Dad

I should really write more often, but I've already run out of hilarious, poop-related childhood stories to tell. I'll have to think of some more. Or maybe just make them up.

I suppose I could talk about my father. Strap in, kids. This one's gonna get bumpy.

My dad just turned 57, which makes me HORRIBLY OLD. He and I didn't have the best of relationships when I was younger. He went to college and got a degree in sociology that he never used. Basically straight out of college he started working in factory settings. His longest stint was at American Greetings, where he worked the lines that made candles, stickers, plates and napkins. He would often bring home the "defective" items that looked just fine to us.

After AG moved to Kalamazoo, Michigan, he had to find a new job. He started working at a factory that made Mrs. Smith's baked goods, but that ended shortly after as well. He now works at a factory that hosts men coming out of rehabilitation or jail (though he has never [to my knowledge] been in either.) They make important pieces for the army: tents, outfits, parachutes, etc. Anything that has to be sewn. It's backbreaking labor, hours that are far too long, and according to him, far too much work for the limited staff they have and the short deadlines they are given. But it's work.

In my youth, he consistently pushed me into things that I wasn't necessarily interested in. Baseball was the one thing I was ok with. In viewing his relationship with his own father later in my own life, it is easy to see why our relationship was so strained. There wasn't a lot of love shown on the paternal side of my family. I suppose they thought that it was a sign of weakness, as my father would often call me weak, pansy, pussy, etc. when I wasn't able to do something that he felt I should have been.

Case in point, one day he and his friend Roger had gone to get a case or two of beer. I suppose they had picked up other things, as I was asked to carry the beer into the house. Perhaps he was just being lazy. In any case, I was nine and having noticeable trouble carrying an entire case of Coors Light by myself. So about halfway up the steps, Timmy, Roger's middle child who was slightly younger than me, offered to take the beer from me. I smiled and handed it to him, only to have my father yell at me, telling me what I wuss I was for not being able to carry something so light. I broke down, ran through the house into my room, slammed the door shut and locked it, and cried my little eyes out.

My mother eventually made him apologize, but dad wasn't one to mean much of anything he said. Except the biting, snide "jokes" and names he would call us. He constantly picked on my mother, sister and me for our collective obesity. If you ever wonder why I have body image issues, it's because of him. Every day of my high school career he would tell me I needed to lose weight.

"When I was a senior in high school, I weighed 165 pounds. How much do you weigh? 200?! That's too much! You need to stop eating those Big Macs!" he would quip as he popped open another beer.

I asked my mother several times why she stayed with him after all the horrible things he would say, and she would always make excuses for him. He was just joking, she explained. Just picking at you because he knew it got to you.

My father was a bully.

It's amazing the memories that will randomly hit you while doing things you once did. A few months ago while watching an old episode America's Funniest Home Videos, I remembered that my dad would call him Bob Faggot instead of Bob Sagat. I never knew what it meant, and completely forgot that he used to do it until now. I also remember him making jokes about being a fudge packer, and other homophobic slurs and remarks. My dad is also a bigot and racist. Even today he makes comments using the N word, and talks about "spics" or "the towel head who owns the gas station." I don't say all these things to make you hate him; that isn't my intention in the slightest. I just want to paint a picture of the man that I have grown up with as my sole male role model.

Many years later when I came out of the closet, it had a seriously detrimental impact on him. My sister called me the night he found out and told me I needed to come home because he was in bad shape. I came into the house to find him staggering through the kitchen and dining room. The stale stench of beer hit my nose before he got to me. It was probably the most drunk I had ever seen him, which was saying something, as dad was probably a functional alcoholic at that point. He slapped his hand on my shoulder, and through tear stained, bloodshot eyes, looked at me and apologized.

"Curtis, I'm sorry for making you gay."

That's the only time my sister or I have seen him cry. Even during both of the funerals of his parents, his eyes only moistened. There was no sobbing, no strangled moans; only a resigned sadness. But this was horrible.

It's extremely painful to grow up in the south being different, especially if that difference is your sexual orientation. But it's nearly deadly when your parents blame themselves for something you can't convince them is not something you or they decided or did. It might have killed me if I had been closer to my dad, so maybe it's best that we were a little more separated than a usual father/son pairing.

The day I moved into my college residence hall for the first time, my mom stood bawling at the car. She hugged me and told me she loved me and would always love me and to be a good boy and not to party and so on. My dad walked up to me and put his hand out to shake it. My mom snapped at him and told him to hug me. I don't know if it was because he felt awkward because I was gay or because he felt awkward showing emotion, but it was exactly that: awkward.

Ever since then, things have gotten better. I think the distance that I put between myself and my family helped to mend some of the bridges and helped him to realize that he cared for me and missed me when I was away. Our phone conversations still focus mainly on sports teams, but at least there are conversations. There's no more talk of losing weight; no more blame for (or even discussion of) my sexuality. Just the trappings of a father and son.