An Untimely Post About My Father

"What are you saying? Strippers can't study law? Cuz that sounds like some racist shit to me." - Lazarus Jones

"You're one in a million Lazzy, never change." - T.O. Hob

~

It may not have started out like one, but this is a serious entry.

~

After twenty some odd years I have come to the conclusion that I may never forgive my father for not wanting us. I tried, I really did. And while I very often thought I was close to forgiving what he had done, I knew I couldn't forget it. And in the end it's not the kind of slight you can live with.

Let me explain.

I'm twenty five years old. When I was three years old my mother and father split up. It was her first marriage, his second. His first one had ended in a similar way, kids he didn't want, a life he couldn't live, infidelities he could no longer hide. He was his first and only priority...but that didn't make him a bad guy. Just immature...even thought he was well into his forties.

My mother was younger, not young, but younger and very, very pregnant. This was the time my father chose to split. He had one kid he didn't want, and one more wasn't going to make the
situation any better. So before my brother showed up, our old man split. Didn't even come to visit him in the hospital, or so the story goes.

Now my mother wasn't the easiest person to get a long with, she can be a bit loopy sometimes, takes things to heart too much, doesn't always makes the most sense. But she's not a bad person either, just takes some patience in dealing with. My father had no patience, and was quick on the trigger when it came to being a little too physical. It was a bad combination.

It sounds horrible, but I was a little kid. I could have forgiven him for everything he did to me, everything he did to my mother. I could have lived with the separation, the financial and emotional problems it caused me, my mother, and my baby brother if only the old son of a bitch had tried a little harder. If he had wanted us, if he had fought for us. If he had done anything but basically abandon us. It would have been easier if he had just disappeared. But he didn't. His new "wife" lived nearby, his business was nearby, and he figured that if he had to continue to support us financially he would stick around to abuse and harass my mother. Somehow that sort of made sense to him.

We were good little kids my brother and I. We weren't like his older boys. They didn't do well in school, had problems at young ages, just weren't nice little kids. When I was young I thought maybe they had deserved to be abandoned. But what had we done? I didn't see at the time that they were that way because he had abandoned them. They were victims, not criminals.

My father was a terror when he was around. It wasn't that he hit us much, or neglected us even. It was just how he treated us. He yelled more than he talked, took pleasure in frightening us, would do anything he could to get us out of the way when he had something he found more important going on. Those memories were so frequent and so disturbing that I try not to think about them. But what really stands out in my memory isn't so much how he was when he did show up but how often he didn't show up...and how disappointed we always were. We would sit in the living room, staring out the window, waiting for him to come up the hill. Sometimes we would wait right up until bedtime, when finally our mother had to concede, he wasn't coming. I've talked about it before, but writing this now I remember how much it hurt. And I almost tear up thinking about how stupid we were. Most people only touch a hot stove once, we just kept on getting burned.

When he remarried he didn't tell us. She didn't like us very much, and she was a bit fucked up herself. Kids can sense when they're not liked, and we responded in the only way we knew how, by not liking her just as much. There were long periods where my father would ditch us. Not return phonecalls, not come to visit, not even take time inquire about how we were doing. Usually when he disappeared he'd stop sending child support checks and things would become very tight around the house. A couple of times they almost cut the power off, few times they might have actually cut the television and phones off. One of the predominant memories of my childhood was my mother calling in to radio station contests where they were giving away small monetary prizes, because she couldn't come up with another way to make ends meet.

He would always show back up. It was like sometimes he needed us, or needed us to need him, just long enough till he felt better about himself. Then he returned to being cold and distant. We wanted a father, he just didn't wants sons. He made no secrets about it.

When I was in high school he disappeared once, refused to take our calls, told his secretary to tell us he went away, but not tells us where and not give us a phone number to get him at. It was a tough time for me, a lot was going on in my life, I needed someone to talk to, someone to back me up, someone to teach me things. I needed him, and he wasn't there for me. It wasn't a surprise. I forgave him, treated him no differently when he came back. But I knew I could never forget. I got by alright on my own, but when you're a kid like that, and you're struggling...you shouldn't have to get by on your own.

When he returned this time there was something different about him. All of a sudden he needed us. He wanted us to be interested in what he was doing, the company he was building, the toys he had acquired. He needed someone to admire him, someone to love him for what he had done. We tried...we really did.

My father didn't come to my high school graduation. He had the gout. He went to work...but didn't come to my high school graduation.

I still didn't hold it against him.

When I was a freshman in college he had some health problems. Suddenly he changed again. Although he would never admit it, and none of us would ever call him on it, it was like he realized what a shit he had been for so long. Now, as he stared death in the eye, he had to do something to make up for it. Had to work his way into heaven.

My grandmother (my mom's mom) hated my father. She once told me that one day he would realize what a miserable fuck he was and that he would try and buy his way into heaven. She seemed almost eager to watch him try. The day after he checked into the hospital, she died.

She was right. He had previously refused to contribute to my college education (I paid for my first year of school with my mother's help). Now he was willing to foot the entire bill for my education. Whereas previously I had worked several shit jobs at once, suddenly he was willing to give my brother and I jobs working for him. He just seemed to care more. I could never forget the things he had done, but this was what I had been waiting my entire life for. My father finally seemed to give a shit.

It didn't last long, and I guess, on the surface I knew it wouldn't.

When I first went to work for him we had discussed my taking over for him. There were parameters. I wouldn't quit school, I would work with him not for him, I would never have to lie, cheat, or steal.

We had a deal.


He tried to make me quit school. I wouldn't. He hated the fact. Hated me for the fact. He barely made it out of high school, and in his mind no one should be able to do anything he couldn't. So if he couldn't make it into college, I shouldn't be able to either. I stuck with it anyway. He did his best to make it miserable for me.

I came out of school all ready to work side by side with him learning everything there was to learn about the business. Only thing was he wasn't ready to teach. He upped and left for Florida as soon as I arrived leaving me to figure things out on my own.

So I did.

For over two years I've worked at figuring things out on my own, fixing things that didn't work and running with the things that did. I don't know it all yet, but I know a lot of it, and most of it I've had to teach myself. What that means though is I don't always do things exactly like my father would. More often than not they work. He hates that. If something isn't done exactly as he wants it should fail miserably. As often as we can we will do exactly as he wants, and if it fails he'll say that it was never how he wanted it done. If something fails miserably it must be because it wasn't done exactly how he wanted it done.

He's sort of insane like that...and sort of typical for any father.

He likes to browbeat people, yell, and scream, and abuse people for no real reason. He'll make up a reason just so he can show how "powerful" he is. And woe be the person who challenges him. I remember the first time I challenged him. I was 12 years old. We were driving and he said something that I disagreed with. So I told him I disagreed and explained why. I thought I had made a pretty eloquent argument. He didn't, so he smacked me. I called him an asshole. I don't think I had ever even used that word before, but it just seemed to fit the situation. He hit me so hard I could taste the blood before I even realized I should be bleeding. Funny part was, it didn't hurt. I was a big kid getting bigger and he was an old man getting older. I realized that day that he couldn't hurt me. I was smarter than him even then, and soon I would be stronger. There was nothing he could do to me.

For a long time I thought that everyone's families were as fucked up as mine. A lot of the kids I knew had it just as bad as I did. But as I got older, as I met more people, as I shared more stories, I realized not everyone was like us. There were some good people out there. It scared me. I'd spent all this time swearing I would never have a family because I wouldn't want to become as big of a bastard as my father and here were all these people that had pulled it off. What if I could make it work too?

I don't know why I'm writing all this, rushing through it all when know I'll have to come back to it later. I guess it has a lot to do with something my father said today.

Last night we had it out again. He left the office in a huff. I don't like it when a conversation ends like that, and I don't like it when he thinks he's won an argument simply because he's left before you've had a chance to say your side. If you let him get away with that he'll just do it over and over and over again. So I went to his house, beat him home actually. And before he got in the door I said to him, "Do you have a fucking problem with me? Because if you do let's get it out there right now and get this shit over with, because I can't keep working like this."

He tried to ignore me, but I couldn't let him. "What's going on with us? Tell me what the problem is so we can past all this. Otherwise it's going to be a fight every god damn day. There's no reason for you to be up my ass all the time, so why are you?"

He just kept ignoring the question, and started complaining about shit he knew nothing about. As usual. I let it go and headed back to work.

Today he started again. I asked him to close the door of the office so we could talk about it. He did and then said this, "All this fucking talking isn't any good. You always want to talk about shit. It's no good."

The man would rather have no idea what's going on, would rather complain without resolution, would rather fight then discuss something.

He'd rather just keep on being an asshole.

My response was quick (as it usually is) and not entirely fair (as it has been lately). Before he could walk away I lowered my voice and said to him, "If you don't want to discuss things because you can't keep up, that's fine. But don't cry about it later when you have no idea what's going on."

He started to reply, but couldn't think of anything to say. He just stomped off like he usually does. The argument took a different course then it usually did, but ended just the same.

Nothing solved, nothing different.

I really wish I could forgive my father, it's just getting tougher and tougher to even try.

~

"I know, a minute doesn't seem like much, but just wait. That minute will turn into an hour. That hour into a day. Before you know it you're dead and buried thinking, 'What the fuck just happened?'" - T.O. Hob