My Father

Why do I bury my serious writing here beneath all the silliness and emotionality? I start with a big argument with some imaginary person, and then get to the point. What's up with that? Hey, it's the price you pay. When I edit these things for a serious purpose, which I sometimes do, I lose the nonsense. But this blog is where I do pretty much what I want, and no one else's opinion matters, here. Deal with it. You're invited, but it's my party, and I don't have to be a good host. I've just sent a friend something that he may have a use for, and I pulled the angst out. Because that email was not about me. This is.

I don't give myself complete freedom here, because I do feel a sense of obligation. I don't do gratuitous vulgarity. Surely you must understand that I could. You've perhaps glimpsed something of the baroque nature of my thinking, and I can do it with levels of depravity that would make a sensitive person loath me. Of course I can. I would see it as a betrayal of your trust, though. And it is unnecessary. But I could.

Why do I say this? Because this is my place, but I control myself. It's my sort of public place. And so, my father.

I saw him today, as noted, for the first time since early 1995. He lives 5 miles away. He's turned into my grandfather, old grandpa H, who starved himself to death in his mid-90s. My father looks perhaps 10 years younger than his age. But he's sort of bent over now. Still lifts weights, but skinny legs. Severely arthritic and uses a walker for longer distances.

Completely unchanged, in terms of the subjects of his non-stop monologue. I don't say it that way to be unkind. It's just true. Part of it is true because he is a narcissistic personality. But we knew that. The important part of it is true because he is a desperately lonely person. The huge part of his talk is completely and utterly negative. If I responded to it, all I would be inclined to do is defend the people he is attacking, or correct the distorted impressions he has. But I knew that was useless 15 years ago, and it still is. It would just be arguing, and I don't argue. It's all said, his talk, with a manic good-humor as if it were all a really funny story, punctuated with laughter, often bitter, always big. Sort of a disconnect.

My former wife was the same way -- so much of her script was about all the bad things men had done to her. It should have been a warning to me, but I was young. It used to make me mad, how all those men had mistreated her, cheated her, done her wrong. I didn't realize that I would become just another man she would talk about in the same way. Live and learn. For my part, she was a wacky gal, and I used to tell wacky stories about her, until I clued myself in to the fact that my son didn't like my doing that. So I shut my idiot mouth up after that. Because he was more important than my using her to get laughs. See? I never have apologized to him.

So, a funny story my father told. (This is one of the things that I would normally never write. I'll keep it vague.) A brother has a new wife. My father spoke to her on the phone, and there was a communication problem. As he hung up, he said to himself, "Fucking embarrassing." She heard it. The "embarrassment" wasn't about the communication, it was about her. The husband, my brother, has cut off ties with my father. Because it was a profound insult to the wife, and it was unbelievably shaming to my brother. My father doesn't understand that, and no explanation will make him do so. There is no apology that can undo the bad feeling, because any apology would come from incomprehension, and it would lead to no change in behavior. This is one of my father's funny stories, told with much laughter.

Well, he did not stop talking from the moment I came till the moment I left. This is understandable, and I see it as my role to be the guy who listens. I always have seen that as my role. I don't say much. Hardly anything. For this, I am, of course, judged. I don't have much of a personality. I'm boring. I'm negative. And I am, but for reasons other than he would understand. It's just that everything he says is wrong. What can I do? Agree? Argue? Correct him? Please. He has not had a new idea, has not learned anything since the 1950s. And every opinion he has is absolutely right, and anyone who disagrees with him is out to get him. Tell me I'm wrong.

I did offer a bit of advice. I know better, but one slips, forgets. It's only human. My advice was wrong, of course, and he told me why it wouldn't work. It's odd. You know, I'm right a lot of the time, in this sort of situation. Strange how I've never been right with him. I've thought to point this out, but I'd just be wrong. Here's the thing though. If I'm told how I'm wrong every time I offer an opinion, it sort of shuts down any possibility for a conversation. Should I point that out? I have a strange impulse to describe someone nailing down the lid to their own coffin. He builds the box that holds him. Don't we all.

Okay, you know by now that I have a deep interest in nutrition. I'm pretty knowledgeable. Vegetarian, but not uptight about the choices other people make. Pretty balanced in my outlook. My father spent a good while instructing me about how to be healthy. Violent exercise is the key. It's all about circulating the blood, getting it to every part of the body. This is his idea. Nutrition? Diet? Doesn't matter. Exercise is the key. His diet, he informed me, consists largely of fish sticks and cranberry sauce. I am not kidding. I'm not holding him up to ridicule. He said this shortly after, or was it before, he talked about all the medications he was on, and how such and such a painkiller had caused him four years ago to lose half the blood in his body through his anus -- half, per the ER doctors. His prescribing doctor hadn't realized the meds had aspirin in it. And so on. Prostate. Arthritis. Various surgeries. He never, not once, stopped needing to clear his throat. Addicted to milk, you see. "I'm addicted to milk."

I took a chance and mentioned how I used to ache quite a bit from doing jiu jitsu -- a topic I would have liked to talk about, for all that it would surely open up questions of my being gay -- and I said that fish oil had helped in a major way. "Oh, I've used fish oil for 30 years. People used to ask me how I was so healthy and I told them about my formula, cod liver oil, yeast, vinegar and milk. I've never had a cold in my life." I'm not sure that's such a good thing, given all the phlegm. I didn't bother to say that fish oil is not the same as cod liver oil. It's not exasperation. It's not hopelessness. It's experience. Fifteen years have not improved his listening skills.

I did not bother to suggest that nutrition is important too, along with exercise, whether "violent," or merely sufficient. I did not say that circulating blood to all parts of the body is a good thing, but only because of what is in the blood. It's about more than oxygen. It's about the nutrients in blood, that cells need, and get or do not get depending on what has been eaten, consistently. I did not say this, because I don't argue. And telling my father anything contrary to what he already knows is arguing, and negative.

You are amazed sometimes at the magnitude of my egotism. My masculine beauty, my unmatched physical power, my genius IQ. Well, part of my humor is to say true things in a ridiculous way. But do I really have to point out the source of this satire? I did learn something today. I learned where my ridicule of "genius" comes from. He must have said it 8 times. "I like being around geniuses." All the various medical professionals he had contact with. Geniuses. Geniuses. They are the A plus plus students. The docs with clinics in the mall are the D students. His are geniuses. And the guy with half a tongue who does the iron work for the house -- he's a genius. And the guy who built the room under the house. And his sister's four kids, geniuses -- prosecutors and scientists. And an ex wife's uncle won the Nobel Prize in physics, and her father has a medical wing named after him at USC, and his son by that marriage had an IQ of 170. Odd how he didn't mention me. Because my little half brother Jack did not have an IQ of 170. But I did, nearly. Lot of good it's done me. Don't even get praised by my dad.

Is there hope? If so, it isn't about information, my specialty. I'm not a warm guy. I'm not a hugger. Part of me is, but that part is fiercely protected. So is there hope? I feel an inexpressible pity for him. He is consumed by regret and insane with loneliness, and I am moved beyond all power of expression by his plight. I cannot rescue him. He will use me as an object to vent his mental illness. I am not wise enough, and I am too angry and afraid, to risk any overt expression of love, love which I must possess or be utterly inhuman, but which is buried too deep to find. My mere presence, silent, mostly, will not be enough. But it is all I have to offer, and that with an intractable reluctance.

We are opposites, and we are so much alike it is breathtaking.

All I felt comfortable mentioning was my son. I've always had the feeling my father was jealous. But even he is not foolish enough to badmouth my son.

3 24 09
J