The Father Had a Revelation by Brandon Hobson

Summer, 1978--Longview, TX

     Look Carol our time's due. I had a revelation that it's due we tell our son how I searched deep in the jungles of Africa for two years and found you. How you're really a baboon and all. He needs to know this Carol, you're his mother. Why are you shaking your fucking head Carol. We've got to tell the boy everything. I just mean that it's due time, Carol. It's due time that I sat him down and tell him how I found you hanging upside down on a tree with the others, eating bananas and sniffing fingers and barfing and growling and screaming and farting. How I taught you civilized behavior and sign language and even how I up and shaved your face and back and rear all the way down to the sensitive pink infected skin and how you roared and scowled over a hot Mr. Bubble bath back at my hut. Remember? Remember when you thought birds was mean? That's why our son is scared of them birds, Carol. Quit shaking your fucking head Carol. I learned sign language and taught you fucking sign language.
     Carol our boy should rightly know about exactly why he had hair on his back at age ten, and how I made up that story about you riding that bull down in San Antonio's '61 rodeo and having your vocal chords ripped fucking out and then replaced with the bull's own vocal chords in grim honky-tonk revenge. For fuck's sake Carol our son still thinks you got a bull's vocal chords. How do you explain that. You can't even tell me. Get serious now before I get completely pissed out of my mind because I'm talking about a revelation, my revelation. Carol quit shaking your fucking head.
     Look at me Carol. Now you just remove your fingers from your face and look right here at fucking me. I kissed them fingers last night, remember. Don't that mean dick to you? I washed thoroughly and kissed them black padded fingers of yours. Fingers that double the size of my own. Fingers that continue to grow each year with the coiled tight pins of black hair I shave bare from every smooth, limp fold and wrinkled vast area of your large body once a week in order to take you out in public, see. Fingers is important in sign language. People in public places notice that. Please for the love of Christ Carol remove them fingers from your face, Carol.
     Listen to me Carol. We have got to decide how and when and where we will tell our boy about this. He's got a right to know. He's the product of our own two fleshes, mine and yours. Don't that mean dick to you? Sure as hell I can stand here and drink my scotch and soda water and blabber like a fucking chimp if I have to until all this registers in your goddamn brain, Carol. Our only boy. It's all my fault. Carol, I swear I should've never went and got that fucking vasectomy after he was born. That was just plain dumbshit behavior on my part and damn near the stupidest thing I've ever done to my own pink fucking flesh. I cannot believe how I let that horseshit pathetic little fuck of a doctor talk me into slicing me of my own pride-and-joy, so to speak, my own manhood. Haven't been the same since and you know it, Carol.
     My impotence entertains you Carol and that's just fine. Forget last night Carol. Forget it. Wipe it from your mind. You can stand here and snicker all you want and that is just fucking fine Carol. I know what you're thinking. How I can stand here and drink my double scotch and soda and rant on like a fucking jungle cat about sexual things and all. Fine. Go ahead and snicker. Go ahead and put your big brown furry fingers up to your mouth and just fucking snicker. Carol you know as darn fucking well as I that five percent of American males over thirty-five years of age suffer from impotence. And you sit there and snicker about my anxieties and deflations of dick, Carol. Thank you, Carol. Thank you for being so goddamn sensitive to my own failure of dick. I'm sure your son would not like it if he knew how you snicker at me when I'm shriveled up and just plain limp, Carol, how you carry me over your shoulder each night to bed after I've sat here in front of the black tube we call a TV and drink up my scotch. I'm sure he wouldn't think it's funny how I'm limp as fucking deflated balloon morning noon and fucking night, Carol, how my own little revelation is really a drunken state of oblivion when I ache and moan at your firm back muscles while you carry me over your shoulder to bed only to leave me to sleep alone, splayed and buck naked on my side, numb and loaded, how the last thing I hear every night from you Carol just before I pass out is that pathetic hiss of a snicker while you stand there above me in darkness, your shoulders hunched, arms beating on chest, fists closed.

About the author:
Brandon Hobson lives in Oklahoma and have an M.A. in English. His work has appeared in The Southern Anthology 1996, New Plains Review, 3am Magazine, 2River View, Stirring, and Words of Wisdom. Mr. Hobson is currently finishing a novel.