I.

You’ll be just like them, you know. The spitting image.

II.

My birth was immaculate. But then again, you probably know personally about virgin birth as well. Your good old mom and dad decided to have children, shook hands about it, and bam—babies everywhere. Your mom’s a virgin, your dads a virgin; only their kids are tainted by the need to get freaky every once in a while. That’s just how it is, generation differences maybe, or maybe something that tainted the water.

James’ parents fucked to have him. And then some.

Everyone knew it, it was never a secret. When you were explaining how the stork hid you in a cabbage patch for your parents to find, James would lean in and say “My parents had sex to have me.” When asked what sex was, he couldn’t tell you, but it seemed more reasonable than your story; how did your parents find a random cabbage patch in the city, and why would they look for babies there? Your mom and dad never went past a kiss on the lips before heading off to work, but James’ parents had sex, supposedly every chance they got, though no one ever really wanted to confirm it.

I think all of James’ friends had their own little ghost stories about Mr. and Mrs. Brady’s sex life. I think all of us had accidently seen Mr. Brady walking around the house naked at some point, hairy and unashamed, so our stories usually involved vague evidence of their habits. Toby told me once that he tried to call James one day to hang out and heard Mr. Brady reply between grunts “He’s, ugh, he’s at soccer practice. Mmmm. . . call back later.” Toby says that before he hung up he heard “Oh God, I’m coming!” yelled over the phone, but even I don’t believe him on that one.

The account I would whisper about (when James wasn’t around, of course) was from all the way back in the sixth grade, during a sleepover. It was around seven of us fooling around at midnight, playing videogames and loudly talking about the girls who let us touch their tits (all of us were lying, of course). I went into the bathroom to escape the pressure of one-upping the next guy with lies about my “sexual prowess,” at least until I could think of a better story.

The bathroom wall creaked—no, not the wall, whatever was hitting the wall on the other side was creaking. A frantic voice was muffled through the wall, rhythmically calling out something. I pressed my head against the slightly shaking wall and heard “Tom --ah...ah ah AH, YES! OH!”

Blankly, I left the bathroom. The guys tried to suck me back into their conversation of which girl let them feel her up at Jason’s birthday party, who totally touched Tina’s breast, whatever. I had my fill of girl talk and went to bed. The next day, when Mrs. Brady offered me some fruit salad made fresh that morning, I wondered if she had washed her hands.

It makes me thankful that I was adopted. In some far off place, some strangers did the dirty work and sent me express mail to a little cabbage patch in the city. At 40 my parents remain chaste, they kiss before going to bed, and no more. The walls creak in my house, but the walls are old, nothing out of the ordinary. The pipes make noise sometimes in the night, high and rhythmic, but they just need to be drained—one day we’ll take care of the those old pipes.

III.

Dinner at Isaac’s always feels like you’re spending an evening with the Von Trapps, or the Cleavers, or maybe a nice little family in Stepford. Dinner comes out great, and everyone feels the need to compliment the potatoes and moan over the meat. His dad will make up some “clever” puns about the food, like “Hey, these beets are making me feel like a beatnik,” and everyone laughs that “I’m not really sure if I’m sincere” laugh before moving onto another bit of empty conversation. Every time, I have to ignore my impulses to stay through it. One day though, between the salad and the roast, and after some witty comment about the broccoli, I’ll nonchalantly joke, “Man, it’s really awesome that they only gave you community service and banned you from schools. Who knew that being a white-collar worker would work out so well for you?” In some of my imagined dinner scenes, I don’t even make a good transition. I just bluntly say “I know you molested a ten-year-old boy last year,” and appreciate the dead silence. It’s never discussed, how just last year he was all over the local paper, the controversy of the entire town. After a string of good luck on his part, it’s like it never happened. He makes another comment about the delicious dessert, and I wonder if any of his kids think about the disheveled mug shot as their dad. I never ask though, and they never mention it, so I eat my pie, go back with Isaac into his room to watch TV, and ignore my impulses.

IV.

“I learned it from you, okay?”

It’s my favorite line from my favorite anti-drug commercial. Usually they take the low blow, add some babies or household pets to guilt you against using drugs. “Do you really want to hurt your grandmother?” they might ask while showing a sad old lady, frail from her disappointment in your actions. This one though, they have a parent shaking the kids’ baggie of marijuana, asking “Where did you learn to use this stuff, huh? Where?” The kid melodramatically replies to the stunned adult, and I laugh every time at the overdone drama of the situation.

My parents smoked weed on the porch every morning. All I can say about that is that my mom makes some of the best breakfast food you can get. It’s not really something we talk about, it just is. But it gets my friends’ parents talking. Most of their kids aren’t allowed at my house anymore. I don’t really know why.

They always look at me like I’m a crack head’s child, with hesitance and pity. I come over, and while they say nothing, they give me that look that says “I know you and your family are corrupting the kids behind my back.” One of them actually gave me a hug and then subtly tried to sniff me for weed. No such luck—I’ve got bad lungs. I notice the nervous look when I pass their test, still not sure if I should be near their kids. I’m used to it though. So then I usually go to their darling children’s rooms, where they ask me if I want some Vicodins or if I want to do a Whip-it with them. Not really. I think that’s why I don’t really keep the same friends for that long–they all want to get fucked up eventually.

What I really like to do is check their bathroom cabinets. You can tell a lot about people by what pills they put in their bodies. I like to sneak into the parents’ private bathrooms and poke around at their prescriptions—allergy medicine, Oxycodone, Percocet. The choices are extensive.

Then I leave, saying goodbye to the kid’s mother, who probably takes more than her required dosage of Prozac, and go back home to watch TV. I hope every time that I might see a new, funnier drug commercial on the tube. Sometimes my dad comes and watches TV with me, reeking of an earthy smell that always comforted me when I hugged him as kid. We watch how another kid ruined his entire life from the evils of marijuana, and snack on nachos until the next made for TV movie pops up.

V.

I wrote a story once about someone that becomes just like their parents. My girlfriend read it and said “Why don’t you ever write happy stories?”

Huh.