The Typical Absent Father

 

 

My father was such a non-entity in my life that it almost didn’t occur to me to devote a blog entry to him. But then I figured, is he not after all just one more poignant example of what a shit-show my life really is?

He certainly is.

My grandmother is an enabler. She babysat my mother’s first brat from an absent father, my older half-sister, so that my mother could go ahead and go out to the bars and the parties and get herself knocked up again by an entirely different man. So began my life.

Apparently the two phrases most used to describe my father were “Italian Stallion” (ew) and “Town Drunk” (more ew!). As described previously in my blog about my mother, my grandfather was already livid to have her living back in his home with her first illegitimate baby – so he would have been beyond livid if he had known that oops… she did it again. So she manufactured the great rape story that I described, again, in the blog titled “Mother”.

This made it easy for my father to evade any and all responsibility for me, especially when I came out with my face all busted the fuck up courtesy of a bi-lateral cleft lip and palate.

From the time I was 10 years old, I was lead by my mother to believe I was the result of a rape. I guess it never occurred to her that almost 20 years later, I might end up back in that same town where I was conceived, and find out the truth. I ended up there because the bone-graft I’d had on my miserable harelip in Dallas was a giant fail, thanks much to my alcohol and drug-addicted psychopathic sadist of an aunt and her solid, meaty fist. So, after what I call “The Year of the Dead Rot“, I went to Denver and see if the surgeon that had done the reparative surgeries on me when I was an infant could try to repair the mess that she had made. I was to live with my uncle, (Uncle Pervy) who lived in the mining town where I was born, 100 miles away from of Denver.

This man, I will call him Uncle Paul, Uncle Pervy, or Uncle P. is my mother’s older brother. Unbeknownst to us all, he knew exactly who had impregnated her with me, he knew it was not a rape, and he’d had no idea that she had told myself and my grandparents that it was; (allegedly because she feared my grandfather’s wrath).  The fact that my uncle and my grandfather had fought bitterly, lived in different states, and were largely estranged from each other had helped to propagate the longevity of my mother’s lie. Uncle P. maintained infrequent contact with his mother, my grandmother.

After I had been down there for a few weeks, one day Uncle P. said “let’s go see your father! he wants to meet you!” I was in shock. I was like, “uh, what, you know who he is?!  but – what – how – he’s a fucking rapist fuck! Why would I want to meet somebody like that?!”  My uncle was stunned. He said, “why would you say something like that?!!”

It turned into this whole stupid thing where I told him that my mother claimed that I was the result of a rape, and he didn’t believe me, so we got my mother on the phone.

…and that is how I found out the story I had believed for over a decade about being the result of a rape was a lie.

Who the fuck DOES that to their kid?!  Oh right… my mother. Then, the miserable bitch begged my uncle and I both not to tell Grandpa what she had done. I don’t think I ever told him – I can’t even remember anymore… but I did tell my grandmother, eventually. Not that it did a whole hell of a lot of good. She was so sickeningly devoted to my mother.  Apparently my uncle kept his mouth shut on her behalf as well.

Fuck.

So anyway I spend exactly ONE day of my life with Daddy Dearest of Mine… literally, one. Ever. That was enough. When I first met him I had two simultaneous thoughts; “Mom fucked him?! Really? HIM? What was she thinking? WAS she thinking?” and “I shot out of his dick?!  Well, that explains a lot. 😦 “.

Since it was our very first time meeting, ever, did he think maybe a quiet dinner or a private setting would be appropriate? Of course not.  He decided that the thing to do was to stuff me into his truck and take me up a very steep and alarming series of mountain passes to a cabin way out in the middle of nowhere, that was owned by his friends. When we got there he proceeded to drink and yuk it up with his friends and drink play his guitar and drink and essentially completely ignore me… and drink… for hours.  I’d had the foresight to bring a bottle of water and a couple of doobies, so I went out walking on the mountain for hours… it really was stunning up there. Unbelievable. Like straight out of a toxic fabric softener commercial with all of the majestic wind-swept flower fields and the yonder purple mountains. It really was a rocky mountain high. That part of the day was admittedly pretty awesome.

When I finally went back he STILL wasn’t ready to leave so I had to wait for a small and uncomfortable eternity. We finally left, and I was in absolute terror. It was dark, I didn’t know where I was, I was miles from anywhere up on some god-forsaken mountain, and I didn’t know any of those burly, drunken men in the cabin. I had to get into my  extremely drunk father’s truck, and somehow we made it down the winding mountain passes, some literally only a foot or so wider than the vehicle.  I was in such terror that once I made it home whole and uncrushed, I vowed to never see him again, and barring one brief incident at a street festival, I never did. He was all pissy at me the whole drive home for being a “wet end”.  (Ew.)

I guess I’m just lucky it didn’t turn into some sort of a gang-rape scene or something.  It was a really, really creepy scene.

So that’s what I got for a father.

Fuck him.

Too bad my mother did. If she hadn’t, I wouldn’t be going through this…