I just got off the phone with my dad

2022/ 2023?

I got mad at him a few times over the length of an hour.

it was the longest I've talked with him since before college.

I got angry when he told me about his surgery as if i didn't know

i felt instantly defensive. I felt angry all of the sudden that he was doing what he's done before. of what i accused him of doing in my letter to him; of being afraid, of letting us in on how afraid he was of dying, of being in danger, of wanting to die, of wanting to be better, i told him how angry it made me to be at my mothers cancer surgery and hear her fear, hear her desire for a partner, for someone to fulfill this promise, this broken promise of taking care of her.

I led into the conversation i wanted to have by first asking when he first used drugs. 14

I asked if he was bullied when he was a kid because he was feminine. I asked if the LA punk rock kids he hung out with were gay. he said he wasn't sure. that it never occurred to him. but that there was a man who lived on the end of his block when he was 12, who was gay and a predator. and him and his friends used to go to his house and play pinball, and he didn't realize he was being groomed. And when he was 17 after a football game, the man approached him and gave my dad his phone number and told him to call. and he did.

and that started something secret and addictive around sex and sexuality for him.

and i asked when he stopped. and he said it was when he got sober.

he told me we were more alike than any of the other boys, and that same thing i've heard since i was a kid, that he thought it was funny that I was the most athletic and the least into sports.

he asked if i drank a lot, if i did a lot of drugs. I told him i didn't know how to answer, that I didnt understand why he wanted to know. youre asking me questions to get to know me better, isn't that why you're asking me questions? So i asked a question to get to know you better.

I was afraid of him asking about sex, i was afraid of the answer, of the truth i've not even disclosed to my 1 year old relationship, a relationship i banned him from asking more about, like a child.

he apologised for a lot of things. that surprised me. about the kitchen table, about leaving, about the wedding, and about the drinking and the drug use in the house.

i told him, i didnt really care to hear it, i think i said that, i think i said that it wasnt fair that he was telling me all of the things he was sorry for, i think i said i didn't know what he wanted from me.

the things he said we were similar:

that we're creative, sensitive, love deeply, intelligent, destructive.

i asked if he saw me being destructive when i was young. towards jake is really what I wanted to know, what i really feel the most guilt about.

he said no. that i have anger.

he told me more about evan, his friend who overdosed 4 months before his wedding to my mom, his friend who he loved like a brother and who knew he wasn't straight and didnt care, who's death pushed him into being suicidal, how bad of a place he was in, how he turned to anything to make him feel better, he talked about how 9/11 did the same to him.

i asked him about how it feels to learn about how his father died, drunk and crushed by a semi truck on the side of the road, unclaimed in LAPD City coronary until this year. He said it could have been him, he asked if i remember in 2007 when he returned home with the car destroyed. I told him no.

he said he was drunk, that he had to drive back down to freemont and he drank more, that it was raining, and he was drunk and he hydroplaned and rammed into the barrier of the highway. That a semitruck came and smashed his car, that he should be dead, that there were so many instances where he should have been killed. He told me about the amount of dead people he's seen. I've heard that one before, i remember his stories of scooping brains and burring friends and having friends kill themselves. and tonight he told me again.

he told me he wrote me a letter, to explain himself. that it was too long and he decided not to send it. and i told him i wanted to read it. he wanted to know why. i told him i didnt know him either.