second act

by Judy Slitt

I guess you could say my mom is having her second act. You would’ve thought 75 was too old for that. She invited me to the Dürty Bürdy for one of her stand-up open mic nights. She never did this kind of thing before my dad divorced her.

But now she’s on stage, saying “Look, there’s my son!” and pointing to me in the front row. “He’s the reason my pussy is so big that a train could go inside!”

This sets her off on a round of “My pussy is so big” jokes.

I mean, how am I supposed to respond to that? I try to be open-minded and all. But most of the jokes don’t even make sense, like “my pussy is so big that Jared Kushner got lost in there looking for the Middle East.”

The emcee is this young black guy named Demetrik. He’s, like, in his 20s, and I’m pretty sure he’s fucking my mom. Whenever I see her perform, he comes up and throws his arm around my shoulder, all chummy. He breathes stale beer into my ear: “I love your mom, man. She’s so funny. You’re so lucky.”

Demetrik is wearing this dumb hoodie with a cartoon pickle wearing sunglasses. It says, “Just dillin’”.

I ask him what his shirt means.

He looks down and grins. “Oh, man, yeah, it’s like, I’m just chillin’, but I’m a pickle. So, it’s dillin’. You know?”

I say, “But it kinda looks like ‘just diddlin’.”

He says, “Naw, man, I don’t think so.”

And then I re-focus my attention on my mom, and she’s on stage talking about how she loves getting rammed in the ass.

Maybe it was a bad idea, but I bring my girlfriend June one night, so she can understand where I come from, etc. She looks at me weird the whole time and leans over the table to say, “Your mom is crossing all kinds of boundaries. That’s totally inappropriate,” which was not the reaction I was looking for at all.

I say, “Oh, well… I thought it was funny, actually,” and she frowns and I say, “Is this about the coke can thing?”

And then I have to go up to my mom after the show, and she’s wasted at the bar, her arm around Demetrik. They’re bumping their hips together and saying, “Chugga chugga choo-choo!” and laughing.

I say, “Hey, Mom, good show tonight.”

Mom holds her arms out and says, “Baby! I’m so glad you came!” We hug and she kisses my cheeks.

I say, “Maybe next time you could…you know. Maybe cool it with the coke can thing.”

Mom says, “But it’s a compliment toward your father.”

I say, “I don’t know.”

Mom says, “I’ve lived enough years on this Earth to say what I want to say.”

Demetrik says, “I don’t know, man. I thought it was pretty funny.”

I want to punch him in the face but instead I go back to the table with June and tell her Mom won’t include the coke can joke anymore.

June-Bug is wearing ladybug earrings and a cute blouse with ladybugs on it, which I haven’t seen before. It must be new. It’s hard for her to get clothes that fit because she’s a little person but also buff. It’s like, she doesn’t want being little to hold her back. She can lift heavier than me even though she’s, like, four feet tall.

I’ve just had my third divorce, so I’m hoping it all works out with June-Bug. I feel kinda bad for her since she works at the regional airport and does everything - checks luggage, washes bathrooms, bartends. Sometimes she throws on a high-viz vest and runs outside to move the safety cones. We met because I work in TSA and I complimented her ladybug headband. I ordered a pepperoni pizza at the airport cafe and she microwaved it for me. It was too hot and I burned my tongue, but I didn’t care because I got her number.

Mom’s back on stage. She says, “The thing about taking a really big shit is…”

She pauses for dramatic effect. “That’s the joke.”

The crowd explodes with laughter. A hipster spits a peanut across the room.

Why didn’t my marriages work out? Each time I think it’ll be different, and it’s not. My exes just left out of nowhere. And they seemed exasperated with me for not knowing why. Their faces looked kind of like June-Bug’s does, now.

“I’ve started dating young,” Mom says on stage, elbowing Demetrik. “I just got tired of having old balls in my face.”

Photo of Judy Slitt

BIO: Judy Slitt lives in Virginia. Her stories have appeared or are forthcoming in Bright Flash Literary Review, surely magazine, Cosmic Daffodil Journal, Moss Puppy Magazine, M E N A C E, Crow & Cross Keys, and BULL. Her website is judyslitt.com.