Chapter 1: Here's a story...

People are always trying to compare my family to the "Brady Bunch", that TV family from the 1970s. I've heard this about a million times, yet everybody who mentions it seems to think that they're being clever and original. I knew about the show, of course – doesn't everybody? But I'd never actually seen it until recently, when I finally gave in and I looked up some clips on YouTube.

Holy fuck, what lame, cheesy shit. (Plastic grass? Really?) But after watching a couple of episodes, I have to admit that there really are a bunch (pardon the pun) of amazing similarities between my family (the Bradleys) and those fictional dimwits from the '70s (the Bradys).

Let's start with the obvious: my mom and stepfather got hitched last year, creating a large new family with five kids (not six like on TV). And it's almost unbelievable how our names match up with the characters on the show.

On my side, there's my mom (Cheryl), my older sister (Marcia), and me (Greg). I'm 16 years old and an admitted asshole. Well, not always; some people think I'm a little bit of alright. It's just that I'm used to getting my way, and I'm not afraid to push to get what I want. That serves me well on the tennis court, where I'm an all-county player for my high school team. But it sometimes rubs some people the wrong way, too bad for them. And while I have plenty of friends, none are particularly close. Better to take care of myself and not depend on anybody else, I say.

My sister Marcia is 17. Looking at her objectively, I must admit that she's become an attractive young lady – blonde, tall, and nicely developed in all the right places. But personality-wise, she's pretty much my opposite – serious, proper, respectful, and boring. Teachers wonder why I can't be more like her. I pretty much hate her guts.

Marcia thinks everyone should be a rule-worshiping ass-kisser just like she is, and she'll immediately rat you out to the nearest authority figure if you violate her overdeveloped sense of right and wrong. I can't count how many times she's squealed on me for every little thing. Drives me crazy with that shit.

My mom is 39, a bottle blonde. If I look at her objectively, she's still quite attractive. She's very particular about her looks, wearing fashionable clothes and making almost daily trips to the gym. She has to be very careful about her appearance, because that's what earned her a job as a lightly-skilled receptionist at a big-time architecture firm. That, and the fact that she's probably fucked every straight male in her workplace over the years, both during and after her first marriage. (Actually, I heard that she even got the gay partner to bone her in the conference room one time. Mom's not one to turn down a challenge.)

Which brings up a big difference between the Bradleys and the Bradys. The Brady parents were depicted as a couple of sympathetic, blameless, semi-virginal, widow/ers. The Bradley parents? None of the above.

This is my mother's 2nd marriage. My biological father was a nice guy who did most of the parenting for Marcia and me, but he was a pussy when it came to mom. I never understood why they got married in the first place. From my earliest memories, she treated him like shit – rude, condescending, generally hateful.

From when I was real little, I remember her leaving the house in the evening dressed like a slut while my father was stuck at home with me and Marcia. Her cover stories were weak, and after a while she cared so little what my dad thought that she had her man-of-the-night pick her up right in front of the house. Sometimes I'd peek through the front blinds and watch her climb into a luxury car driven by one of the big-shots from her office. They'd usually greet in a very un-professional manner pulling away. Once I tried to tell my father what I'd seen. He told me to shut up.

Dad put up with this open cheating for a long time. Even as a kid, I felt less angry at her for running around than ashamed of my father for letting her get away with it. I mean, he didn't fight for her or threaten to throw her out or anything like that, he just rolled over and let her walk all over him. So while mom was out doing who knows what with who knows who, my father would plant himself in front of the TV slowly pouring the contents of the liquor cabinet down his gullet, ignoring me and Marcia until he'd drunk himself into a snoring stupor on the recliner.

Until one night, when he snapped. After he'd quietly polished off a couple bottles of scotch, he suddenly sprang from his chair and started yelling at our absent mom, ranting and raving that he was going to kill her, and generally acting insane. He grabbed a baseball bat, smashed every picture of my mother in the house into bits, and went storming off into the night, leaving me and Marcia stunned in the trashed living room.

I don't know where he went, but he didn't find his target, fortunately. He was still out on the hunt in the wee hours of the morning when my mother returned to find me and Marcia home alone. Marcia – always the tattletale – told her about dad's promise to knock her pretty head for a home run. She called the police, and when he returned a little while later still swinging that bat, he was arrested.

So after all the shit she'd put my dad through, it was my mother who ended up being the one who filed for divorce. She also got full custody of us kids, since the judge quite reasonably decided that my father's attempted-murderous rampage was worse than my mother's sluttiness. My father moved out of state after serving his probation, and I haven't heard from him since. He's probably permanently scarred.

I don't think anything could scar Matt Brady, my new step-dad. He's 44 but gives the impression of being younger – a tall, well-built, open-faced Viking with light hair and a fair complexion. (He swears that when he was in his 20s, he looked just like the guy who plays Thor in the movies. It's possible.) And like a Nordic raider, he's traveled far and wide, plundering wherever he goes. And by "plunder", I mean "fucked anything with a pair of tits."

I'm almost positive that Matt was one of the guys who picked up my mom while my birth father sat and stewed. Who knows, maybe I actually saw my mother climb into my future step-dad's care without realizing it. He's divorced as well, and his story is even more convoluted than mom's. This is actually his 3rd marriage, yet none of his kids were birthed by one of his wives. No, really.

Matt married his college sweetheart soon after they finished school. He was a good catch, because whatever his faults, my step-dad is good looking, a lot of fun, and a very talented architect. He won design awards in college, latched on with a prestigious firm, and quickly became one of the hottest young architects in town.

About a year after his marriage, the teenage daughter of the Mexican cleaning lady inexplicably became pregnant. Though a miraculous virgin birth was unlikely, apparently nobody asked too many questions, even though baby Juanita's features were suspiciously Caucasian and her hair was suspiciously light brown.

When the teen gave birth to a second daughter the following year – this one an unmistakable blonde – the shit finally hit the fan. The sexy senorita's parents demanded a paternity test which, surprising to no one, proved that Matt was the father.

Luckily for him, his baby momma was of legal age, if barely. Unluckily, his wife left, and his young lover's traditional shotgun-toting father "persuaded" him to take the whole family (his lover, her sisters, her parents, the occasional cousin, etc.) under his roof.

He never married his baby momma, but he obviously kept putting his meat in her taco, because they made a third child a couple years later, a boy they called Roberto. Matt still liked to sample other salsa, however, and he kept dipping his chip into an assortment of other women, probably including my mother.