00.02 – Goodwin And Sinbad

Shara went down to City Hall one day and registered as a self employed fisherman.  She figured that way she could spend all of her time fishing and claim she was working if anyone asked.  On her way out of City Hall she took a moment to ogle the statue of the (naked) town founder outside the front door.  Local history had it that Twinbrook had been a nudist colony back before the mosquitoes from the swamp had moved in.   Dang, Shara thought, too bad Sinbad’s plumbob ain’t that big.

With Shara ‘working’ all the time now, Sinbad was happy to have more time with his boyfriend but to his surprise, Goodwin wanted nothing to do with him.  “No, thanks,” was all Goodwin said when Sinbad tried to flirt with him one afternoon while Shara was out.

“Whataya all mad ’bout?” Sinbad, ever the genius, asked.

“You done got married to that chick, Sinbad.  Said  you wouldn’t marry me then you went and hitched yourself up to her.  I ain’t puttin’ out for you no more.”

“Well you got that Jenni girl pregnant,” Sinbad reminded him.  “I reckoned I had a right to have a young’un too.”

That just pissed Goodwin off more but he had to wait until Shara learned to tell the fridge from the door so she could go to work before he could yell at his soon to be ex-boyfriend again.

“You know that was a accident,” he said.  “I was drunk and she was real purty like you.  Ain’t no way she’s gonna let me have nothin’ to do with that baby anyway cause I ain’t marryin’ her.  You said you wasn’t mad ’bout that no more.”

“Ain’t mad,” Sinbad said.  “Reckon I done married Shara for you.  She wouldn’t let me in her pants otherwise.  I ain’t carryin’ no baby an’ you can’t get knocked up.  You was all sad ’cause Jenni wouldn’t let you see that baby an’ I reckon it’s time we had our own young’un anyhow.”

“You mean you’re gonna dump your wife after she has us a baby?” Goodwin asked in disbelief.  He couldn’t believe it.  Sinbad was going to be back to being his and his alone and they would have a baby on top of it.  He had always wanted children but had given up on the idea when he had fallen for Sinbad.  The men of Goodwin’s family were almost always infertile and Sinbad refused to get pregnant, claiming it would interfere with his criminal activities.

“Yup,” said Sinbad.  “You gonna marry me an’ be my new wife after I get rid of this one?”

“That you proposin’?” Goodwin asked.

Sinbad just shrugged.  “Sure reckon it is,” he said.  If it would get him back into Goodwin’s good graces, he was pretty sure he could stand to marry his boyfriend after he got rid of Shara.  After all, they had been living together since graduation.  How much difference could there be in being married?

“I love you, Sinbad,” Goodwin said, “and I accept.”

Goodwin grabbed Sinbad and kissed him.  “Now you gotta get to work on makin’ a baby,” he said.

“Reckon I’m gonna need some practice first,” said Sinbad.

So he and Goodwin went off to the shower to do exactly that.

Life settled into a routine after that.  Sinbad skipped work a lot because there was nothing in Twinbrook worth stealing.  He spent most of his time sitting on the broken down couch playing video games on the new $10,000 television that took up one whole wall of the living room and that I forgot to take a picture of.

Goodwin still didn’t like Shara and refused to try but he did tolerate her and together they sat down to stare at the new board game Goodwin had picked up at a garage sale.  It looked like that wizard’s chess game those kids were always playing in the Harry Potter movies, only the pieces wouldn’t move.

“I reckon the batteries ain’t no good no more,” Shara said one day after the two of them had been studying it, trying to make it move with their psychic mind powers for several hours.   But neither she nor Goodwin could figure out where the batteries went so the just went back to staring at it.

At night Goodwin was stuck sleeping on the musty little bed in the guest room.  It still smelled like Sinbad’s great uncle Bubba even though great uncle Bubba had been dead for twenty years.

Or maybe that was just because the roof leaked.  Great uncle Bubba always had been a little damp, especially as he had gotten up there in age.

Shara was now sharing Sinbad’s bed at night.  Goodwin could hear them through the paper thin walls as Sinbad tried to get her pregnant and he had to remind himself that soon they would be rid of Shara and it would be back to just Sinbad, Goodwin, and their new baby.

Then one morning Shara jumped out of bed and ran to the bathroom to throw up.

“Huh,” said Goodwin to Sinbad as they stood watching her, “you reckon she’s dyin’ or just drunk?”

Sinbad just shrugged.  He didn’t have an answer.

Sinbad was getting used to Shara jumping out of bed at all hours of the night when one night she jumped up out of bed but didn’t do her usual run to the bathroom.  Instead, she stood in the middle of the dirty clothes pile on their floor and watched as her stomach expanded.  “I’m all knocked up!” Shara shouted excitedly.

“Gonna be big as the loch ness monster,” Sinbad muttered.  Then he rolled over and went back to sleep.

Goodwin was ecstatic when he heard.  Only nine more months and he would have Sinbad all to himself again.

Shara sold the fish she had caught to the old man who ran the gas station down on main street.  He in turn made sushi with it and poisoned half the town.  But Shara didn’t care.  She had made enough money selling her fish to buy a rusty crib and an old broken down rocking chair at a garage sale.  They put them in Goodwin’s room and Shara started planning how she was going to tell him he had to move out once the baby was born.

Then Shara went back to fishing.  Maybe if she kept selling her fish she could afford diapers by the time the baby was born.

Sinbad took to happily sitting in the rocking chair, imagining how it would feel to rock his and Goodwin’s baby.

While Shara was fishing, Goodwin did the same thing.

In great contrast to his boyfriend’s criminal career, Goodwin was a cop.  He wanted to get promoted before the baby came so he could afford to take some time off.  Sinbad started tinkering with spare junk lying around.  His plan was to make some toys for the baby so they could save money.  Everything was going fine until he set himself on fire one day.

Goodwin rushed to put the fire out.

“I love you, Sinbad.  I don’t want you to die,” said Goodwin.  “So don’t go trippin’ over that bunch of dirty clothes there.”

“That’s real sweet, Goodwin,” said Sinbad.

And then they kissed.  “Let’s pretend we’s makin’ our own baby,” suggested Goodwin.  “You wanna knock me up?”

“Reckon I do,” said Sinbad.

And they both knew there was no risk involved since the men of Goodwin’s family couldn’t get pregnant.

Work was slow since everyone in Twinbrook was dirt poor and didn’t have anything worth stealing.  Sinbad wanted to do something for the baby so he went for a walk around the neighborhood one day because going for a walk helped him think.  He saw that one of the neighbors had bought a new Yoshimoto Evasion.  “Hmm,” said Sinbad as he looked at it.

He ended up wandering out to the junk yard where he met some guy.  It turned out the guy was Jenni’s father.  Sinbad still harbored some resentment toward the girl for making his Goodwin stray and then not letting him see his son Lester afterwards.  He took an instant dislike to Dude.  After all, it was his fault Jenni even existed.

“You tell your slutty daughter my boyfriend wants to see his son!” Sinbad ordered.

“My daughter is a good girl,” Dude (seriously, what is that guy’s name?) said.  “You keep Goodwin away from her.  It’s his fault she got in trouble in the first place.”

Sinbad slapped Dude.

Then it turned into a brawl fit for Sim City’s finest biker bar.  Sinbad kicked Dude’s butt good but it didn’t make him feel any better.

On his way home, Sinbad walked by that Yoshimoto Evasion again.  There wasn’t anybody around so he swiped it.  It made him feel a lot better.  All he had to do was repaint it, file off the serial numbers, and he could sell it and have plenty of cash to spoil the new baby.

There was a Big Lemon sitting in the driveway of the next house he passed so Sinbad swiped it too.

The next house he passed was Jenni’s.  Sinbad rubbed his hands together in evil glee before stealing her Sloppy Jalopy.  He might not get a lot out of it but hey, there were desperate people out there.  Someone would be willing to take it off his hands.  He felt better after swiping Jenni’s car so he went home.

The next day Shara was out at her new favorite fishing spot – that’s the place where she catches piranhas, y’all and she had a wish to catch fifteen – when she felt something moving in her stomach and then a big pain.

“Reckon I shouldn’t a had that sushi at the gas station,” she said and went home to take some antacids.

But the antacids didn’t help so Shara figured she was having the baby.

She let out a screech as Sinbad came home and he panicked.  “What do I do???!!!!  Shara don’t you mess up my floor after Goodwin done mopped it today!”

“Get me to the hospital idgit,” Shara yelled at him.

So Sinbad took her to the hospital in the Sloppy Jalopy he stole from Jenni because he didn’t want to get his nice truck all messed up.

Goodwin figured it’d be a while so he went to bed.

It was a while because the baby didn’t actually want to come into the world.  Seriously.  What white trash baby belonging to these two (three?) idjits would?  So anyway, about three o’ clock in the morning Shara came home carrying baby Bocephus Tolbert.

Don’t worry about where his name came from.  If you know nothing about country music, I can pretty much guarantee you won’t get it.  Actually, all of this generation’s children are going to be named after old(ish) country music people.  To decide who gets to be the heir, I’m going with the one who has the most lifetime whatsit points when they turn young adult.

Sometime the next afternoon after Shara had left the baby squalling in his crib, Sinbad came dragging in.  I’m not entirely sure where he was all night and it never occurred to me to look for him.  He sat down on the porch with Goodwin to stare at their game for a while.

“So now we got our baby, you gonna dump that girl?”

“Well…’bout that,” Sinbad said.  “See, thing is, we ended up with that little Bo feller.  And I was kinda wantin’ a lil girl baby…”

“Sinbad!”

“Whataya think ’bout keepin’ her ’round just til she has one more?  Then we get rid of her.”

“Well,” said Goodwin, “I reckon so but only if I get the be the one that chooses where we’s dumpin’ the body.”

Sinbad was happy to agree to that.

“Hey, baby,” Sinbad said to Shara the next day, “you reckon we oughta give Bo a lil sister?”

Shara reckoned they should so they got started on that right away.  But there were more surprises in store for the three of them.

Goodwin had been ill ever since baby Bo had come home from the hospital.  He had put it down to the smell of poopy diapers mixing with Uncle Bubba’s smell in his bedroom.  Then one day while he was doing the laundry, Goodwin suddenly expanded.  He almost didn’t believe it, but clearly, he was pregnant.

Goodwin abandoned the laundry and ran to tell Sinbad.  “We’s havin’ a baby!” he shouted.  “Ain’t been no pregnant man in my family since my great-great-great granddaddy birthed cousin Agatha but I’m pregnant!”

Sinbad was overjoyed.  And he shows it so well.

“You reckon we can git rid of that girl now?”

Sinbad said he reckoned they could and went to break up with Shara.

“I is breakin’ up with you,” Sinbad told Shara.  “You are no longer my wife.  Imma marry Goodwin now and he’s gonna be my wife and give me younguns.  It’s time you and that baby done left.”

Shara was heartbroken.  She had had no idea Sinbad felt that way.

Sinbad went back to Goodwin.  “I done tole Shara she hadda go,” he said.  “It’s just me and you now, baby.  Whataya say we try for twins?”

Despite Sinbad’s lack of anatomical knowledge, that was exactly what they did.

Heartbroken Shara had no idea what to do.  She had sold her swamp house to move in with her ex-husband.  She couldn’t go back there but with a baby, she couldn’t go down to the homeless shelter.  The social workers were known for taking babies away from sim parents living in the homeless shelter.

But then she received a phone call from someone she barely knew: Jenni Jones-Brown.

“I heared ’bout what that Sinbad feller did to ya,” she said.  “Men is scum.  Them boys done hurt me too.  Now I got my baby by Goodwin to take care of and my momma what done went crazy when my daddy left with that hooker.  We got some room.  Y’all come on down and stay with us.  Bring that boy of yours.  We can raise him up not to be like his daddy.”

With no other choice, that was what Shara had to do.

But halfway to Jenni’s house, Shara stopped and….

*POP*

It seemed that last woohoo with Sinbad had gotten her pregnant after all.