Saturday, February 23, 2013
Friday, February 22, 2013
The Sons and Daughters of Bad Men: A Memoir
A simple post on Facebook about the silly way my father taught me to ride a bike led to several stories of abuse and parental terror and I realize just how many of my friends grew up in violent households.
It makes me think about the perfect storm I lived in the middle of that should have led to an abusive household and didn't. It makes me think just how lucky I was.
The Storm:
My mother's father was a violent alcoholic who beat the shit out of my grandmother regularly. My grandmother developed agoraphobia and a drinking problem of her own to deal with it. My mom told me she was about 6 years old and thought everybody's family was like that. Everybody's dad must get drunk and angry and everybody's mother must never leave the house. She didn't know anything else.
My grandmother quietly told me the story of how she spent a night standing over my grandfather with a knife in her hand. He had beaten her again and had recently taken to beating the children. He was passed out stone drunk. She thought long and hard about slitting his throat from ear to ear. She told me the only thing that stopped her was the thought of leaving her children with no mother. She threw him out the next day and listened to him bang on the door to get back in.
He died several years ago from a brain tumor caused by a lifetime of hard drinking. I never met him.
My father was an undiagnosed schizophrenic who had a serious drug problem. My mother was 15 living on the streets of a small city when she met him. She has always told me she wanted to live on the streets. That it was different back then than it is now. But I don't think that's the whole story. My grandmother says my father was just really screwed up from too many psychedelic drugs.
She told me the story of him climbing in the window in the middle of the night where ever it was my mom was living at the time. I think Mom was pregnant with me. He scarred the bejezus out of my grandmother. He had been in the hospital all day because he had tried to kill himself again. He cried telling my grandmother that all he ever did was fuck everything up.
My great aunt said when my mother and him visited her she wasn't comfortable sleeping in the same house as him. My mom says he was completely off the rails. My uncle (his brother) whom I only met a few times told me that my father was spiraling out of control for a long time, was constantly seeking out violent situations, ended up in jail where he contracted HIV and died when I was 8 years old. He didn't raise me. My mother extracted him from her life before I was even a year old and before my brother was born. Someone had seen him leaving a bar with a hooker and that was finally enough for her. I never met my father.
My uncle came to a birthday party I had once. I think I was turning 22/23. He came and met my friends and my brother and had a great time. He gave a friend a ride home at the end of the night. I heard back from her later that he said he was amazed how well my brother and I had turned out because our father wasn't the greatest person.
My Mom had me when she was 17. She had my brother when she was 18 and my youngest brother when she was 20. She was so very young. I was raised by my step-father. I consider my step-father my Dad. I think I was barely a year old and my brother had just been born when my parents met. Dad was 19 at the time. The story goes that he drunkenly stumbled into my Mom's house with a friend looking for my Mom's brother who was living with her at the time. Probably to buy weed or something. They sat down and had a beer together. It was later decided that my dad would move in when his car broke down in the yard and he couldn't go home. Shortly after that my mother was pregnant with her third child.
I remember no other father. I don't remember who told me or when that my step-dad wasn't my real father but I always just knew. It just wasn't a deep dark family secret. It didn't seem to matter. My father raised me and my brothers like we were all his kids. He treated us all the same. He was just 'Dad' and nothing else.
Like my mother, my step-father was raised in a violent household. His father beat the tar out of him on a regular basis. We used to catch shit for rocking back on our chairs at the dinner table so they were on two legs. Dad told us stories of how his father would backhand him off the chair if he did the same. My mother said it was a fucked up household he grew up in. His parents had three kids and only seemed to want the one daughter. She was treated like a princess. The other daughter, whom most likely had minor down syndrome, was ignored and Dad got shit-kicked regularly. I remember my dad telling me once that he hated his mother most of all even though she never laid a hand on him because she stood by and let it happen never once trying to stop it.
And there it is. The perfect storm of abuse and trauma. Two parents raised in violent situations. Two very young parents not ready to have three kids. One parent not even my biological parent. My real father by all accounts dangerous and violent. Us kids growing up poor in a small town. These are usually the ingredients for a tragic childhood...
And yet...
I was lucky. My step-father was never violent and we were always pretty close. My mother was never violent even though it must have been hard to raise three kids at that age. I know we didn't always make things easy. We got into trouble, we made terrible messes, we screamed and fought, we broke things, we ran wild some days, we made her want to tear her hair out but still... things were okay.
I mean, we were still poor. Dad spent winters away working in the logging camps. It was hard to make ends meet. My parents fought and screamed sometimes. They even broke up for a few months when I was young and Dad lived in a shack on the edge of town for awhile. We got spankings when we were bad but never bruises. Dad was even most likely bi-polar (as my youngest brother, his biological child, was recently diagnosed with) and his moods could shift dramatically. He could go from manically happy and giddy to grumpy in no time but it was never a violent, angry swing. It was more like living with a big, grumbly, grumpy bear that you didn't want to poke because he'd grumble some more. And then he'd be all giddy again and singing the Smurf theme song in the kitchen.
My Mom and Dad split for good when I entered my first year of university. I still talk to my Dad and I'm very close with my Mom. Dad hit the bottle for a few years after the split but seems to be doing better now. Even drunk he was never scary or violent (he rarely drank when we were kids. Mom didn't like alcohol in the house because of her own drunken father). Last year Dad had a girlfriend that he seemed to be really fond of die suddenly and unexpectedly. It was a sad and tearful phone call that day. I don't see him much as he lives far away but I still think he was a pretty good Dad. I should probably go visit him.
My childhood wasn't always easy. There were hard times. There were good times. There were bad times. But there was never violence. And for that I am eternally grateful to my parents.
It makes me think about the perfect storm I lived in the middle of that should have led to an abusive household and didn't. It makes me think just how lucky I was.
The Storm:
My mother's father was a violent alcoholic who beat the shit out of my grandmother regularly. My grandmother developed agoraphobia and a drinking problem of her own to deal with it. My mom told me she was about 6 years old and thought everybody's family was like that. Everybody's dad must get drunk and angry and everybody's mother must never leave the house. She didn't know anything else.
My grandmother quietly told me the story of how she spent a night standing over my grandfather with a knife in her hand. He had beaten her again and had recently taken to beating the children. He was passed out stone drunk. She thought long and hard about slitting his throat from ear to ear. She told me the only thing that stopped her was the thought of leaving her children with no mother. She threw him out the next day and listened to him bang on the door to get back in.
He died several years ago from a brain tumor caused by a lifetime of hard drinking. I never met him.
My father was an undiagnosed schizophrenic who had a serious drug problem. My mother was 15 living on the streets of a small city when she met him. She has always told me she wanted to live on the streets. That it was different back then than it is now. But I don't think that's the whole story. My grandmother says my father was just really screwed up from too many psychedelic drugs.
She told me the story of him climbing in the window in the middle of the night where ever it was my mom was living at the time. I think Mom was pregnant with me. He scarred the bejezus out of my grandmother. He had been in the hospital all day because he had tried to kill himself again. He cried telling my grandmother that all he ever did was fuck everything up.
My great aunt said when my mother and him visited her she wasn't comfortable sleeping in the same house as him. My mom says he was completely off the rails. My uncle (his brother) whom I only met a few times told me that my father was spiraling out of control for a long time, was constantly seeking out violent situations, ended up in jail where he contracted HIV and died when I was 8 years old. He didn't raise me. My mother extracted him from her life before I was even a year old and before my brother was born. Someone had seen him leaving a bar with a hooker and that was finally enough for her. I never met my father.
My uncle came to a birthday party I had once. I think I was turning 22/23. He came and met my friends and my brother and had a great time. He gave a friend a ride home at the end of the night. I heard back from her later that he said he was amazed how well my brother and I had turned out because our father wasn't the greatest person.
My Mom had me when she was 17. She had my brother when she was 18 and my youngest brother when she was 20. She was so very young. I was raised by my step-father. I consider my step-father my Dad. I think I was barely a year old and my brother had just been born when my parents met. Dad was 19 at the time. The story goes that he drunkenly stumbled into my Mom's house with a friend looking for my Mom's brother who was living with her at the time. Probably to buy weed or something. They sat down and had a beer together. It was later decided that my dad would move in when his car broke down in the yard and he couldn't go home. Shortly after that my mother was pregnant with her third child.
I remember no other father. I don't remember who told me or when that my step-dad wasn't my real father but I always just knew. It just wasn't a deep dark family secret. It didn't seem to matter. My father raised me and my brothers like we were all his kids. He treated us all the same. He was just 'Dad' and nothing else.
Like my mother, my step-father was raised in a violent household. His father beat the tar out of him on a regular basis. We used to catch shit for rocking back on our chairs at the dinner table so they were on two legs. Dad told us stories of how his father would backhand him off the chair if he did the same. My mother said it was a fucked up household he grew up in. His parents had three kids and only seemed to want the one daughter. She was treated like a princess. The other daughter, whom most likely had minor down syndrome, was ignored and Dad got shit-kicked regularly. I remember my dad telling me once that he hated his mother most of all even though she never laid a hand on him because she stood by and let it happen never once trying to stop it.
And there it is. The perfect storm of abuse and trauma. Two parents raised in violent situations. Two very young parents not ready to have three kids. One parent not even my biological parent. My real father by all accounts dangerous and violent. Us kids growing up poor in a small town. These are usually the ingredients for a tragic childhood...
And yet...
I was lucky. My step-father was never violent and we were always pretty close. My mother was never violent even though it must have been hard to raise three kids at that age. I know we didn't always make things easy. We got into trouble, we made terrible messes, we screamed and fought, we broke things, we ran wild some days, we made her want to tear her hair out but still... things were okay.
I mean, we were still poor. Dad spent winters away working in the logging camps. It was hard to make ends meet. My parents fought and screamed sometimes. They even broke up for a few months when I was young and Dad lived in a shack on the edge of town for awhile. We got spankings when we were bad but never bruises. Dad was even most likely bi-polar (as my youngest brother, his biological child, was recently diagnosed with) and his moods could shift dramatically. He could go from manically happy and giddy to grumpy in no time but it was never a violent, angry swing. It was more like living with a big, grumbly, grumpy bear that you didn't want to poke because he'd grumble some more. And then he'd be all giddy again and singing the Smurf theme song in the kitchen.
My Mom and Dad split for good when I entered my first year of university. I still talk to my Dad and I'm very close with my Mom. Dad hit the bottle for a few years after the split but seems to be doing better now. Even drunk he was never scary or violent (he rarely drank when we were kids. Mom didn't like alcohol in the house because of her own drunken father). Last year Dad had a girlfriend that he seemed to be really fond of die suddenly and unexpectedly. It was a sad and tearful phone call that day. I don't see him much as he lives far away but I still think he was a pretty good Dad. I should probably go visit him.
My childhood wasn't always easy. There were hard times. There were good times. There were bad times. But there was never violence. And for that I am eternally grateful to my parents.
Friday, February 15, 2013
Fucked
I'm standing in the shower drinking a bourbon and coke letting the hot water slide over my sore muscles. Last night I smoked opium in the nude above the alleyway and wrote poetry late into the night. One of my favorite futile pursuits. Tonight I'm making love to Jim Beam thinking about long hair wrapped around my hand. My back straining against the mattress. The walls shaking and my thighs shuttering. I'm thinking about digging my fingers into the soft flesh about the throat. Sinking my teeth into that soft spot between the shoulder and neck. Tender and inviting. I'm thinking about sighs in my ears. I'm thinking did I get everything I came for?
"Jim," I say, "Who do you love?"
Silence and the pitter patter of water against the tile are my only answer. Ice clinks in the glass as I raise it to my lips. I drain the last sweet drops down my throat tonguing the rim of the glass like a lover's mouth, ice clicking against my teeth. The amber fluid warms my throat, sinks into my stomach and spreads to my limbs. I feel leaden like sinking under water. My minds swims for the surface, breaks and slips back down under the softness of the liquor. We've been down here a lot lately. It's starting to feel like home.
"They're thinking about me right now, you know Jim." I sigh, "They're thinking about my big tits. They're thinking about fucking me. I can feel them. I can feel them like tendrils in my mind. I can feel them thinking, and sighing, and muttering, and deciding. I can feel the ghosts of their hands on me. I can feel all of them. Each and every one. Every. Last. Fucking. One."
I raise my hand to throw the now empty glass against the shower tiles. It shatters into a thousand sparkling shards slipping past my naked feet down the drain. My blood starts to flow red against the glass and water. A thousand little sparkling bloody cuts. The blood and glass swirl mesmerizing me as my mind slips down the drain after all that hot water. My mind is going to sea in a river of sewage. We are bleeding for nothing.
"Fuck," I mutter to the steam rising off my skin, "now I have to get another drink."
"Jim," I say, "Who do you love?"
Silence and the pitter patter of water against the tile are my only answer. Ice clinks in the glass as I raise it to my lips. I drain the last sweet drops down my throat tonguing the rim of the glass like a lover's mouth, ice clicking against my teeth. The amber fluid warms my throat, sinks into my stomach and spreads to my limbs. I feel leaden like sinking under water. My minds swims for the surface, breaks and slips back down under the softness of the liquor. We've been down here a lot lately. It's starting to feel like home.
"They're thinking about me right now, you know Jim." I sigh, "They're thinking about my big tits. They're thinking about fucking me. I can feel them. I can feel them like tendrils in my mind. I can feel them thinking, and sighing, and muttering, and deciding. I can feel the ghosts of their hands on me. I can feel all of them. Each and every one. Every. Last. Fucking. One."
I raise my hand to throw the now empty glass against the shower tiles. It shatters into a thousand sparkling shards slipping past my naked feet down the drain. My blood starts to flow red against the glass and water. A thousand little sparkling bloody cuts. The blood and glass swirl mesmerizing me as my mind slips down the drain after all that hot water. My mind is going to sea in a river of sewage. We are bleeding for nothing.
"Fuck," I mutter to the steam rising off my skin, "now I have to get another drink."
Wednesday, February 13, 2013
Ennui
He said, "You have to have goals. Always be moving forward. Good things only come if you want them. You have to want them, visualize and move towards the things you want. I want to be happy. I strive to be happy."
I stared at my hands, "Good luck with that."
He frowned, "Well, what do you strive for?"
I raised my eyes to the ceiling and sighed, "Stasis."
I stared at my hands, "Good luck with that."
He frowned, "Well, what do you strive for?"
I raised my eyes to the ceiling and sighed, "Stasis."
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