There’s a link on the sidebar to the beginning of this…

Other then the Indians Natives, Dave the Tokin’ Nip was the only non-white kid in our class. And the chuggers don’t really count. My dad calls them ‘apples’, red on the outside and white on the inside. He’s careful about who he says stuff like that to. It’s not like we live in some upper-crust elite suburb. It’s a small interior town and there are just not very many non-European immigrants here. I’ve never even met a real coloured black person before. Anyway, Dave’s always kinda stood out, you know? For some kids being different is tough, but for Dave it was all good. Stuff always seems to come easy for him; grades, sports, girls… and loads of friends of course. Part of that is he’s the go-to-guy when you need weed, but it’s more then that. He’s a lot of fun to hang out with. He doesn’t have an accent at all, but when he’s drinking or telling jokes he does this killer Asian accent. It’s funny as hell.

The bad part about Dave is he cannot keep a secret. I wouldn’t call him a ‘gossip’, he doesn’t go out of his way to tell people shit, he’s just friendly and chatty and usually high and stuff comes out. He swears he never told anyone about the wedding present, but he’s full of shit. Two weeks after she threw the beer bottle at me, Lynda starts calling the house. Because I’m still on probation, I’m working all different shifts at the mill and when I say ‘working’ I really mean it. I’ve never had to work like this before and I am bagged when I get home. Parts of me hurt that I didn’t know I had before. I have a couple of beers after my shift (the only good thing about shift work is anytime is miller time) and smoke a joint before I go to bed and sleep until it’s time to go back to work. The money’s great, but I’m to fucking tired to spend much of it.

Anyway, Lynda starts calling the house every day and my mom is all excited about it, like it’s Farrah Fawcett calling. I really can’t be bothered to call her back, but eventually she calls when I’m at home and awake. Mom hands me the phone grinning from ear to ear. Guess who this is? She mouths. The psycho bitch I knocked up? I mouth back.

Lynda’s all nice and sweet on the phone. She’s heard I’m working. She’s sooo happy for me. She’d really like to get together and talk about stuff. She promises not to throw anything at me. She doesn’t actually apologize for it, just says being pregnant fucks with her hormones. I agree to meet her the next afternoon.  Mom comes back into the kitchen after I hang up. She looks so pleased. I can’t stand it so I go down to the China Lily to see Dave and score some weed. We’re standing outside the back of the restaurant smoking a joint and I tell him about talking to Lynda. He says you know how to make a hormone, right? Don’t pay her. He kills me.

I meet Lynda at a coffee shop the next day and she still looks skinny as hell. She notices the way I look at her and the very first thing she says to me is her boobs are bigger. She says they could get way bigger and they’ll probably stay big even after the baby’s born. Seriously. That’s what she starts off with. The only thing I can think of to say is ‘super’. She tells me she’s been to the doctor and everything’s fine. She starts telling me about how bad alcohol can be for the baby like it’s something I never would have thought of on my own. She says smoking isn’t very good for the baby either, but the stress of quitting might be worse so the doctor just encouraged her to cut back.

She asks about the job and my parents and she tells me some lame story about her sister and stuff going on at the Italian Delight and I can tell she really is making an effort. Part of my brain knows that she’s only being nice because I have a well paying job and she needs me to support her and she’s probably heard about the wedding present. On the other hand, it’s 1981 and there aren’t many well paying jobs out there for a guy fresh out of school and we’re both stuck in this one-horse town and I’m going to be paying for this kid one way or another and for the life of me I can’t see a way off of this path.

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