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Drag
So your mom was a New York punk legend in the '80s? Big deal.
First and worst, there was her name. Fret.
Who the fuck names their first kid Fret? Even being bussed to a school where a lot of the kids seemed to have made up names, Fret stuck out. Fret’s mother stuck out, too, at least she would have if she’d ever bothered with a PTA meeting or a bake sale or a class trip. That wasn’t her speed, though, and it fell to Daddy to show up for that stuff.
Then there was not being allowed to call her Mom.
Fret got so sick of trying to keep track of when to say Mom and when to say Stark that she finally just quit mentioning her mother. Long before this Fret had figured out how to do the laundry and had delegated Gauge to kitchen duty. When Daddy got sick of pancakes and canned soup, he’d take Fret and Gauge out for pizza. When his favorite blue shirt got mixed in with the whites and came out blotchy from the bleach, he went to Sears for a new one. They all just adjusted to blue splotchy dish towels and underpants.
Stark was out late most nights and hungover and mean during the days.
Once in a while Fret would hit the sweet spot, usually around 4 in the afternoon, when her mother was semi-approachable and she’d find Stark fiddling around with her guitar. Fret lived for these…
