After I got kicked out of camp, my mom wanted me to learn the ways of Man, so I moved in with my dad.
For the first couple weeks I’d listen to everything he said like there was going to be a quiz. He’d say, “Life’s all about getting two things: a job and laid. Unemployment is pretty damn high right now,” and he’d throw me a condom.
He showed me how to shingle the roof, how to cut and put up drywall, install a switch, change an outlet, change the oil, brakes, spackle, all that stuff. He’d say things like, “Bet your mom never taught you how to do this.”
When we ran out of projects, there wasn’t much to do. Have an extra beer. Watch some more TV, have another drink. Go to the batting cage, and while we’re there, how about a drink with your old man?
Whenever I tutored a girl, he would toss me a beer and her a wine cooler. “Women are just like pistons. Get some lubricant in there, they run real smooth, do everything you ask ‘em to.” If I had a guy over, he’d just plop down and we’d all end up watching Cops or James Bond on his tube TV. It was like I didn’t really move anywhere new; I just went back in time.
I had a friend over once. We were on the couch watching TV. My dad stumbled in and started yelling about having company over without permission. First I’d heard of the rule, but I asked my friend to leave. Once he was gone my dad asked who he was, where was that girl. I said, “I tutor her at the library now.” He asked if I was planning on hitting it. I said I was not. He asked why I was sitting so close to my friend on the couch. Were you planning on hitting that, he said. I said I was not. He asked if I was a goddamn fairy, so I left the room until he sobered up.
My mom used to get a phone call from him once a month, and she’d go into her room with the cordless in the middle of dinner, and half the time she wouldn’t come back out. Half the time, we’d hear her crying in there. She’d stay in her room and ask me and my brother to clean up the table and do the dishes so she could get some sleep.
Twice I’ve woken up in the middle of the night and peaked out into the living room to see him either sitting in the blue glow of his tube, or lying on the couch on his cordless, mumbling some nonsense, and understood I was finally seeing the other side of that phone call.
The second time, I opened my door, took the phone from his hands, and said, “Mom, you don’t need this.” I hung up the phone and called him an asshole.
“An asshole?” he said. “An asshole?” He said it over and over again. “You know, I wasn’t an asshole before. No one ever called me an asshole. No one said, ‘Bob, you are truly an asshole,’ no one. No one bothered me, and I didn’t bother them. And now here I am, an asshole. So, what’s changed? Is it me? Have I changed? Have I become an asshole?”
He got up and threw the phone at the fridge and it smashed to pieces. “Been doing things the same way for fifteen years. And now I bother you. Damn shame, ain’t it? To bother your kid like that, huh? Goddamn shame.”
I grabbed my pack and headed for the door, but before I left, he said one more thing. “You know, a man living alone, no kids, no responsibilities, pretty easy to save up some money.”
I turned to look at him.
“Business doing well, lots of disposable cash. Can make things a lot easier for some people, especially someone who does have responsibilities.”
“Guess you finally realized you don’t really have any kids,” I said.
“Guess so.”
He said he had twenty grand for each of us, me and my brother. But I owed him an apology. I wanted to tell him to fuck off, keep it all. Let him live with his guilt.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“Sorry for?”
“I’m sorry that I called you an asshole.”
“And why would you do something like that?” He paused. “Is it because you’re…”
“Because I’m…”
“Because you’re an…”
“Because I’m an asshole.”
“Right. I mean, what else do you call a kid who freeloads for weeks, has no job, pays no rent, and has the balls to call his own father an asshole? Does that sound like something a real man would do?”
“No.”
“No, what?”
“No, sir,” I said.
“No, sir, is right,” he said. “I knew you couldn’t be as dumb as you looked. Everyone eventually comes to their senses over money like that. I just hope to God your brother has more brains than you do, I can’t imagine he doesn’t. And don’t ask me how or where he got that sense because he sure as shit didn’t learn it from that prideful stuck-up bitch of a mother you have.”
I took a step forward. “She’s not a bitch, and you don’t know shit about Robbie.”
“I know he’s enough of a man to know when to stand up and fight and enough of a man to know when to shut up and listen.” He stepped towards me. “But I wonder about you,” he said. Then he gave me a shove in the chest and I stumbled back. “What about you?” he said. He gave me another shove and I was against the wall.
He stumbled over a can on the floor and chucked it at me. “Well?” he said. “You little queer. Is that all you do, apologize?”
Something happens once you realize you can stand up to someone. For weeks we were like ghosts in the same house, hearing each other’s creaks and moans, doors opening and closing, but always in separate rooms. Eventually I saw that he was avoiding me more than I was avoiding him. I’d step into a room and he would slink out. It became a game. I would intentionally place myself in his way, just to see if he would leave the room or not. If he was working on the car, I’d go to the garage and have a sandwich; if he was in the living room, I’d watch TV just to see if he would get up right away or wait for a commercial break.
I always thought that if I ever confronted him, and I always felt like eventually I would, we’d have this big heated fight like in the movies, and I’d say something and he’d say something worse, and then he’d smack me and then I’d push him—I’d push him so hard that we both realized that finally I was the new alpha around the house, and we’d both have a slow, respectful recognition of the shift of power within the household and go on with life. There would be no repairing the damage he did when he left us, but we would eventually come to respect each other. We would have that at least.
But in that moment, I wasn’t thinking about what would come next. Not the next second, not the next hour, and certainly not the following weeks. I pulled my fist back and he looked down at it. His eyes went wide, like he was excited, waiting for it. I dropped my arm and gave him a big shove in the chest. He fell back, tripped over a six-pack he’d left lying around, and stumbled all the way across the room and through a sheet of plasterboard. I looked down on him, and I felt just as much respect for him as ever before.
My dad can tie a bowline like nobody’s business, can sail anything short of an aircraft carrier, can shoot the eye out of a deer, the ear off a hare, fix your toilet, your roof and your car, but I’d be damned if I let him teach me the ways of Man.
