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- 01/23/2016
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Names, places, characters, events, and incidents are based on the authors' lives and experiences and may be changed to protect personal information. Any resemblances to actual persons (living or dead), organizations, companies, events, or locales are entirely coincidental.
Note: While authors are asked to place warnings on their stories for some moderated content, everyone has different thresholds, and it is your responsibility as a reader to avoid stories or stop reading if something bothers you.
My LIfe: In Pieces - 5. Daddy Dearest
My Life: In Pieces Daddy Dearest
If you haven’t read the other parts of My Life: In Pieces, then you may not know my father threw me out of the family home when I was 15 years old. I lived on the street, and survived by being a rent boy (male prostitute) for the next seven years.
Here’s just a little update on my father, since I got off the street.
Once I’d met Michael I started to correspond with my step-mom, Darlene. She often told me that my father didn’t like it; he figured I should just stay out of their lives. Darlene had learned to stand up to him and told him that if she wanted to talk to me, she would.
She was happy to hear that Michael and I had gotten married and I gave her our details, names and address, things like that. Most of our conversations were via e-mail, we did call each other from time to time. Darlene would tell me what was going on in their lives and I’d tell her about ours.
Finally, last summer I decided I wanted to give Dad a chance to see us, maybe even accept us. I think like most kids, no matter what my father did to me, I still wanted his approval, his love.
Leysa, Michael’s mum, offered to share their annual BBQ on the Labour Day weekend, and I could invite them to that, thinking it might be easier for them both if there were more people around. So I wrote to Darlene and invited them.
There was no answer from Darlene about the invitation, and when I called her, she said she was still working on it. On him. Okay, I thought, whatever.
Then on a Thursday in late July, Michael got a phone call at his office, from my father. Dad asked Michael to meet him for a beer after work. Mike agreed and went to meet my father for the first time. Of course I only have Michael’s version of events, but there was no reason for me to doubt him. Here’s what Michael told me, in his words:
‘I got to the pub – Hair of the Dog – around 5:00pm. Your dad told me he’d be sitting on the right-hand wall and that he’d be reading a book with a green cover. I had no trouble spotting him. My first thoughts were, wow, Tim looks nothing like him. He stood up and shook my hand. I think he was a little surprised I was in a suit, and that I had a good six or seven inches on him.
I ordered a beer for us both, sat down, and asked him why he wanted to meet with me. He said that he wanted me to stop Tim from speaking with Darlene, and that he doesn’t have any interest in seeing Tim, at all – ever.
I said to him, “Why are you talking to me? I mean talk to your son. I’m not here to do your dirty work.”
He said, “You’re his husband, you need to control him.”
I told him that wasn’t going to happen. I said, “Tim is his own person, I don’t tell him what to do or who to see.”
I was pretty angry by this time, and told him in no uncertain terms I didn’t like his attitude or him. But I did say, “Tim is your son; he’s been through a hellish life from the time you tossed him out to when he ended up in hospital. No real man does that to his child. Tim still wants to try and mend the fences to have a relationship with his father. Fuck only knows why. So he’s going to invite you to a family gathering at my parents’ place. If you cared about him at all, maybe you can get your head out of your ass and be his fucking father.”
I left after that. I don’t think I’ve ever wanted to hit anyone like I did on that day. I wanted to put him through the wall.’
Michael didn’t tell me about this meeting until after it was over. I was pretty angry that my father would go to my husband to have him call me off his wife. I spoke to Darlene and she told me that they weren’t going to come. I invited her anyway.
Well, Labour Day weekend came in September, and we went to the BBQ at Michael’s parents. My mother-in-law sat us down in the living room and said that we could talk in here if Daddy decided to show up.
After that the nieces and nephews dragged me to the pool. They like me because I’ll stay in there with them and I’m easy to drag down to the bottom. We had a blast, there was lots of food, family and fun. About 4pm, everyone left, leaving just Mike and me, and his folks.
We stood talking in a loose circle, Michael with his back to the house, me beside him facing away from the house and his parent opposite us. They wouldn’t have been able to see past Mike. It happened quickly when it did; I heard my name: ‘Timothy’. I turned and he was there, my father, yelling at me, that he wanted nothing to do with me, and at the same hitting me. The blow caught me under my left eye and then his fist glanced off my nose. I went down; a bloody mess, and I watched as Michael went into full cop mode.
He put my father on the ground, arms behind his back, and a knee there too. All the while, my father never stopped his tirade; we were faggots, I was never his son, we were unnatural freaks, I’d never been his son and he hated me. Hated me for doing this to him.
Michael told his dad to call the police and give them his badge number, and also ask for an ambulance. Leysa gave me a towel to help stop the bleeding and held my hand as she saw how my father’s words still hurt, still ripped out another piece of my ruined heart.
The police arrived pretty quickly followed by the ambulance. Michael wanted me to have x-rays and a medical examination for the police report.
At the hospital, the doctors were concerned about my eye and the bone around it, my nose and history of previous concussion, but thankfully my eye and my nose weren’t broken. After a few x-rays, they decided I was okay; I’d be sore, possibly have a concussion and I may have headaches. I did for a couple of months.
I was pretty down after all of this. I was angry that I had invited all this pain into my family; but I was saddened that my father did not apologize, wasn’t sorry and never would be. I tried to let it go. No sense in holding on to hope that things would change.
My father was kept in jail without bail until December when he changed his plea to guilty and avoided a trial. He was sentenced to three years.
I don’t know how to feel. I tell myself it’s all over … but it never seems to be.
Can you ever really leave the past where it belongs?
I appreciate you reading and reviewing my work. Thanks to each of you.
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Names, places, characters, events, and incidents are based on the authors' lives and experiences and may be changed to protect personal information. Any resemblances to actual persons (living or dead), organizations, companies, events, or locales are entirely coincidental.
Note: While authors are asked to place warnings on their stories for some moderated content, everyone has different thresholds, and it is your responsibility as a reader to avoid stories or stop reading if something bothers you.
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