I could not, and I told him I couldn’t even stand yet, let alone perform some stork posture like a goddamn ballerina in a little pink tutu.
And respected medical professionals say this deep-breathing surgeon is one of the best in the entire world.
“Who is Clayton Fire Bear?” he asked me once more, with a glint in his eye that suggested he knew I had a big secret.
Men like him don’t deserve to know my secrets. I didn’t tell the people cutter any of what follows.
2.
My mostly ignorant son, Hank, dropped by my hospital room just to scream at me.
Doctors had sawed through my skull. They had cut out part of my brain. I was still freeballing it in a lime-green fairy gown. I was in a fucking hospital bed, for Christ’s sake, and Hank’s machine-gunning me with entire belts of words just because I didn’t tell him about the surgery until after it was over. I figured, why worry him? We hadn’t been speaking since summer anyway. Ever since we had a blowout at the Phillies game.
Me, Hank, and my granddaughter, Ella, were waiting in line for hot dogs. We hadn’t yet eaten dinner because my son had worked late again, picking us up well into the second inning, and so we didn’t even enter Citizens Bank Park until the bottom of the fourth, by which time Ella and I were ready to start eating our own hands. The line was long. Hank had something up his ass, and even Ella felt the fuck-yous coming through his skin like sweat. I knew, because she kept grabbing my hand and squeezing it. Any idiot could tell that she was nervous.
When we got to the front of the line, the cashier was wearing one of those scary—and sexist by anyone’s standards, but will my liberal son ever say that? Hell, no!—black headdresses that cover everything but the eyes. And in ninety-degree heat, no less. Her sweat was seeping through the fabric.
That headdress looked like a torture device. If a conservative Republican candidate said women should cover their faces in public, he’d be assassinated by feminazis before the sun set. But those same liberals who hate conservative Christians will protect Muslim rights.
What were they hiding under those black tents they made their women wear?
I didn’t want to know.
So I did the classiest thing this American patriot could think of—I shook my head, put my unwrapped hot dog down on the counter, and walked away in protest. No woman should be forced to cover her face in public. That’s bullshit. Un-American.
The poor brainwashed Muslim lady started yelling at me through the black fabric, saying, “You never heard of the First Amendment? Freedom of religion?”
I had fought for those things. Watched my buddies die so that she was free to wear that fucking Muslim torture device in my country. So I was damn well entitled to my opinion. She could wear it, but that didn’t mean I had to buy food from her. Freedom goes both ways.
As I walked away, I heard Hank making a big production of apologizing on my behalf and then paying for the hot dogs—no doubt leaving a massive guilt-based tip, “acknowledging his privilege,” whatever the fuck that means—and then he came after me, dragging Ella by the arm. His face was the color of a ripe Jersey tomato. Hers was white as fresh milk.
He started screaming at me in front of a growing crowd of strangers in red Phillies caps that matched ours, saying I was an embarrassment and that if I couldn’t “put a lid on” my “racism” he was gonna ban me from seeing Ella, who at this point was staring hard at her fancy sneakers that actually lit up when she walked.
Lights in sneakers. Now that’s some spoiled rich-girl shit, right?
But I like Ella, and she likes me. Her parents hadn’t fucked her up too much, which was a bit of a miracle.
I asked Hank how my walking away made me a racist when the Muslim veil had prevented me from even seeing what race the woman was, which is when he switched to calling me a bigot, conceding the point.
I told him he had better learn to know his enemy, because the great jihad was on and there’s a reason the Jews don’t let “peaceful, nonviolent” Germans wear swastikas in Israel—and that’s when Hank marched Ella and me out of the stadium and drove us home in silence.
We never even went to our seats, which were right behind home plate. Kendrick was on the mound. One of Hank’s big-shot clients had provided the tickets for free. And yet we didn’t even see a single pitch. What a fucking waste. And all because the Muslims had invaded our national pastime.
When Hank dropped me off, he said, “We will not speak to you again until you apologize for your abhorrent vile behavior. It’s 2013!”
“Fine,” I said, and got out of the car.
As he drove away, I saw Ella’s sad eyes looking out through the back window, and I thought, She’s doomed without me.
Hank’s wife, Femke—yes, that is her real name, pronounced Fem-kah—no doubt took his side and fueled the fuck-your-apelike-father fire. Femke calls me Aap—pronounced ahhh-p—because that means “ape” in Dutch, her native tongue. Fuck her.
Either way, months passed without a word from him, which I didn’t mind so much. But I missed Ella terribly. I thought about trying to break her out of school for a few hours, saying she needed to visit the dentist, but I knew my she-devil daughter-in-law would have me arrested, and I didn’t want to put Ella in a position where she’d have to lie to her parents, because the guilt would have eaten her up.
She’s a great kid, Ella. I’m telling you. The spitting image of her American grandmother—my dead wife, Jessica.
I’m a dangerous right-wing grandpa. And I own guns too. Lots of them. Some registered, some we don’t talk about. I’m an education full of truth and experience that contradicts the never-ending bullshit Professor Femke Turk teaches young people at her “sister school” university.
My daughter-in-law’s parents emigrated from the Netherlands when she was a teenager, so she has “European sensibilities,” which is code for even fucking dumber than regular US liberals. She didn’t take our family name, that’s how much she hates me. And to make matters even worse, my granddaughter’s official name is hyphenated: Ella Turk-Granger. I thought only Mexicans hyphenated names, but apparently the Dutch do too. At least the one I know does. My son didn’t have the stones to put a stop to that, which broke my father’s heart.
So I don’t think Hank and my Phillies-game disagreement was really about Jihad Jenny selling swine hot dogs and American beer—the consumption of which the Muslim religion forbids, which makes her a hypocrite anyway. The Taliban would stone her to death and cut off her head for a trophy, which is why she prefers America, and don’t you forget it.