Now that I look back on it, I suspect my Mother always had a touch of The Crazy. As a young child, I assumed that the death of my Father knocked her off of her rocker. But with age, little memories previously blocked out due to lack of understanding started to swim to the surface and it finally occurred to me that she must have always been that way. My Dad just shielded us from her. This is another reason why two parents are better than one. In the event that one parent goes batshit, there’s a back up.

My Mother always believed that a woman’s greatest asset was her youth. She thought flawless facial features and a perfect body were her ticket to a rich man and a comfortable lifestyle. Her life was one of complete dependency, so one could imagine how it felt for her to have the rug suddenly pulled out from under her feet. I remember all the times shortly after my Father’s death I watched her standing in front of her bathroom mirror, agonizing over every hint of a wrinkle, muttering quietly to herself, “I’m in my thirties with 2 children. Who’s going to marry me now?”

Realizing that time was running out for her, my Mother threw herself full force into the dating scene. Because she felt her value as a woman had decreased due to aging and childbirth, she significantly lowered her standards. She started dating bikers, alcoholics, criminals, drug addicts and general lowlifes. The pool of bachelors had grown significantly smaller in her absence and she found herself picking over the carcasses of bitter divorced men, desperately searching for some marriageable meat left still on the bones. On the off chance she managed to bring a halfway decent guy home, her grieving, selfish, resentful children were mean to the potential New Dad and chased him away with sneering bad attitudes. She handled this by dating faster and faster, turning her front door into a revolving door, grading each mate more generously than the last even if it meant overlooking abusive tendencies or other obvious character flaws. All this in order to successfully complete her quest for a new husband.

At one point, she even dated a transvestite.

Mark was freakishly tall with broad shoulders and pronounced chin. He was a good 50lbs overweight and he carried it all in his stomach. Worst of all, he was an extremely hairy guy. Mats of thick, black hair covered his knuckles, his chest and his back; he had a 5 o’clock shadow a mere 2 hours after he shaved. I guess what I’m trying to communicate to you is that Mark made one hell of an ugly woman.

He fascinated me.

For one thing, he actually thought he looked like a girl when he dressed as one. He didn’t. For another thing, garbed as a female, he had a pretty ample chest. It was the only thing on him that looked even slightly realistic. Being that I was a bit of a late bloomer in the boob department, I was intensely curious on how he produced the effect. So, I asked him.

He told me that he made his own falsies out of water balloons. He put one balloon inside of another as extra insurance against breakage and then filled the balloons with pudding. He assured me that the pudding was the most important part. Simple water doesn’t have the same texture and consistency as a real breast, he said, but pudding fooled everyone.

To this day, I don’t know if he was telling the truth or totally fucking with me.

“That’s fucking weird,” I told him.

“What were you planning to use?” he laughed, “Tissues?”

“Maybe I won’t use anything,” I haughtily replied.

“You won’t interest any boys with that attitude.” He shot back.

“Well I guess I’ll leave them all for you then!” I snapped.

At that point, Mark lost his temper. He started ranting and raving and insisting that he was not gay! He just liked women’s clothes! He liked how they felt on his body! It didn’t make him gay! Why was everyone always judging him?

My Mother quickly jumped to his defense and chastised my rudeness. She demanded I apologize to Mark. At first I refused, but the threat of punishment convinced me to reconsider. When the dust settled, Mark and my Mother agreed that I was narrow-minded, intolerant, and needed more exposure to alternative lifestyles. Together, they vowed to ‘educate the kids’ starting first thing in the morning. Then, they proceeded to get ready to go out for a night on the town.

When Mark was dressed as a woman, he demanded to be referred to as ‘Mary Anna.’ I called him this to keep the peace. Inside I thought, “Yeah, you’re totally not gay, buddy. Whatever.”

The next day, our apartment was filled with so many gays, bisexuals, transvestites, and transgender folks that I thought I had accidentally stumbled into the middle of a gay pride parade. Apparently, my Mother had been spending a lot of time hanging out at a popular gay bar and when the place finally closed, she remembered her intolerant children and decided to bring the party back to her place. I have no idea how having over a bunch of homosexuals with hangovers to cook me breakfast was supposed to make me into a better person, but I went with it. Gay people can cook and they knew how to make almost every fruit and vegetable into a flower!

My 6 year old brother did not adapt so well, opting instead to throw a fit and lock himself in his room. His outburst did not spoil the good cheer, though. Everyone just airily waved their hands and said, “Oh, he’ll get over it.”

There was another man there dressed like a woman. His name was ‘Jenelle.’ Unlike Mark, he was openly gay. When I asked him if he personally thought it was possible for someone like Mark to dress like a woman and still be straight, he answered, “Well, he’s dating your Mother, isn’t he?”

As if that explained anything.

Eventually the circus disbanded and my Mother, Mark, and I were the only ones left in the messy kitchen. “Where’s your brother?” my Mother asked me.

“Still in his room.”

“He never came down?” Mark asked.

“Nope.”

“I guess he still needs a little work,” my Mother mused, “Perhaps we can take them to that picnic?”

“That’s a fabulous idea!” Mark agreed.

“I’m OK with a picnic,” I said, but no one replied. They were too busy hashing out the details between them.

The day of the picnic arrived and my Mother presented me and my brother with two tie-dyed T-shirts she had made for us for the occasion. One the front, with a black sharpie, she had written, “My Godfather is Gay….” On the back, it said, “And I’m Proud of it!”

Confused, I asked, “Who is my gay Godfather?”

“Jeff,” my Mother answered, “You remember him. From the party.”

I shook my head.

“You mean Jenelle,” Mark cut in as he lumbered down the stairs donning a pink and yellow sundress with a straw hat decorated with fake flowers.

“Oooohhh,” Said I.

“I’m not wearing that shirt!” my brother suddenly screamed.

“Oh yes you will wear this shirt!” my Mother firmly insisted.

“I don’t even know him!” he shrieked as tears began to run down his cheeks, “I don’t even know him! He’s not our Godfather! I don’t even know him!”

The fit my brother threw was horrendous, but she eventually got him to wear his shirt. During the car ride there, I whispered to him, “Why did you get so upset over the shirt?”

My brother stared out the car window for a long moment. Finally, he said, “She never lets us know people.”

I shook my head. Again, I was confused.

But the picnic was fun and everyone was nice. After awhile, even my brother started to enjoy himself. When we finally made it home, he was so amicable that he admitted that he’d like to attend another one.

Mark decided to take full advantage of the situation. “In that case,” he said, “You wouldn’t mind wearing that shirt to school tomorrow.”

My brother slowly shook his head: No.

Quickly, my Mother latched onto the idea. “Actually, I think you both are going to wear your shirts tomorrow.” Her voice hardened. Obviously, this was not up for debate.

I wasn’t worried. I knew I could always wear the shirt on the bus, under my jacket, and change in the girl’s room before anyone saw me. But my brother was terrified.

Turns out, his fear was not without good reason. He came home from school bruised, bloody, and walking with a limp. A group of kids had beaten him up at the bus stop. My Mother never found out; she was too busy visiting friends with Mark and never saw my brother with all the dried blood from his nose crusted all over his face. She never saw the fury in his eyes and he ripped the shirt from his body, grabbed a pair of shearing scissors, and cut it up into the smallest little pieces. It never occurred to her that my brother was not recoiling from alternative lifestyles out of hatred of other people, but out of confusion by how fast his life was changing. She never considered that we might need time to grieve our Father’s death before we could adjust to a new one…especially one as different from our Father as Mark was.

All my Mother knew was that she needed a husband.

And her looks were fading.

And she was running out of time.

My Mother never married Mark.

But my brother did end up becoming a homophobe.