Private Parts Read Online Free PDF

First, she had to chill the glass. Then she took a lemon rind and ran it around the rim of the glass. Then she mixed the alcohol -- one part vermouth and one part whiskey -- and chilled it. Finally, my mom would put a piece of Saran Wrap over the top of the glass in the refrigerator so everything would be perfect when he got home.
    My old man could be a bastard sometimes. She would kill herself for half the day preparing this stupid drink and he'd sip it and go, "Hmmm. Not as good as the one you made last night, honey." Meanwhile, we were living in Roosevelt, an almost all-black community, a place worse than South Central L. A. There wasn't a white neighbor in sight, and my father was in his little bungalow, making believe he was in some fancy country club, sipping away at his Rob Roy.
    My mother let me make my dad his Rob Roy one night, which was a big mistake. I sure as hell wasn't going to go through that torture. I'd piss in that damn glass before I spent half my day making a stupid drink. If I got it j ust slightly off, my father would scream his head off at me.
    Those drinks didn't tranquilize him at all. He would just get all lit and red-faced and then scream even louder. No matter what I did or said, he'd just yell at me.
    "Hey, Dad, how was your day?"
    "Are you putting me on? SHUT UP!"
    "Dad, I'm just asking..."
    "You don't care about my day! SHUT UP, YOU MORON!"
    He'd be bitching to my mom about work and how his partners were screwing the business up and I would try to empathize with him and ask him questions.
    "What?" he'd yell at me. "What did you say? I'm talking to your mother, you dummy. You don't know what it is to have a partner. You never even worked. GET OUT OF HERE! SHUT UP!"
    I remember one time I told him that I wanted to be a millionaire and he chased me up the stairs. He was going to beat the fucking shit out of me.
    "You dope, you don't even know what it's like to make money!" he screamed. "You say you want to make money? Let me see you work. YOU WON'T EVEN LIFT YOUR ASS TO MOW THE LAWN! SHUT UP!"
    Meanwhile, if I even tried to mow the lawn, he would grab the lawnmower from me and complain about how he was the only one in the family that had the brains to know how to mow the lawn right.
    My dad and I never did things that most dads and their sons do. I think he was a pretty good athlete but he never suggested we play sports together. Once I played catch with my father. I threw him the ball and he missed it and it hit him in the nuts and that was the end of that.
    My father's favorite sport was yelling. And he was pretty scary. I'm surprised that he didn't just wake up one
    night and wipe us all out like a disgruntled postal worker. Maybe he got all his frustrations out by yelling at us. Actually, it was mostly yelling at me. My father would never yell at my sister, because she was his favorite, his little jewel. And my mother actually dug it when my father yelled at me because that would take the heat off her. I was the designated yellee.
    He'd do it everywhere and under any conditions. We'd go out to a restaurant to eat and we all had to know what we wanted to order before we even got there. He'd get all embarrassed in front of the waiter for some stupid reason. My mother would fumble around with the menu, indecisive about what to eat.
    "I know what I want to eat before we get here. You shouldn't need a menu!"
    Then he'd get bent out of shape if we ordered out of order.
    "Howard. You order your appetizer, then your salad dressing, then your entree, you moron!"
    Here we are in some shithole Greek diner and my father's worrying about following the rules of Amy Vanderbilt and Emily Post.
    I once asked for Russian dressing after my entree and all hell broke loose.
    "What do you care what the waiter thinks?" I'd ask.
    "THERE'S A PROPER WAY TO ORDER, YOU IDIOT!"
    He's that way to this day. I should take Stuttering John out to dinner with him. He'd put him right through a wall. When we go out with my parents