange juice he was eyeing earlier. It's not even Christmas yet but if I fall asleep before he does, there's gonna be no Christmas dinner left in the house by the time I wake back up. Mom doesn't say anything when she turns around to go upstairs and Dad just laughs and follows him. Shadow doesn't want to leave me but she doesn't want Mitch to leave either, so she starts pacing back and forth and looking all sad at me. I adjust my hats and follow the leader with little Miss Clickity-Click scratching along beside me. They're already chomping away on lukewarm pizza and Mitch stops chewing for a second to stare at me in the doorway.

"That's mine, Benj." He takes another bite and watches me while he keeps munching away. Not even an hour ago he ate a whole medium pizza by himself and he's already on round two. He says I eat like a bird but I say he just eats like a fucking stable full of horses. And he always does this - he takes my food then he buys nasty shit he knows I won't like so I won't eat his. Greedy bastard. "Come on! You already ate yours! You're bad!"

"You weren't eating it, dood."

"Gimme that." I lean forward and take a big ol' bite outta the side while he blinks at me and Dad giggles like a schoolgirl from the table. You'd think he hadn't already seen us do this fifty times.