A
few years later, while I sat on my couch, Frank finger-fucked my
sister's best friend on the floor in my basement while I watched The
Simpsons. I heard her moans and smelled the inside of her body
while Barney and Homer drank at Moe's.
When
they were done, they laid on the floor for more than an hour, silent,
seeming not to even breathe, perhaps waiting for me to leave, as if
it was the getting up that shamed them. A few years later, he became
addicted to heroin.
He
died last Friday.
Today,
my first visit home in years, I see that bat, my Louisville Slugger,
in the corner of my parent's garage, among the fishing rods and
bicycles and other forgotten things. I pick it up; it looks brand
new. Not sure it's even the same bat, I spin it around. I see what I
wrote on its side in permanent marker, what Frank had once ignored:
Property
of JP: Don't
Fucking Touch.
John Arthur
The
Watchmen
Alan
Moore