My Stepdaughter’s New “Beau”
Now, as I’ve made clear in the past, I don’t care a lick for the two daughters my wife Peggy has from her previous marriage. Unfortunately, since her ex-husband is in prison, she has sole custody, and so her children live in MY house with ME. Now, while I don’t accept Bekka and Taryn as my own, and I in fact regard them with a contempt seemingly without limit, I sometimes feel compelled to step in and play the role of father figure to them. I guess a part of me feels pity for them, since their dad “Ken” wasn’t really there while they were growing up. When he wasn’t buggering children in the back of his Aerostar or shooting himself up with paint thinner, he was burgling whorehouses or gambling on clandestine bobcat fights. In short, these girls need a strong positive male role model in their lives, and the Richmeister is just the one to step up and do it once in a while, when it’s convenient for him.
I know a lot of men with daughters will understand the situation I’m about to address. Maybe you’ll even vote for me after you see how adroitly I have handled things. You see, Bekka brought home a new boyfriend last night. I use the italics to show my doubt as to the applicability of this word. I think she’s just screwing this dude. Bekka is like her mother in that way (kinda slutty). Anyway, his name is Jay Lafray, and according to his myspace page he is a model, entrepreneur, and songwriter, which, in myspeak, pretty much means he is a loafing mooch. He’s a dead ringer for Brandon Lee (that guy from “The Crow”). When she brought him through my front door, it smelled like somebody had just 9/11′d the first floor at Macy’s. My foyer still smells like Drakkar Noir. I invited them into one of my studies to have a nightcap, since I wanted to give him the once-over and some alcohol before he drove my stepdaughter home to bang her.
I offered him some cheap scotch, since I knew he wouldn’t be able to tell the difference, and we sat and talked a while. He had been a Sergeant in the Marine Corps a couple of years back and had served in Iraq. At first, I was impressed, but when I asked how many civilians he had mutilated, he clammed up pretty good, which cost him a few points. He was definitely well dressed; an exquisitely tailored pinstripe suit covering a black silk shirt with just a few buttons casually opened. His trousers were pleat-free, and I could almost see his penis straining through the crotch, which I didn’t like at all. He sensed that I was becoming aggressive, and tried to placate me by explaining his personal philosophy.
When he told me he had a creed, my curiosity was piqued. I find that a person who has a creed, motto, tenets, or even a credo or weltanschauung is generally someone to be respected. I was dismayed, however, when it took him almost four minutes to recite it. It was pretty abstract and didn’t make much sense, and I was confused later because when I was looking for the exact text of the creed on his myspace page, I saw a bunch of other creed-like “sayings.” While he does not seem to be technically “retarded,” he definitely has some glaring cognitive deficiencies and deserves our unfettered pity.
And yet he seemed confident, self-assured. He had a certain magnetism generally found in those who have accomplished great things. I had to know more. I probed him with my throbbing question muscle, and found out some mildy interesting bits: He and his friend are trying to start a magazine that may or may not come out later this year. He has some pictures of himself on the internet, sort of like everyone else. He’s a Capricorn. And yet, none of these things was the crucial piece, the keystone of his character that made him so compelling. And then he let it slip: He used to nail that girl Jenn from “Real World Denver.” You might remember her. She’s the one that might seem hot if you were wasted and hadn’t been laid in a while.
I was blown away. I mean, here I was, sitting in a room with something almost close to a virtual superstar. My first instinct was to stand up, rush forward, and ask for his autograph, but I managed to keep my cool. I felt awkward talking from that point forward, so the conversation sort of just died. They got up a few minutes later, said their goodbyes, and left. I sat for several minutes before I could compose myself enough to call for Consuela to come clean up the glasses. But before she collected his, I stopped her. While he had not touched his scotch, he had left a piece of vigorously chewed Orbitz Mint Mojito at the bottom. I giddily plucked it from the glass, and walked around my mansion for a few minutes, trying to decide where to put it. Eventually I went to my valet and pulled from it a very old locket that had been given to me by my mother on her deathbed. I looked into the sad gray eyes of the woman whose photo lay inside, before pulling the picture out and dropping it into the wastebasket. I gingerly placed the gray-green blob into the locket and stashed it in the farthest reaches of my most secret safe at the bottom of the most secure strong-box at the back of the clandestinest vault I own.
Drifting off to sleep that night, the words of one of Jay’s less rambling creeds echoed endlessly through my head: “Fame is vapor, popularity and accident, riches take wings. Only one thing endures and that is character. That’s why they call me Jay LaFray.” Truly as beautiful as it is sensical.