Acting 101 Ch. 09: Christmas Break

Fair warning: There is almost no actual bow-chicka-bow-wow in this chapter. There is plenty of sexual and embarrassing subject matter, but this is only a little more than a simple father-son camping trip.

A trip that advances the plot....

Please remember, as with all my stories, should you be looking for 'Realism', just move on. I aim for 'Ridiculously Plausible'.

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I only had one traditional final exam that Fall semester. Aside from our now performed final scene in Acting 101, I only had final papers and a writing assignment. Those were all completed and handed in well before I walked into that one exam. I was already packed for Christmas break at my parents', and when I handed in the two blue books I had filled during the test, I went straight to the car and headed off north to my home in Winston-Salem. I was barely across the border into South Carolina, when my phone started getting texts. Fortunately, the Tesla is pretty good with reading aloud and taking text dictation, so I could keep driving and did not have to pull over to reply to Steff.

Steff: How did your exam go?

Steff: My first is this afternoon, and it should be really easy, which has me worried

Steff: LOL

Me: Mine was harder than I thought. But I still crushed it, I think.

Steff: Good

Then, a half hour later...

Steff: Got all your shopping done for your family?

Me: Yep. Have to have. Dad and I have our trip starting Wednesday.

Steff: Going to go kill some poor woodland creatures with your big, bad gun?

Me: It is mostly fishing.

Steff: Don't drown

Me: Let's hope.

A little while after that last exchange, the phone rang. It was Meredith.

We chatted for quite a while. She asked about my exam as well, then grumpily complained that she had a matter at work blow up all of a sudden that would keep her inordinately busy over the whole holiday season.

"What the Hell do we have judges for," she groused, "if not to issue continuances over the holidays so lawyers don't have to toil in their offices while everyone else is guzzling eggnog at the firm's Christmas party?"

"I have complete confidence that the Mighty Meredith will subdue her paperwork dragon sufficiently to enjoy some mulled wine and bad caroling with her office colleagues," I said with merry reassurance. "Just don't get too collegial with any coworkers," I added teasingly.

"Don't worry, darling," Meredith replied softly.

My mother was typically effusive when I arrived home, fussing over how 'tired' I looked, demanding to know why I hadn't brought any laundry for her to do, and asking for details of how the semester had gone. She also told me she had planed dinner early, so I could go out later and see old friends.

I told her, in order, to stop fussing--I was getting plenty of sleep; that I was a grown-ass man and could do my own laundry without bringing it home to Mommy; and that, although I was not behind on sleep, I was tired and just wanted to hang out with her, Dad, and my sister. Maybe we could play Bridge, please?

The next day I spent driving my little sister around, doing Christmas shopping and running errands for Mom. Someone had to, because Sarah had chosen to leave her car at school and fly home. Sarah is a frosh at Ole Miss and is astoundingly pleasant and fun to talk to... for a little sister. One long afternoon of one-on-one time was exactly as much as I needed.

I spent that afternoon interrogating her about the college boys I knew would be all over such a cute girl like white on rice, all the while carefully lying through my teeth about my own love life. I became convinced that Sarah was getting laid, possibly regularly, and began, with utterly astounding hypocrisy, to plot an unannounced visit to Oxford, in order to put the fear of God into a few selected dudes.

(Spoiler: I did make that visit, and it turned out that there was just the one guy, his douche quotient was unfathomably low for a sophomore, and he and Sarah ended up as a couple for more than a year before she finally drove him nucking futs and he moved on.)

After my sister and I made it back to the house, we all four went out to eat together. Mom seemed surprised that her children wanted to spend time with her, and she asked us, well... me, twice if we wanted to do something on our own with friends instead. After dinner, Sarah did end up hitting a movie with an old buddy. Mom seemed puzzled that I was content to hang out with her and Dad, and make sure I was fully packed for Dad's and my annual trip together.

"Are you trying to get rid of me, Mom?" I complained. "We leave early-early tomorrow, and I don't want to sleep the whole ride there. That would be especially bad for the parts where I drive!"

"Late nights never stopped you before now," she just replied.

"I'm an old man now, I need my rest," I snarked. "Seriously, Mom. Chuck is doing Christmas in Vail this year with his family, and Pete has to work tonight."

She finally got off my back and when I got home, I packed and we three watched Netflix.

The next morning, my father and I hit the road. There is plenty of nice wilderness and easy drive west of where I live, and he and I always took three or four days right before Christmas to chill out in the woods and get some time away from the women in our family, who seemed to outnumber us about four to one, even though there were only the two of them.

My father is a very successful man. He may have been born with a silver (plated) spoon in his mouth, and that gave him a certain boost at the start, but he has made far more of himself than most men from similar circumstances. The long hours and near-constant travel meant that he was by necessity a distant figure most of the time. But when he was there for his family, he was always fully there. And the times he was able to plan to set aside as just for us were set in stone.

He made it to very few of Sarah's or my softball to lacrosse games, but any time he specifically told us that he was, in fact, coming, he was there the whole time, trying not to jeer the refs (and failing) and flirting with our teammate's moms, in the best tradition of youth sports parenting. For him, there was none of that last-second ghosting you see in the movies, where the shitty dad decides to take a last-minute meeting instead, absolutely proving to the kid that they are not his priority.

Dad also carved out specific times for each of us each year, plans that went off without fail. He and my mom took a trip outside the country twice a year, every year... usually outside the continent. In the rare event that wherever they went had internet at all, his phone and laptop remained buried in the suitcase. Honestly, how Sarah and I don't have more siblings was beyond me. He takes Sarah to New York every year before school starts to let her shop without Mom's interference. (And he gets to drink weird cocktails in Manhattan bars till the wee hours without Mom's interference.)

Just before Christmas was my block of time. Four days. In the woods. We took two small tents (Dad had a pop-up trailer for years it might rain or snow), coolers, beer, camp chairs, and all the other simple amenities for a comfortable campsite that still earned the name. Our fly rods were securely tucked behind the seats in the cabin of Dad's beat-up old F-150, which he kept for this trip, runs to Home Depot, and to otherwise annoy my mother. On the rack behind us was my vintage thirty-ought-six with the brand new scope I had bought myself for my birthday, and Dad's black rifle. The trip was always primarily about fishing, but we would spend the last day hunting wild boar. Feral swine are dangerous and a huge and growing problem for everyone from farmers, to ranchers, to gardeners, to owners of small dogs. That is why they are always in season. And, since I've never killed anything except insects that I didn't eat, it is fortunate that game pork can be quite tasty, if you know how to cook it.

By the afternoon, we had found a likely site, pitched camp, donned our waders and were in a small river, casting our flys across a likely looking bend.

After almost a half hour of companionable silence, my Dad, out of the blue, asked, "So, who is the girl?" This set off all manner of alarms in my head. Dad and I talk a lot on these trips, but not usually when we are in the river. If he talks here, it means something.

"Who is what girl?" I replied cautiously, wanting to figure out what he knew. What he was supposed to know... was nothing.

"I don't know who she is," Dad said in an idle voice that was not fooling me. "That's why I'm asking."

"What makes you think there is a girl?" I asked. "I do not have a girl," I added in what I thought was a very clever lie. I did not have a girl, I had two women, only one of which could even be plausibly thought of as a girl, which I did not.

"Pull the other one, Scott," Dad laughed at my weak denial. "Your mother specifically tasked me with finding out about her during this trip, but even I could tell all on my own that you have a girl, without her far superior detective skills."

"How?" I asked vehemently, already moving past denial to damage control. Full disclosure of the current state of my love life was not in any way on the table.

"How do I know? Karen Courtney," Dad replied calmly, flicking his fly a little further out.

"Karen Courtney is not my girl."

"A fact that you have not seemed to be able to accept for the last six years," Dad laughed. "Every time you come home, item one or two on your agenda is always calling or, more often, visiting Karen, just to see if you are off the rejected list."

Karen Courtney was a life-long friend, but when she turned seventeen, the Boob Fairy backed up an eighteen-wheeler at her house and my perceptions of my tomboy buddy... evolved. Her perceptions of me remained forever unchanged, unfortunately.

"This year," Dad said, "even I noticed that you didn't go hound-dogging off as soon as you got home. And the way you turned down all her subtle reminders that you had time to go see the Courtney girl has got your mother all fucking excited now. So give."

My father never swears around women, children, or business acquaintances. When he started swearing around me, it had been one of the coolest moments in my life. It had meant I was a man.

But he also never swore unless he was livid, or more often, when he was having fun, so that F-bomb meant I had a problem. Without it, I might have just gone with vague reassurances of 'nothing serious', etc. But now I knew he was amused, which meant he was going to dig, and keep digging.

I prayed fervently for the God-damned fish to make an appearance. The fuckers did not.

"It's complicated," I tried. Then I changed where I was casting my fly, in a vain attempt to find some distracting fish, but even if there were a couple out there in the vicinity, they all seemed to have had a big danish for breakfast and weren't hungry. "If we don't find some fish, it is going to be a can food dinner tonight," I observed.

"Uh huh," said Dad drily, ignoring my concerns about hunger. "So, what is the complication? Are you in another unrequited love situation?"

"It is not unrequited!" I snapped before I could help myself. Damn.

"Nice!" laughed my father. "So if you are getting 'requited' all the time, what is so complicated?"

"The complications," I replied, hoping I could shut things down with an unresponsive reply.

"Ah yes," Dad intoned sagely, "The Complications often do complicate matters." He shut up and concentrated on his casting. The fly flicked across the water. The bastard let the silence extend just long enough for me to hope he was going to let things drop. I should have known better.

"You know, boy," he went on suddenly, "the reason humans keep old farts like me around long after we stop spawning babies, is to dispense wisdom and advice... to help by passing on our own experiences with these complications."

"I am dead bone certain that you have not had to deal with this complication," I laughed.

"Oh ho!" laughed Dad loudly. The noise meant another half hour before the fish might consider biting. "Now you really have me curious."

"Dad. Father. Scott, Sr. I have always appreciated your support, and the way you have always been there for me when I asked for advice," I said, both imploringly and curiously, "but I've never known you so insistent on giving it. What's your freaking deal?"

Dad looked at me and grinned. "I'm a fifty-three year-old man who has been happily married to your mother for most of my adult life. When the opportunity to live vicariously through my son, or any other guy with a new relationship, comes along..." he shrugged. "Complications just make the whole story even better."

"Jesus...."

"So what is the problem you are dealing with? Wait..." my father interrupted himself. "Is she a black girl?" He misinterpreted the way my eyes widened. "I'm disappointed, Scott. You know your mother would not have a problem with...."

"Dad!" I interrupted, scaring the fish again with my volume. "I know Mom wouldn't have a problem! Shit! And if I were dating a black girl, then Grampy Dan could go fuck himself."

"Fuckin-A," replied my father, who was not a great fan of his father-in-law. "But I still don't see the problem. After Christmas, drive back to Atlanta, collect the girl, and bring her back for New Year's."

I stared at him, appalled.

"Listen, if there is a problem, your mom is a fixer. If your problem really isn't something that manly advice can handle, let her have a crack at helping," my father said quickly. "Why not give it a try?"

"Because if I brought two women back home for New Year's, Mom would have a fucking aneurysm, Dad!" I exclaimed.

I have mentioned before that my mouth gets out in front of my brain from time to time. Other times, my mouth freezes up and I am speechless. This was really one of those times where the latter would have served me better. Much better.

My father stared at me. Somewhere in the recesses of my mind, I rejoiced that for the first time since I was five and took a bath in house paint, I had rendered my father speechless. Out in the front of my mind however, I was kicking myself. Hard.

"There are two girls," Dad said slowly at last. "Two?"

"Two women. Yes," I ground out between clenched teeth. "Mom. Would have. An. Aneurysm."

My father looked up at the sky with a small smile on his face and rocked his head back and forth. "I don't know, Scott. Your mom might handle that better than you think."

Wait. What? What the... What the actual fuck, my mind screamed. What had I just learned about my mother, if only by implication? I had the sudden idea that pursuing what made Dad think that Mom would not freak out might derail his interrogation of me. But I quickly discarded the thought when I realized that I would rather give a PowerPoint presentation to my parents, with diagrams, on how I'd fucked Steff in a restaurant bathroom the prior Friday, than actually find out what gave my father the idea that Mom would be cool with my having two girlfriends at once.

While I was running around in panicked circles in my head, my father was quiet for a moment. "Um..." he said carefully. At least someone besides me had decided to be careful with his words. "Are you simply dating two girls at the same time, or are you, um... more than just dating them?"

I stared at him. Glared, really. I was determined not to answer, but of course my silence answered for me.

My father sighed and reeled in his line. "We should move up to the next bend. There may be something to catch down there." A change of venue sounded good to me. And any fish in a new spot would not have been scared off by all the hollering.

As we walked upstream, Dad sucked at his teeth. "Um, you do know how likely it is that this will end poorly... for all three of you." He paused, "But especially for you?" We trudged on, and I did not answer. "Look," he went on while we struggled through a thicket, "one of them will find out eventually. They always...."

"Not my problem, Dad," I interrupted shortly.

"It will be," he insisted. "You're smart, boy. God knows you are smart. But even the smart ones get caught. Do they know each other?"

I snorted. "Oh yeah. But...."

"Christ, you are fucked."

My father was pissing me off. The thicket, which had more of its share of thorns than was strictly reasonable, was pissing me off more. "They know about each other, Dad," I growled.

My father spun around to look at me when I said that. In doing so, he let go of a branch, which whipped back and spiked him fairly effectively. I moved to help disentangle him, and got impaled myself for my sins. We were both laughing, and both only a little in pain, when we finally extracted ourselves from the fucking thorns. From there, we waded back into the river and saw that indeed, we had found a better-looking location.

We started casting again in silence, but I could just feel Dad percolating across the way from me.

"Let me get this straight," he started up again. "There are two women. They know each other. They are both actually aware that you are fucking the other one at the same time?" His eyebrows were higher than I'd ever seen them.

"Yes," I sighed. Mortified as I was by this conversation, I had to admit to myself that it was immensely God-damned satisfying to have my father on his heels like this. And I grinned at myself, especially when he uttered the phrase, "at the same time."

Unfortunately, my father might have been off balance, but he is never anything but observant. It's why I'm such a rules-following, responsible guy. I never got away with one damned thing around him growing up.

And I didn't get away with that little chuckle to myself either.

His raised eyebrows snapped down into a furrow, and his eyes themselves narrowed. "Wait a second. You smiled when I said, 'at the same time.' Are you having threesomes!?"

All chance of eating fresh fish that night fled with his shout. Every fish in the whole freaking river must have heard him. I'm betting fish in aquariums in Asheville heard him.

"They don't like to use that term," I whispered in a strangled voice, completely unable to resist.

My father stared at me. Then he threw his rod onto a nearby rock and splashed over toward me. When he got to me, he stuck out his hand. "Well put 'er God-damned there," he said, with a grin and a gleam in his eye. I bemusedly shook his hand. "I have never met any guy who ever came close to a threesome!" he exclaimed. "Well, except for.... Anyway."

Do. Not. Pursue. That. Interrupted. Remark.

"And my son pulls it off," he went on. I swear, the sonofabitch was proud of me!

Now he was laughing. Hard. He was bent over with his hands on his knees, he was laughing so hard. When he finally could breath easily enough to straighten up, he looked at me again. "Don't get me wrong, I still think you are fucked in the long run, but at least you have a chance to get away in the end with your balls still attached, instead of hanging from their rearview mirrors."

"Yeah," I said, suddenly pensive. My father sensed it and settled down on a huge rock, inviting me to sit down too. The fishing was forgotten.

"I'm joking, you know," he said, arm around me--something he didn't do that often.