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Like, Ruined My Life

James Vidian

    K, so, like, yesterday? My mom totally ruined my life. Like, I’m not even kidding. She ruined it. I had Chase over and we were, like, hanging out, and my mom texts me that she needs me downstairs. So, I text her back and say why? I’m hanging out with Chase. And she’s like maybe you should find a different activity, young lady, and shit like that.
    What, like she didn’t do stuff when she was in high school?
    I know, right? Stupid. She just doesn’t like Chase.
    Why?
    She thinks he’s too old for me. She says he’s just interested in my body.
    What?
    I know. Stupid. I want him to be interested in my body. And, like, when we’re married in ten years, a five-year difference isn’t going to matter.
    Totally.
    So, Chase saw that I was distracted by my phone and he asked what’s wrong and I, like, tried to brush it off like it was nothing, but Chase saw my mom’s text and he didn’t know how my mom feels about him and so he got all mad and stood up and started yelling, saying that she should come face him like a man and my mom could hear the commotion from downstairs and came up to my room and walked in.
    She
what?
    I know. Stupid.
    My mom would never do that.
    Cuz your mom’s chill and shit.
    Yeah.
    Yeah.
    Sarah brushes her bangs off her forehead with chewed-fingernailed fingers.
    So, like, she’s in my room. Didn’t even knock, just walked in. And I’m, like, trying to cover up because I don’t want her to see me and Chase is shouting and doesn’t have a shirt on and there were so many other things to pay attention to in that moment but I couldn’t stop worrying that my mom would see his bulge and I thought when he got mad he would deflate a little, but he, like, got bigger.
    Did your mom see anything?
    I don’t know. She was mostly looking back and forth between me and Chase and I was looking back and forth between Chase and her and Chase was just looking somewhere off into the corner, still shouting at my mom but suddenly, like, shy for some reason and not looking at anyone.
    Sarah examines her fingers and chews an end off one nail.
    And, like, he took a few steps toward the wall and punched straight through a picture of my mom sitting in a pumpkin patch and yelled that she can sit on this right as he shattered the glass covering the picture.
    You’re joking.
    He was mad. And still big. Like he liked being mad.
    Shayna turns her eyes down to her lap and fiddles with a zipper cutting across her pants in a high-end nonfunctional way and shakes her head.
    So, what did your mom do?
    What does she always do?
    Sarah sits up and smooths her jeans like she’s smoothing a skirt and pushes an imaginary pair of glasses up the bridge of her nose.
    My recent investigation into this very situation — male arousal and its linkages to anger and power — suggests that if you continue exercising this tendency in your life, young man...and shit like that.
    Ha.
    I know. Like, she put on her readers and grabbed one of her old articles off a stack on my corner desk and read it to us. It was 30 pages long. She was reading for an hour once she walked us through the statistical figures in the appendix and why she chose predictor variables
x1
and
x2
over predictor variable
x3.
    What?
    It was about sexual activity in the teenage population and effective parenting strategies to mitigate risk, especially among young women — youths, she called them. Us.
    You’re starting to sound like her.
    I’ve heard it too much.
    Was Chase still mad?
    I don’t really know. He kept watching the corner for something to change, and like, every time Mom said sexual propensity among the adolescent or hierarchical regression or something he would flex his bicep and grunt and say sit on my sexual propensity or sit on this hierarchical regression but then the innuendo fell apart.
    Shayna pulls the nonfunctional zipper up and down her thigh, exposing shallow denim but no pocket.
    It was the same regression line she used in her
Journal of Marriage and Family
article where
y
is a scale of risky sexual behavior and the predictors include conversations with mother about sex, conversations with father about sex, single or non-single parent household, socioeconomic status, number of partners so far, age of first sexual interaction...
    And this all ruined your life?
    I’m getting there.
    Shayna purses her lips and flutters an eyelid. Sarah bites a nail and spits it to the side.
    Like, Mom says all the variables were regressed to the mean and Chase blows his load.
    Shayna’s eyes pop open and she grabs Sarah by the shoulders, letting the zipper fall against her leg.
    Shut up.
    I know. Stupid.
    You mean...
    Yeah. Like, ruined my life.

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