It’s June 8. An odd kind of day for me. It’s Dave Bell’s birthday but that’s not it. I haven’t been in contact with Dave in a number of months. I posted a Charlie Kirk quote about how a few deaths are necessary to maintain the second amendment. I posted it soon after Charlie Kirk was shot. It may have been a bullet that killed him though the conspiracies are saying his pic attached to his shirt was blown up like the Netanyahu regime took out Lebanese people with exploding beepers and pagers. Dave said I was better than that. I had to disagree.
June 8. It was my father’s birthday. He didn’t know what to do with me except call me an idiot most of my life growing up. It was that foundation that I built my house upon. I still suffer from his words though I know I’m not an idiot most of the time, there are times when I hear his voice, or even feel the back of his hand as it hits my skull. I did not like him and felt our lives would be better if he was not around. I dreamed my parents would get divorced but with my luck my father would have custody.
Loads of people loved my father but behind the door of 13 Riverview Avenue, we feared my father. My mother would pick up my father at the train station and getting in the house mere seconds before my father would tell us to watch out. Various iterations of watch out would vary. Sometimes it would be explained or excused that my father was in the bar car of the train and had probably been drinking all afternoon, being a salesman who had his liquid lunches.
Did he try to connect with me? I suppose he did. One year I had won a goldfish at a winter carnival and I brought it home for life in a bowl. Since it was around the Christmas holiday, it was decided to get me an aquarium. I really didn’t want an aquarium and was not of the inclination nor had the maturity to maintain a fish tank. I am not sure if my father saw this as a chance to connect with his youngest, but there were rides up to Mahwah to get fish or equipment. Those rides were generally silent, listening to WNEW AM and WIlliam B Williams playing Sinatra or other big band songs from that bygone era.
My father was the one who spoke of the magazines under my bed. My brothers had Playboy and Penthouse, so I felt I should have my own, only they were Mandate and Honcho. I’m certain he was disgusted. He told my mother (who discovered the magazines years before and asked me about them. I told her they were for ‘art class’ and she chose to believe that lie). My mother told Frank who told Annemarie, who told Brian and when it came to me I couldn’t deny it and stated that I would be moving out.
I wasn’t asked to go but I knew if I wanted to live my life the way I wanted to, I could not do it under their roof. There was a gulf between my father and me and it was around this time of year, between his birthday and father’s day that it really went south. I called him to wish him a happy birthday and he wanted to know where his gift was. I explained that I wasn’t doing so well financially and was going to combine his birthday and fathers day.
He did not like that at all and let me know it. I yelled into the phone, asking him if he was 12 years old before hanging up. We did not speak for a few years after that, only reaching a tentative truce when my mother passed away on Mothers Day in 1991.Once again I was not doing so well financially, my living situation was tenuous and thought he had changed enough for me to move back until I was able to get back on my feets. Frank, Annemarie & Brian advised against it but I thought I knew better, that he changed. He hadn’t. After living on my own for a few years he expected me to go back to his rules of when I was 10 years younger. We clashed, we fought and after a few months of hardship, found a place in Weehawken.
As I moved out he shadowed me. Annemarie was around and tried to place herself between my father and me as he bellowed making sure I was not going to steal his stuff. This was the guy who when he saw me using his deodorant told me to not use his things, because ‘who knows what diseases I had’. After leaving 13 Riverview Avenue I did not speak with him until a few months before he died. Annemarie, Brian and I cried at his wake. Not because we were going to miss him, but to me we cried because he never saw he had a hand in raising four good kids.
One last note. I did not like him so much that I crossed out his face with my fingernail in a photo of him and his brothers and sister. Looking straight at the photo you’d never see it, but if you held it at an ange it was clear that someone x’d out my father’s grinning face. EVeryone knew itt was me, though I’m not sure if he knew and saw the damage done. I was no angel but I know the treatment and beating I received were unwarranted.
