Stepdad

I stared blankly at him from across the table and examined his giant orange peel nose, his melanoma-speckled forehead, massive and red - the shore of his baldness which had morphed at some point from athletic-type buzz cut into old man head. Years of golfing weekly with no sunscreen and hair loss can do a number on a good looking man.

As usual, he wore a tie-dye collared sports shirt, one of his shirts -- the ones he'd been dyeing and selling for 20 some years, having started his business in our garage with our own washing machine. Together with his shorts and runners, his whole ensemble perfectly represented both pot-smoking hippie and jock that had molotoved him into one hot conservative Republican mess. He was on his third tequila sunrise (requested in a tumbler lest he be mistaken for a ‘faggot’) and we hadn’t even had our appetizers yet. His green eyes peered through sagged eyelids that appeared to droop down so low they almost folded over themselves and nearly touched his eyeballs while a few still remaining eyelashes pointed almost downward, emphasizing the tired, pigeon feeder Grandpa look about him. His squarish fingers were spread out as he monologued, his thumb naturally in a position of hyperextension.

I suppressed eye-rolling, groaning, or feigning an epileptic fit. We were, after all, in a restaurant for god's sake. I drifted in and out of listening to avoid the worn shoe of confrontation.

"...So anyway, we was the kinda kids that would break anyone's ass that got in our way. I mean it..."

Jesus Christ he’s old, I thought, and at 56 he’s still talking the same shit about growing up in Wisconsin. Maybe he read my mind because he stopped, turned his head ever so slightly, smiled goofily, and sweetly uttered one of the many nicknames he had for me. His cracked tooth that had greeted my giggling face so many times over the last 25 years reminded me of the beautiful man behind the worrisome sun spots, the political diatribes, and the days of old before he was a joy-sucked middle-aged adult whose better days were far behind him and who watched way too damned much Fox News.

".....I dated Margie back then -- she had the biggest tits. But anyway, that's not the point..."

I pretended to be intensely interested in the wine list and buried my head in it, while I breathed in my mother's tangible, thick embarrassment. A familiar parcel of family dinner failure was about to arrive without warning. But she only scoffed and then shoved a vodka tonic into her face.

"...Those fucking people. They don't know how to work. All they know how to do is cash their welfare checks and use their food stamps. And I'm gonna work my ass off and pay for their health insurance? Uh uh..."

Food stamps, I thought, and had a faint recollection of using a food stamp for postage to a letter to Santa Claus. This is the man that rescued my mother from standing in line for blocks of government cheese when I was eight years old. Maybe his politics were more nuanced back then.

"...Fine. I'll shut up. Can I get another tequila sunrise please?"

From my eight year old point of view, he was like a large freckled child – unlike any other adult I had ever met. He was a massive muscular man testifying to the hours he spent boxing, wrestling, running, and in general trying to maintain the youthful body that would eventually escape him. His patience for kid hyperactivity was inexhaustible. He would chase me around the couch until I fell to the floor in utter euphoric exhaustion where I would be doomed to a tickling session until I cried out for my mom gasping for air through my roaring upheavals of laughter. Then, fully clothed, I would get tossed into the pool as I squealed in a mix of terror and delight, but mostly delight. On occasion, he would then pretend to walk casually and step fully clothed into the swimming pool, as if just walking about. La di da, he would hum, for my amusement. He would take out his wallet soaked and ruined and pull out the sopping wet money and pretend to pay for something while I doubled over in pre-adolescent hilarity.

When he wasn’t acting silly for the sole benefit of getting me to snort and snicker and squeal, he was working himself to the bone, reinventing some way to keep the wad of Benjamins he always carried in full supply. He couldn't go back on a rescue attempt. He knew my sisters and I would be needing synchronized swimming lessons and Guess Jeans and trips to Disneyland and trampolines and cars insured for 16 year old garage mishaps.

"...We're losing our house..."

I snapped back from my rescued childhood, replete with everything I had ever wanted and more and stared at the man that now had an IRS freeze on his checking account.

No, no, no, no. You got it all wrong. You are the one with the piles of cash everywhere and the Christmas presents that fill an entire room, see? You're the one that knows about mortgages and investments and the stock exchange and interest rates and how to check the oil in my car and how to file my fucking income tax return, and how to interview for a job at Dairy Queen. You're the one with all the answers who knows how to solve everything. I'm the one that needs a girl scout uniform and flute lessons and braces for my gnarled teeth and someone to pay for my college tuition. I'm the one that needs help paying my rent and that can't afford to get my wisdom teeth pulled. I'm the one that crashed my car and can't afford the $2000 repair job. Remember me? You're the one that went into a trance and punched the fuck out of a punching bag in the garage. But I'm the one that has always needed you punching. You're not defeated. You can't be.

My eyes flashed between his sad eyes and my mother's uneaten plate of pasta and I wrestled myself from the ridiculous grips of self pity and the selfish solitude of realizing that there was no one left to hold my life together if I were to fuck it up. I allowed myself to grasp, however superficially, his disappointment, loss and sense of years wasted - his own personal Waterloo. How much graver and more psychologically destructive is it to, at 56, lose everything you've ever worked for than to, at 33, watch your childhood superhero become merely a man?



I flagged down the waiter and ordered another margarita while I calculated if I had enough money in my checking account to pay for dinner.

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