Swish Side Story

I'm doing the audition circuit out in Hollywood big time these days, so it wouldn't surprise me to come home and find the apartment a little dusty. Mom always found cleaning to be in defiance of her religion, and dad thinks dusting demeans his manliness. I would say it's the high-pitched girl voice and purple vinyl jacket, but I don't want to get his ire up. Anyway, the dust is no surprise. And in fact, I'm not really surprised to find a gang war between my dad and lesbians either.

I knew some fallout was coming from my sister's revelation she's a homosexual, and dad's gang was getting dangerously full of itself, so it makes sense the two would eventually crash into each other. At least that's what I'm telling myself.

Cassandra and her girlfriend Steve tried to make a new family connection, part of some therapy or something, Cassandra's attempt to heal all the emotional scars in her life that led her into Harvard law and becoming a lawyer, instead of the path I took of pre-teen superstardom and my brother Poot's path of cult worship. She was doing well, too, she at least got to the point where mom was cool with it. Of course, mom said she always liked lesbians, she just didn't know why they all followed each other off a cliff to their deaths. Once again, mom not exactly Harvard material, as Cassandra always says.

If only dad could be so understanding. I suppose I could cut him a little slack by saying he was still struggling to keep control of his gang, the Baiters. Uncle Luke suggested the name because they attract so much jailbait, supposedly. I totally agree with them, as I was telling dad. I think they're the masters of attracting younger girls. Hopefully they'll take my suggestion and start calling themselves the Master Baiters.

But my own enjoyment aside, nothing challenges dad's masculinity more than fully-clothed lesbians. He and Cassandra never got along while we were growing up, he never did stop calling her "the other one." And Cassandra's partner Steve keeps telling her to stand up for herself, which makes for more tension than you could shake a tense stick at. Dad was just trying to taunt them after a while, his way of looking cool in front of the gang. I know he had to have some clue "the rugmunchers" wasn't a politically-correct way to refer to them. Cassandra told me so over Christmas and he must have heard. Anyway, it wasn't long before things blew up and Steve's friends in the National Wymans Collective began to protest.

Should be no surprise dad saw the group of leathernecks out front and took them as a threat to his turf. It was good for dad, in a way, since he rallied the gang together behind him. Uncle Luke put aside his differences and the fight for control of the gang was over, at least temporarily. They challenged the Wymans Collective to a rumble, and who knew, Steve can't turn down a challenge.

Actually, the rumble hasn't happened just yet, it's set for later Friday night this week, after Steve's lecture at NYU about the phallogenic oppression of the menstrual cycle, and dad sews the names on the back of the jackets. But this is a by-the-numbers thing for dad, so I predict the fight was short, the Wymans Collective fought the good fight and overcame, and probably three of the four members of dad's Master Baiters survived. Dad's crafty enough and knows when to abandon a good fight, so I assume he climbed on Freddy Mercury's back and got the hell out of there when the odds turned against him. If Uncle Luke bought the farm, maybe that will put the gang disputes to an end, and maybe even dad learned a little bit of respect for Cassandra and her new pals. In the meantime, I got to find a place in California and erase all excuse for coming back to this apartment.

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