Best Son, Steve Mcdede

Setting: Lobby outside of a Wedding Banquet.
Light up to reveal man in a suit talking quietly to himself and then looking heavenwards as if trying to remember. Drinking coffee from a mug. Puts it down and roll ups sleeves.

That is good stuff. I’ll drink convenience store coffee if I have to, but it’s nice to have the flavor and not have to taste paper or to-go plastic before it goes down. Hey, what do you think about this? I’m out here mumbling a speech to myself. Celebrating my Dad’s marriage and yours truly is the best man. Why not me? I’m not going to pull that Cyrano De Bergerac thing, with some guy who barely knows what makes my Dad tick, although it’s been done. What does that tell you? Me, being the best man? We could divide up the room. Sure in here and in there at the wedding banquet. (Points at audience and direction of the wedding banquet). Those who think it’s because Dad and I are so close, tight as it were, on one side or not a lot of friends on the other. I, for example, think it’s an inspired choice and suspect that might be a unique perspective. That’s why I planted myself here. The inspired choice section. I got to hand it to the old man. He has weathered some tough times, but he always comes around. You know, we never got close until I grew up. He and my Mom split. I loved my Mom, but Dad used always tell me he saw something in me and that was more than my teachers were saying about my crappy school work. I heard my Mom say that I was bored in school. Not challenged. That was nice of her, but bullshit in the extreme. I couldn’t do any of that stuff. I would try til’ I had a massive headache from the exertion and still not know a theorem from a proof. I still don’t. I threw in exertion so you wouldn’t think I was a total moron. I read a lot. Big deal. Kids can read by second grade and if you read enough you’re going to pick up details. There ain’t no talent involved. What Dad saw in me is what he has in himself, a talent for not doing any work and still living well. Which sounds easy, but it’s the hard way. It really is. The path less chosen or something like that, Whitman said. Once while we were in between proper residences, Dad and I were living in an abandoned firehouse. Still had the pole and alarms that just needed to be wired up. You should of seen the looks people gave you if they saw you walking from that property. Being poor in this country is worse than being a child molester. I swear to god. I used to see this lady almost every day for a month because she was always walking her dog. If we were walking past each other on the sidewalk, she would pull her dog’s leash tight as if she was making room for me to pass, but a perceptible shudder or twist of the mouth, something, made me think she didn’t even want her dog to touch me. Fuck that bitch and I don’t mean the dog. Walking her dog all fucking day long. What the fuck had she ever done to deserve having a nice walk in the sunshine at 2 in the afternoon accompanied by a pure breed at the end of a leash, dependant on the food that she alone could provide? We didn’t see Dad for a few years and I really just forgot about him. Sometimes he would come up. Mom would say “you forgot to give your sister her lunch money. You father used to do that,” and then I would remember that had happened. That made me sympathize with him a little bit, because any reminiscence was negative and usually got attached to me as a lesson on my behavior. So, I began to think, Dad must have had his reasons for leaving Mom. She’s no day at the fucking beach either. Anyway, my Mom was happier after he left. He removed himself from the situation and I gave him credit for that.

Another sip of coffee.

I drink 12 cups of this stuff a day. If I’m out, I carry one of those big old Stanley Thermoses. It’s a conversation starter. “That thing is big enough to be fire extinguisher’, ‘my Dad used to carry one of those to work in the day.” That kind of deal. They are awesome, I say. I have two alternate speeches tonight and I don’t know which one I’m going to go with. I’m thinking about just blowing it all up and starting over. I’m going to call that one The Blow Up Speech. Not very creative, but it provides 100% foreshadowing. Post The Blow Up Speech, Dad and I could still be a team, I just got to make him understand he ain’t the only one with leverage. We work in delicate situations and you have to be a team. He still wants to be Dad. Well, for one thing that’s not going to work and if it did work, this is a different situation all together. It’s a partnership and that’s a title that couldn’t be more self-explanatory. People think it’s easier to lie. No confrontation-wrong. Drama queens and kings, starting over without history is indulgent. It makes you feel good to plunge the knife in, wipe the slate clean, all those clichés. That’s the temptation. Hard is to maintain a steady job, plod along without my moment of glory, when a whole wedding party is transfixed by an incredibly inappropriate speech. If I didn’t want the stage drama, I should have made my move a couple hours earlier when asked does anyone object. Vainglorious, I believe applies here. But again choosing between right and wrong isn’t what I’m about. I’m self educated for the most part and self-made, though my Dad would disagree with the latter as would a few step-Moms. Dad is charming. Gift of gab and all that, but he has two looks that I call the croc ye and the falcon eye. The croc is deadeye. The person being looked at is meat hanging in a locker and Dad is about to take a bite. The falcon is a gaze upon chosen prey and if you think about it isn’t all that different except the prey is still mobile and still has a chance to escape. Don’t want to go all mother earth on, but if you live on instinct, cause that what this is, always a wet finger in the air to see where the winds coming and going, even if you’re pulling that finger out of your ass, you become pure in an animal sense. Pre-garden of Eden stuff. It can be magical highs. The only one I’m really getting since I learned from Dad not to drink. By his bad example, not from fatherly advice. You can always learn even from someone playing with your existence, just to feel like he owns the situation. He drank my step-mom Petra’s good scotch just to show he could. That he was the king. That night, Petra’s daughter Mara came home from a date that didn’t go very well. I could have told her that predate. She has her own issues, but this guy she’s with looked like he would be fine hanging out with us instead of making date efforts. When Mara comes home she’s feeling anti- guy from the get go. She doesn’t get a lot of dates, which gives you an idea what Petra looks like. It was a Friday night, but her Mom was asleep after a hard work week. At least that’s what Petra said. I can’t identify. I rest when I can. That’s’ why I don’t have a job with set hours and if Petra does then she was a conscientious nonobjector and deserves anything that comes with it. Dad’s sitting in Mara’s dead Dad’s recliner. I think his name was Matt. He’s watching a Clint Eastwood movie. He likes the ones where Clint rides alone, drifting from town to town. Conveniently leaves out of his Clint fantasy that he has sidekick to cushion any slings or arrows. Mara wants to change the channel to that reality show where everyone is tossed into a house with completely different personalities and we watch them like the gladiators in Rome. Which don’t get me wrong. I would watch, because at least there’s a very real danger that someone’s going to fucking die. Those kinds of stakes would keep me glued to the set. Dad lights into Mara about how the show was for brain dead cunts that have such boring lives they have to peep on others and if she mentioned she liked Clint Eastwood movies to guys she might get more dates and why was she home so early? Mara started to cry and ask Dad why couldn’t she find anything about my Dad on the internet? And that she and her aunt were going to hire a private detective to look into his past. That’s all it takes to fuck and destroy months of work. I had even started to like this girl that I had gone out with a few times. She had tresses of gold and tits so firm you really knew where the rubber met the road. We could lean against each other while standing straight up. After Mara told us to fuck off and went to bed, I told Dad, you really screwed the fucking pooch on this one.” Isn’t saying screwed and fuck in the same sentence a bit redundant,” was all he said, but he looked worried. No croc or falcon eye. The next morning I knew it was over. Petra and Mara were pissed off in mother-daughter solidarity. The word cunt a dissonant echo in everyone’s ears. Dad was highly averse to any publicity or prison time so he made me leave with him the next evening, like con men in the night, but only after moving their money to offshore accounts, including Mara’s college account, which was satisfying, given her betrayal. Leaving for us isn’t like for normal people. The hassle of moving out and establishing a new set up. We laughed at these zombies, who worked so hard to make, what? Really, what? I always hoped for their sake, that they were after a goal in the long run that as far as I could tell, never happened. But the image of it, gave them purpose. For us, the pressure of maintaining an identity was a growing fog that you had to punch into to get some air. I never told Dad, but my favorite part was never seeing the furniture again. Everyday, the same fucking couch with upholstery I wouldn’t even see after a week because it all became so blaah. We wouldn’t plan immediately. Just hang out and let an opportunity slip into our lives. Those were often the best ones as opposed to a deliberate schematic. Dad never said anything, but he was always chipper when we made our move. All the step mothers and step siblings were like one big family to me. Kind of a white trash extendo kind, but like it or not we were kin at one time. When a baby is born into a family they don’t get any choice of what family they’re being born into. This is kind of the same deal, but from a different end. We’re pretty good and there isn’t much choice about becoming connected. We’re like high pressure salesmen that also hook into your emotions over time. Hell, if door-to-door salesmen had the advantages we had, everyone would own half a dozen vacuum cleaners and aluminum siding. I saw one of my ex-sisters once at a concert for a super-group. You know, one of those bands that form from members of other successful bands to break up the monotony of playing their greatest hits over and over. Her name was Lila and she was in one of these huge concert bathroom lines for women and my swarm was held up because of it. If women will put up with a bladder full of beer and wine coolers and wait twenty minutes to use the bathroom, you know they will swallow just about anything. Lila just locked into my eyes with this sorrowful face, trying to impress upon me how guilty and ashamed I should feel. I just smiled and waved, losing her as the phalanx around me pulled me along, never suspecting I was a wild card.

Takes another sip of coffee.

Addiction is what they call it. A pot a day. I shit you not. The only problem with reading so much is I know the latest scientific shit that going to be reversed in about six months time. Even with sciences’ bad track record in the short run, it’s still a test tube versus an advertising slogan. I won’t deny its dominance in a marathon. Kills everything in its path. Tradition, religion, but fucking with a man’s habit ain’t right. His simple joys. Instead of waking up and smelling the flowers, I smell the grind. Marcia Stack told me that my Dad didn’t love anyone and that included me. I knew she was trying to hurt me, so I let her see that it had. A key point of being a good con man and is to give away points that don’t matter. I suppose you have a point, I mumbled to her. “You suppose,” she yelled flinging an ashtray at me that bounced off a shoulder. “He deserted you before and he’ll do it again like the white trash he is.” So I told her I’m not a Marxist. The whole class thing eludes me. Elude. (laughs). A word to counter the white trash thing. So funny. I could have added touché to demonstrate my affinity with French fencing. Next time. She was a piece of work. You never saw such an affected woman. Her god was refinement. I’ve seen some of the media coverage calling us all sort of vile names, but it might not have happened to, for example, if Marcia didn’t pretend she was flush with cash. Marcia did teach me signs to watch for. Not least, a faux Brit accent and to note statements like “not currently in a liquid state’ and ‘we’ll ride it out and be fine.” Other indicators are pretending to like opera and, ballet, huge car payments, no cable, but really a skanky whore at heart who was counting on Dad to bring much more to the table. Dad had perhaps overplayed that card. Marcia had decided at one point in life that she was what she looked like. We were much more substantive. W e didn’t’ care what we looked like as long as we could eat well, have a nice roof over our heads and a couple of decent vacations a year with some long weekends thrown in. After I knew our stay was limited, I started to embarrass Marcia on purpose. Rent ultimate fighting DVD’s to turn on when she had friends over. Go out of my way to mangle grammar. The thermos I mentioned earlier. Blue collar signs made her livid. I got a bus pass to wear around my neck with a yellow nylon cord. This all worked to our advantage since she soon realized that I wasn’t even close to being on the same ultimate journey of presenting her in a chic light. She was more than happy to usher me out and (this is the really funny part) Dad insisted on his heartfelt emotional parental compact with me he was out too. (beat) Dad may have founded the company, but in between families I taught him how to skim the obituaries online. Widen our the net, but I think he likes hanging out in cafes, skimming the obits in the local rag, chatting up the townies for tidbits of useful gossip. Dad can blend like no one else. Part of the business. We don’t have time to develop our own identities. Too busy finding out wives/stepmothers expectations. I always wondered if I could stay after he left. Say I wasn’t in on anything. I had trusted my Dad and now he deserted me. But I knew in the unlikely event I made it pass initial resistance that they would realize they never wanted me in the first place. It was my Dad they had invited and sort of forced to take me as baggage. How long can I pull this thing off anyway? Women are willing to put up with the added baggage stuff, but it stops being cute after a while and turns pathetic. Which is exactly how I see their situation, but I file that thought under ‘unhelpful to the cause remarks.’ (Yells at banquet door) Am I up yet? OK. Be right there. Looks like it’s all me. Choices. Choices. Why don’t you all take a guess what I’m going to do? I could tell you right now, but I might change my mind three or four4 times before grabbing the mic. That’s what con men do, think on their feet. I will tell you, I’m going to throw in a little foreshadowing into my opening remarks, false or otherwise just to keep Dad paying attention.

Looks to the side behind a chair and pull out a big red thermos.

Hey! Look what we got here. Can’t go anywhere without it. I told you it’s a conversation starter. Looks like a freaking fire extinguisher. No coffee today. I wired this baby up as an incendiary device. A bomb. There are instructions everywhere on the internet. It’s crazy. This is another choice. I’ll tell you what. I’m going to go in there and make my speech. Why not? Maybe I will set this to blow right after. Or not. It would be just for the wedding party anyway, not for you guys. It should be a minor detonation, if the calculations on that website were correct. You’re my audience. I love you guys. Let me give you one hint. The Blow Up Speech doesn’t necessarily go with the bomb. That would take away from the effect. (inhales deeply) Well here goes.