Free Baby Geisha by Trinie Dalton Page A

thing repeatedly—a pair of chaps.
    â€œYes,” the man said. “Slidey and I have had good times together.”
    â€œYou know Slidey?” Eugene asked.
    Bob, sensing Eugene’s diminishing suspicion, started barking viciously in imitation of a Rottweiler he had seen on police reality T.V. Eugene grabbed his nose to subdue him.

    â€œSlidey’s family to me,” the man said, tapping his pole to the ground like a rainstick.
    â€œMy brother made Slidey,” Eugene said.
    â€œNo shit,” said the man, extending a filthy hand to shake. “I’m Eugene.”
    â€œI’m Eugene too!” said Eugene. Doppelganger? He looked at the panties strewn over the other Eugene’s poles and asked, “Are you behind the underwear deal?”
    Old Eugene nodded. He reached back as if to unsheathe a sword, pulled a couple pairs of underwear off his sticks, and chucked them into a cattail patch. It was a confrontational slapstick move, too advanced for Eugene or Bob to comprehend. Part yahoo and part bliss. Who was this perverted hobo?
    Â 
    On the spot, Eugene was forced to remember, through his medicated pot haze, the day his mom came home fifteen years ago and announced his dad, Eugene Sr.’s, death. The conversation with his mom had faded over time but his rage remained. Eugene’s hooligan boy life with his awesome renegade father had been prematurely terminated. His mom claimed that his dad had died in a river rafting accident, when the inflatable raft that he and five others rode the rapids in wrapped a rock and drowned them.
    â€œRocks don’t kill people,” Eugene told his mom in denial.
    â€œThose damn rafts do,” his mom said. Her coldness set reality up as something airy that could be popped at any moment.
    He had trusted his mom in the past but when his dad died he began to see her as the family interloper. Eugene had always felt suspicious about losing his dad. There was never a wake, for example, just a jar of ashes, which could have been from any joe schmoe.
    Â 
    The day their dad’s vase appeared on the dining room table, Eugene’s little brother sat beside him in silence, early in the
war between mom and son, waiting to see what Eugene would pull. Eugene chose retreat, so the boys retired to their bedroom stocked with two twin beds, Playboys , and candy. Eugene laid Dark Side of the Moon down on his turntable, put the headphones on, and dropped out. Dougie sat there on the edge of his skinny bed adorned with outer space bed sheets, slumped beneath a black light poster featuring the evil dwarves that haunt mushroom overdose victims, and waited for his brother to finish listening so he could mastermind their dual survival from here on out. Eugene stared at the sheets and wished he could transport to that corner of the universe they depicted. He had always preferred the company of men or space aliens to women, including his mother.
    Who would teach them how to elk hunt or how to rescue trucks from the quicksand rampant in the nearby red rock river valley? They’d had big plans to become cowboys, albeit Eugene’s vision, he’d assumed all along, was probably a variant on his dad’s. Deep down, Eugene’s cowboy vision included playing lasso with a buff cowboy who would hogtie and manhandle him. Now that those hopes were dashed, the boys vowed over pinpricked fingertips to be river haters.
    â€œRivers are lame,” Eugene told Dougie, when the Pink Floyd record was over.
    Â 
    Eugene felt betrayed by Slidey, who had allowed another human to visit and bestow upon his shores gaudy accoutrements. Panty slinging was a cowboy move, Eugene decided, thinking back to the years he struggled to substitute his macho, muscle-obsessed homoerotic fantasies with a more benevolent, sage-smudging kind. This alleged other Eugene, as he set those panties free like a dandelion releases its downy seeds, conjured so many despicable emotions in