It is Father’s Day.
My father was, by any objective measurement, a terrible man, who committed terrible crimes that left death and horror in their wake. Not even considering that, dude worked for Philip Morris for ages. He died in the days he was talking shit about me over texts to the scammer who was posing as a Thai twink and draining his bank account.
He died the day before my birthday. Got the call around five in the morning. The last call I had gotten from the heavily discounted public nursing home we managed to find for him was to inform me that they had screwed the door to his balcony shut, because he kept smoking out there. I nodded. I’d smoked out there too.
I drove out and went to the eighth floor of the renovated livestock holding pen he died in (no joke, it had been that originally). There he was. He was all fucked up. I sat with him for twenty minutes or so. And then I got an orderly and we dressed him in his bullshit kilt, his bullshit sporran, his bullshit shoes.
(It should be said that he was very very proud of his Scottish heritage. He spent a lot of time researching where his family was from, to what clan he belonged, what our coat-of-arms was. He was very proud, and my I was oddly proud as well, as he went out to the garage and tried to learn how to play the bagpipes. Honk wheeze fuck! He was very proud and he had made it all up. Was he proud of the complexity of the world he had made in which our coat of arms bore the motto Sine fine — without end — and the diligence with which he lied to me and my sister every day? Was he proud of his lie, or was he proud to live his lie, or was he proud to believe the lie, or was he simply proud to believe something to be true in his lifetime of lying? Any born liar will tell you: all of the above.)
My father was a terrible man who committed terrible crimes, who blithely waltzed through felony and misdemeanor like beaded curtains. Of course his most terrible crime was never mentioned in public. He was a pedophile. And he abused one of my mother’s brothers for years. But it all worked out, because my mother’s oldest brother got his revenge for humanity by fucking my little sister for years. She was five, she was fifteen, he fucked her. Well, that’ll show dad.
Meanwhile, his mother was abusing me, but it was pretty might, all things considered. I didn’t develop BPD as a way to deal with it like my sister. I didn’t develop BPD in a time when BPD was a cutting edge diagnosis known only to the sorts of professionals we couldn’t afford. So I myself wouldn’t die far too young, richly-hued with jaundice from drinking gallons of vodka daily.
God knows I tried, but I didn’t tangle with that clear liquor. Not this wee fairy. I was more into beer and bourbon and pills and acute lifelong depression and PTSD and undiagnosed, undiagnosed, so much undiagnosed.
But anyway.
So my father was a terrible man. But since he was my father. But since he was such a talented liar, who believed every lie he told even as he cherished them as lies. But since he was queer in the 1950s and ashamed, so ashamed. But since he was smart, and charming, and funny. But since he was my father… I will always love him. There he is, in me. He lies through my mouth. Or rather, I lie through his mouth in my mouth.
You know what I mean? Maybe you do.
I miss him, even though he only saw my son twice, and not from lack of opportunity. We talked maybe twice a year for the last decade of his life, because he was busy trying to live the bar life, the end of the bar at the end of the night life, and I was trying not to. And he raised me, of course, so it’s not like I was calling him much either.
I miss him. He was sober at my wedding and wore his kilt (his bullshit kilt), and my wife’s high school English teacher was hammered and lifted his kilt and reported that he was not in fact wearing underwear.
I miss him. He tried to teach me, he really did. Once during a spanking he told me I had to take it like a man. I was six. But I think he thought it was a valuable lesson. I think he saw it as a valuable lesson. And he also told me, “if you can’t dazzle them with dexterity, blind them with bullshit”. Again, probably not an altogether good thing to teach someone impressionable, but I took it to heart and lived it as far as I could. I still do it in my music. And in my writing.
But don’t worry. This is all true. No bullshit here from the ruddy-cheeked l’il Irish-German fairy.
This is all to say: there are a million valid reasons to love even the most flawed father, just as there are a million valid reasons to hate even the most saintly father. It is entirely valid to love their flaws… to an extent. It is entirely valid to hate their virtues… to an extent.
I have had a father, and I have not had a father. I generally, for whatever reason, liked having a father more than the alternative, but the reasons, barely alluded to above, are complex. And so, every year on Father’s Day, and on Mother’s Day, and on any day people want one, I offer myself as a surrogate. I am an actual father. I raise a son. I’ve read The Dead Father by Donald Barthelme, which I cannot recommend enough, and I have been a son (part of the book mentioned just now is A Manual For Sons, a brief excerpt of which can be read here), and I have seen fatherlessness and I have seen an excess of fatherness.
If you desire a father, either in addition to or in place of your actual father, if your father is absent or too present. If you would like to try out being fathered, having a father, then I’m your fairy. No contracts signed and no money owed until the contracts are signed. I’m right here. You don’t even need to talk to me. All you need to do is stop for a moment. It doesn’t even have to be today, because there is no real Father’s Day, or any day at all. All you need to do is stop and cock your head and then smile, or cross your eyes and spit, and say, Fuck you, dad. Thanks. And you can add all the things you’re thankful for or you can just add for nothing. I’ll get the message either way.
Either way, kid, I’m proud of you. I’m so fucking proud of you. I’m so, so… fucking proud of you.
Size Writes 