A regular reader asks me a few personal questions, and since I’m wide awake at 2am and the holidays are at hand to remind me of family stuff, I felt like answering them. Q and A is after the jump.
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A reader asks,
“Moreover, like Hacker Boy, I want to ask the questions others won’t:
[22 Oct 06 “He asks me endless questions about what my life was like when I
was homeless and living on the streets for four years as a teen; no one has
ever asked me about this time.” WTF? Why not?]
Did you ever know your father?
Are either of your parents still alive?
Why do you sound vaguely Canadian?
What gave you hope?”
Why not?
I don’t know why my boyfriends and lovers never ask about this — once my past is out in the open, it becomes this sort of no-go area for the rest of the relationship, and no one has ever dug and queried like Hacker Boy. I could say for certain that in a few cases, it’s been that I’ve dated men who would rather be talking about themselves than anything else. But I also think that my stories are like horror stories for many people, and that the stories — I — make people uncomfortable. It’s too awful, and people just don’t want to know. It’s why I avoid holiday gatherings, especially with families. They always ask where my family is, and I won’t lie, but I can’t seem to sweeten my answers — and if any of the truth comes out, I’m like this thing everyone feels sorry for the rest of the night. Holidays and holiday dinner parties become for me the anniversary of the exalted and the detrimented. I’d rather be alone. But I think that if you really care about someone you ask the hard questions; I seek to be understood in relationships, but that’s rare.
Did you ever know your father?
I grew up calling a whole bunch of different guys “daddy”. Hell’s Angels, drug dealers, and one unbelievably physically and emotionally abusive Latino welder (my mother was actually married to him for a while). I remember coloring at the kitchen table while he punched her and dragged her by the hair across the kitchen, and put a kitchen knife to her throat. She sobbed, and said “god is watching you” which I think made him stop. This was “daddy”. I didn’t find out until I was ten that my real father was alive — she’d told me he died in Vietnam. After I got off the streets I used my status as his daughter to obtain his war records, then tracked him to a midwest state; I went to meet him and he talked to me for fifteen minutes, giving me a whole different (and I think, true) version of what happened between him and my mother, and then he asked me to leave and never come back. That was when I was 23. I was really glad I met him as an adult, so I could just see he was some fucked up guy — and not worth me giving him the emotional value of a father.
Are either of your parents still alive?
I have no idea, and I don’t care. I have a real family now.
Why do you sound vaguely Canadian?
Eh? Must be all the beer.
What gave you hope?
People.
