Grounded

"You're grounded!" Jake's father yelled at him.

Jake looked from his father's red-face to his mother. As usual she was nodding her head like one of those novelty doggies people use to keep in the back of their car. She always did that when his father started yelling-- silently nodded her agreement no matter how wrong the blow-hard was. And tonight he was as wrong as ever. Friday night. All the kids were out at the burger joints with their cars and girls; everybody except him because his blow-hard father wanted to make some stupid point about grades.

"This is the worst report card I've seen. You're a disgrace as a son!"

Fuck you, Jake said to himself looking away. Here it comes.

"You're gonna wind-up bum digging ditches, if you're lucky. When I was your age an education was something only the rich could get. Now....."

Jake wished he was big enough to take his father out. On could whack across his fat mouth was all he'd like to give him. A good whack and then saying something real cool like, "You fat bald-headed dreeb. I'll kick your ass if you ever raise your voice at me again."

Maybe next year if he put on more weight. Gotta get on one of the teams-- wrestling, soccer, anything to bulk up so I can take the blow-hard out nice and clean; no wrestling on the kitchen floor with mama screaming to stop or anything; just one clean Mike Tyson knock-out punch.

"No go to your room and stay their all weekend. And while you're there I suggest you do a little studying, dumbkopf!"

What did the fuck call me? a voice in Jake's head screamed. He looked to his mother in protest and there she was just nodding her head as if she hadn't heard a thing. Crestfallen, Jake walked to his room.

"The little shrimp ain't no son of mine, I tell you. No sir, Ethel. That ain't my kid. We got brains on my side of the family."

"That's quite enough, Bill. Don't overdo it."

Jake slammed the door to his room. "`That's quite enough Bill...Don't overdo it...'" Is that all she can say? His own mother, and that was all she could say....

From his window, Jake saw them as they walked to the driveway to the car. Mom wasn't too bad, but the Blow-hard had asshole written all over him. A suit and a tie. Nobody wore a suit and tie anymore. At least Mom looked kinda cool in a almost mini-skirt. She could still getaway with a dress like that. She was built like him-- small-boned and lean; delicate. What was it the girls always told him? "Jake, you've got such good bone structure. Boy, would you have made a beautiful girl."

Jake turned from the window and walked from his room. He went through the living room to the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. He removed his father's two remaining bottles of Sam Adam beer from the shelf. "Fuck 'em," he cursed outloud, thinking about his father's mouth-frothing warnings regarding Jake's beer drinking. "Fuck 'em."

After polishing off the first beer, the thing he wanted to do-- needed to do -- became clear. He went to his room, slipped-in Meat Loaf's Bat Out of Hell II into the deck and turned it up full blast. The old house began to shake. Then, holding the second beer firmly in his hand, he went from his own room to their room down the hall. He kicked the door open. "Twin fucking beds. I don't blame Mom."

Besides the twin beds everything else in their room was like out of a magazine. Real people didn't sleep here; "Gee-zuz, no wonder why I'm fucked up with parents like these."

Jake placed the beer on the desk nearby the door and went to the chest-of-drawers. He bent down and opened the bottom draw. The panties were neatly folded in two rows. He hesitated for a moment, then reached for the sole black pair. Opening another draw he extracted a bra and a pair of panty-hose. He then placed all three items on his father's bed and went to the closet. After rummaging in here for a moment he found what he was looking for-- the red mini-skirt his mother had stopped wearing years earlier. He threw this on his father's bed then rummaged around on the floor until finding the stiletto heels he was looking for. He then stepped from the closet to the bed and gazed on the bounty. A crazy sticky warm started in his chest, then a delicious tighting over the surface of his scrotum. He let out a horse laugh. He went for the bottle of beer and consumed it in one long chug-a-lug. "Fuck 'em."

A half-hour later, he teetered from the house to the garage and rolled his BMX bike out into the driveway. The stiletto heels were like walking on stilts but he didn't mind. Once on the bike, he found that the mini-skirt made riding extremely difficult, but he didn't mind this either. By the time he reached Tom's house he was exhausted. Tom's bedroom was around back. Jake rode past the front door, down the driveway to Tom's bedroom window. He placed his BMX down and tapped on the window.

"Holy shit!" Tom said.

Jake did not hear these words, but rather, read them from Tom's lips. Tom frantically opened the window.

"Jake, what the fuck are you doing?"

"My dad, grounded me, so I'm gonna make a few extra bucks turning tricks."

"Wha-- are you out of your fucking mind? You look like a hooker!"

"That's the general idea. C'mon, I'll let you be my pimp. We'll split everything 50-50."

Jake could see Tom was quickly getting over his shock. Money had a way of doing that to Tom.

"Jeez, do you think you can really pull it off?" he wanted to know.

"Sure; I mean, how complicated can it be?"

"Yeah...Ok, let me get my bike."

A few minutes later, the two were biking down Kennedy street on their way to Martin Luther King Avenue. Once there Jake told Tom where to stand and what to do. He had figured the whole thing out while they were riding over. The intersection of King and Kennedy was a known hooker stroll. There were lots of little nooks and cranny's were the pimps could hide while they kept an eye on their hookers.

"Ok, ok, you stay here with the bikes while I get a customer," Jake said handing the larger boy his BMX.

"Jeez, Jake, I mean, how do you know what to charge them and everything."

Jake hesitated. His face took on a puzzled look. Finally, he seemed to have an answer. "They'll know the price. I'll just ask for $10 more than what they offer."

Tom's face wrinkled with respect for his buddy's shrewdness. "Yeah, cool. That'll work, man, yeah."

Jake smoothed his skirt and began walking towards the intersection. It felt funny walking on the heels after bicycling for so long, plus his mother's mini was skin tight around his hips.

"This is my corner, bitch."

"Huh?" Jake said, eying the black girl in astonishment. Where had she come from? he wondered. He hadn't see her a second ago.

"You must be new around here," the black hooker said. "I've never seen you before. Well, anyway, that's neither here or there. First rule: never try to work another corner."

"O--oh, I didn't know," Jake said suddenly feeling scared and foolish. The girl was taller than he and seemed as rough as sandpaper.

"But I tell, you," the black hooker said, suddenly smiling a wicked, calculating smile, "you might be good for business. You young, cute, blonde. The tricks like that shit. Maybe we can be a team, you know, salt and pepper."

Her name was Tasha. She talked a mile a minute using a language Jake understood only about 1/4 of. But this may have been because all of a sudden the traffic was going crazy. Guys were tooting their horns and calling from their cars like nuts.

"See what I mean?-- salt and Pepper. We a team, sistuh. We got it going on."

A big diesel slowed down.

"Hey, Tasha who's your friend?" the beefy driver called.

"Her name is Anita and she charges $50 paid up front."

"No problem, hop in Anita."

"That's $25 now, $25 after."

The driver quickly thrust a fist-full of bills out the window which Tasha snatched from his hand even quicker.

"Now, you take it easy on her, Hogan. She's just starting out.

Jake hopped into the cabin and gave the trucker directions to his house. As the truck accelerated he looked to the rear-veiw mirror and saw Tom awkwardly following while wheeling the BMX to the side. Tom was soon a speck, then vanished from the mirror completely.

"Where are we going?" the trucker wanted to know.

"To my house," Jake answered without thinking.

"Hey, baby, I like that."

The trucker reminded Jake of the guy who plays Roseanne's husband. He was that big and beefy. Jake shivered at what would happen once they got to the house.

"Pull into the driveway," Jake ordered him.

"Hell, I don't know if I can get this rig in there, sweetie."

"Well, just park on the street, whatever, but c'mon, we have to hurry."

Jake knew the neighbors were looking. He could feel their eyes. Mrs. Cucio would surely be recording all. Then Bill Karnes down the street, his father's golfing buddy, was probably suffering another heart attack by now watching. It didn't matter. It was too late to turn back now. Besides, the trucker had already paid for him-- at least half of him.

"Upstairs the room at the end of the hall with the twin beds in it," Jake told him pointing upstairs. "I'll be up there in a second."

The big man bounded up the stairs like a sprinter. Jake moved just as quickly to the bar in the living room. Behind the bar was his father's liquor cabinet. Jake walked straight to it, then, taking off one of the heels, he smashed the small pane and unlocked the cabinet from inside. He removed the bottle of Jack Daniel's and beginning drinking from it immediately.

By the time he got upstairs to find the trucker naked and laying on his mother's bed, his fright was gone.

"Not the other one," he said to the trucker.

"Huh?" the man grunted.

"Not that bed, this bed," Jake said pointing to his father's bed.

"Oh, sure," the man said lifting his bulk and swinging it over to the other bed.

"And roll the bedspread down to the sheets. I got a feeling this is going to be gross-fucking-city."

"Hahahaha," the trucker laughed. "Gross-fucking-city'-- you kids say the craziest things. It kills me, every time, I tell ya. `Gross-fucking-city'-- Hahahahaha.... Where do you come up with such vocabulary?"

The scream woke Jake from demon-filled dream. It was his mother's scream. She was standing there next two his father in front of Mrs. Cucio and Mr. Karnes. All faces were aghast as if frozen by some horrific sight. Jake felt someone's leg over his thighs; a tree-trunk of an arm over his chest. It was the trucker, naked and hairy and snoring like a locomotive. On the top of his head, he wore Jake's mother's panties as if it where a sleeping cap. Jake wondered about this until his father's voice riveted his attention back to the four horror-stricken faces.

"Gee-zuz Kaa-ryess!" his father gasped.

Jake could not remember his father ever evoking the son of God's name quite like this before. Even the day he had called him from the police station to tell him he had just totaled his new station wagon and was being held for DUI.

"Looka 'em," old man Karnes wheezed his hand at his heart. And then old man Karnes gasped and dropped like a sack of potatoes, right there in front of everybody.

Jake felt a laugh began at the bottom of his throat. He was naked and sweaty, had his mother's bra and heels on, and was entirely pinned under the impossible weight of the sweat-drenched trucker in his father's bed with old man Karnes dying on the floor, and yet, he felt a laugh began at the bottom of his throat.

"So, tell me dad," he said in a voice that sounded even to him like that of some dwarf from hell.

"How long does a dude get grounded for something real cool like this?"

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written by thebard