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Listening, I offered only the professional interviewer's objective nods. I wish I could tell you that I felt terrible for his wife, or that I looked at the man seated across from me and saw a study in moral corruption. But I had only met his wife one or two times, enough to determine that (a) I had nothing to say to her because (b) she fit the classic Dad Girlfriend Mode of being openly hostile and emotionally unstable. He never meant to marry her, it was obvious, but she got pregnant and, well, at times situations between people are far more crude and hopeless than my liberal education taught me to believe. From the moment I learned that my father had not only gotten hitched, but had accidentally become a father again, I felt no anger, no envy, but only the sort of shoulder-shrugging sympathy one feels for a hapless friend who has vague, admirable goals that he tends to destroy the possibility of achieving. He was a grown man, he had brought this life on himself — yes, I understood. But it was also the sort of life no one in their right mind wanted to live, and now, barely into his forties, he had to go on living it.
"David," he was now saying, his face crinkling back into blanched despondency, "let me tell you something. I know I haven't exactly been around or what have you. But listen to this. Never get old. And never get married."
This was an odd moment for a million reasons, but namely because it was the first time my father offered me advice that I immediately took to heart. In recent months, my "relationships" had taken a turn for the worse. Frowning and putting their clothes back on, the girls in my living room would tell me that I was opaque, selfish, indicative of a generational fear of intimacy, or simply in need of therapy. Worn down by hearing these (mainly true) analyses, I had sworn off the whole idea of love. I did not have a problem, no! It was these poor narrow-minded girls who wanted to be smothered with affection and drowned in dependency who had the problems! Monogamy, marriage, actual sex as opposed to "sex". . . pffff! These were blind unions destined to shatter or, worse, were held flimsily together only by mutual fear of them shattering!
There was only one problem with this worldview: I struggled not to think of it as total bullshit. Furthermore, it wasn't conducive to the real life I secretly wanted to live: a life in which sex wasn't queasily linked to nonsensical psychodrama, but was merely two bodies, some sweat, some kissing, some bare skin, an orgasm or two, perhaps a jealous neighbor listening through the wall, and maybe, who knows, the chance of something like love if you did it enough times and had stuff to talk about afterward. With my theoretical view of love and sex at odds with my actual hopes, I tried to reinforce the former while obliterating the
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It turned out he was having more affairs now — three simultaneously for a few months.
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latter. Woody Allen movies, for instance, became a popular pastime. Same with John Updike novels. And now, here in the restaurant, I had the best cultural reference of all: my father, a real live human being whose life would be so much easier if only he heeded his own dictum: And never get married.
"Shit," my father was saying, suddenly, looking at his watch and shaking his head. "I'm supposed to pick up my son at day care, totally slipped my mind . . . "
When the check came, he offered to pay it, though it turned out he didn't have quite enough cash on him, so I pitched in ten bucks. I thanked him for the advice, walked him to his car, and two years passed without us speaking. Not for any reason. Just both of us busy, him with his beleaguered marriage and pliable girlfriend, me with writing terrible short stories and further insulating myself from women. Then one day my father called me, and we drove up to Maine to see his parents. During the ride, he seemed even more broken than in the restaurant. It turned out he was having more affairs now — three simultaneously for a few months — and though he was briefly comforted by the confession, he never quite reverted back to the charming guy I knew as a kid.
Again, I pressed for details. I learned that his wife had discovered his indiscretions by carefully studying the phone bills. As a result, his household was no longer the cold war of a stagnant marriage but a full-on combat zone. They fought daily — terrible, cartoonish fights. On one occasion, his wife ran naked into the street. On another, my father, the animal lover, relieved his tension by taking the dog for walk — her dog, from before they met! — and shooting it dead with his
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"Dad," I said, "What the fuck are you going to do?"
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shotgun. "Hated that dog," he told me in the car. "Got back and told her, 'Sorry, he ran away.'" Most recently, the police were called, and my father asked if he could sleep in the cell at the station. "Best rest I've had in years," he said, which would have been funny if only it weren't true.
"You know," I said, "maybe you should consider getting divorced."
"I know," he said. "But the kid. I couldn't do it to the kid."
"Look at me," I said. "I'm fine. More or less."
My father was silent. The same way I preferred not to think of him as my parent, he preferred to forget I was his son.
"Dad," I said, legitimately concerned, "what the fuck are you going to do?"
He had no answer. Of course he didn't. He was tired. He would apologize, swear he wouldn't repeat the same mistakes, then repeat the same mistakes. Put another way: he would do nothing. As we rode on in silence, an epiphany started to form in my mind — more of a self-scolding, actually: You have been taking advice from this man? He is sweet, yes. And means well, true. And, okay, is responsible for your existence on the planet, which is no small thing. But, really, what the fuck have you been thinking?
After the trip, it was another four years until we spoke again. This time I didn't bother asking him about his marriage, or about his life at all. I had learned, and besides, I was too thrilled to introduce him to my girlfriend.
"It's been almost three years," I said. "Can you believe it?" n°
| ABOUT THE AUTHOR: |
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David Amsden is the author of Important Things That Don't Matter. He lives in Brooklyn. |
©2006 David Amsden and hooksexup.com
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