“At least I had a job,” he shot back and lit up.
“What do you think I was doing in there, huh? I was trying to make some money to pay for the goddamned roof over your ungrateful head.”
“Give me a break, Mom, you’re fucking disgusting. I saw what you were doing.”
“And do you know what? Men pay to see me do it. Yeah, perverted fucktards like you, who can’t get a real woman, shell out good money to see what I got.”
“Okay, then, how much have you made at it so far?”
The little shit. “I told you I don’t want you fucking smoking in my house!”
“It’s not going to be your house in another week, so what do you care?” Jesse flicked his ash onto the carpet and took another drag. “How much, Mom?”
“Forty-six bucks so far.”
“Ha,” he laughed at me. “My mom, the high-class internet hooker.”
“Hey, it’s better than being homeless out on the street. At least it’s something. More than what you’re bringing in around here.”
“Quit bitchin’. I’ll get something else.”
“Yeah, right. Just like you were going to go to auto mechanic school? Or how you were going to get your electrician’s license?”
He crushed his cigarette out on the windowsill next to his bed. “And how’s your G.E.D. coming along, Mom?”
“I don’t have time to put up with your bullshit.”
“That’s right, aren’t you supposed to be shoving something up your ass for a nickel just about now?”
“Fuck you!” I hissed, gripping my towel tighter around me as I turned to leave. “And I’m not going to let you talk to me that way. I’m still your fucking mother, you little bastard!”
I slammed his bedroom door, then slammed my bedroom door. I shut down the computer and almost ripped the wires out of the wall. Instead, I collapsed on my bed and cried like a stupid little bitch for the next hour. I heard Jesse leave at some point. Eventually, after I’d cried all I could, I went to the kitchen for a drink.
I didn’t bother to get dressed. What difference did it make? Jesse was right, I wasn’t much better than a whore. And a lousy whore at that. Couldn’t even pay my goddamned bills. I opened the refrigerator to find that the six-pack of Natty Ices I’d bought the night before were gone. That thieving little fucker.
I fetched the half-empty bottle of cheap vodka from the back of the broom closet where I kept it hidden. That boy had been driving me to distraction for the past eighteen years, but I still loved the bastard. He’d always had his daddy’s good looks, but lately I could see it in him more like a man instead of a boy. I thought this daddy and me would be together forever. Those were some wild days back then. Back when I had a body men would fight to get their hands on.
My first swig of vodka went down hard, but it felt good by the time it hit my belly.
I woke up on the sofa some time the next morning. The empty vodka bottle was on the floor and Jesse had apparently thrown one of our tattered old afghans over me. I was still naked underneath. There was peanut butter stuck in my hair. My head was twice too big for my skull and I had to piss like a racehorse. If this wasn’t rock bottom, I was pretty damned close to it.