Maudlin, Part Three

(Originally June 17 2006)

Tomorrow is Father's Day. I'm not about to try to dredge up something nostalgic about my own Dad. That wouldn't make sense. I don't have enough good memories to fill a paragraph.

But today I realized something, as I was considering the impending holiday.

Men suck.

Bah, that's not fair, I know. It isn't just that men suck as a gender, although many women would argue the point. It's people, on the whole, who suck. Self included. In my cipher, I can recognize only two fathers who might be noteworthy, deserving of a "Happy Father's Day". The other fathers are either absent or dead.

In the present context, since the beginning of June two of my friends have lost their fathers to death and two other of my friends have become expectant fathers with their wives.

I have other friends who's fathers died way before mine did.

I have two friends who never talk about their fathers--one being alive and not with my friends' mother, and one having died before I ever met my friend.

I have another friend who's father I greatly admired--he was a strapping masculine Italian, a well-liked goombah who seemed to like me well enough too. He'd ask about me through his son, my friend. It got so that I was ashamed to give any reports of myself because I hadn't been doing so well in the past few years (see Blog; Last Three Years). I looked forward to having better things to say one day when the man up and died. This was about two years ago. When I learned of his illness and of his terminal condition, I cried myself home from the lunch where I got the news. Between then and the actual death, I learned a little something. My friend seemed not to be all that bothered by it. I know he was affected in ways I'll never be able to describe, but what he mostly communicated to me in the following brief conversations was that his father was a bully who made my friend's childhood difficult, and my friend blames a lot of his own dicey behavior toward women on his father. He also gave me the impression that it didn't take long for his mother to move on either.

And through all these permutations I wonder and I wonder and I wonder what it's all supposed to be about. What is "Fatherhood"? What is it supposed to mean to have a father? What does my one expectant friend really expect to BE, when he becomes a father? What does my other friend, who is already a father but is going to add another child to his family in half a year feel about fathering?

And what the hell happened to OUR fathers? What the hell were they doing when we were growing up? Why were they letting themselves just freaking DIE, leaving our mothers and ourselves just all the hell alone in this nasty-ass, cruel effing world? Or why were they such @$$holes that they didn't instill better memories or values in us? (By the way, isn't the President a father? And the Vice-President? Aren't most of these so-called men in politics 'fathers'? And in the countries around the world? So much for 'fatherhood' making a "man" out of you.)

Why can only 2 out of 11 of my friends (I can bump that up to 4 out of 11 when I think about it) give me the impression that they even like their fathers, or the memory of their fathers?

You see, I know emphatically that I am what I am today because of my father--sprinkled with a heathy dose of lunacy from the remains of the mothering I received in my father's absence.

I chose to chase down a religion because I wanted a Father. I followed a narcissist in a cult-like religion for 11 years because I wanted a father. I went to a part of the country and joined a culture that never wanted me to be a part of them for 8 years because I wanted a father. I tried very hard to emulate the values of another very narrow-minded man because I wanted a father. I still adore the thought of that narow-minded man to this day because I want a father.

I ran in terror from every commitment I've ever had with a woman because of the father I had. I was molested before I turned 10 because of the father I had. As a result, I can't stand to be touched--because I had the father I had. I can't balance a checkbook or make sound financial decisions because of the father I had. I get lost within a fog of endless introspection every June because of the father I had. I fight for hope but now in my forties have to face yet another failed chance to fit into this world as a man, a husband, a father--because of the father I had.

No, not a pretty picture, I admit. Nothing really upbeat for me to end on either. I can offer this advice though--all you "men" out there who made a baby? You want a Fther's Day card? A necktie? Some kind of regard, even though you pretend you don't?

Then BE a father, for God's sake. Okay? I mean, at least TRY. Damn!