So I guess this is how the rest of the country lives. In neatly managed sub-divisions with names like Winding Hills and Whispering Pines. I visited my cousin in Quiet Oaks. Where everything is just a little bit nicer.

The playground equipment made of red cedar. Stainless steel gas grills. Riding mowers. Men with braided belts holding up their shorts. Aqua-marine collared shirts and this season’s sandals.

There was a shared space in the backyard allowed neighbors to mingle and children to roam. No dogs nor fences. Nor Oaks for that matter.

Even the mothers were a little bit skinnier. Fitness is easier when you have a maid. And a nanny. And you don’t have to work. Bottles instead of cans. Brand name liquor. 2.5 kids and a car for each.

If Rockwell were alive he’d paint their portrait….

But this is what my cousin worked for. What he dreamed of while washing dishes until 2am in college. So how can I judge his happiness?

After all, he did seem happy. Everyone seemed happy.

Even my daughter, Anna. The four-year old relished the leather chairs she could stretch out on. The home theater and toy-room. The inflatable bouncing gym. Closets as big as her bedroom.

“I don’t want to go home, Daddy,” she said to me, lying together on the king-sized bed.

“I know, honey,” I said, stroking her hair. And I had never felt so small…Soon we’d be back in our cold basement watching scrambled television from our bunny ears. We’d be in our single beds
upstairs, poked with springs and sweating beneath a lop-sided ceiling fan. The walls still only half-painted. The pungent smell of our kitchen sink coming up the stairs. Torn screens that let in the flies.

She fell asleep, smiling, and I went to the basement fridge…Mixed some brandy with water and then went outside to roll a smoke. The neighbors were sitting around a big glass patio table. The computer programmer. The medical salesman. The trial lawyer. Their sculpted wives.

My cousin had retired with his wife, yet here they were drinking his green-bottled beer.

“Hey, Jim Morrison,” the programmer welcomed me. He thought it was funny that I’d been drinking since noon.

The table laughed and I pulled out my rolling tobacco, which made them laugh even harder.

“It only costs a buck,” I said. “Lower taxes, you know. I thought you’d like that.”

The medical salesman asks if I can make it a “wacky” cigarette. He said he hadn’t had one since 1988. I obliged. He giggled the rest of the night.

The trail lawyer had his iPod hooked up and was playing a mix of outdated songs. Actually, only the first 10 seconds of each song, just to show off his collection.

“You like Dave Matthews?” he asked me.

“No.”

So he put on a new country song.

“How about this?”

“No.”

“You don’t like country?”

“That’s not real country. That’s soft-rock.”

I had tired of him hours ago. When we were playing bocce ball across their lawns, and he pumped his fist at every good shot, and proceeded to smack his partner’s ass. He was clearly a closeted homosexual with sadistic tendencies.

He put on some old 1990’s rap song. One of the wives started dirty dancing on the chair. I thought about all the neighborhood sexual tension. The desire. Scoping each others wives, and hoping they’d get drunk enough to take off their tops.

Then out of the fucking blue the trial lawyer started dancing on me! I knew he was a fag! That’s something only fags do. And by fag, I mean cocksuckers that refuse to be who they are, get married, and fake it just because they aren’t man enough to come out. The homosexuals leading the pink parade were more of a man than him.

I stood up and blew smoke in his face. He recoiled and switched songs.

The dancing wife, still clothed, sat down and cracked another beer. It was then that I finally recognized her…she was the double-dipper from a tee-ball game earlier in the day!

Anna and I had tagged along with my cousin, who was the coach, and his son for an afternoon at the ball field.

Ms. Double-Dipper was there with her daughter. Sitting in nylon folding chairs with a cooler, digital camera and a backpack spilling over with disinfectants and lotions and first-aid supplies.

Anna sat next to the woman’s daughter and I stood behind them all. The girl had a cheese and cracker pack. There were eight little breadsticks and a square of soft processed cheese.

“Can I have one?” Anna asked the girl.

Her mother chimed in, “You can have one, but I’ll put the cheese on for you. I don’t want you to double dip.”

Ainja’s face curled.

“Sorry,” the mother said to me. “I’m kind of a germ freak.”

Ms. Double-Dipper proceeded to coat the tip with cheese. Anna took a bite and went in for another dollop. The woman’s hand blocked her, though politely.

I wanted to grab the blonde whore by her brown roots and hock a loogie right down her fucking throat.

But she was my cousin’s neighbor, so I said, “Anna, just one dip, they get freaked out by saliva honey.”

I didn’t say germs. Why would my kid’s germs be any more harmful than her kids? This coming from some bitch who lies in other people’s sweat at the tanning salon?!

“And you can only have one,” Ms. Double-Dipper said. “This is her dinner snack.”

Anna looked dejected. I went to my cousin’s car and rooted under the seats until I found two packages of gummy “fruit” snacks.

When I came back, the girls were playing with some kids. The tee-ball game continued. Ms. Double-Dipper and some other parents watched the girls play, with each action scrutinized….”Don’t touch that dirt.”

“Get down off that bench.”

“Put those rocks down.”

“Don’t pull the grass.”

What happened to letting them just be kids? It was like this even back in their sub-division. Let them fall, let them get dirty, let them get hurt…if they do, its a lesson learned. Give them some fucking critical thinking skills. Some adventure. Some trial and error!

While Ms. Double-Dipper regulated the play, I opened the fruit snacks for the girls.

My kid was germ ridden eh?

After being sure no one was looking, I put two fingers into my pants. I rubbed a load of sweat from my taint….I hadn’t showered in two days and Nebraska is fucking hot…

Then I put my fingers into one of the fruit snack bags. Swirled them around till they had a nice even coating of my cock sap.

My fingers stunk like smegma and strawberries.

“Do these taste ok to you?” I asked, holding the package to Ms. Double-Dipper.

She put her long tan fingers into the bag. Her diamond was as big as the chewy strawberry she pulled out.

I couldn’t have asked for a better reaction.

“No, they taste kind of stale,” she said.

“Oh well. I’ll just toss them.”

And now sitting at the glass patio table, drinking brandy and green-bottled beer, I thought about my stinking nut juice going through her system and let out a laugh.

“Damn, you must be stoned, Morrison” the computer programmer said to me.

I smiled and rolled another one. Soaking in the conversation. It went from new cars, to college basketball, and finally to their favorite topic…the sub-division. They talked of everyone on the sub-division board. How the elections were rigged. How so-and-so isn’t keeping up his lawn. Any
little thing that was out of the ordinary, the average, the norm.

And then they broke out the laptop. Apparently the sub-division has its own blog and forum for their gossip. It was the first time that they came alive. That I saw any passion.

Here we were sitting in the star-shine, Venus perched between a sliver of moon, and their faces were surrounding a computer screen, reading the scandals of the neighborhood.

Is this the result of instant gratification? What are they searching for that they don’t already have?

I inhaled deep, took a long swallow of brandy, and exhaled. I heeled out my smoke and went to bed without saying goodbye.

The next day we went home. Back to our suicidal neighbor. The angry ex-marine. The Alzheimer patient with a new Harley. And the newlyweds who finally ran out of conversation. I felt good to be back in our neighborhood, filled with suspicion, but free from competition.

Anna jumped out of the car and hopped on her tricycle. I watched the sun set over the trees and swung her on our plastic swingset….She smiled. I smiled. It was like we never left.