twenty-something

[Ed. Note: Father's Day isn't until June 19. Oops.]

Father's Day 2005 has just passed, and it passed without me calling my dad.

This isn't unusual, as I don't remember if I've ever called him on Father's Day. But today, it was on purpose. I actually remembered what day it was and I chose to make a statement.

I bet he didn't even notice.

We have a... problematic relationship. Especially now. I had known about the issues in my parents' marriage for two months and he had made no attempt to contact me. No calls. No emails. Not even any passive-aggressive message through my mother. And, for weeks, I had been dreaming about confronting him -- and most of these dreams involved me preparing to confront him and him ambushing me first. Each morning after I'd have one of these -- and they came often -- I would wake up confused, surprised that this was bothering me as much as it was, surprised by what aspects of this whole mess were hitting me hardest.

I haven't talked much about my parental woes over the past few months. I just haven't had the heart to post them here because it's been breaking my heart. And it's fresh, unlike the 90s, which I can write about with enough distance to make them bearable.

No. This stuff with my mother and her husband is very now and it's been weighing on me heavily. The short update: My father wants to come home. He has not claimed responsibility for his sins, nor has he apologized or asked for forgiveness, but my mother, ever the doormat, has decided to give it to him anyway. She wants to "give things another try." Additionally, my mom is in the clear with her skin cancer but, as I found out Friday, she has been having catscans to get to the bottom of an "issue" in her throat.

Things have calmed, I guess, but I can't help but worry it may be the calm before the storm. What if this is more serious than melanoma? What if he leaves her again?

My dreams of confronting my father always involved me ending our relationship. Telling him that he may be her husband, but he's not my father. That he never was. And I would always end it by saying: "If you're planning on leaving ever, if you think that you might pull this shit again -- you better just walk away now. Because if you do this again..." The dreams would normally end with varying degrees of threats. All very Oedipal, I guess.

So I went home for Memorial Day weekend a few days back. I went home on one condition: he wouldn't be around. I would get to deal with him on my terms, in my time. I made this deal with my mother. And she agreed to my terms.

I was home for less then 24 hours when he showed up at the house on Saturday afternoon. My mother was at work and I spotted his car parked at our barn across the street. My heart sank for a second and then started pounding. Just pounding. Thump thump thump. Blood flowed so fast throughout my body. He wouldn't dare come over here to the house.

But, soon, he was crossing the street, making my bad dreams come true. He was ambushing me.

He was about to enter the front door and I found myself backing down from this confrontation.

"Hey, mon," he said playfully as I walked away from him. I didn't respond, just clenched my fists and trembled a bit as I hid on our back porch, him in the adjacent kitchen.

I took a moment and I walked into the other room. I didn't say a word.

"I was gonna make my self scarce this weekend," he said as he washed out a coffeecup in the sink. "But I saw your aunt" -- who I was visiting Rutland with that weekend -- "down at the store and I figured I would stop up."

I stayed stone silent, arms crossed, twice his size.

He made himself at home, fixing himself a cup of coffee. "Well, things are a lot better than they were a month ago."

"I've known for two months."

A beat.

"Oh." He just looked at me. "I knew that."

"You didn't bother to call me or contact me at all for two months."

"It's funny --" He fiddled with something or other. Not looking at me. "You were one of the first people I thought to call."

"It's not funny. None of this is funny."

Another beat.

"I didn't mean funny. You know..."

His tone was light, friendly, breezy. With every word, with every gesture, I grew angrier.

He talked for a short while. He said that things were just great between him and mom. That this distance has made them realize they still want to be together. That they were getting along better than they had in years. Sure, the problems were still there, the "little things" -- money woes, living with my grandmother, my mom's car; you know, all the things that made him fall out of love -- but they didn't matter. They were going to be together. Forever. And he didn't mention the word love, not even once.

I grew sick by his simplification of such a horrid chain of events. He had reduced years of martial problems, and a few months of quite intense separation, into "little things." I interrupted. "You could have had my side for so many months. I understood those problems. What bothers me is your cruelty."

"Because I didn't call you?"

"No," I scoffed. "The way you treated her. The way you did things."

"I made some mistakes."

"You told her you didn't love her the day she had a biopsy!"

"I feel bad about that."

"That's not something people do."

"You don't know what happened. She tried to make me say it --"

The very timber of his voice was making my skin crawl.

"She told me it all." I tried to be assertive, not aggressive. Assertive, not aggressive. Hard to do through clenched teeth. "You said you had been lying for years. That you didn't love her for years. And you said all that -- the day of her biopsy. You couldn't have have lied for one more day."

"Yeah, she said the same thing," he replied casually, kind of with a shrug. An oh well.

I wanted to punch him.

"That's a moment of truth. That's the measure of a man. You're the type of guy who's gonna kick his wife while she's down. This is your true colors."

He did shrug this time, a full-on shrug. "I guess I don't see it that way."

This was a moment of truth too, I realized. For us.

As he grimaced at me, not at all regretful for what he had done, a sort of "that's life" look on his face, I realized that my mother was stuck with him. And he knew it. She deserved better, so much better, but he was all she thought she got.

I also realized that I was done. With him. With this. I would support my mother, but I would not get wrapped up in all this ever again.

I ended quickly our conversation in the kitchen. I asked him to leave. He lingered, but I didn't say another word to him. Not that day. Not since.

He wasn't worth it. This villain was just a goofy, cheap, pathetic, selfish asshole. His faggot son had done more by 24 then he will ever do in his whole life and, you know what? All those things that the faggot son has, all his "success," he owes none of it to this man. None of it. This man who wasn't there for the first ten years of his son's life. This man who had ten years free, without child support, without responsibility, to make something of himself but ultimately failed, perhaps for lack of trying. This man who said "I love you" to his son only once in his life, once, when forced to by his wife. This man who leeched off the welfare system for years while unable to provide for his family, who now votes for Bush. This man who wouldn't even give $50 a month to help his son, who was putting himself through college. This man --

No. His faggot son owes him nothing. No gratitude. No anger. No more clenched fists or rushed blood. No more dreams or nightmares.

Not another word.