So far, I have only posted funny stories, mostly because they tend to be the only stories of mine that aren't really long. Also, I don't want my readers to kill themselves before I can actually get a story collection published and I can get rich off of the royalties and the movie deals and the celebrity endorsements.

This story is set in Madcity, where I spent one of the best years of my life.

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Non-Paternity Event

1.
    "Are you saying my mom is a skank?"
    "It could be your grandmother."
    "What?" Richard Wilson thought of his sweet grandma getting it on with somebody other than grandpa. "Chuck, I'm gonna be sick here."
    "No. It's your mom. She's the skank."
    "Oh, thank God. No…wait…my mom's still a skank."

2.
    Richard, a third year genetics major at the University of Wisconsin, hoped to enter their world-renowned genetics doctoral program. He had volunteered to take part in a yearlong project run by a third-year doctoral student named Chuck Weiland on the advice of his father, who had said, "Son, it never hurts to kiss a little ass."
    Weiland had sent out letters over the summer to the 38 University of Wisconsin students whose last name was Wilson, twenty-three of whom volunteered to have him sample their cheeks with a cotton swab for genetic material. Weiland's experiment was designed to find out how many of the Wilsons on campus were related genetically, and then to see if they could be connected genetically to other pockets of Wilsons throughout the Midwest.
    Richard, thinking his father would get a "kick out of it," had swabbed his father's toothbrush and asked Weiland to test that swab as well. Boy, he thought, finding out the truth about his ho mother, that sure blew up in my face.

3.
    Richard was standing next to Weiland as they both looked at a computer printout of his father's and his own genetic profiles.
    "Look," Weiland said, sitting in a stool in the genetics lab and using his pencil as a pointer, "roughly one in twenty children born to a married couple is the product of what we call a non-paternity event."
    "A non-paternity event." Richard thought that it was somehow important to repeat everything that Weiland was saying.
    "Which means that the presumptive father, the guy married to the girl, is not the biological father."
    "The biological father."
    "Yeah, the guy with the semen."
    "The semen." Upon hearing the semen, Richard dropped his backpack. He heard a crunch and then he hoped that his $200 Hewlett-Packard graphing calculator had somehow survived the fall.
    "The semen."
    Richard imagined his mother taking a warm load of…No. Not that.
    "Your father," Weiland continued, "is one of the Midwest Wilsons, but you're not."
    "Jizz."
    "What?"
    "Nothing. Never mind."
    "So, while the odds aren't great, five percent of us are being raised by…"
    "Some sad loser."
    "Some sad-ass loser."

4.
    Richard got on the LN, the free late-night bus that went down Johnson, away from campus, and onto the Isthmus. He got off and started walking to his parents' house. What would he say to his mother, who had turned out to be a slut? What would he say to his father, whose wife had boned some random dude?

5.
    "Dad, how could you not have told me?" Richard had found his father at the kitchen table, eating Doritos and staring at the refrigerator. Now, they were sitting across from each other.
    "What? And get in trouble with your mother? Not worth it."
    "But mom's a ho!"
    "Look, was I happy that there was another rider on the range? No. Obviously not."
    "Well, that's something. At least you weren't happy."
    "There you go. See, it's not all bad." He popped another Dorito into his mouth, pointed the open end of the bag toward his son.
    Richard looked at his father, thinking this explains everything. "This explains everything!"
    "What do you mean?"
    "Why you were so distant, so…so…" Richard searched his malfunctioning mind for the right word, "…so distant!"
    "Son, I just didn't find you to be very interesting."
    "What?"
    "Well, if we're doing that honesty thing now. I mean, c'mon…a science geek?" Mr. Wilson shrugged his shoulders and raised his upturned hands in the familiar c'mon gesture.
    "Geek?"
    "Son, we both know you're a geek." Mr. Wilson reflected for a second. "Son…you do know that you're a geek, right? I didn't just spill the old beans, did I?"

6.
    It was introspection time for Richard. Yes, he was into science. His SATs had been stellar. He couldn't throw a football to save his life. There was that unfortunate, best-forgotten season of little league. His Dungeons & Dragons characters were still legendary at his old high school, if Dungeons & Dragons characters can be said to be legendary.
    He had always thought of himself as different, as maybe having geek-like tendencies, but not as a geek.
    Great. So his mom was a whore and he was a geek.

7.
    "Besides, son, you don't think your old man didn't get in the game?"
    "Oh, dad." Richard shook his head and help up his hands for his father to stop.
    "Look, I figured if your mother could fuck the neighbor, I might as well—"
    "Mr. Johansen! It's Mr. Johansen! Dad, he's like sixty years old!" Richard imagined the pruney old guy next door on top of his mother, or underneath her. Oh, God! Oh, sweet, merciful Jesus!
    "Not Johansen. When we lived on Paterson. Mr. Tedeski."
    "I don't remember a Tedeski."
    "Of course not; he high-tailed it the hell out of there when your mother turned up pregnant."
    "He took off?"
    "Like a scared little girl."
    "Why was he scared?"
    "You got me."
    "Did you threaten him or something?"
    "Are you kidding? He was huge. He had played football for the Badgers. He would have killed me."
    "Dad, you could have taken your beating like a man. At least mom would have felt bad."
    Mr. Wilson thought for a moment. "I doubt that, son. I seriously doubt that."

8.
    Mr. Wilson and his son were sitting for a moment pondering the undeniable truth of what he had just said when Mrs. Wilson walked in from her three-mile run. Mr. Wilson looked up at her and said, "The boy knows."
    She unzipped her windbreaker and took a Gatorade out of the refrigerator. "Did you tell him?"
    "Are you kidding? I don't want to get in trouble. I'm not stupid."
    "Good. There will be no discussion of that issue in this house."
    "But, mom, how could you have boned—"
    "No discussion," she said, heading out of the kitchen and into the living room. "None."
    Richard and Mr. Wilson looked at each other. Mr. Wilson raised his eyebrows and shrugged his shoulders in the familiar what're you gonna do? gesture. They took turns eating Doritos until the bag was empty. Mrs. Wilson came in for another Gatorade and the men in her life tried not to make a sound.