Beautiful (?) Chaos
Winchester and Emilio1 run discordant circles round Boris and Blanche and you loathe what wonder you note in both their eyes for should your spawn become such hellions you’d sooner have hanged yourself before attending this midweek barbecue at the in-laws’ so as to have prevented your witnessing of the downfall-beginnings of these children of yours.
The hotdogs are on the grill2 going “Tsssssssss.”
The buns are splayed next to the condiments and onions and are covered in blackflies.
You’re on your sixth beer, Fuckhead, and sidling to you comes your son and he asks you for the water balloons.
“Fu—”
Your wife reminds you to watch your language.
“Pleasure me violently3,” you mutter.
All is copacetic—
But Boris yet stands at your feet and across the yard you note that Blanche has come to a standstill, eyes you curiously now and godammit if Winchester and Emilio haven’t put conservative pause to their saturnalia in exchange for monitoring the fallout of what Boris says, of what he asks of his father-dear.
You elect honesty:
“I have asthma,” you say.
Boris says, “I have the water balloons,” and hands you the bag.
They’re so, so cold.
Boris peels into the yard declaring “Water balloon fight!”
More like you’ll be fighting with these water balloons….
But because you’re a good man your perch is a lawn chair now and there’s a bucket down by your sandals and gradually you fill it with those slippery thingamabobs and they wobble around in there; the children seethe just outta eyeshot now and all is quiet save the whistling hotdogs yet blackening because your mother-in-law requested them well-done and the hotdogs beg for mercy which won’t come to them and alongside those hotdogs you whicker into the realms where control evades you, where you’re there to be slathered in dijon and mayo and chewed up and vacated by route of an arsehole applying for leave.
Twenty water balloons down, one-hundred-thirty to go—
And you swear you can see the sun slowly setting; that over the past half-hour you’ve watched the thing travel a finger’s-length through the sky, and then you realize that you were looking at the sun and that’s why you can’t see too well anymore—that your blindness has nothing to do with your sixth and seventh and eighth beers, that you’re not dehydrated, no, but that you were staring at the sun, Fuckhead, you dunce.
But because you’re a good man I’ve restored your vision come the filling of the hundred-fiftieth, just in time for you to long for blindness again because these four tots who are your children and nephews didn’t bring their bathing-suits and they stand naked in front of you now, eyeing one anothers’ vulnerables with gormless bewilderment.
“Fuck me,” you say.
“What does that mean?” Winchester inquires.
“Now’s not the time to talk about that,” you say, and you slide them the tub of jiggling fun and brace yourself; you hold your ninth beer tighter and grimace; you squint; you long for a cozy blanket; you look around for help but no help is there nor is it coming because the six o’ clock news has stolen over the 75” TV and Cock Ackerly, who is a fantastic anchorman, tells tales of horrific things and the people listen to him—
Everybody but the children, that is, who stark-nakedly carouse inside the bounds of the dog-shit laden backyard of your in-laws with no care in the world for who killed who or what the Prime Minister4 did or whatever that latest study on dementia concluded—
Nay!
They’re naked with a hundred-fifty water balloons between them and none of the three boys have eyed that thingy of Blanche’s and wondered why it’s not a penis because to a child a child is a child and that’s all there needs to be ever:
A pal, somewhere.
Listen:
The water- balloon-fight has escalated to all-out war; there are no allies here, not even oneself to themselves because you just witnessed Boris press a blue one over his face until it exploded there. Blanche laughs at him, tries her hand at what her big brother did but is distracted when Emilio pelts her between the shoulder blades. She yells, “Fuck me!” and laughs horrendously, just like her mother, as she heads for a reload—
Winchester. Where is Winchester?
He is over there, urinating through the chainlink fence into the neighbour’s yard as the neighbour tends to her marigolds on its opposite side and the neighbour rears back and covers her mouth and signs a crucifix over her heart and glances up to the heavens.
A dog is defecating next to the barbecue, out of which the grey smoke billows—
There must be at least seventy-five water balloons remaining—
So you run to get them.
“Outta the way!” you say, pushing aside young ‘un and tot.
And so the barbecue is punished into submission with your hard work and the kids love it and your mother-in-law thinks the hotdogs are fine and dandy.
Cousins
And were on sale, too! Hooray!
Ere can you find bratwurst at such a price.
That’s fun sometimes
Or the President, or the Grand Poohbah from whichever country you hail.