"James Townley, how many times do I have to tell you that you shouldn't be getting plastered like this?" I hated it when my son would call at all times of the night for me to pick him up from one of his benders, "You are twenty years old. You're not old enough to fucking drink". My annoyance was compounded by the fact that where I was driving him was severely out of my way. The house that I once shared with Amanda was no longer my home. I was staying in a hotel that was clear on the other side by Vespucci Beach. Now I was opening the car door for my sot of a son.

"Don't you fucking tell me what to fucking do." His words were slurred with insobriety.

"Son, you've really got to stop drinking like this. You'll kill yourself if you keep binging like this." I was severely disappointed, but not surprised. Both of my kids were destroying my hope for millennials.

"I'm not your son, I'm a De Santa. You hear me, a DE fucking Santa Claus, bitch!"

"Jimmy, what would your mother say about this? You can't make all of this noise when I get you home."

"Like you care, Michael," he said, his voice becoming incredibly more lucid, crisp even. It was as if his brain stopped focusing on his drunkenness and focused on the conversation at hand.

"What makes you say that, Jimmy? I do care that your about to march into my house drunk as skunk. I do care that you'll probably disturb Amanda. What makes you think that I don't care about your mother?"

"It's pretty damn obvious that you two are about to end it." The garbling returned with a vengeance.

"Why would you say that?"

"The way you two fight is ridiculous. It's like you two don't want to be married anymore. At least not to each other."

"Come on, son. What do you do, eavesdrop? What have either of us said to make you think-" He cut me off.

"I might be drunk right now, but I ain't stupid. You have both used the word 'divorce' in your arguments. And for the record Michael, I don't have to eavesdrop. You two are so damn loud that when you fucking argue the walls rattle." He barely managed to say without stammering.

"We never argued in front of you." At least we promised we never would.

"You had all of your arguments within earshot! Were you always this oblivious to what goes on around you? I mean, why do you think I don't have a job now? It's all your fault, Dad, all your fault. I just want you to think about it. We have nothing in our house," he said, his words still heavy with inebriation.

"What the fuck are you talking about?" I was livid. If only he knew what nothing meant. I grew up in a trailer where the refrigerator was always empty, with the exception of beer. This drunken little shit had no idea what 'nothing' was or what it looked like.

"My computer is so 2012 and the entertainment system is like two years old now. I don't have a car and my game system is going to be obsolete soon."

"What the fuck is wrong with you kid. You have a good fucking life. And you don't have a car because you don't have a goddamn license."

"No my life is shit dad. With you and mom about to call it quits, my life is going to be even shittier. Like a shitstorm of shit. You know what I mean."

"I have no fucking clue." I didn't; the alcohol was fucking up his brain. What the hell was he talking about?

"The one thing in my life that was constant was you two being together. Even when we moved from Yankton, your shitty relationship with Mom was something that I knew was going to be the same. I had to leave all of my friends behind and come to a strange city 1,500 miles away from where I lived. I had to learn a new name. I had to make new friends, and that was hard."

"I didn't know that our marriage meant that much to you." I thought Jimmy might do this. He always bottled his emotions up, and they always spilt out onto the ground sloppily. In that way he was a lot like his old man.

"It did. It was something that made me feel good. Even in the middle of the night when you two argued as loudly as you could, I used to say that the two of you would be like this as long as you lived. Angry and yelling at each other, but with one another." That part of his brain that dictated his inhibitions was completely checked out for the evening. He never would have told me about any of this when he was sober.

"Is there anything else you'd like to tell me?" I asked, jokingly.

"Just that when you hear me watching porn-"

"Jimmy, I really don't want to or need to know about-"

"No, you do. I play the lesbians on the big TV and turn the volume up, while I watch my gay shit on the computer with my headphones plugged in." He made a weird smile that I recognized. It was the smile he always made when he was pulling a prank on someone. I hadn't seen that smile since we were back in Yankton, when he used to pull all kinds of gags on his friends.

"What the fuck?" Seroiusly, was he fucking kidding me.

"Yup, since we're being honest and shit," he said before passing out.

I had not planned on hearing any shit like that. Then again, he could have been pulling my fucking leg. I didn't like the things I was hearing from people. First, Trevor says that Tracey might not be my daughter. Now, Jim is making jokes or dropping hints, or coming out as a gay. I mean if he said that he was I wouldn't really care. I've worked with them in the past and their just as good as a straight guy. I mean Packie was a good worker and all. It's a shame that the family name would die. The fuck am I talking about? It was already dead. Townley died in N. Yankton like Trevor said. Now I had two fucking things to investigate, both had to do with my kids. My daughter might not be my daughter and my son might like guys. "Well, fuck, that's my life," I said as I pulled up the driveway to my house. "Come on," I urged as I tugged his body. I knew that he would not talk so I got out of the car and walked around the front and opened the passenger side door and grabbed my son's shirt. He sat up, and got out of the car without falling onto the ground. I opened the door and got him to the stairs.

A strange sound, a hybrid between a grunt and a pained moan was all that came from my son.

"Come on now, up the stairs," I said, still holding him by the shirt, as I led him up the stairs and towards his room. Once on the second level I guided him into his room. I stifled the urge to go immediately to his computer and look at his internet history. I laid him out on the bed and left the room. When I came out, Amanda was standing just outside of the bedroom that we used to share. We made eye-contact, harsh, critical, eye-contact. I said nothing as I walked down the stairs and back to my car. It was going to be another lonely night in the hotel for me.