Why Should I Care?

Elspode · 02-27-2005, 12:09 AM

My father was a slut. Even when I was seven or eight years old, it was pretty clear to me that he wasn't going to be the guy who drove me to baseball, taught me about girls or made sure that my injuries got healed. No, it was inevitable that he was to be the guy against whom all "normal" sorts of familial infrastructure was to be measured...with him on the negative side of the scale.

How I didn't end up a flaming homosexual was always a subject of puzzlement to both my mother and myself. I was raised by *extremely* strong willed women...women who could either purr and coo to bring a man to them, or shuck the sonofabitch and do the oil change themselves. Women who could wither a man just by dint of their desireability and self-assurance.

My father, being led by his dick, was always "out of town" during my youth. Every event of significance was attended either by my mother or my grandmother. If it was my mother, she was almost certainly hanging on the bare edge of her capacity. If it was my grandmother, she was probably schnockered, and working up a whole litany of criticism for my mother for the lack of being there.

In retrospect, having earned a bit of experience, which allows me some adult perspective, I'm pretty sure that my dad was out having his helmet polished most of the time. It was the Sixties, and he strove to fit the archetype of the besuited and closely coiffed young apprentice, even if the price of his suits meant that Mom and I went without food or lights for a few days.

He was a handsome bastard...short, stocky, and well-muscled, a devotee of Jack LaLanne. I have memories of female impersonators hanging around the house...they were my mother's best friends. Her best girlfriends. The only reason they were there at all was because of my father. They wanted him at first, but later, having met my mother, became entangled in the reality that was the Chambers household.

My father flitted easily from drag bar to bowling alley to the corner hoodlum drugstore to the fire department to the checkout line at the all-night grocery...and never once showed that he was anything but in control. It was only thirty years later that I was able to understand that Chuckles was bisexual. It was only because of the memory of the sheer loving humanity of all those fading transvestites that I was able to understand what pure acceptance meant. It is only because I was surrounded by people who had been rejected by "proper" society that I was able to grasp that love had nothing to do with parentage, and everything to do with who was there when the chips were down.

We were too poor for babysitters most of the time, and too socially isolated for real family friends to watch me. Because of this, I was always brought in tow as my folks traversed the Kansas City nightlife, doing whatever young adults do in search of entertainment, amusement, opportunity. I remember hanging out at "the drug store", a remnant of Kansas City's mob days...a place where the hopeful Goodfellas bought their tobacco and scandal sheets, drank coffee, scored junk, and waited for an opportunity to be somebody. I remember being given sodas at the counter, and reading scandal sheets when they were really, really vile...two headed babies, hermaphrodites and graphic murder scenes in black and white splashed across the front pages. I remember falling asleep in the back seat of a borrowed car while my drunken father asked my mom if he could "hit her in her box", and wondering just why it was that my mom had to drive home, anyway.

My parents came squarely out of the last remnants of KC Jazz Age turmoil. My mother's best friend was to eventually inherit Milton's, the absolute last edifice of KC's true jazz heritage. Milton Morris was the first guy to book Bill Basie, Charle Parker, endless others, into the Kansas City bar scene. Milton's first storefront was on Vine Street, long before 'Kansas City' entreated us to "stand on the corner at 12th Street and Vine." Before they died, each of these legends would come through KC, do their gigs, and end up at Milton's at 32nd and Main in KC, and chat up the old fucker. And sometimes...they would play. At the very least, somewhere in a suburb of KC, there is the most amazingly unexploited collection of jazz vinyl in the entire country, right now.

Milton was my "Aunt" Hazel's blood uncle, and she nursed him through to his last breath - each sickening, flaccid, whoreborne, twenty dollar blow-job, eighty-year-old, one-leg-cut-off-by-a-cable-car-when-he-was-a-kid remaining day of the son of a bitch's life. It was into this "marijuana could get you fifty, glossy porn 3 x 5's gets you life" world that I was pulled for want of a better place for me to be most Friday nights. It was drag queens who brought me coloring books and toys when I broke my leg two days after my seventh birthday. It was flaming queers who dried my mothers' tears when my father failed to show up three days after he was due. I walked up the stairs to their $40-a-month flops that are now trendy Midtown lofts when I was five or six years old. I asked my mother unanswerable questions about why men would want to be women.

It was my domineering grandmother (whom I kicked in the ass one day when I was nine because she badmouthed my worthless father when he called to say he couldn't pick me up one weekend) who laid it all out for the man I was to become. She looked me square in the eye, and called me an "ungrateful bastard"...ungrateful, because I lived with her, my mom and my grandfather, and apparently didn't grasp that my father was a waste of space. A bastard, because...that's what I truly was. I still have the forged Tijuana wedding license that shows my parents' anniversary to be two months prior to my birth...even though I know it to be a fabrication.

My father is pushing 70 now. My mother died 13 years ago. They were divorced when I was 10, and no one will ever know whether or not they were the better for it. My mother married a copier repairman who proved to be a capable motorhead and an abusive asshole with a penchant for affairs...women who would call at 3:00 in the morning, demanding to speak to him. I learned things from him...how to use a wrench, the fact that malfunctioning doesn't equal broken...but mostly, he was a child molester - the man responsible for screwing up my half sister.

I 've just spent a couple of hours trying to run my father, Charles Chambers, down on the Internet. His poverty keeps him moving now, makes him hard to find. Why do I want to contact him? That's easy.

I want to tell him that I'm better than he is. I want him to know that I have fought the battles that he ran from, and I am a better man for it all.

Is that wrong?

Brett's Honey · 02-27-2005, 12:21 AM

No....that's not wrong.....

BigV · 02-27-2005, 01:04 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Elspode

My father was a slut.
--snip--
I want to tell him that I'm better than he is. I want him to know that I have fought the battles that he ran from, and I am a better man for it all.

Is that wrong?

No.

In a few more, hell, no.

Having been terribly let down by your father, your motives sure seem to include a strong desire to vent your bitterness. That's understandable and probably healthy, but of course, I'm no analyst.

But as a father myself, I can think of nothing that I would rather hear from my son, than that he has become a better man than I. Speaking from my own perspective, that is my ultimate goal for my kids. I have a different balance of virtues and faults compared to your experience, but I can hardly ignore the breadth and depth of my mistakes and failures. As as I grow older, and my son grows older, there are more faults, and more time to reflect upon them. To hear of success in spite of all those errors would bring joy to my heart.

I am willing to speculate that you don't have that as your goal for seeking him and speaking to him. I would likewise be willing to speculate that your father would greet this news with a mixed reaction--soothed by your success and stung by your criticism of his faults.

But I don't think you're wrong to want to tell him.

Elspode · 02-27-2005, 01:17 AM

Mostly, I want to let him know that the end product of his ejaculation has lived long enough to have some perspective on what might have made him dip his wick in the first place.

The rest is all window dressing, right?

jaguar · 02-27-2005, 04:53 AM

wow. no.

richlevy · 02-27-2005, 08:47 AM

No, not at all.

Have you tried http://www.ussearch.com? I used these guys to find someone with just a first name and date of birth and they delivered results.

OnyxCougar · 02-27-2005, 10:04 AM

No, you're not wrong.

As far as finding him...
Are you sure he's still alive?
If you have his social security number, it will be easy (not cheap but easy) to find him.
If he's dead it's cheap and easy to find him with the SSN.

Good luck with your search. If I can help, let me know.

Clodfobble · 02-27-2005, 10:14 AM

I understand your efforts to find him, Patrick, but I have to admit I suspect it won't be as cathartic as you hope if you ever do find him.

How do you plan to contact him if you do? Perhaps in written form you might get some sort of emotional release... but if you actually talk to him in person or on the phone, you will forever be replaying the conversation in your head and the little things that you wanted to be said differently. Also, with writing, there's a chance he won't respond, which may be the best thing for your heart anyway.

I sometimes have the desire to contact my ex-stepfather, and tell him exactly what I thought of him from day one, and show him that despite his abuse, and comically childish behavior (ever seen a grown man throw a flailing temper tantrum on the floor?,) and all his horrific failures as a parent and certainly as a role model, I have somehow managed to rise above his influence and, as you said, use him purely as an example of what not to be. Ironically, I am most definitely a better stepmother because of him.

But then I realize there's no way to do that cleanly, without re-introducing him into my life in some fashion. Even if I tried to just write it down and mail it with no return address, it would rekindle his desire to find me--to apologize, to tell me off, it doesn't matter, it's all something I don't want. I'd rather he just stay gone. Perhaps your father is old enough that you aren't worried about that, but consider if you really want to give this man the satisfaction of knowing how you turned out.

Paleobabe · 02-27-2005, 10:17 AM

No.

That was beautifully written by the way.

Beestie · 02-27-2005, 10:23 AM

Its not wrong, Els but I wouldn't bother giving the piece of shit the satisfaction of knowing that at least one thing he did turned out right even if he had nothing to do with it.

I wouldn't give him the satisfaction. But, then again, that's the kind of asshole I am.

Elspode · 02-27-2005, 10:43 AM

I seem to end up hearing from him once per decade or so, on average. After he and my mom got divorced, he headed for California in the late 60's, and has made and lost at least three fortunes that I know of. The last address I had for him (and this is no shit) had him living in a camper down by the Sacramento River. I'm pretty sure he's still in Redding, CA somewhere.

If and when I see him again, I seriously doubt I'll tell him all of what I poured out in my initial post. It would be me making myself feel better by hurting him. I'm not really wired that way. Just one more thing that I think makes me a better man than he ever could have been.

wolf · 02-27-2005, 11:43 AM

I hope that you get what you want out of this.

Troubleshooter · 02-27-2005, 12:08 PM

Be careful of needing a specific outcome from this. Things may not go as you expect or want.

External validation isn't always a good thing.

You've proven yourself as a person many times over by all accounts. Don't let that hinge on anyone else's (clearly screwed up) standards.

xoxoxoBruce · 02-27-2005, 03:04 PM

Although what you’ve written here should suffice as a cathartic you could write it all down, attach some pictures and put the envelope away “just in case”.
That said, stay the hell away from him you dumb bastard.
Given his age and history he’s, if alive, not in good physical or financial health. You being who and what you are, would just drag the reprobate home with you, in a rush of misplaced empathy, placing a huge strain on you and yours.
Let lying dogs sleep.

richlevy · 02-27-2005, 03:31 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by OnyxCougar

If you have his social security number, it will be easy (not cheap but easy) to find him.

In most cases, with an SSN you can get a current address for less than $100 if the person isn't homeless. You can probably get the same results with just a name and a date of birth, but you will have to eliminate false positives.

02-27-2005, 12:09 AM	#1
Elspode When Do I Get Virtual Unreality? Join Date: Dec 2002 Location: Raytown, Missouri Posts: 12,719	Why Should I Care? My father was a slut. Even when I was seven or eight years old, it was pretty clear to me that he wasn't going to be the guy who drove me to baseball, taught me about girls or made sure that my injuries got healed. No, it was inevitable that he was to be the guy against whom all "normal" sorts of familial infrastructure was to be measured...with him on the negative side of the scale. How I didn't end up a flaming homosexual was always a subject of puzzlement to both my mother and myself. I was raised by extremely strong willed women...women who could either purr and coo to bring a man to them, or shuck the sonofabitch and do the oil change themselves. Women who could wither a man just by dint of their desireability and self-assurance. My father, being led by his dick, was always "out of town" during my youth. Every event of significance was attended either by my mother or my grandmother. If it was my mother, she was almost certainly hanging on the bare edge of her capacity. If it was my grandmother, she was probably schnockered, and working up a whole litany of criticism for my mother for the lack of being there. In retrospect, having earned a bit of experience, which allows me some adult perspective, I'm pretty sure that my dad was out having his helmet polished most of the time. It was the Sixties, and he strove to fit the archetype of the besuited and closely coiffed young apprentice, even if the price of his suits meant that Mom and I went without food or lights for a few days. He was a handsome bastard...short, stocky, and well-muscled, a devotee of Jack LaLanne. I have memories of female impersonators hanging around the house...they were my mother's best friends. Her best girlfriends. The only reason they were there at all was because of my father. They wanted him at first, but later, having met my mother, became entangled in the reality that was the Chambers household. My father flitted easily from drag bar to bowling alley to the corner hoodlum drugstore to the fire department to the checkout line at the all-night grocery...and never once showed that he was anything but in control. It was only thirty years later that I was able to understand that Chuckles was bisexual. It was only because of the memory of the sheer loving humanity of all those fading transvestites that I was able to understand what pure acceptance meant. It is only because I was surrounded by people who had been rejected by "proper" society that I was able to grasp that love had nothing to do with parentage, and everything to do with who was there when the chips were down. We were too poor for babysitters most of the time, and too socially isolated for real family friends to watch me. Because of this, I was always brought in tow as my folks traversed the Kansas City nightlife, doing whatever young adults do in search of entertainment, amusement, opportunity. I remember hanging out at "the drug store", a remnant of Kansas City's mob days...a place where the hopeful Goodfellas bought their tobacco and scandal sheets, drank coffee, scored junk, and waited for an opportunity to be somebody. I remember being given sodas at the counter, and reading scandal sheets when they were really, really vile...two headed babies, hermaphrodites and graphic murder scenes in black and white splashed across the front pages. I remember falling asleep in the back seat of a borrowed car while my drunken father asked my mom if he could "hit her in her box", and wondering just why it was that my mom had to drive home, anyway. My parents came squarely out of the last remnants of KC Jazz Age turmoil. My mother's best friend was to eventually inherit Milton's, the absolute last edifice of KC's true jazz heritage. Milton Morris was the first guy to book Bill Basie, Charle Parker, endless others, into the Kansas City bar scene. Milton's first storefront was on Vine Street, long before 'Kansas City' entreated us to "stand on the corner at 12th Street and Vine." Before they died, each of these legends would come through KC, do their gigs, and end up at Milton's at 32nd and Main in KC, and chat up the old fucker. And sometimes...they would play. At the very least, somewhere in a suburb of KC, there is the most amazingly unexploited collection of jazz vinyl in the entire country, right now. Milton was my "Aunt" Hazel's blood uncle, and she nursed him through to his last breath - each sickening, flaccid, whoreborne, twenty dollar blow-job, eighty-year-old, one-leg-cut-off-by-a-cable-car-when-he-was-a-kid remaining day of the son of a bitch's life. It was into this "marijuana could get you fifty, glossy porn 3 x 5's gets you life" world that I was pulled for want of a better place for me to be most Friday nights. It was drag queens who brought me coloring books and toys when I broke my leg two days after my seventh birthday. It was flaming queers who dried my mothers' tears when my father failed to show up three days after he was due. I walked up the stairs to their $40-a-month flops that are now trendy Midtown lofts when I was five or six years old. I asked my mother unanswerable questions about why men would want to be women. It was my domineering grandmother (whom I kicked in the ass one day when I was nine because she badmouthed my worthless father when he called to say he couldn't pick me up one weekend) who laid it all out for the man I was to become. She looked me square in the eye, and called me an "ungrateful bastard"...ungrateful, because I lived with her, my mom and my grandfather, and apparently didn't grasp that my father was a waste of space. A bastard, because...that's what I truly was. I still have the forged Tijuana wedding license that shows my parents' anniversary to be two months prior to my birth...even though I know it to be a fabrication. My father is pushing 70 now. My mother died 13 years ago. They were divorced when I was 10, and no one will ever know whether or not they were the better for it. My mother married a copier repairman who proved to be a capable motorhead and an abusive asshole with a penchant for affairs...women who would call at 3:00 in the morning, demanding to speak to him. I learned things from him...how to use a wrench, the fact that malfunctioning doesn't equal broken...but mostly, he was a child molester - the man responsible for screwing up my half sister. I 've just spent a couple of hours trying to run my father, Charles Chambers, down on the Internet. His poverty keeps him moving now, makes him hard to find. Why do I want to contact him? That's easy. I want to tell him that I'm better than he is. I want him to know that I have fought the battles that he ran from, and I am a better man for it all. Is that wrong? __________________ "To those of you who are wearing ties, I think my dad would appreciate it if you took them off." - Robert Moog

02-27-2005, 01:17 AM	#4
Elspode When Do I Get Virtual Unreality? Join Date: Dec 2002 Location: Raytown, Missouri Posts: 12,719	Mostly, I want to let him know that the end product of his ejaculation has lived long enough to have some perspective on what might have made him dip his wick in the first place. The rest is all window dressing, right? __________________ "To those of you who are wearing ties, I think my dad would appreciate it if you took them off." - Robert Moog

02-27-2005, 04:53 AM	#5
jaguar whig Join Date: Apr 2001 Posts: 5,075	wow. no. __________________ Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life. - Twain

02-27-2005, 08:47 AM	#6
richlevy King Of Wishful Thinking Join Date: Jan 2001 Location: Philadelphia Suburbs Posts: 6,669	No, not at all. Have you tried http://www.ussearch.com? I used these guys to find someone with just a first name and date of birth and they delivered results. __________________ Exercise your rights and remember your obligations - VOTE! I have always believed that hope is that stubborn thing inside us that insists, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that something better awaits us so long as we have the courage to keep reaching, to keep working, to keep fighting. -- Barack Hussein Obama

02-27-2005, 10:04 AM	#7
OnyxCougar Junior Master Dwellar Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: Kingdom of Atlantia Posts: 2,979	No, you're not wrong. As far as finding him... Are you sure he's still alive? If you have his social security number, it will be easy (not cheap but easy) to find him. If he's dead it's cheap and easy to find him with the SSN. Good luck with your search. If I can help, let me know. __________________ Impotentes defendere libertatem non possunt. "Repetition does not transform a lie into a truth." ~Franklin D. Roosevelt

02-27-2005, 12:21 AM	#2
Brett's Honey whatever Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: Oklahoma Posts: 308	No....that's not wrong.....

02-27-2005, 10:14 AM	#8
Clodfobble UNDER CONDITIONAL MITIGATION Join Date: Mar 2004 Location: Austin, TX Posts: 20,012	I understand your efforts to find him, Patrick, but I have to admit I suspect it won't be as cathartic as you hope if you ever do find him. How do you plan to contact him if you do? Perhaps in written form you might get some sort of emotional release... but if you actually talk to him in person or on the phone, you will forever be replaying the conversation in your head and the little things that you wanted to be said differently. Also, with writing, there's a chance he won't respond, which may be the best thing for your heart anyway. I sometimes have the desire to contact my ex-stepfather, and tell him exactly what I thought of him from day one, and show him that despite his abuse, and comically childish behavior (ever seen a grown man throw a flailing temper tantrum on the floor?,) and all his horrific failures as a parent and certainly as a role model, I have somehow managed to rise above his influence and, as you said, use him purely as an example of what not to be. Ironically, I am most definitely a better stepmother because of him. But then I realize there's no way to do that cleanly, without re-introducing him into my life in some fashion. Even if I tried to just write it down and mail it with no return address, it would rekindle his desire to find me--to apologize, to tell me off, it doesn't matter, it's all something I don't want. I'd rather he just stay gone. Perhaps your father is old enough that you aren't worried about that, but consider if you really want to give this man the satisfaction of knowing how you turned out.

02-27-2005, 10:17 AM	#9
Paleobabe Hopelessly Annoyed Join Date: Feb 2005 Posts: 15	No. That was beautifully written by the way.

02-27-2005, 10:23 AM	#10
Beestie -◊\|≡·∙■·∙≡\|◊- Join Date: Feb 2003 Location: Parts unknown. Posts: 4,081	Its not wrong, Els but I wouldn't bother giving the piece of shit the satisfaction of knowing that at least one thing he did turned out right even if he had nothing to do with it. I wouldn't give him the satisfaction. But, then again, that's the kind of asshole I am. __________________ ♠ ♥ ♣ ♦

02-27-2005, 10:43 AM	#11
Elspode When Do I Get Virtual Unreality? Join Date: Dec 2002 Location: Raytown, Missouri Posts: 12,719	I seem to end up hearing from him once per decade or so, on average. After he and my mom got divorced, he headed for California in the late 60's, and has made and lost at least three fortunes that I know of. The last address I had for him (and this is no shit) had him living in a camper down by the Sacramento River. I'm pretty sure he's still in Redding, CA somewhere. If and when I see him again, I seriously doubt I'll tell him all of what I poured out in my initial post. It would be me making myself feel better by hurting him. I'm not really wired that way. Just one more thing that I think makes me a better man than he ever could have been. __________________ "To those of you who are wearing ties, I think my dad would appreciate it if you took them off." - Robert Moog

02-27-2005, 11:43 AM	#12
wolf lobber of scimitars Join Date: Jul 2001 Location: Phila Burbs Posts: 20,774	I hope that you get what you want out of this. __________________ wolf eht htiw og "Conspiracies are the norm, not the exception." --G. Edward Griffin The Creature from Jekyll Island High Priestess of the Church of the Whale Penis

02-27-2005, 12:08 PM	#13
Troubleshooter The urban Jane Goodall Join Date: Jan 2004 Location: Florida Posts: 3,012	Be careful of needing a specific outcome from this. Things may not go as you expect or want. External validation isn't always a good thing. You've proven yourself as a person many times over by all accounts. Don't let that hinge on anyone else's (clearly screwed up) standards. __________________ I have gained this from philosophy: that I do without being commanded what others do only from fear of the law. - Aristotle

02-27-2005, 03:04 PM	#14
xoxoxoBruce The future is unwritten Join Date: Oct 2002 Posts: 71,105	Although what you’ve written here should suffice as a cathartic you could write it all down, attach some pictures and put the envelope away “just in case”. That said, stay the hell away from him you dumb bastard. Given his age and history he’s, if alive, not in good physical or financial health. You being who and what you are, would just drag the reprobate home with you, in a rush of misplaced empathy, placing a huge strain on you and yours. Let lying dogs sleep. __________________ The descent of man ~ Nixon, Friedman, Reagan, Trump.

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