Daddy Nixon

Today, my mother believes I am the byproduct of her illustrious affair with Richard Nixon.

“Gwendolyn!” She calls from the living room, a newscaster voice behind her. “Your father is on TV! Come see, oh, he’s so handsome!”

I groan from the kitchen, trying to consume my breakfast banana in peace. “Mom, I’m eating.” I call back.

She barges in, grabs my arm, and takes me into the living room anyway. Once close enough to the TV, she abandons me to caress the television screen where Richard Nixon is speaking.

“Look at that face!” She’s half yelling. “You look just like him!”

Richard Nixon looks like a pig, but I don’t tell her that. I also don’t point out that I look nothing like him. I’m not sure why my mother has various fits of psychotic senselessness, but I do know that her wealthy, Orthodox parents tried to get her exorcised several times. And put her in institutions. I’m not sure how those worked out, but I think she was better when my dad was around.

Too bad he probably died.

“Sure, mom, he’s real cute.” I finish my banana and walk to the kitchen, throwing it in the trash.

She flits around the TV like a butterfly, swooning and catcalling the president, but pauses when I get near the door.

“I’m going out today,” I say. As if I’m ever home for long.

“In THAT?” She dashes over, grabbing at the hem of my loosely fitted peasant top. She glares down.

“Oh, sweetie,” she croons. “Did you lose your bra again?”

“Oh, yeah,” I reply with faint absentmindedness. “They’re so hard to keep in one place. I’m beginning to like not wearing them, isn’t that funky?”

Without warning, she takes an ample squeeze of both my breasts. She laughs as I push her away, hiking my shirt back up.

“With knockers like those, you could be one’a them dancers!” she spins away, beginning to gyrate her hips in what she thinks is a seductive way in the center of the living room. “That’s how ol’ Nikie and I met,”

As the door shuts behind me, she yells, “I was hot too, once! Real groovy!”

-

As soon as I get to Russell’s, we’re smoking.

“How’s koo-koo city?” He asks, taking a hit.

“Not too shabby, though I got groped again this morning,” I reply as he passes it to me. I take a long, much needed drag. “And she’s convinced I’m the love child between her and Nixon.”

Russell laughs. “If I got as much action from you as she did, I’d be in heaven.”

“Whatever. You?”

He sighs. “My girl’s still in prison. I’m peachy.”

A long moment passes. Sandra, Russell’s long-time girlfriend, got arrested in a protest against Vietnam months ago. We were all there, but she got separated from us when the cops showed up—we watched them take her away. He’s never been the same since.

I can’t find anything to say, so I don’t.

We pass a joint back and forth awhile, not speaking. Eventually, he says: “Hear the news?”

I look up from a daze. “What news?”

“As of yesterday, we can vote!” He smirks, handing me this morning’s newspaper. Though the top screams of the current death toll in Vietnam, there’s a smaller headline below that reads:

26TH AMENDMENT CERTIFIED BY NIXON—VOTING AGE LOWERED TO 18

“Right on!” I laugh, throwing my head back. “Now we can vote him out of office!”

My friend’s in jail for protesting a stupid war that my real dad died in, which effectively made my mom even more of a psychopath than she already was, but hell, I can vote. Yay.

Thanks, pigdad, I think to myself. You always know just what I need.