By the sea, there is a city where a young boy named Kurt is a charitable and helpful towards his mother’s friends whom she invites to her social gatherings. Just like any good party, friends end up drunk and like any good samaritan, Kurt helps them return home safe and even sometimes puts them to bed. While helping, Kurt hears the confession of the impaired adults, but no one, neither the friends nor the mother, wonder how Kurt feels about this situation. His father was a veteran from the Vietnamese war. After returning from the battlefield, he committed suicide. His house has been place of numerous parties. Kurt is an actor of his own misfortune while being a spectator of the misfortune of others. Being exposed and helping others problems…show more content… During this, Kurt is telling the reader how to handle drunks and that for his “job” he needs to know where everyone lives and their story: “Mrs. Gurney lived about half-mile up the beach in a bungalow with a lot of Gothic additions. The scuttlebut on Mrs. Gurney was that while she wasn’t divorced, her husband didn’t love her.” He tells the reader that by listening to the adults in just one summer he learned all the gossip and numerous rumors. He also does not partake in the conversation much; he never gives his opinion and gives minimaliste answers. He agrees without a hesitation even though he didn't believe himself just like when Mr. Crutchfields asks him, a 13 year-old, if it is okay to “fuck around”. Later on he explains why he always agrees with the drunk adults: “I said yes, because I knew it wouldn’t hurt, or cost me anything but one measly breath, though that wasn't really my answer.” Or even when Mrs. Gurney asks him “do you think i'm beautiful?” and he says yes even if he doesn't find her attractive: “Her breast sagged away like sacks of wet sand [...] The tan skin of her chest look like parchment, like the yellowed, crinkled page of some ancient text, maybe the Bible, or the Constitution, the original copy, or even the rough draft.” He also accepts the egocentric side of her. She explains that her children grew up and doesnt need her as much as before, she complains about her old age and even reminds him of his dead father by singing a
