“It was fine,” I said through gritted teeth, walking back to the bedroom. Wheels had the decency to look at least a bit contrite as I walked over to him. He hung his head a little bit, and I started to feel bad for the way I had glared at him, but then he farted again and I didn’t feel so bad anymore.
“It was fine,” I said. “Not that big of a deal.”
“You did it?” my mother squealed. “I am so proud of you!” And she was, in her weird, weird way. Both of them were. I hear horror stories all the time of people coming out only to be rejected by their families and kicked out onto the streets and told never to return. I was scared, yes, when I was seventeen and trying to work up the courage to out myself to my family. Sandy had already come out to his family and received indifference, so we figured we could expect the same from mine. Boy, were we wrong. Being their only child, of course they were upset. For, like, two seconds. Once my mom got over her tears and my father stopped frowning, they went online to look up two things: where the closest chapter of PFLAG was, and the proper way to use a dental dam. “For all we know,” my mother had said, “you may be into rimming now. We just want to make sure you are safe.”
I love them completely, don’t get me wrong. But they like to meddle just as much as Sandy does. They keep asking when I’m going to give them grandbabies. “We’re not getting any younger,” my father once growled at me.
“Well, I’m not quite fertile enough yet,” I had growled right back.
I don’t have the heart to tell them that I don’t have ovaries like they seem to think I do.
“You got up on the stage?” Dad said now, sounding surprised. “Did you take off your shirt?”
“It’s not that kind of a club,” my mother scolded him. “He wasn’t being auctioned off like some piece of meat. This isn’t Phoenix.”
Apparently I went to the wrong kind of clubs. When you’re auctioned off, does that still make you a prostitute? Money is still exchanging hands, so it sounded kind of whorish to me. I decided right then and there that I would not want to be a prostitute. Besides, I still had all my teeth and I didn’t look good in fishnets.
“Phoenix,” my father grumbled. “Such a blight on the world.”
“Did you shake your groove thing?” Mom asked me.
“No,” I said, picking up Wheels and wiping off his paws. He just grinned up at me adoringly, shaking his butt where his tail used to be. “You’re gross,” I told him.
“I don’t think shaking your groove thing is gross,” my mother said, sounding baffled.
“Maybe that means something different than it did years ago,” Dad said. “Like maybe now it has to do with unseemly things, like fisting or nipple clamps. Which,” he said, directing his stern words at me, “you better not have been doing in public. You could get arrested for that kind of thing, even if it was in a sex club.”
“It wasn’t a sex club,” I said, trying to scoop up leftover doggie discharge. “You’ve been there before, remember? For pride? You thought that leather bear had a neat vest and you asked him where you could buy one and he told you that he’d take you for a ride on his motorcycle?”
“Oh yeah,” Dad said thoughtfully. “The floor was sticky there.”
“From drinks,” Mom said. “Not semen.”
“Well, that you know of,” Dad replied.
“How does it feel to be thirty?” Mom asked me as I scooped up the sheets from my bed and headed to the washroom. “Hungover from any… whiskey?”
“I didn’t drink that much last night,” I grumbled and then I froze.
“Did you meet anyone last night?” Dad asked casually. Too casually.
“What?” I asked, trying to buy time. “No.” Then it hit me. “You already spoke to Sandy, didn’t you,” I accused them both.
“Matty,” Dad sighed, “I think we need to work on our subtlety.”
“Of course not, dear,” she sniffed. “We’re as subtle as the day is long.”
“Yeah, if the day is in Antarctica during the winter,” I muttered.
“What?” Mom asked.
“What?” Dad asked.
“She said you guys were subtle as the day is long. And I said only if the day was in Antarctica in winter.”
“We heard that, sweetheart,” Mom said. “We’re not deaf.”
“Days are really short in Antarctica during the winter,” I ground out, shoving the sheets into the washing machine.
“That’s nice, dear. Did you want to go there or something? That seems really far away. Consider going somewhere closer first, like Iowa. I hear the people there are very… Iowan.”