Page 37 of The Trailer Park Twink

“He did, and it was adorable. Sat right next to me in my truck, even though the window seat was empty. My boy just sat there, his hand on my knee, riding alongside me for half a day before Shelly finally called.”

“I’m not your boy.”

In response, Bubba blows him a kiss, and Ezra quickly looks away, blushing.

I turn and stare at Mom. “You called Bubba?”

“You gave me no choice. You put me out on the side of the road like an old dog.”

Ezra gapes at her. “What kind of monster dumps a beloved family pet on the side of the street?”

I point at Mom. “Her. She’s done it thrice. First with Lulu, a senior shar pei we adopted from the landfill. Then with Scamp, my cheeky chiweenie. Finally, with Mr. Manimarco Bigsby, the bichon frisé she stole from that house she used to clean for meth money on weekends.”

“That’s horrible.”

“They all bit me,” Mom argues.

“Allegedly. But from what I remember, Mr. Manimarco Bigsby had no teeth, so it’s not as if he could pierce the skin.”

Her eyes narrow. “He gummed me. He would just sit there gnawing on my kneecap. It tickled. I asked him to stop on several occasions, but the little motherfucker just kept gnawing. Day in, day out.”

“Lies, lies, lies. You just didn’t want me to have them. You know how much I loved each of them, so you took them away.”

“You were trying to take my husband,” she shouts, sounding exasperated.

“You’ve always had your claws in him. Then you started jacking off for him online every day.

Our walls are paper thin, did you think I wouldn’t hear?

Desperate times called for desperate actions.

If you think I won’t do anything I can to protect my marriage, you’re sorely mistaken. ”

“What marriage, Shelly?” Dallas asks, though not unkindly. “Honey, we ain’t been happy in years. You and Austin are always at each other’s throats. We can’t keep living like this. We all deserve to be happy.”

“Yeah, well what happiness do I get? You and my son get to ride off into the sunset on a big Pride float, and I’m left on the streets.

I just get discarded like trash. What kind of a happy fucking ending is that?

” The happy ending you deserve , is what I want to mutter, but she’s got a gun, and I don’t think I’d look very adorable with a gaping gunshot wound to the chest. The last thing I want to do is bleed out in front of Dallas, so I bite my tongue.

“You get to go out and be queer and happy, and I’ll end up dying in a gutter. I’m not going down like that.”

“Then what do you want?” Dallas asks. “What’s the end game here? The way I see it, you’ve got a gun, and you were aiming it at my son. There’s no coming back from that. Whatever we had once is over. It ended the second you put our boy’s life in danger.”

She pauses like she’s taking the words in.

There’s a storm brewing in Shelly Snowden.

A righteous air of quiet rage permeates the room around us.

“I hate this. It wasn’t supposed to be like this.

I wasn’t supposed to be living in squalor.

” Mom lifts her hand not holding the gun and scrubs her face.

“I was supposed to have a man who wanted me back. A son who didn’t try to steal him. A life worth living.”

“You had that life. You had everything, and you snorted it all away. Worse, you had the life I wanted. The one I dreamed of with Dallas, and you took it from me, then you took it for granted.”

“I didn’t want a husband who likes dick just as much as I do. I didn’t want a queer for a son.” She turns her focus back to Dallas. “I never would have married you if I knew you were bisexual. I would have just moved us out of the trailer park and split you both up.”

I press my face to the center of Daddy’s back, whispering, “I still would have found you, sir. I would have tracked you down.” He reaches behind and pats the side of my thigh like he’s saying now isn’t the time, but he appreciates the sentiment.

“God knows your kind make terrible husbands,” Mom mutters to Dallas. “You're just handsy whores who can't keep their dicks dry.”

“Well, that’s just hateful,” Bubba says. “What the fuck does his sexual orientation have to do with his potential as a husband? That’s biphobic as hell, Shelly.”

“He’s literally been fucking my son behind my back. If you want to talk about biphobia, maybe you can start by shaming him for proving the stereotype. You all just cheat in the end. That’s what you do. Who in their right mind would put themself in that position to begin with? I wouldn’t!”

My eyes narrow, and even though she’s still holding the gun she was aiming at me a few minutes ago, I don’t let that hold me back.

“If we’re keeping score, you cheated first, and you’ve cheated endlessly.

Anyone can cheat. Dallas being a blatant bisexual sex-god doesn’t make it any worse than when you do it, but you don’t hear straight people running around refusing to date other straight people, telling them they’re incapable of love and monogamy. ”

“Well, if they’re aromantic heterosexuals, they might,” Bubba says. “Then again, I don’t know any aromantic hetero or homosexuals, so what the hell do I know?”

“Or feminists,” Ezra says. “As a proud, staunch feminist, I get it. Men are fucking trash, and we’d all be better off without them.”

“True,” Shelly says, “but no one asked you.”

Ezra folds his arms across his chest and scowls.

“Shelly,” Dallas interrupts. “What do you want from us? What can I do to end this? Ain’t neither of us happy, and if you take a second to think about it, I think you’ll realize ain’t neither of us been happy in a really long time. This thing between us is toxic.”

“He’s toxic,” she says, pointing the gun at me again.

“He takes and takes until there’s nothing left to give.

He took my freedom. He took my youth. He took every tube of lipstick I ever bought just so he could draw stupid hearts on his mirror with your initials inside.

He’s a vulture, and all he’s going to do is bleed you dry. ”

Dallas reaches behind until his hand finds my hip, and he gives me a squeeze. “He’s my son, and he’s welcome to every penny I have.”

His son. Fucking swoon .

Mom is chewing her cheek as she takes the words in, her face twitching as her fingers tap an inconsistent beat against the gun’s metal.

Finally, she slides the gun into her pocket, the handle dangling from the edge, and holds out her hand.

“I want the trailer, I want your pickup truck, I want whatever money we’ve got in savings, and I don’t ever want to see either of you again.

” Does she think the admission is going to make me feel bad?

Does she not remember all the horrible, hateful stuff she’s done to me over the years?

Granted, I was hardly a doting son. I didn’t soak up her maternal love like a sponge on the rare occasions she would drizzle a little down my way.

In all honesty, she has every right to hate me for what I’ve done with Dallas. My given-fucks are nonexistent.

I open my mouth to tell her that, but I don’t have a chance to say it, because Ezra lunges past us, launching into flight as he reaches my mother, tackling her to the floor.

The gun slides against the hardwood floor, landing at my feet.

I don’t think she would actually kill either of us, but I don’t want her to have this gun.

Not wanting to risk her getting it again, I pick the gun up and rush outside, wanting to hide it somewhere she won’t be able to find it.

I debate placing it under the porch, but mental images of her crawling beneath our trailer house during multiple meth binges flicker through my head.

With my luck, she’ll end up on a bender, crawling around looking for fuck-knows-what, only to inadvertently twitch her finger against the trigger and blow her own fucking brains out.

The legal tape would be endless, and I’d probably get thrown in prison for the rest of my life.

I mean, yeah, Daddy would commit murder just to secure a spot as my cellmate, but I don’t want a life lived behind bars, I want one spent standing in the sun, right at Dallas Johnson’s side.

There’s only one option.

I rush to the lake, wading through knee-high water until it rises to my chest. Luckily, I’m still naked as the day I was born, so I don’t have to worry about swimming in jeans.

I dive forward, swimming for a few minutes until I’m far enough away from the shore.

Lake water is the last thing I want in my eyes, so I close them before sinking.

It’s not a very deep spot, thank God, because knowing me, I’ll accidentally drown on the first day of our forever.

Refusing to open my eyes, I wriggle the gun beneath the dirt with one hand, using the other to pile what I’m hoping is more dirt on top and not the bloated, waterlogged innards of a person or creature claimed by the lake.

Once the gun is secure in its new resting place, I swim to the surface, surprised to see my mom standing alone on the shore, and to my surprise, there’s a single teardrop trickling down her cheek.

But why? There’s no love to be lost here, only emotional baggage.

Looking like a drowned rat, I’m sure, I slowly wade my way out of the water and onto the shore.

She’s waiting for me, her arms crossed over her chest like she’s cold, which, yeah, I get it, because it’s a little chilly out here, but I’m drenched and she’s not. Is she nervous? Why?

She closes her eyes and looks away, taking off her sweater and handing it to me.

Once I've got it tied around my waist, hiding my bits from her, I clear my throat to let her know the coast is clear. Not looking me in the eyes, she roughly wipes the tear away and sniffs, hardening her expression, but it doesn’t feel genuine.

“I don’t get you, Austin. I never have.”

“What is there to get? I’m not a puzzle, I’m just a person.”