When I was a teenager, my mother dated a narcoleptic named Clay. He wasn’t allowed to drive and would often fall asleep suddenly while yelling at the television. He did speed and lived on a diet of fish filet sandwiches that had been liberated from the dumpster. Sadly, that’s about all there was to Clay: fish filet sandwiches and frequent involuntary naps.

One year for Christmas, I accompanied my mother and Clay to his family home, where I met his three nephews, one of whom had a very noticeable weight problem. The brawny nephew was a huge fan of the Dallas Cowboys and accordingly received a Dallas Cowboys t-shirt as a gift. It was hard not to share his enthusiasm for his new gift; he was just so happy. A nice, new shirt that would display his affection for the team, his team, loud and clear across the front: Dallas Cowboys.  Who would have guessed that, when stretched across his elephantine torso, it would no longer read Dallas Cowboys, but rather Dallas Cow.

Before Clay, there was Jim. Jim claimed to have been a hit man. He drove a red Camaro that, in my opinion, really dated him—it hadn’t been cool to drive Camaros for at least seven years. He had a lumpy, inconstant face and lived in hotels. I liked visiting with my mother while she was dating Jim. Our meals consisted of gas-station cheese and candy, and as we ate, Jim would regale us with tales of the fugitive life.

Then there was Ralph. I never actually got to know Ralph, but have come to refer to my mother’s time with him as her “glory days,” by virtue of the endless supply of trucker food that flooded the freezer and threatened the seams of the pants of anyone spending sufficient time at their home in Fernley, Nevada. I visited my mother in Fernley just once. They lived in a large house in the suburbs. During my visit, she emerged from the back bedroom just a handful of times.

The last boyfriend my mother had will never have a proper face. When I was 20 and living in Redding, my mother spontaneously showed up at my house to introduce me to her new companion, bragging that he was two years my junior. I didn’t bother to look at him. Two days later he stole her car, crashed it into a ditch and took off. At least that’s the story I heard.

For the past seven years my mother has been dating a woman named Jay. This is the longest relationship I have known my mother to have. I’ve got no stories or observations about Jay—she is an enigma. I don’t know where she came from or what is going on in her head. From what I can tell, my mom dishes it out and Jay takes it. Somehow it works itself out.

Ethan ran over my foot with our car today. Actually, he didn’t so much run it over; he just parked the car on top of it. The pain is nothing compared to the humiliation of screaming at the top of my lungs in front of the kids and the neighbors, “Ethan, there’s  a fucking car on my foot! Fuck, balls, get this fucking car off of me! What the fuck are you doing—there’s a car on my foot!”

I often lie in bed, fantasizing about the opportunity to act cool and unaffected by horror and pain. If a car had been parked on the foot of fantasy Ami, she would have simply gestured with her chin and casually said, “Yo, bro’—there’s a car on my foot.” But no. Real-life Ami had to flap her arms like a chicken and scream like a fucking maniac in front of the neighbors she has yet to meet.

It’s exactly the kind of scenario I would have loved to witness from my kitchen window.