the Stepdave

The way things look is important to my mother. You could almost say she’s obsessed. After my father died, she felt compelled to redecorate the entire house. She’d pour over DIY magazines and lose her shit if the idiots at Home Depot gave her eggshell paint when she’d asked for pearl. Yes, everything has to be perfect and in its proper place—which is why I can never understand why she married a loser like David.

He’s the perfect example of what this town can do to a person. Apparently, he was some kind of big shot athlete in high school. He was the king of this town, once. He clings to those days as if the memory of them is dipped in gold. The glory years when the world was his oyster and everybody would fight and claw just to stand beside him. “That kid’s going places.” I’m sure somebody said about him back then. But he made a tragic mistake: he stayed. He grew old. Those people who used to worship him moved away or moved on, and he was left behind with only the faded image of a world that used to belong to him. Decades of freeloaded beer have plumped out his once fit physique, and his “Best Hair” accolades from the class of ’83 seem less and less relevant as the years go on.

I hate him. I hate him for so many reasons, not the foremost being that he latched onto my mother before my dad’s body had even gone cold. He hates me too. He tries to hide it when my mother’s around, but it’s obvious that he does. His reasons are the same as everyone else’s in this town—I’m weird. I don’t fit. I don’t belong. Not that I mind much what the StepDave thinks of me. He’s a world class asshole with an allergy to hard work and a penchant for day drinking.

"You're not going out of the house dressed like that." I hear him bark from the kitchen table.

I can’t help but roll my eyes. His half-assed attempts at “parenting” could almost be seen as a joke, they’re so ingenuine. His favorite line--an old standby--is my personal favorite: “If you’re gonna live in my house. You’re gonna live by my rules.” Never mind the irony that this isn’t his house at all. This is my dad’s house. And the only rule I aim to follow is the one I made up myself years ago: Make the StepDave miserable, at any cost.

I do this by playing fun little games--like wearing outlandish clothes I know he hates or by hiding his liquor bottles when he's passed out in his recliner.

What can he do to me? My mom is his meal ticket and he can never show her the true monster that lives beneath his mask. This gives me the freedom to fuck with him with absolutely no fear of retribution.

The Stepdave will never be my dad. Not ever. Not even close.

It's insulting that my mom even pretends.