Free Bad Kid by David Crabb

fear, but I was also executing a favorite courting ritual of my mother’s.
    â€œNever seem desperate,” she’d remind me while staring at the phone for three whole rings before answering.
    â€œHello?” Greg asked. “Are you there, David?”
    â€œSure,” I said, staring at the Saturday-night shows I’d circled in the TV guide. “I don’t think I have any plans.”
    Two hours later I was in the bathroom, trying to cover a massive nose zit with flesh-tone Clearasil, a product supposedly designed for Caucasian humans, in spite of its peachy-orange hue. After several attempts, my schnoz still looked like a tiny, radioactive tangerine. No matter how thinly I laid the Clearasil on, I still had a huge orange dot in the center of my face. A half hour into washing and reapplying the stuff, my mother popped her head in the doorway.
    â€œDavid, I . . . Oh, honey. Your face looks like a Twister mat,” she sighed. “What’s going on with your makeup?”
    â€œMom, it’s not makeup!”
    â€œYou know your mother wouldn’t mind if you wore makeup,” she chirped, styling her hair in the mirror. “Some men live their whole lives as ladies because . . .”
    â€œMom! I’m not a lady. I’m just trying to cover my zits, okay?”
    â€œHoney, try this Oil of Olay instead,” she said, pulling a small tan tube from her purse. “Your face looks like you were drinking a glass of Tang and your mouth missed the glass.”
    â€œI don’t want your makeup, Mom. It’s for women. This Clearasil is bisexual.”
    â€œDavid,” she giggled, “it’s actually called unisex , meaning both men and women can . . .”
    â€œI know, Mom! Just leave and go to Mike’s already!”
    My mom had started dating Mike a few months earlier. He lived in Seguin, a small town forty-five minutes away, where she was going to visit him for the first time. In the mirror over my shoulder she put on lip gloss, muttering as she hiked up her brassiere. My mom had always been self-conscious about her ample cleavage.
    â€œHoney, do I look like a shameless hussy?”
    â€œMom,” I said to her reflection, “stop worrying.”
    â€œWell, I’m nervous about meeting Mike’s kids tonight,” she said, staring at her reflection and shrugging, as if to say, I guess this is the best we can do , old gal . “You would tell your mother if this top made me look like Dolly Parton, wouldn’t you?”
    â€œMom, you look great,” I said, rubbing her shoulder. “Besides, where are you supposed to hide those things?”
    â€œYou turd!” she yelled, laughing herself to the front door. “Your mother should be ashamed of you.”
    As she walked out, I yelled, “Good luck on your date, Mom!”
    From the stairwell on the other side of the door she absentmindedly replied, “You too, honey.”
    An hour later I left our apartment complex and began my hike to Greg’s. As I walked down Harry Wurzbach Road in the humid sunset, the neighborhood changed. The houses got nicer, the businesses got fancier; gas stations were replaced by high-end craft stores and dress shops. I was entering the ritzier part of San Antonio, near Randolph Air Force Base.
    Twenty minutes later I arrived, double-checking the address Greg had written on a pack of gum in gym class. It was a newer house painted a soft eggshell with pale gray trim; the sidewalk was lined with tiny electric candles. The trees on either side of me whispered with the sound of tinkling metal chimes. I stood at the large, frosted glass door and rang the bell. A few moments later Greg’s mother appeared, wearing pink-framed glasses and a powder-blue top; a long blond braid rested on her shoulder.
    â€œHello, dear. I’m Georgia, Greg’s mother,” she said, wrapping her arms around me.
    â€œOh . . . hello, Mrs. Brooks,” I