hurricane tee tee

by JD Clapp

Every family has a few fuckups, the brother-in-law who hits on all the women at Christmas, the bible thumper sister who insists on saying a twenty-minute grace at Thanksgiving then asks everyone to say how Jesus blessed them last year, the crotchety uncle who thinks MAGA is too liberal, the aunt who tells you you gained weight and look tired…Yeah, I got all of those, too. But I also have my niece, who answers to her street moniker, Tee Tee. A forty-year-old, extra-large blond woman who truly thinks she’s black and has the meth-fueled energy of a cyclone just before it demolishes a developing country. Here are three short interactions to give you a taste.

Loggy Gone!

Tee-Tee texted me in a panic. Fuck me. I’m too tired for this shit. Her texts, always a mix of meth-addled gibberish and some version of a “white girl who grew up in the hood” Ebonics, came in three flavors—I need something (e.g., I need bail money, my car got jacked, etc.), I love you, or drama. This one was pure drama. Being past my bedtime, I decided to forego the usual back and forth texts to clarify what the hell she was trying to tell me and called her.

“Uncle John…I…I…Loggy gone! He gone!!!! It Paint Chip’s fault!!!…He…he locked up again and now Paul gonna throw me out and nobody care what I do for them…and I…I…” she sobbed into the phone.

“Calm down…I’m having trouble following what you’re telling me. Loggy is your cat? And who is Paint Chip?” I asked.

“Loggy! You met him! He gone!! I think coyotes ate him and it my fault ‘cause I had a bell on him and he fat and wearing a dinner bell for coyotes that I put on him,” she said.

Shit. I remember the cat now. It was massive just like her, a gift from her last boyfriend who’d spent 25 years in California’s finest penal institutions for a gang-related shoot out.

A month prior, I went to her birthday party at the place she currently lived. Paul owned the house, a sprawling place in a lower-middle-class neighborhood that had several people living there. He bartered sex, drugs, and cash for rent. Apparently, Paul’s wife who no longer wanted to have sex with him but lived there and remained his loving wife, was fine with the arrangement. Tee Tee had explained she “ain’t in his bitch harem” and traded house cleaning and cooking in exchange for rent.

I spent a couple minutes trying to talk her through what happened to her cat. After she explained he went missing the same night a coyote tried to kill her neighbor’s little dog, I couldn’t offer much hope. Shit, coyotes probably did eat him. Let’s focus on the other two problems she raised so I can go to bed.

“I’m so sorry. He might turn up, but…I wouldn’t count on that. But, why is Paul going to kick you out?” I asked.

“Because Paint Chip got all fucked up and throwed a rock at us, then the cops came and took him and Paul don’t want no more drama,” she said, her sobs turning to a highspeed rant.

I now also recalled that her father, my idiot brother-in-law, called Ernie Paint Chip because he seemed to have brain damage. “Dude, she always picks the retards so she can boss them around. That guy had to be eating paint chips or some shit when he was a baby.”

“Paint Chip is your boyfriend, Ernie?” I asked.

“Yes! That dumbass crack baby is soooo stupid and he on probation and ain’t supposed to be drinking and I think he did meth with Tito and was drunk on Banana 99 and on molly too, that he got from Curtis and he got throwed out of the motel for breaking a window and Paul don’t want him living here no more and now he gonna kick me to the curb, too.”

I decided not to go down that convoluted rabbit hole. It wasn’t my first rodeo. What a fucking mess…Let’s cut to the chase.

“Ok…shit, that’s a lot. I’m so sorry you are dealing with all that at once. What can I do? Do you need money or a place to stay? Do you want me to talk to Paul?” I asked.

She paused, sniffled then said, “No. I’m cool. Paul’s wife love me and I’ll be good. I gotta go look for Loggy, now. Love you, Uncle John.” Then she hung up.

“I love you, too,” I said to the deadline. Fucking family.

I silenced my phone and went to bed.

*****

Sling Shot Thong

Around 2015, I flew back from Ohio to San Diego and met Tee Tee at a Starbucks to give her $2000 so she could buy a car and get off the streets. Being an alcohol and drug researcher by trade, I knew handing an addict $2000 was a dicey proposition, but my wife and I decided it was worth the risk. Doing nothing likely meant she’d end up doing real time or dead, and if my two grand went up her nose…well, unlike her worthless mother, at least we fucking tried.

During those years, she cycled in and out of her dad’s house and county jail for petty offenses, until her old man had enough and gave her the boot. Out of spite, Tee Tee posted up in the bushes at the end of his street, making sure to use his hose to shower her three-hundred-pound ass, around the time the neighbors left for work in the morning. (Other than the fact that both my brother-in-law and sister-in-law are both big people, I still can’t explain the incongruence between her ample size and her meth intake.) Tee Tee found this routine quite amusing. However, nobody else did, especially not her father.

The Starbucks was on the border of one of San Diego’s many down-and-out neighborhoods. Between me moving to Ohio and her stints in lock up, I hadn’t seen her in a couple years. I didn’t know what to expect. To my surprise she was clean, decently dressed, still massive, and in a jolly mood when she met me. She was tweaking, but not off the rails. After buying her a quad hammerhead—just what a meth addict needs—we got down to discussing what happened and her plans to get out of her current mess.

“So do you need any clothes or camping gear until you can get into an apartment?” I asked.

“No, I good. My pilt dad finally gave me my shit. Uncle John, you know what that dumb ass brought me first? A bag of my lingerie. What the fuck am I gonna do with that?! I’m a big girl, you could use my thong as a sling shot to shoot a motherfucking watermelon across the parking lot, sheeesh, pow, splat. Ha! But I’m glad I got all my sexy shit back. Lace ain’t cheap and that is a lot of lace, Uncle John. A lot of lace,” she said in a concert-level voice, then started cackling at her own narrative.

Jesus!

After jabbing out my mind’s eye and spitting out my latte in a laugh, I saw the faces of horror on the two women sitting adjacent to our table. I silently shushed her and motioned with my hand to keep the volume down. My gesture useless and the hammerhead interacting with the meth, she continued at the same volume and speed.

“So I go back thinkin’ fuck that restraining order, and I pound on the door but he just yells from the window to leave or he’ll call the cops on me and I tell him I need my clothes not a bunch of lacey thongs ‘cause it’s fucking cold on the street. Then he tells me if I move off his street, he’ll give me the rest of my shit and I need to wait by the curb. He so pilt. But I go to the curb and wait for his fat ass to toss out three trash bags, which ain’t even half my shit, which is ok cause I got no place to put it now and then he tells me to beat it. Fucktard,” she ranted.

Time to wrap this up…

“Ok…so what’s your plan? I mean, how are you going to get off the streets? You going to treatment? What about a job? I asked.

“Hell…I got it figured. I gonna go back to school after I get into this woman’s treatment program up in Esco. They help you get set up with free money from the government. I still got a few EBT accounts. Then I’ll look for a room up there,” she explained.

Heard all this before…a few EBT accounts? Jesus.

“That sounds like a decent plan. You don’t want to end up locked up again,” I said.

“Oh hell no. I can’t go back inside. It ain’t bad food and you ain’t on the streets with a bunch of crackheads but I got some enemies and them guards jacked my ass up good last time. No, sir. I just need this car to get going.”

I slide her the envelope. She took it, folded it in half, and stuffed it into her bra.

“Tell me about this car you’re buying,” I said.

“Oh…it’s from Janelle. It was her grandma’s Honda Accord. Low miles and shit. I gonna sleep in it for the next little bit until I get into the treatment thingy. I number three on the list,” she explained.

Ah, yes…the $2000 dollar car that belonged to a little old lady who only drove it to Church and bingo. My money will end up going up Janelle’s nose, whoever the fuck she is.

“Sounds like a decent plan. We really want you to be safe,” I said.

If she isn’t playing me, I give her a 10% chance of staying clean and out of jail.

“I know, Uncle John. Love you and Aunt Mary. Tell Woodrow I love him too. Now I gotta beat feet. I gots a date then gonna pick up my new wheels,” she said and stood up.

We hugged goodbye and I watched her and my cash amble across the parking lot.

*****

A Handy for Pops

Tee Tee called from the Sea World security office. I knew she was there with my son, her ex-con boyfriend (who I really liked but was always cross-faded), his crackhead father and Flava-Flav’s doppelgänger, Pops, and my college-aged son, who she called Woodrow since birth because his sonogram showed he was well endowed. Shit. Now what…

“Uncle John, we lost Pops. You heard from him?” she asked.

“Pops has a phone?” I asked.

“Hell no. He can’t use no phone,” she said.

“Then how would I have heard from him?” I ask.

“Sheeet… You right,” she said.

“How did you lose him? When? At Sea World?” I asked, against my better judgement.

“He was drunk and kept askin’ for mo’ beer money, so I sent him back to the Woody’s car with Beaver,” she explained.

Clear as mud. But now I gotta ask.

“Who is Beaver?”

“Beaver!! You know!! She my girl from Esco! I gave her a hundy to take Pops back to Woody’s car and give him a handy,” she explained.

“Wait…You gave your friend a hundred bucks to give Pops a hand job? In Chris’s car?” I asked.

He’s going to need a hazmat suit to clean the seats.

“With his money. I ain’t got no hundy. I hold his disability cash for him or he’d blow it all on crack and hos in a day. Beaver got her own man, so she’d only do a handy.”

Makes perfect sense.

My head started to hurt. I rubbed my temples. Ok…this is a stupid question, but when in fucking Rome…

“Did you look in the car?” I asked.

“Yeah. Beaver was sawin’ z’s in back, all sweaty and shit. Pops is hung! But Pops gone. Got ghost! Dumbass crackhead could be swimming with Shamu. We look all over and can’t find his ghetto ass nowhere,” she said.

I sighed, ready to simply wish her luck

“Hold up…The security guy got him on that golf cart. Ha! They got the blue light on…”

I hear mumbles. Her yelling at Pops. My son and Tee Tee’s boyfriend laughing in the background.

“Never mind. He was sleeping in the bushes. We cool. Love you!” The line went dead.

I laughed.

*****

I could fill a three-volume book but, I fear, too much at once is like overdosing or some crime against humanity. She might be a trainwreck, but she’s my trainwreck.  And she loves her Uncle John.

Photo of JD Clapp

BIO: JD Clapp is a writer based in San Diego, CA. His creative work has appeared in over 70 different literary journals and magazines including Cowboy Jamboree, trampset, and Revolution John. His work has been nominated for several awards including the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and Best Small Fictions. He is the author of two story collections—Poachers and Pills (2025), and A Good Man Goes South (2024).