Dispatch by Bentley Little

the good part of town outraged by the fact that the city could take away businesses from private owners and essentially give them away to their buddies.
    Letters poured in both agreeing and disagreeing with me. I wrote another claiming that this section of the city was a historic landmark and should not be tampered with by petty politicians with ulterior motives. For all of my letters, I invented fake names and addresses, often stealing them from the phone book and tweaking them a little so they were off by one number. Never once was one refused; all of them were published.
    My dad commented constantly on the Eastside controversy, voicing his disgust with anyone opposed to redevelopment, but he seemed to have forgotten that I was at the center of it, that my initial letter had kicked it off. He walked in one evening while I was typing an angry anti-city hall polemic once again from President Carlos Sandoval of the Hispanic Action Coalition. I quickly unspooled my letter and casually placed it facedown on the desk, replacing it with another.
    "What's wrong with you?" my dad asked, a look of annoyed dissatisfaction on his face. "Hiding in your room, typing letters, when you should be out there trying to pick up girls. When I was your age, I was bagging babes right and left. Like Tom."
    "Whoa there," I said. "That doesn't sound very Christian."
    He took a belligerent step forward. "Are you making fun of me?"
    "No," I lied.
    "I'm a Christian, but I'm still a man, goddamn it. Which is more than I can say for you." He glared at me, and I looked away. "How come you don't have a girlfriend, Jason? How come you never date, huh?"
    I'd wondered the same thing myself. I'd sort of come to the conclusion that growing up in such a hostile family environment had made me socially inept.
    I looked at him. Maybe, I thought, this was one of those bonding opportunities. Maybe if I just reached out, opened up to him, he might meet me halfway and we could forge some sort of ersatz father-son connection. Better late than never, right? I took a deep breath. "I don't really know how to meet girls," I admitted.
    "You don't?" He feigned surprise. "I know what you should do," he said, leaning forward. "Get some gonads."
    So much for bonding.
    He left with a laugh, amused by his own joke, and I sat there feeling embarrassed and humiliated. I'd get no fatherly advice from my dad. The fucker had no interest in being a parent to me. All he cared about was himself. He might not be a drunk anymore, but he was still a selfish asshole.
    I locked my bedroom door and finished writing my letter to the editor, putting in specific rebuttals to the arguments that my old man brought up in his daily rants, knowing that it would drive him crazy to read such precise dissections of his reasoning. It felt good to attack him this way, and in a guise of impersonality I came at him viciously, hitting him in his most vulnerable places.
    Take that, you prick , I thought.
    The next day, I went with Robert, Edson and Frank Hernandez to the little taco place, and it was more crowded than I'd ever seen it. The controversy had been good for business, and Frank suggested that we start a petition to save the homes and businesses on and around Eighth Avenue. I was tempted to tell him what I'd been doing, what I'd been writing, but something kept me from it. I looked up from my carne asada and nodded. "You write one. I'll sign it," I said.
    Frank stared morosely out at the street. "They could just take our home, man. You know that? They'd take it and pay us what it's worth—which is shit—and then we'd be fuckin' homeless. Where else could we find a house for that much? We'd end up in an apartment in Santa Ana next to some fuckin' illegals."
    "Maybe it won't go through," I offered. "I mean, if everyone got together and—"
    "Who you fuckin' kidding?" Frank said. "This place is history." He nodded at my tacos. "Enjoy 'em while you can, man."
    Robert and Edson ate in silence. They liked