Excerpt from "Who Do You Belong To?"
published in Un<>Cut Magazine, December 2011
Vol. 2 Issue 2

http://www.magcloud.com/browse/issue/305390

Sunderman had gone to Florida to punish himself. He hated the place. The walls of his hotel room looked like some kind of accident inside a waffle iron. His only son Philip had bought his ticket and paid for his hotel room and told Sunderman to check up on his friends who’d moved down there – people Sunderman had spent his time avoiding when they lived in Indiana. Philip was gay and lived in Indianapolis, which Sunderman didn’t like to tell people about. He didn’t care much for Indianapolis either.
Sunderman moved the telephone to the crook in his shoulder with his good arm and dialed. As the phone started ringing, he tried to calculate what time it was in Indianapolis. Where he was from they didn’t use Daylight Savings Time and he could never remember what time it was anywhere else.
Philip sounded asleep. ‘Dad, where are you calling from?’
‘Desperation, Florida.’
‘From the hotel?’
Sunderman didn’t say anything, still trying to figure the time there, and why his son was still in bed.
‘Dad, they charge you five bucks a minute to use that phone. Where’s the cell phone I got you for the trip?’
‘On my kitchen counter in the box it came in, probably.’
Sunderman heard a muffling on the other end of the line, and his son saying something but Sunderman couldn’t understand what.
‘Dad, is there something I can do for you right now?’
‘Hell yes, I need a…’ Sunderman stammered, his mind a blank. He tried mentally inserting various substitutes for what it was he might need. I need a haircut, I need a drink, I need a miracle. ‘I need a ticket home,’ he said.