A 22 Year Old Boy Shouldn’t See This

In 1996 there were a lot of people living in my family’s house. It was like a long term hostel. The family matriarch, my grandma, ran the house, as she always had. I was living there with my girlfriend Heather, her best friend Barbie who was dating one of my best friends Jake. My mom was also living with us, along with her latest dipshit, loser, siphoning boyfriend, Clyde*. That’s seven people in a four bedroom, two bathroom home in northern San Diego. People were everywhere and privacy was impossible.

My family had been moving back and forth from San Diego and Missouri for a couple of years and somewhere along the way my mom started dating this guy named Clyde. He was short. I knew I couldn’t respect a potential stepdad who’s shorter than me. I had specific standards when it came to stepdads. I’d had a stepdad before so I knew what they should be. Step dads are supposed to be tall and emotionally abusive. They’re not supposed to be diminutive with a gentle demeanor. His Midwestern drawl constantly infuriated me. It wasn’t the drawl exactly as I’d become use to it over the years. It was the slowness of the drawl. The slower pace is the hallmark of a drawl but this was like a rush hour drawl. No words moved, like being stuck at conversational red light.

His son constantly used the expression, “Cool beans”, which made me hate Clyde’s bloodline as well as beans, a legume which I’d always had a good relationship with. My mom and Clyde really wanted his kids and I to bond. It wasn’t going to happen. His daughter was okay and his son was a decent little guy but I couldn’t get past “Cool Beans”. No one wants cool beans. Cool beans are beans that you missed out on. Cool is fine. But ‘Cool Beans’ isn’t a compliment to a situation. It’s a punishment because you missed out on Hot Beans. Think about your expressions!

The forced bonding really got to me. It was a potential step sibling blind date. “Our parents are dating so now let’s try to like each other because I guess we have to.” I have trouble getting along with most people so why would I get along with the little idiots whose dad is banging my mom? But it was obligatory that I should. As the oldest by ten years it fell on me to be the bringer of mirth and acceptance but I wasn’t good at bringing either, even at the tender age of 22. It was uncomfortable and tense. But I think a 12 year old kid who constantly uses the term “Cool Beans” wasn’t able to pick up on that.

So in 1996 we were all living in the family home. It was fun because it was so chaotic and stressful. My grandpa had died in May of the previous year thus rendering my grandma a mourning shell of who she had been my entire life. Her sadness and inability to move on saddened and frustrated me beyond what I was capable of dealing with. But all these people in the house in 1996 seemed to imbibe her with a new kind of life. All of us couldn’t replace my grandpa and what he and my grandma had built but I think, perhaps, all of these people in the house maybe insulated my grandma from the grief that now defined her. There was lots of bickering and arguing but it was fun and weird. The youth in the house, I think, reminded her of how our life was when I was a kid. It felt like we were making a new family. Growing up, all my friends hung out at my house which created an energy that made the house very special. In 1996, the constant coming and going and the rampant talking and debating among us maybe distracted her from the constant sadness that had come to be her partner.

One night my grandma was making dinner. Heather, Jake, Barbie and I were in the living room watching TV. My grandma said, “Danny, go tell your mom and Clyde dinner’s ready.” I got up and walked down the hallway to the main guest bedroom. In my house no one knocked on the door. I was raised to just barge in. We all did it. There wasn’t a lot of privacy or discretion in my house growing up. I didn’t even know that our bathroom doors locked until I had discovered the sweet siren of masturbation. So to just open someone’s bedroom door with neither a proclamation nor declaration wasn’t something that was out of place.

As I opened the bedroom door I saw a tangle of legs; legs that looked to be unclothed above the knee. Foolishly I proceeded and saw knees in various positions, leading to a left foot up in the air. A woman’s left foot. Then I saw a right ass cheek, a small man’s ass cheek. Then the sounds hit me; grunting and subtle moaning. Because I was full of idiotic naiveté I continued to push the door open. I then had a full view of Clyde pounding my mom. Fully naked, fully pounding. My mom had a mastectomy in 1992, leaving her left breast noticeably different than her right one. I had never seen it until this night before dinner. Clyde and my mom were writhing in pre-dinner humping and it destroyed me. Briefly seeing my mom enjoying sex just seemed wrong. And enjoying sex with Clyde seemed impossible. I stood in the doorway for what felt like two hours but was probably only a second or two and then I immediately started screaming. I was screaming like I was watching my first born child beheaded. I turned and ran down the hall, taking a hard left away from the living room, towards the front door. I saw an immediate look of concern on the faces of my friends in the living room and as I blew past the entrance to our kitchen I saw my grandma rush to see what was causing my terror. I hit the brown front screen door and yelled and ran into the street.

I hit the street and just kept running. The image of idiot Clyde banging my mom in my family’s home was my propellant. I ran into the darkness with an intensity that rivaled trying to escape a swarm of hornets. But you can escape hornets; you can’t escape a terrible recent memory. The more I ran the more intense the memory became. I heard my friends coming out onto the street and yell for me. My ears were blinded by what I had seen. This was my Saving Private Ryan. My mind was flooded with a terrible memory of 15 seconds ago.

Had this happened at 2am I still would’ve reacted the same way but the fact they I saw this before dinner really did me in. My mom shouldn’t be having sex with a guy named Clyde whose son says “Cool Beans”. And this took place before dinner. It just shouldn’t happen. It’s wrong. That was the kind of thing that Heather and I should be doing (and had many times) but that’s because she and I were still somewhat new to having sex so having sex when we could and when we probably shouldn’t was part of the learning process. The last thing I needed was eating my grandma’s home cooking with my mom smelling like Clyde and Clyde smelling like my mom’s mastectomy.

I continued down the street and reached the streetlight at the corner. The house on this corner held significance. When I was 13 I had a paper route. One day on the route a dog sprinted from this house and bit my right butt cheek while I was on my bike. I kept pedaling as I screamed and kicked the dog. About 20 feet later the dog let go and I crashed my bike into someone’s fence. My grandpa took me to the hospital ER. I thought I’d have to go to a different kind of hospital for this new tragedy.

I was in the middle of the street and I just laid down. I didn’t collapse. I purposefully and silently just laid down in the middle of the street, a street I had grown up on and knew well. I assumed there wouldn’t be any evening traffic but at this point I didn’t really care. I was distraught and unable to figure out how to move forward. What I had seen was now in my mind forever. How dare my mom have sex in my house before dinner. That’s what bunkers and outhouses are for. How did she not know this? I would’ve gladly grabbed Jake and asked him to help me build a Mom Sex Outhouse in the backyard if I’d known what the alternative could be. Laying there in the street I really missed the dog that bit my ass. That was a better memory.

I laid there in the street, panting from the downhill sprint and from trying to figure out how I was going to move on in life. I’d heard familial sex before but this was painfully different. One morning when I was in high school, when my grandparents and I were living in Missouri, I was awakened by the sound of my grandparents having sex. It was cute. And they were giggling. The giggling is what woke me up. Yes, I was disgusted but I wasn’t horrified. I simply sighed and walked my dog out into the early morning Missouri snow to wait it out. It was unsettling but I had no cause to run down the street screaming. I actually thought it was kind of adorable that my grandparents still had sex. And grandparent morning sex? Kinda cool. “Good for them” I thought as I cringed all the way outside. I sat down on the porch, freezing, and pat my dog.

But this, this was completely different.

Staring up at the orange streetlight I tried to figure out my next move. I heard everyone from the house standing outside, 100 yards away up the slight hill, yelling at me, trying to figure out what was going on. I knew this was the dumbest important moment of my young adult life. I turned my head and saw their silhouettes in the middle of the street. I heard small murmurings from them and then saw two smaller figures join them. I heard brief speaking. Then I heard riotous laughter. I assumed I would just have to find a new family. There was no way I would be able to face these people again. But then I realized that if I kept running the image of Clyde boning my mom would be the defining moment in my life. I couldn’t let this happen. I knew I had to go back. This was my Excalibur. I needed to face this. So I got up off the street and walked slowly back up to my house. Everyone else started to file back in. After all, dinner was ready. I walked in the house with my head down, not knowing how I would ever be able to eat again. I sat down on the couch next to my friends and slowly began to eat. My friends were enjoying my trauma. My grandma was laughing to herself. Then I heard my mom and Clyde, across the living room, giggling.

*This asshole’s real name is Dennis.