Now, when I find gay porn in the VCR, I go to Vern. Folks call him Lil’ Vern, but that doesn’t make a lick of sense because he’s not little. Anyhow, Vern’s a piece of donkey shit. He hasn’t got a loyal bone in his body, and I hate going to Vern because he likes to hit me. Don’t matter what the occasion is, I see Vern, he hits me in the arm as hard as he can. One time he knocked me down and laughed.

Vern’s a hard, hard bastard and he carries guns. That’s the only way he gets any respect outta me. A man should own guns, I say. I’d own them if the judge would let me, but that’s a whole other thing.

Vern can get things done, and that’s what I needed. I asked him how to stage this “lesbianism intervention” as he calls it, and he said the first step is to put grandma in a sack and take her to the desert. Once there, he said, you “reprogram” her, which is just Vern’s fancy way of sayin beat her silly. I asked how that would fix her up straight again, and he explained that this is just the “preparation stage” of reprogramming. Vern and I talked long into the night on ways of fixin grandma, and by dawn I was ready.

When I got home, grandma was putting her face on like she always does, at 5:38 in the A.M. I was all set with my sack, and I got in the hallway ‘round the corner from the bathroom. Then grandma saw me in the hall mirror and asked what the hell I was doing. First I froze, thinking she might figure I was just a mannequin, or a cardboard standup. Well, that didn’t work. So I told her about the tape, and how I was going to save her from the devil.

Grandma made me lie down, and she told me how she’s found them tapes in the VCR before. She said our grandson’s been watchin them with his high school buddies, and she’s talked to him about it. She promised me she’d tell him the VCR was off limits from now on, and that settled my mind. After all, boys will be boys.