Chapter Forty Father and Child

When I was a kid, not only was life simple and my problems insignificant, but the way of dealing with them was a lot less horrific. If I did something wrong, my parents would discipline me, and that would be that. Their styles were usually quite distinct from one another, my mother informing me in a melancholy way of how ‘disappointed’ she was with me, whereas my father would just yell, but they all merged into the same outcome.

I would be sent to my room. Inside I would kick and scream and cry for a few hours, until my throat was raw and my eyes red and itchy from meager tears. I did this successive pattern for years on end, until I began to realize that they had sent me to my room; not a prison. I was surrounded by oodles and oodles of toys at my disposal, and no parents to interfere with. Suddenly, it didn’t seem like such a bad punishment anymore. I would play for a good few hours and then falls asleep, too tired out from crying so hard. It was a simple procedure to follow, and generally worked. I would usually never do the bad activity again because, even though penalty wasn’t as harsh as I had first anticipated, I hated the feeling of being wrong. I still hated that feeling of inadequacy years into my adolescence, and that point was only emphasized even more when I was at Gerard’s. I could never compare to his thought patterns, and therefore almost always felt inferior. (Feeling inadequate and feeling inferior were two very different things, however; inadequate meant I was never worth anything to begin with, whereas inferior meant that I was worth something, just not as much). Gerard never punished me for inferiority either; he just expected me to compete with him. I was always punished for inadequacy with my parents, but I grew hazy with details on when exactly the type of punishment had dissipated.

Sending me to my room this time was not going to cut it. This was something far more serious than just breaking my grandmother’s antique vase, or getting into a fight with Sam on the front lawn. I had criminal charges on my record now, and though I still needed a lawyer to make everything final and perhaps a court date (I was not entirely sure how this whole problem was going to get sorted out, I had zoned out constantly during the talk between the officer and my mom, only perking up when I heard Gerard’s name mentioned). Even if I didn’t know what exactly was going to happen, this was still fucking serious. I knew my parents would follow their normal discipline routines, but it was going to be far more drastic. My mother had already cried; not only was she disappointed in me, but she was saddened by me. The stains left behind on her cheeks from where the salty discharge had tainted her skin reminded me over and over again of what I had done. Or what had been done to me.

In their minds at that moment, I was a victim as well as a perpetrator. I may have done some unlawful things myself, but from the way it had been explained to my mother from the deceitful officer’s dirty mouth, they were not the only laws being broken in this out-of-the-ordinary situation. Furthermore, from the way my mother’s stressed gaze and hurried hands elaborated the subsequent material to my father, I was not to be blamed for these things. I was the victim. I was the injured party, and I had only been acting out against the person who had hurt me. This was all normal. Expected. Typical. Average, even.

This was all a lie.

A lie that hurt me deep inside, but I was powerless to stop it. I heard Gerard’s name constantly tossed around, implications rendering through the tone of voice used. His name had turned into a dirty curse word, something that little children would get their mouths washed out with soap if they dared to utter the obscenity. Gerard was supposed to stay away from little kids, and suddenly, I was that little child. I had broken the vase all over again, but instead of being sent to my room, I was being talked around, or down to. No one was treating me like Frank the person. Everyone was treating me like Frank the rape victim.

I didn’t know how I could lose myself so quickly.

I kept silent. I had to. It was one of the only decisions I was able to make myself, and I was going to keep it, along with my mouth shut; to prevent being caught from my own lies. I wanted to clear Gerard’s name, fuck how I wanted to clear it. But I couldn’t without exposing myself. If I said that all of the acts we had committed were consensual, then I was admitting to a relationship, which was just as bad. I knew, just from the legal jargon that they had spewed out while I was half-listening, and the stuff I had heard from court shows on TV, that even if I had said yes, it was still a form of rape. I was a child, and therefore did not know what I was consenting too. If I said that Gerard wasn’t a rapist, that I had wanted it all along and I had even initiated it, he would still be a rapist in their minds. He should have known better to be involved with a child like me. He should have kept me away. And I should just be sent to my room for another night.

I knew that if I told them that Gerard was my art teacher and nothing more, then someone would find a small hole in my lie and expose it for all the world to see. If they asked me more questions about art and about our teaching relationship, I could spew over details from our sexual life together. Art was sexual after all, and even if that was talking about passion in painting, I knew that the cops would not see it in that light. I was fucked. I knew I was. And that was why I knew I had to keep my mouth shut. I promised myself I would. There were too many people depending on me for this. Gerard, my mother, my father, and more importantly, myself. I had to shut the fuck up.

I was never good at keeping promises. I broke it the moment I stepped inside my house and faced my father.

My father had been sitting in his armchair by our small bay window, watching and waiting for my mother’s car to roll into the driveway. He had not gone to the police station, probably because he was too angry and he knew he could not control himself. He’d much rather be an insane animalistic monster when there were no witnesses around to judge him. In our house, he was at the top of the food chain, my mother a close second. He could act any way he wanted behind our white door, and could get away with it.

He had the newspaper folded in his lap when I came inside, pretending to read and getting out some of his belligerence by crinkling the thin inked paper in his large hands. He jumped to his feet as soon as my mother’s key made the distinct sound in the door, but didn’t say or do anything other than a faint grunt at me, as my mother pulled him aside and whispered in his ear what had gone on. I knew I couldn’t run to my room; that would be the cowards way out. I needed to hang around and face my punishment like a man, even if I was being looked at like a child.

I plodded along slowly into the kitchen and awaited my fate. My feet felt cold against the tile floor in the eating area and it was a nice change from the heat I felt around me constantly. I was in Hell, and the tile walkway to my demise was a nice change of scenery. I even started to enjoy myself waiting in the kitchen, getting a drink from the fridge and not realizing how thirsty I had become. Though I had not eaten in hours, I was far from hungry. I was a bit queasy from the amount of alcohol I had consumed, though I had only been drunk enough to have my speech slur and my thoughts blur. I never threw up (though I felt like it a few times in the interrogation room).

In the kitchen then, I didn’t even taste the wine in my mouth anymore. It had become dry and sticky, and the cool water I splashed at the back of my throat helped a great deal. That was, until my father walked in. I was standing by the sink, my sock feet shifting back and forth as he came in, and walked right over to the counter in front of me. He slammed his fists down, startling me, and wasting no time in the process.

“Can you please explain to me who the hell this Gerard character is?” my father boomed, his deep Italian voice echoing off the kitchen walls and rippling in my glass of water. I clutched the cup tightly, like I had done at Gerard’s only hours earlier.

In all my life, I had never been afraid of my father until that moment in time. The way his suddenly jet-black eyes seemed to bulge out of his head, probing the question even farther into my small body escalated his danger in my mind. My dad was a big man in height, but only medium built in girth, even as he aged. He had a small remnant of a beer belly, but that was it. Everywhere else on him was slender, muscular. He had strong forearms from working as a mechanic for most of his life, and had miraculously retained them even after he was forced to take a desk job. His friends used to always joke that he was lifting photocopies in the backroom to keep those muscles the way he did, and though he laughed, he never denied it. I wouldn’t have been surprised if he did. I could never retain any kind of muscles the way he did, the only one time I could remember getting definition to my body being in grade nine gym class, and that was gone within the first month of summer. I could never figure out how I had come from this man’s genes, considering I was so short for my age, and I questioned our relation even more now.

He was so angry in that very moment he looked as if he would kill something. My heart was in my throat, because I wasn’t sure that if the small counter was in the way, if he would have taken me out instead. Logically, I knew my dad could never hurt me. I had done worse things than this, and he wasn’t even mad at me, per se. It was at this Gerard character.

Character. The word made me cringe. The fact that my dad had called him a character instead of an actual person, only sent more rage flowing through my veins. He was trying to act as if this person didn’t exist. As if he was a fictional entity and therefore could do no harm. He was trying to write off the fact that his son had been spending time with a forty-seven year old man in his apartment who let him drive his car and gave him wine. He was writing off one of the most important fucking people in my life, the one who had taught me everything I needed to know – or at least more than my father had ever taught me. And to top it all off, they were writing off this aspect of Gerard – the teacher, the painter – and replacing it with such vile words and connotations like rapist and pedophile. I couldn’t take it. It was in that moment where I knew I had to break the promise I had made to myself, to everyone.

I started talking. Yelling, actually.

“He’s my art teacher,” I snarled, cocking my head to the side to show my spite. I had never been that ballsy to my father since that day I had asked for a music course. I had lost that battle then, but that was before I had built up confidence. And something to fight for. If I wanted Gerard to fight for everything, I couldn’t be a hypocrite and not do the same thing. I took a drink from my water smoothly, watching my father’s face twist and sneer from the brim.

“Don’t fucking talk to me like that,” he swore. I had been wondering casually exactly how long it would take him to swear in this argument, and I now had my answer. Not even two sentences in and he was swearing and cursing at me. My father would always lecture me for my language, tone or content wise (which was probably why I abused it so much myself), but he was the first to abuse it himself. He didn’t always swear, it was rare that he would say ‘fuck’ under a normal circumstance – just when he was angry. And you could see the progression of his anger the more and more he used that word.

So far, he was progressing nicely.

Usually when my father’s tone and anger progressed, I subsequently regressed. Not this time. I didn’t apologize for my statement like my father was used to. Instead, I placed my glass down on the counter with a clank and gave him a stern hard expression. It wasn’t a challenge per se. I was just letting him know that I was going to hold my ground, that he couldn’t shake me that easily. Probably, in his mind, that was even more lethal than a challenge.

“I asked you who this fucker was,” my father repeated, his deep booming voice progressing with his fury. “Answer me.”

“I did,” I articulated, not being as loud, but just as spiteful as him.

“Since when have I approved you taking art lessons?” He straightened his posture from leaning on the counter to crossing his arms over his chest defiantly.

“Since you didn’t let me take music,” I answered him honestly. I straightened up as well, mimicking his arm crossing. “I needed to do something with my time. I wanted to be creative. I started to paint.”

“You don’t need to be creative.” He shook his head violently, seeming perturbed by the thought. “You need to go to school. You need to see your friends.”

“I do hang out with my friends,” I informed him, my voice becoming soft, in blunted surprised. This was the first time ever he had encouraged me to hang out with Sam and Travis. As far as I knew, he hated the two of them. I had heard him call each of them delinquents and fuckers under his breath on many occasions. I wondered what had changed his mind.

“Friends your own age, Frank,” he said lowly, narrowing his eyes at me.

I had my answer for what had changed his mind, I thought bitterly. I felt my head glance down at my water, still rippling from his words. I didn’t know what else to say, and I heard my father sigh, letting his arms drop down to his sides.

“Frank, why the fuck art? There were so many better things to do with you time.”

“I’m good at art.”

“Did he tell you that?” my dad retorted condescendingly, making the fucking pronoun that represented Gerard’s name into a depraved utterance. “He was only telling you that to get you over to his house.”

“That’s not true,” I argued, shooting him an angered, then a desperate gaze. I may not have been the best painter in the world, but I knew that was not why Gerard wanted me there. “Gerard wants me to be an artist.”

My dad cringed hearing the name, though I wasn’t sure what upset him more.
Myself as an artist or Gerard.

“Don’t say that shit in my house.”

“It’s my house, too.”

“No. You don’t own it. You don’t pay the bills, you don’t have a job, and therefore, you can’t say that shit in my house.” He began to wave his hands in the air, curling his fingers back and exposing the index one in front of me, waving it around like it was a weapon.

“This is why I had to go to Gerard’s place!” I suddenly shot out, unaware of what I had done until it was all over. “I felt suffocated here. I stayed at Gerard’s place because he left me do whatever I wanted.”

“Oh, I bet he did,” he fired right back, curling his upper lip and giving new and unwanted meaning to his statement. “Frank, what that man did to you was fucking disgusting.”

“What? Teach me about art?” I said, raising my hands in the air and acting like I had nothing to hide, when I had everything. “That’s disgusting?”

“Don’t make me say it, Frank,” he warned.

“Say what?”

“You’re walking on thin fucking ice,” he warned again, his head and eyes and voice getting lower by the second, and the rage inside of me getting bigger and more arrogant.

In all the time that Gerard was being accused, nothing was actually overtly said. It was a touchy subject that everyone walked around. They may have asked me if Gerard did anything inappropriate to me, but fuck, those words were too loose. They could have meant anything. Everything had its own interpretation – fuck, Gerard had taught me that. What was their definition of inappropriate? Anything could fall into that category and it didn’t have to be sexual. Having a dove outside of its cage would count as inappropriate in some situations. Having a naked model there, too. And even smoking fucking cigarettes in front of me, too. Everyone was walking around the issue, even the boldest and angriest of all people I had ever come into contact with was. I thought my father was fearless; that was why I had feared him. But he couldn’t even form the word inappropriate, let alone what disgusting act Gerard had done to me. I wanted him to say those words out loud, say the ones that were in people’s mind, and that hurt just as much when they were kept there. Maybe if he said it out loud, he would realize how fucking wrong he was. Or it would just hurt a little bit more.

“I’m walking on thin ice?” I asked him mockingly. “But I don’t understand what you mean, father. I only did art at Gerard’s house.”

Not exactly a lie there, I told myself. We made art when we had sex. It was a beautiful thing, if people just understood.

“Don’t make me say it,” he bellowed. “It hurts me more than it does you.”

“It doesn’t hurt me at all,” I uttered with defiance. “Because you have it all wrong.”

“I do, huh?” he asking gaining the sarcastic edge I had. “Care to explain, great artist?”

“I don’t need to,” I snapped back at him, after pausing for a few seconds. It had been the first time he caught me off guard since I had been determined to fight. I hoped my slight alteration wouldn’t drag me down.

“Right,” he nodded, clucking his tongue as he looked around the kitchen, gathering himself tall again. “Because that just said it all.”

We both froze in the kitchen, his words mingling with my own and finding truth in the matter. I had not admitted a relationship, but now, it was implied. My father had suspicions before and, little did I know, I had now confirmed them. I had screwed up the moment I opened my mouth, but I couldn’t help myself. There were some things that I just couldn’t and wouldn’t stay quiet for. I would have to face the consequences from this. I knew I couldn’t be punished from it, and neither could Gerard. Words could not convict someone alone, even if they were never fully spoken. Allegations never got a person put away, at least in this country. The law had become more sophisticated; they needed evidence now for everything. Evidence that they didn’t have. And I was going to keep it that way.

My father continued to cluck his tongue, heaving in and out extra heavy and sarcastic sighs. I tried to regain my composure, repeating over and over again in my mind that I was safe. Nothing could be proven. Nothing could be taken away.

“Frank, just tell me one thing,” my father suddenly breathed, his voice thick with only a touch of the menace he had started out with. I looked at him, cocking my head and furrowing my brows. I nodded, hearing him sigh before he continued.

“Did he at least use condoms?”

I knew I should have thought about this question before. I really, really should have. In all the time I had spent in deliberation, all the lessons Gerard had taught me about interrogations and how to prepare answers, this whole concept had never crossed my mind. At least, not from other people. Gerard and I had discussed the use of condoms before, but that seemed like a distant memory, flaked away through eroding time.

I could remember the last time we had used a condom. I tried to put it on, and started to go with it, making it only halfway through. We both felt some agitation around the foreign barrier, and when Gerard cast me a knowing gaze, I knew I had to give up. I pulled myself out and whipped the dreaded object off, throwing it across the room. We continued without it, and it was like it always had been, but somehow better. We found it a day later, the dove’s beak pecking at the rubber innocently.

“She could have died,” Gerard shook his head as he picked up the condom, tossing it in the waste basket. There was a smile on his face as he talked, but the austere nature of thoughts bled through. “Birds shouldn’t have anything like that. They get into everything – especially doves. They just can’t leave well enough alone. We have to be more careful about this.”

And we were, at least, for the bird’s safety. We never threw off condoms in the throes of passion because we never used them again. The bird was safe. But were we?

I had always thought we were; I always felt safe with Gerard, and here was no difference. I could let him inside of myself without a barrier because I trusted him. He told me that he was clean – he even tried to show me a medical paper saying so. Even if he had been lying there, I saw his body often enough to notice any markings or rashes that would indicate an STD. There never were any, aside from the hickeys I meticulously placed all over his body. There was no way I was diseased either; I had never been with anyone before. There was no way we could hurt each other, and I let it go. I never thought about it again – until here in the kitchen.

It seemed so weird to have my own father talk about such thing. I had only ever heard him use the term ‘sex’ and actually talk about it, maybe once before; things associated with the act were even less common. He had never really needed to talk about such things before, and I figured he probably thought he never would. Maybe that was the reason he looked so drained and sad, just mentioning the topic. I looked into his eyes for only a moment, before turning away.

I didn’t want to answer his question; I couldn’t answer his question. If I did, that meant I had had sex with the artist and that would only get me into more trouble. This time, it was really in my better option to shut my fucking mouth. I made no promise though, because I had a feeling I would break it again.

My father sighed. “I knew it.”

“Knew what?” I spat at him, lifting my head to meet his gaze. “I didn’t even say anything!”

“You don’t need to. You’re silence says more than I need it too.” He sighed again, rubbing his hands on his face. “Fuck, he better not have given you AIDS.”

“What?” I nearly coughed up my lung.

“AIDS!” my father repeated. He slammed his hands back on the counter, meeting my eyes again. “You know, the sexually transmitted disease that kills you eventually. I’m pretty sure most gays and pedophiles have it, or at least something similar.”

My mouth dropped open, debating what I should argue first. My anger had progressed along with his, and I began to swear. “He is not a pedophile, for fuck’s sake.”

“Then what is he?”

“An artist.”

“Bullshit,” my dad said harshly. I closed my eyes upon impact. “There is no such fucking thing.”

“Yes, there is,” I begged, my eyes still closed. This hurt too much to open them and witness my own degrading. A degradation I had apparently already received. They said they wanted to save me from this man who was hurting me, but now that they were in their pursuit, I felt the most depraved. No one had to touch me for that.

“You just don’t know him.”

“I don’t need to know him,” he spat without skipping a beat. When I was angry, the words never came right, but with my dad they seemed ready and waiting. Maybe that was because he was always vengeful. “I don’t want to know him, and you shouldn’t know him.”

“I wanted to know him, dad,” I started, unsure where this was going. I caught myself using the child-like name for him, calling him dad and maybe trying to drive some sympathy out of the situation. If he was going to treat me like a child, I was going to use the name to let him know that he was still a Goddamn parent. I felt like he was ripping my heart out then; he needed to be reminded that he was my dad, and maybe for once, not a father. My mom had been able to do that, though I had no idea where she had disappeared off to, or even if she was in the room. I started to speak again, seeing his brows twitch with the mention of the name, and I just wanted to spill everything from my lips. He already knew it all, anyway.

“I wanted to know him,” I repeated, taking the safest route I could. “I went to his apartment willingly. Everything I did with him was my own decision. He is not a bad person.”

The words were dropped like porcelain bullets; too delicate to mean harm, but still crashing and bleeding the same way. My dad was silent for the longest time, looking at me, twisting his lip and glancing at the floor. He must have done the same thing for what felt like hours. The bullets ricocheted in the silence that consumed us.

“He brainwashed you, Frank,” he sighed at last, shaking his head. Even if I had finally gotten vocal acknowledgement, I didn’t feel like he was talking to me anymore. “He twisted your words and your thoughts. This wasn’t you thinking; this isn’t your fault. He fucking brainwashed you.”

“No, he didn’t!” I exclaimed, weakly at best. This fight was so long, this night was too long; I was getting tired.

“Yes, he did.”

“No…” I started, then gave up, my head falling down and chin knocking against my rigid chest. This was getting nowhere fast. I had to do something else. My mind swarmed with thoughts and ideas, but I came up with nothing. My dad still stood in front of me, his breathy sighs of realization echoing in my ear.

“He gave you wine,” he said out loud, but I wasn’t sure who he was talking to. Sometimes, when facts are hard, you just have to say them out loud to believe them yourself. My dad was becoming a believer, but in all the wrong ways. He brought his eyes to mine, slow and indignant.

“Wine, not liquor, or anything else. He purposely picked wine. Wine is romantic. Wine is for couples. He fucking thought this was a game. He was trying to seduce you…” His voice trailed off, not wanting to complete the thought. He didn’t have to, I knew what it implied. We had been implying the entire time. There was never a yes or no question with this, and there never would be. But fuck, I had to take a stand somewhere and that set me off.

“So what if he tried to seduce me?” I barked, feeling sick to my stomach at the implications I was trying to argue. “It doesn’t mean I said yes.”

My father just shot me a look, his eyes falling upon me as if I was a four year-old-child, and I had broken a vase. I should have known better. I shouldn’t have let everything come crashing down. I sighed heavily, bunching my fists at the side. I should have known better? Known fucking better to what? I did know better, and so did Gerard. It was my father who was wrong, completely in the dark.

“So what if I fucked him dad?” I barked again, disrupting the silence and shocking myself. I shocked my father as well, his eyes widening out of his knowing glare. His confusion and bewilderment took over, and he was no longer dangerous. He was picking apart the direct answer given birth to out of implications. He couldn’t believe it. This was the closest to a confession, though those words, I knew, would never, ever slip out, no matter how many promises I broke. I would never confess that I had fucked him; I just wanted to shock my dad back into reality. Make him realize that this was wrong.

With his eyes frozen in a stark stare, his lips became immobile. He said nothing, so I made up for the both of us. “If I did, why should that have any merit on who I am? On who he is? What if I fucked any random guy? Would you still care this much? Would you still be as fucking crushed and mad at me?”

He stood there for a moment, opening and closing his mouth. He had never thought of that aspect before, and I fucking ran with it.

“So what if I’m gay,” I added, biting my tongue as Gerard’s arguments entered my head. “If I’m gay, it shouldn’t matter.”

“You’re not gay,” my father’s words argued like Gerard’s had earlier that night, only with less force. It was my turn for my mouth to drop open. I knew my father was only saying that to get me angrier and to convince himself to the matter, but fuck, why were people telling me all of this? Why did people know my own sexuality before I did? How come they could make split second decisions and have them stick, with little or no justification? I hated it.

“Stop fucking telling me what I am,” I commanded through gritted teeth. I brought my head up high and defiant, looking my dad in the eyes. He had called me enough things that day, destroying my terms for art and creativity right alongside it. “Stop telling me and just let me decide for myself.”

“Fine,” he uttered after I thought the silence had been loud enough to deafen me. His response took me by surprise, the airy realization sighs returning to his voice as he said it. I cocked my head at him, knowing that this had been too easy. He was not giving up just yet, and as much as I hated it, I was right. He went on, crushing me with each step he took.

“I won’t say a damn thing anymore. You can decide now. I’m done parenting you. You’re almost an adult anyway. You decide for yourself now. I was only trying to help you, Frank. But clearly, you don’t want it.” He folded his arms across his chest and shifted his weight but didn’t move.

“I don’t need anyone’s help,” I declared, clenching my fist and everything else I could through my bitter resentment. If he wasn’t going to be my parents, I thought bitterly in my head, then I was going to show him who I cared about more. “I just need Gerard.”

“Don’t say that man’s fucking name in my house again,” he uttered lowly. He pressed himself against the counter, his enraged face displaying directly in front of my own. He was trying to intimidate me, and, fuck, it was working, but I didn’t want to let him win. I couldn’t let him win. He had already denounced me so much that night, that I had to at least stand up for something more. The vein on his forehead throbbed, his thick brown hair pulled back tight against his head, making his face look like leather. His eyes became much more than bulging and pulsating; they felt as if they were about to jump out and hit me in the face.

I leaned in closer, challenging him with my body before I said any words. He tipped his chin at my movement, breathing out harshly.

“You hear me? His name doesn’t belong here.”

“Gerard,” I said back defiantly. I leaned over the table more, wondering if my eyes were as bulged as his were, and if they could scorn. His nostrils flared at the act even I couldn’t believe I had done. I leaned over closer, doing it again. “Gerard.”

“Fucking thin ice, mister,” he proclaimed, his booming voice hurting my ears.

“Gerard,” I repeated again, feeling the tightening in my chest loosen just enough for me to let out a breathy yell, with the man I was trying to defend name’s attached to it. “Gerard, Gerard, Gerard!”

I slammed my fists on the counter, feeling the fucking anger writhe within me. I kept repeating his name over and over again, my eyes closed and fists balled. I had no idea how long I stood there hunched over the counter yelling at my father’s face. It was like I was lost in my chant, lost in his name, my eyes closed and my breath oozing out of me. I was beating something, I was winning, but I could only be on top for so long before I came to a startling halt.

The next thing I knew, I felt a hot searing pain across my cheek. I opened my eyes slowly, my jaw feeling off kilter and looked at my father square in the eyes. His hand was poised up high, fist balled near his own face which seemed to twitch in rage. It took me awhile to string together what had happened, but when I did I nearly folded in on myself.

My father had hit me.

It was only once, but he was poised and ready to do it again. It had only been a slap, my pain occurring more for the pride factor than anything else. But I could still feel the sting from where his fingers had collided hard against my flushed cheek. I felt the blood vessels bursting underneath the skin and the area grow warm.

Fuck, fuck, fuck, was all I thought until the horrific memories came back to me. In that instant of time, the fragment of a second where the kitchen was quiet and not even our own breathing could be heard, I remembered something very distinct. It was a flashback almost; I had completely removed myself form the kitchen.

I was back in Gerard’s apartment weeks ago, sitting on his bed with him as he told me his life story. He was telling me the story of Simon, his first boyfriend and how he knew his father didn’t appreciate gay people. He had beat him that night, with his belt so bad it left scars still visible decades later, and so bad his younger brother had needed to take care of him. Gerard’s father had beaten him because he was gay, and fuck, my father had just done the same thing. I was not as worse off as Gerard, but I could feel the sting, both emotion and physical, from abuse that didn’t need to be there. Abuse that shouldn’t have been there, and abuse that I didn’t know would have an end.

“Fucking hell!” I uttered, placing my hand over my hot cheek and back away from my father across the counter. I shot out a hard breathed, feeling spittle fly from my lips and across the tile floor. I was mad, so fucking mad I didn’t know what to do. I just stomped my feet and shot my father death glares, which he only returned. He seemed a lot less hostile from before, his fist raised as a solid threat he could use to control me. I didn’t want to be controlled, but I didn’t know how I could fight back without stooping to his level. I couldn’t. If I hit him, he would only hit harder back and another mess would be started. So, I just kept swearing and swearing, not even at him anymore.

“Gerard,” I mumbled in between some of my swears, to see if my dad was even paying attention to me anymore. He was paying too much, and though my startling use of the word ‘fuck’ didn’t rouse him, this sure as hell did. He stiffened his posture and was about to cut in and say something else, his face red and next to exploding from the anger he was feeling, when another voice, a small and tired intonation we had forgotten was in the room began speaking.

“Maybe you should just let Frank go to bed now,” my mother spoke up, taking us all by surprise.

She had been standing in the doorway behind my father, so she had been invisible to both of us. Really, that wasn’t much of a change from her everyday existence, or non-existence. Even as I took notice of her, she was still invisible, the way she gripped the top of her shirt worriedly and the way her voice barely carried to our ears. She was attempting to come out of the shadows, illuminating bit by bit, to try and save her only son. She must have realized to escape her wraith like existence, she needed to speak, no matter how small the words. She couldn’t lash out at my father; it was too extreme, too solid. Too alive. She needed to be passive, but start speaking with that passivity. She wasn’t trying to make things better in that moment, she was just trying to make them stop. Maybe in time, as she gained resilience, she could make them better. Anything was possible; ghosts were living and my own father had hit me.

A sudden thought came to my head, and I focused my attention on her small frame in the door. My anger melted away in my veins and was replaced with a huge washing sense of remorse. If my father had been mad enough to hit me, I wondered if he had ever done the same to her. I had always thought my father wasn’t a violent person, or one to be feared; he may have threatened actions and exuded intimidation from his rough exterior, but I would have never in a million years thought he would have hit me. There was a small part of me that wanted to believe that he didn’t even mean to per se, that he had just lost control for that moment in time and would not do it again. Once it had happened though, he was taking a hold of his actions and using them to his advantage. He was like that; never wanting to admit he was wrong, even if he himself knew he was. He’d find some justification for his action. I still wondered if it would ever happen again, or which of us, my mother or me, would not be at the other end of the hand.

As I watched her in the doorway, I was fucking grateful and so sorry at the same time for all the shit I had put her through. She didn’t want to hear my lies, but that still didn’t mean she had to hear the truth, no matter the mangled form it came out in. She didn’t need to see her son beaten, and she didn’t need to see her partner denounce their own child. She was still a parent, and a fucking good one at that.

I tried to mumble a ‘thank you’ to her from across the room, but she didn’t see me. My gesture was suffocated in the hate around us all.

“Fine. Good,” my father declared, lowering his hand and cooling off. His hit had served its purpose; I had shut up. There was no use for it, especially now that his wife was getting involved. He turned slightly so his body was sideways in between my mother and me. His gut rolled across the top of his pants and the top of his chest went up and down rapidly.

“He can go to bed now,” my dad started, talking to my mother but pointing at me like I as some object. “But tomorrow morning he is going to the hospital. Make sure he gets a whole damn physical. I want to know if that fucker gave him AIDS, and I want to know what else he did to him. I want proof of this so I can get something done. I’m sure the doctors are familiar with this type of shit. They can figure it out, because I’m done for the night.”

He paused, dropping his hand down like a dead weight at his side. He looked at me up and down with a sick expression on his face. My blood stopped pumping then, away from the tingly on my face.

What did he mean proof? Proof that I had had sex with Gerard? Could they prove that kind of thing? My thoughts began to run wild in my head. I tried to wrap myself around the concept that I could also have an STD, if not AIDS. Gerard had tried to show me that medical document, but I had barely looked at it, thinking I didn’t need to. For all I knew, that could have been from another year where he was clean. Just because he was clean then, didn’t mean he was clean now. Didn’t some STDS and AIDS lay dormant in the system for awhile after transferal? Oh, God. I thought. Gerard could have AIDS and not even know it, and now I probably did too. I occurred to me that he had grown up around the eighties, been sexually active then, and that was when the height of the AIDS epidemic had hit. It was possible for him to have AIDS, even if he wasn’t a pedophile or had numerous partners. He had been with enough people, and it only took one. Medical jargon and random history facts I had learned in grade nine was slapping me in the face, just like my father’s hand. Suddenly, that sting didn’t seem so bad anymore.

I began to see sex in terms like my father did, not as a union bringing people together, but as a scary monster that could kill me. Not using condoms was an act of stupidity on my part, not of hopeless romanticism of being closer to some one. Though my mind had fluttered briefly on STDS after that first night together, I had never, ever thought of AIDS. Sex was dangerous, especially anal sex, but it was lost in the back of my mind, a collection of funny names and burning symptoms. I had been a virgin learning everything, so they never needed to apply. It only took one time to change that, though, and I had had more than just one time. In a month, I had lost both of my virginities.

And then I remembered Jasmine. This wasn’t all about Gerard. He may have infected me, but I didn’t just sleep with him. I slept with Jasmine too. We had used a condom, but that didn’t seem to matter anymore. I had had sex with another person, and she had accumulated prior partners too. She could have been infected. I could have been infected. Gerard could have been infected. I was brewing my own epidemic inside my fucking head. I felt like I was already dying.

Starkly, in the middle of the kitchen, I looked down at my body. I wanted to crawl out of my skin, claw it all off until there was nothing there but bone. And disease. I could be sick and not even know it. I risked my life for sex, I risked my life for Gerard, and now, I was debating if it was even worth it.

I was pretty sure that hurt more than any type of supposed bug living inside of me.

“You’ll take him,” my father’s voice boomed into my ears again, forcing me to pay attention. He was talking to my mother, but sizing me up and down with his hateful vision.

Could he see the bugs crawling underneath my flesh, too?

“I don’t want to hear another word about this until morning. And after the hospital, this Gerard character will never exist in my house again.”

His use of the word character struck a chord in me, and made my skin hang looser on the bones. My father was trying to tell me what I was, but he was also trying to tell me who Gerard was. He was fictionalized into this character – one who was a rapist and a pedophile. And now, one that had AIDS and was out to hurt me. I knew deep down inside me that those couldn’t be true. He may have had AIDS, but he was not trying to use it as a weapon of harm. The more I heard character over and over again, and those harsh words spill from my father’s lips…I just didn’t know what to believe. My view on sex had changed dramatically, and I wanted to hate myself for even having it, or at least, having it so stupidly.

But I didn’t hate myself. I couldn’t hate myself. Gerard had taught me not to do those things. Never regret, even if it left me cold, broken, and alone. I wasn’t supposed to regret this, no matter what happened. It was just the price of living.

I struggled to remember the first night I had been with Gerard. He had been so kind and tender. He wouldn’t hurt me. He asked me every step of the way if this was what I wanted, and the next morning he did it again. He wouldn’t have done this to me. He would have never done the things everyone was telling me he was.

I knew Gerard, not them. He was real to me; not fictionalized. I needed to tell them how this story ended.

“Fuck you,” I said quietly against the thick tension in the kitchen. I lifted my head up from looking at the tile floor, and met eyes with my father. His eyebrows raised high, surprised at my words and actions. He may not have wanted to be my parent anymore, but he still wanted respect; respect that I was tired of giving. “Just fuck you, dad.”

With a sigh, I turned away from him and left the kitchen, my heart and head heavy, but still attached to my body. I didn’t want to see how he reacted, and I wanted to get in the last word. I vanished after that, touching my cheek tenderly, and realizing that it had not been his physical act of violence that had finally gotten me to pay attention to everything, but him calling Gerard a mere character in my life. It was true; words did hurt more than physical pain and I had a whole collection of wounds to tend, but not in the public atmosphere of the kitchen. My father was not going to change me, but I had to realize I could never change him, at least not then. I also had to realize that I didn’t always have to be in silence; I could say very few words with just as strong of an impact.

I trudged up the stairs not caring if he wanted to stop me or not. I didn’t feel his presence move from the kitchen; I only heard my mother’s distant cries, seeming in another country or language that I couldn’t understand she was so far away from me. I felt bad for her, being the mediator between the two of us (a hard task for a ghost), trying to save two people who were determined to continue on their paths in life. One of us was willing to prevail over challenges, and the other was ready to crash a burn. I couldn’t tell which was which anymore. I wondered who would clean the mess up in all of this, and who would be there for her.

My worries were still with me, even as I shut the door to my room, slamming it so hard the thought the paneling around would chip and fall off. I paced around the carpeted interior for awhile, my hands running through my hair and tugging on the skin around my face, just for something to do. I no longer felt completely diseased, but there would be those brief moments I would remember what was going on and shudder profusely. The urge from before to just get the fuck out of here and leave, to run away and never come back, had returned, but it was masked by the suffocation all around me. I hadn’t felt so restricted in so long. I couldn’t just leave; my parents were downstairs blocking all exists. Though my mother was just a ghost, I couldn’t pass through her without colliding with the brick wall that was my father. They had my life planned out for me now. I was going to the doctors tomorrow, and from there, I had no idea what my fate was. I couldn’t go to Gerard’s, even if he hadn’t been implicated, because I didn’t know how we stood anymore. Would we still be together, especially if the cops caught on to him? The thing he had been preparing me for all this time had finally happened; society had us. But I had failed on my part. I didn’t know what to do. I wasn’t ready, I was still learning and I had no teacher to ask questions to anymore. Asking questions was only going to bury me deeper in this hole.

I looked around my room frantically. I took note of the mirror on my opened closet door and caught my reflection. My skin was red and raw from scratching at it. I needed to do something with my hands. I saw the guitar, sick and old again in the back of the closet from lack of use, and grabbed it by the neck, inflicting the same straggled feeling that was consuming my whole body. I hadn’t played in so long it seemed, and though you are never supposed to forget out to play an instrument, the knowledge had fallen from my head. It was like the ability to speak and walk and ride a bike. But I couldn’t do any of those things anymore. I was a complete baby again and had no way of learning once my teacher was gone. I tried to play the guitar, I really did. I clamped my hands down on the infernal object and forced my fingers over the chords again and again. It only sounded like nails to the chalk board and did nothing to ease my tension. I was supposed to be playing guitar to help me, to create a better mood for myself, but that wasn’t happening. It only made me madder, the fact that I could no longer do what I had been practicing so long for, and the way my brain and hands were deceiving me. I wanted to play; I needed to play. But right then, the fucking object was causing more harm than good.

“Fuck you!” I swore at the inanimate object, flinging it down from my lap to the floor. It made a clanking noise, the hollowed base of it reflecting a few notes that the action had hit. And it angered me even more, because dropping it down like it was nothing had made better music than I had in the five minutes I tried to play it. Heaving an aggravated sigh, I took the thing by its neck again, unsure of what I was going to do as I barreled outside my room. I walked into the hallway, still dark and only lit by the small incidence of the kitchen below. I could hear my parents arguing still, or at least I thought I did. I didn’t care. My main spotlight at that time, though I didn’t realize it until the action had occurred, was the floor and my guitar. I raised it high above my head, swearing and cursing all the way down as I connected the two hardwood objects to each other.

I watched in awe as the hollowed base folded in on itself, smashing into large chunks, some still threaded together by the strings of the instrument. Those bits hung like loose teeth from a child’s mouth, just begging to be broken away, if it would only end its pain. The shiny surface was now dulled by cracks and split way to reveal a drab inside. After the first smash, I gasped, realizing what the fuck I was doing. I was destroying my creative outlet. I was destroying the fake reason I had come to see Gerard, and more importantly, I was destroying something that used to belong to my father.

He played guitar, he loved guitar, but passed it down to me in a vain attempt to watch his dream come to light. This was never my dream. This was never my heart and soul, though I tried to win over so many people with the ability. It was and never had been me – even Vivian had said so. This was my father, and I was smashing him into little pieces all over the ground.

I smiled for what felt like the first time in years. I raised the carcass of the instrument above my head and began to smash it into more and more pieces. The chunks hanging on by threads broke effortlessly, and drew out a high pitched twang as they fell away. It was almost like they were screaming, crying for help, to which I was deaf to. I kept smashing, feeling the wooden splits ricochet back and hit my hands, still gripping the neck so tight, it was etched into my skin. I felt like I was on stage at a rock show, being high and indignant with an arrogant grace smashing something that was so valuable. Smashing something that had so much importance. Smashing something that I used to love.

You destroy the things you love.

Even if I hated my father right then, I hated him so much because I still loved him despite the hurtful things he was saying. He was my father; I was born to love him, he was apart of me and he was in my blood. I lost the respect I had for him when he hit me, but I still loved him. I thought he was supposed to love me too, but sure as hell didn’t seem that way. He didn’t want to be my father anymore. He didn’t want to deal with me anymore. That hurt – it stung as much as his hit. I needed to destroy him so I could focus on something else. This was the only way I knew how.

I was no longer breaking this object in anger. I was breaking to form symbolism, like I had that day with Gerard and the cans of beer. I had made modern art then, dousing the floor in beer, and ridding myself of my childhood. I was smashing this fucking guitar then to get rid of my parents. My father, who had dictated that whole childhood, and was still doing it then. He was treating me like a child, when I no longer was one. I needed to smash him, break him, to get him out of my life, and since I couldn’t do that right away, I was going to take it out on the guitar.

I kept smashing and smashing until I was just beating down the neck of the guitar to the floor, my strained yelps replacing the twang of the long dead notes. I was breathing heavily, endorphins pumping through me and making me feel so fucking alive. I even felt happy for a split second in the despair and desolation all around me, until I lifted my head.

My father was at the bottom of the staircase. I shouldn’t have been surprised to see him, but it made me jump. He was merely looking up at the spectacle I had created for myself. He could see me still standing there, the neck of the instrument in my hands, done with destruction. His eyes were wide and bulged out, but it was something different than anger this time. I thought he was going to come barreling up those stairs to yell at me once more, tell me that I was a no good kid, but he stayed at the bottom of the stairs, stationary in the same spot, as if he was unable to move. He just kept looking at me with those eyes. It was hard to tell in the distance, darkness, and destruction, but he almost looked sad. My father never looked sad. It was an impossible feat for him. He stayed his angry self, or his non-committal caring-self. Those were the two extremes, two poles, he was staying at. There was never a point in my life where I had seen him sad or cry; my mother had always taken care of that for him. She spilt tears like a river some days, if even to make up for his lack. And though she had cried today, and would probably keep crying about this until it was another distant memory, my father’s supposed sadness in that moment was about something different. My mother was crying because of the situation I was in. Her tears were selfless, weeping for my pain.

This was not about my pain, for the first time that night. In witnessing the act I had committed, the smashing of his very own guitar, my father was able to get the symbolism. He had rejected being a parent, but in that brief moment where he saw his own legacy smashed before him, he realized that I had rejected being a child. I had smashed his dream, I had smashed his importance, I had smashed him.

“Sorry, Anthony,” I said, clear and concise from the top of the stairs. I didn’t feel guilt. I didn’t feel remorse. I didn’t feel much of anything, really.

I looked down at my mess, and back down at him, hardly telling the two apart. My father didn’t move, didn’t talk, and I didn’t think he breathed. I dropped the neck of the instrument, letting it slide slowly out of my fingertips, cascading to the ground with a thud against the rest of Anthony’s swollen dreams. He wasn’t my dad or my father or anything anymore. He was not a parent, and did not deserve that title. He was Anthony now. Simple name for another forty-seven year old staring a pile of broken dreams, and a seventeen-year-old responsible for the mess.

I was sorry I had made the mess, but I was not sorry for Anthony in the least.

As I turned to go back to my room, I could have sworn I saw a tear glide down his face. I scraped the image from my mind, and shut the door behind me. I focused on other things. I stared at a wall, ceiling, every surface in my room. I heard no noise from the outside, except, what I chose to believe and not believe as soft sobbing. It must have been the darkness, I told myself hours later when I couldn’t get the image of a single tear out of my mind. It must have been the darkness. It must have been the darkness; my repetition was in sync with the sobs and muffles of broken wood outside my door.

I repeated something new. My father never cried. It must have been the darkness. My father never cried. And I was right; my father didn’t cry.

But Anthony did.

Date: 2015-12-17; view: 534