I hate Father’s Day

My father is some where, I think. If he’s dead no one has bothered to say.

If he’s dead, good.

He was, and probably still is, a mean-spirited, abusive drunk and drug addict.

My mother left him in Germany when I was five months old. We came to America with my diaper bag, and that’s all. No kidding.

Don’t worry. This is a good thing. Not knowing my father is a true blessing.

My grandparents, Midwesterners who retired from Air Force life in sub-tropical Alablamastan, let us live with them while my mother went to tech school, guaranteeing herself a boring computer programming job for as long as she can stand it.

I guess she can only semi-stand it these days since she’s semi-retired.

She made another bad choice with my step-father who, unfortunately, is also an abusive drunk. The years and my mother’s no-nonsense, I’m-not-going-to-take-your, or anyone else’s-crap stance on life have tamed him. The two states between he and I make our relationship bearable, though I will never like or trust him.

He’s not a hitter. He’s a talker and a fondler.

When I was 12 he told me the world would be a better place if I were dead because I slammed a door, albeit unintentionally. He made countless lewd sexual gestures and overtures I didn’t understand until years later, but he never touched me. 

Life with him was shit; he will always gross me out.

My maternal grandfather, on the other hand, is a gem among men; selfless, kind, generous, peaceful. In truth, he is the person I look to as my father figure and is the only reason I don’t shun father’s day entirely. He’s the only grandfather that counts in my world.

He’s probably the fundamental reason why I’m not a full-on man-hater.

The worst part about father’s day is the phone call guilt. Cards are easy: pick a funny one with zero sentiment, post and send. You get credit for remembering and the guilt monster stays at bay.

The calls, though– yack, although I shouldn’t say “calls.” I mean “call.” I call my grandparents and mother, on average, once a week. (I’m a good girl, mostly.) But I hate talking to my step-father and only call specifically to speak with him on his birthday and Father’s Day so that I won’t have to hear about how down he is because I didn’t.

(I mean, are you fucking kidding me?! How down he is. Fuck him.)

We’re on opposite sides of the political fence. We’re on opposite sides of the outlook-on-life fence (he’s a lifetime pot-head and has built up mountains of paranoia to prove it while I like to pretend there is enough goodness and intelligence in the world to sustain us for few thousand more years). We’re on opposite sides of the how-to-treat-and-respect-people fence.

And, “so it goes,” like Vonnegut said, but without the dead people.

Beyond his role in my unhappy childhood, we have nothing in common besides my mother. I would rather pluck every hair on my body, one at a time, than get stuck in a conversation with him– drunk or sober, yet I call.

God damn. I’m a moron. A moron earning loads of karma credit.

Oh, and there was that time, that time my life was changed in an instant. That time when I was 18 and the sexiest I’ll ever be, and the pervert showed up, naked, outside my bedroom door asking to see my tits.

That was the last night I spent as a dependent of my parental units. Soon after I ate myself into a totally different, less hot, body. Who wants to be sexy if you attract scum?

My mother, who accussed me of lying when I told her what happened, kicked me out the next day– jobless, homeless and two weeks away from the launch of my collegiate career which is, 13 years later, ongoing.

Yeah. I hate Father’s Day. Mother’s Day is next up on the list.

Here we are, trapped in the amber of the moment. There is no why. – Kurt Vonnegut