Author's Note: If you're sensitive in the modern way then stop reading right here. If you read past this point and you're offended? Too bad.
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My cousin David and his wife made the mistake of sending their happy, cute, adorable daughter to one of those woke 'womyn's' colleges in New England. After just one year at that school my niece Lauren came home with the non-binary name of "Jaxx" and she made her parent's lives miserable with a constant ranting about Marxism and an absurd insistence on 'fluid' pronouns that changed from one day to another.
Lauren made it to the end of June when my cousin called me.
"Jim, we're at the end of our rope here. She's driving my wife crazy and we're worried she's going to infect the other kids with this bullshit. Can you take her for the summer?"
A little preface is in order here. My cousin was well aware of my particular peccadillos and he and I understood that Lauren coming to see me 'for the summer' meant she was going to stay a lot longer than that. He'd been out to visit me a few months before and we put away a couple bottles of Scotch shooting the breeze about modern women and how they really needed to be treated.
At one point I told him I would love to get my hands on some wokester and spend some time setting her straight. At the time I didn't have anyone specific in mind.
My own background is I'd been married for a few years to one of those modern women and it didn't work out mostly because I was a man, I liked to fish, I liked to shoot, and I liked my pickup truck. She married me thinking she would make me change but it turned out she was just applying to be my ex-wife.
The divorce was easy. I gave her everything she asked for and in return she surrendered any claim on my future earnings.
It took me some time to get some money together but when I did I left the city behind and banged around Nevada and Idaho for a couple years. I eventually bought a piece of land that featured a tapped-out 1860's gold mine and started building myself a home.
There's a few details I'm going to keep to myself here but I can say that the gold mine might have been crapped out but all the silver the gold miners had left laying around made me a happy guy. I would not say rich, but happy.
The gold miners, you see, didn't realize that the spoils from their mining efforts constituted about five thousand tons of silver ore. All I had to do was process the ore and in short order I was making a comfortable living. The money went into my dream house.
Not long after I finished the house I'll admit to contemplating female companionship. But it wasn't anything I was going to act on. After all, I'd just been cleaned out once before, so why do it again?
On the matter of Lauren I'd never seen her as anything more than my cousin's cute daughter. Seriously.
But then he called and wanted to drop her off here 'for the summer' which was a phrase we understood from our childhood. It was our family code for indefinitely or permanently.
When he finally showed up with Jaxx/Lauren it was clear that she thought they were just here to check in on her father's sad, divorced, recluse of a cousin.
I pulled him aside to talk.
"Dave, what the fuck do you want me to do with her? She's FUBAR if I've ever seen it!"
"Jim, you told me that one time that you wanted to set one of these woke women straight and I'm giving you one of them."
Jaxx/Lauren was walking up the hill trying to get a cell phone signal with no result. I looked at her and shook my head. We were a good thirty miles away from a signal.
"Is Betty in on this?" I asked my cousin.
"She knows. I told her what you wanted to do and as bad as that is she knows it'll be worse if Jaxx...er...Lauren keeps going the way she is. She came home and tried to get her little sister to shave off her hair. That's just one of the things she did."
I sighed. "You two aren't going to change your minds about this are you?"
"No." He gestured up the hill at the girl, "Jaxx killed my daughter. If anyone can get rid of Jaxx and bring back Lauren it's you. And it's not like we can take her to therapy anywhere, the goddamned therapists will just make her worse."
I nodded in agreement. He was dead right about the therapists.
The die was cast and I told him so.
We went to his Jeep (my road would have torn up his BMW) and unloaded her things. One bag was full of the clothes that Jaxx liked and one bag had some of Lauren's dresses and things in it.
I was already thinking of Jaxx and Lauren as two different people.
Jaxx was a good half mile away walking up the ridge in her futile effort to get a signal when my cousin and I hugged and said our goodbyes.
She came running when she noticed Dave's Jeep starting to make the two hour drive back to the county road.
"Where the fuck is Dave going?" she asked.
"Your father," she grimaced as I said this, "is going home.
"What the fuck? He left me here? With you? Some white motherfucking earth raping miner?"
I don't think she saw my fist coming at her head. I rang her bells pretty good and left her where she fell. She was moaning and holding her head and that was fine by me.
The utterly unattractive eyeglasses had gone flying from her face. I went and picked them up and examined them. The prescription was very light and I realized they were just readers.
Going to her two bags I opened the one and found the requisite Che Guevara t-shirt, assorted rainbow themed clothes, a few anarchist themed items, and an odd assortment of perverted Japanese anime items. Lots of anime shit with blonde girls and tentacles. Interesting.
The deviant shit went into my burn barrel. I poured gasoline on the crap and then tossed in a match. It made a very satisfying "whoof!" sound as it burst into flame.
Walking back to Jaxx/Lauren I picked up the cell phone and tossed it into the fire. That damned thing practically exploded!
I picked out a decent enough dress from her remaining bag and took it to her.
Pulling out my knife I reached down to her and let her flop around a bit as I cut off her t-shirt which said "No Justice, No Peace" on it. The denim shorts with foul words embroidered on them followed.
I left her with the dress while the t-shirt and shorts burned.
Going inside I grabbed myself a couple beers and then sat down on my back porch to enjoy the view.
After about an hour I heard her come in the house and she came out to talk to me. She had the dress on.
"Where are my clothes?" was what she started with.
I sipped my second beer and gestured at the sky, "I added them to my carbon footprint. Lauren's clothes are in the back bedroom."
"My name isn't Lauren. It's Jaxx. You're deadnaming me!"
My comment outraged her. I'd expected this.
"Jaxx isn't welcome here but Lauren's a nice girl and she is."
She stood up a little straighter. "MY NAME IS JAXX AND MY PRONOUNS ARE..."
She didn't finish the sentence. And even though the sun was still out I'm pretty sure she was seeing stars.
Very calmly I leaned down and looked her in the eyes, "I don't give a fuck about your pronouns and you'll never repeat that shit to me ever again, understood?"
She nodded to acknowledge me.
In the space of a couple hours I'd already smacked her twice. Not really how I wanted to get things started but none the less progress was being made.
She kept quiet after that and when I made dinner her little nose wrinkled in disgust as a hamburger was placed in front of her.
"I'm not making any vegan shit so don't ask." I said.
She reluctantly started eating the hamburger but had no problem finishing it.
After that it was all business. I got her settled into my guest bedroom, said good night, and then I went off to bed.
The next morning when I got up she was already in the kitchen nibbling at a tortilla.
""Coffee?" I asked her.
"That would be nice. Maybe an aspirin too?"
I took care of her request and allowed an uncomfortable silence to persist. The point was to make her speak first.
