My dad threw car keys and a burrito at my mom. The keys cut her lip open and he got arrested. My dad threatened to divorce my mom and leave us whenever he had a tantrum. He would always throw me against the doorframe when I tried to stop him from leaving. My dad told me outrageous stories when I was a kid. He still tells me outrageous stories and I still have trouble believing them. I’m still inspired by them though.

I remember when I went off to college. The moment my parents left with tears stained down their puffy red cheeks I turned to my new roommate and shook his hand. Now Brian was unlike anyone I had ever met. He was a short fit young black man, with a flat yet full afro, and dressed as he would put it “like the straightest gay guy you’ll ever meet.” No stereotypical tight pants or long flowing scarves just loose fit jeans and a solid color t-shirt. After our hands parted we sat back in our matching black net back office chairs and craned our heads up to look at the ceiling’s peeling popcorn paint. Eventually I asked him if he would miss his parents? He told me he was a native Georgian so seeing as how we were in Atlanta he could see them anytime he wanted. I asked him if he would want to see them again? He said no. He then asked me the same question. I told him I wouldn’t miss them at all. I told him that I was done with them for a while. I lied to him and told him exactly what Dad would have done in his Columbia days where all he wanted to do was impress sorority girls and prove that he totally wasn’t dependant on his trust fund. I told Brian I came to college to flaunt my trust fund, party, get drunk, get all kinds of pussy, and finally escape.

Sure enough Brian panned up from his skyward viewpoint to see me sporting a shit-eating smirk. He knew I was full of shit and truth be told I knew I was full of shit too. I braced myself for the completely justified ego deflation but it never came. In many ways I wish it had. Brian laughed at me. Said I would be fun to hang out with provided I answered one little question.

“Do you smoke weed?” he asked.

This wasn’t a shocking question. To be honest I had grown up all over the Northeast so I was never a stranger to drugs but in that one moment all I could think about was my dad. I wanted to tell him all about how Dad used to tell tall tales about him and his buddies, Colman, Tony, and Bill toking up Vietnamese death sticks. How they ground up vacuum packed hemp leaves into hookahs and puffed out great clouds of snow-white smoke. It’s funny because Dad always listed his friends in his stories like they were his gang and he was the kingpin of Columbia. The Jewish Jack Kerouac. Hell he bragged that he frequented the same bar the beats bummed at in their off class hours. It’s funny because Dad reveled in his adoptive fame but whenever Coleman, Tony, or Bill called he always told Mom or I to get rid of them. All three of them would call the house, greet me as they would a long lost nephew and ask me to fetch ‘the bum.’ The times I did call for Dad he was either on the phone with one of his real estate clients and I would be yelled at for bothering him. At all other times he would be watching an old black and white classic on AMC, and I would get yelled at for bothering him. It was weird as he was completely cool with them when I wasn’t around to answer the phone. Coleman in particular was his favorite. I would come home from school some days and find him on the phone laughing it up with him. Two idiots from New York yammering about the days when neither of them had kids. That’s what I always thought they were talking about anyway. I never found out for sure as Dad pushed me up to my room the moment I came into the house.

Eventually Brian shook me from my flashback stupor because apparently I was thinking out loud. Brian heard everything but he didn’t seem to care. He said I’d be fun to hang out with for sure. He said the stories about my dad were worthy of at least a few nights on the town.

After that he got up and practically skipped out of the room thinking about how much fun he was going to have in his first college quarter. I stayed in the room wondering if Dad was actually that interesting. I craned my head back up to the ceiling and I think I fell asleep thinking about all the interesting stories Dad told after he was done terrifying me. I somehow found a way to my bed and as I lay there all I could think about was the story Dad told me before I left for Atlanta. He made no secret of the fact that he grew up with a trust fund. He told me stories all the time about places he had camped and all the wondrous things he had done on those camping trips. Diving into Lake Superior completely naked in the fall, participating in a nudist colony retreat, and camping out in a high rise hotel with Bill just to watch two men beat each other senseless. But the one story Dad recited again and again growing up, was the time he had almost been killed and eaten by crazed banditos when he was camping in Mexico.

Dad recited this story again while we were having dinner at a hotel’s terrace. Our last night in Atlanta as a family, in a fancy restaurant, and he breaks off into a glib monologue about he tricked a group of thieves and got away from their larcenous and possibly cannibalistic wrath. He asked me if I remembered the moral of the story? I told him I didn’t but like a smartass I told him that the moral was never camp out in Mexico unless you want to be robbed and your body cannibalized. I then made up my own story about how I had dreamt of my own demise the night prior. I told him I would be cannibalized myself in a Buckhead alley way and that my bones would be turned into Satan’s toothpicks.

“Cannibalism is not the point here,” he told me.

He got out of that situation because he had lied to the bandits and told them he had more money in his car. They led him over to the car with a machete under his chin and before they knew what happened Dad jumped in and bolted down the rocky hillside in his crappy Volvo. He told me he needed to lie and escape because he wanted to get back to Mom because even then he saw her as a mother. He told me that he was smoking more because he wanted to be calmer father now.

We sat at a dinner table that night before my dorm drop off and we talked about all those times he wanted to leave. The times when he would publically shame and smack me when he picked me up from school and I had an “F” in my hand. He would take me home and ask me to stand on trial in the center of our living room and recite my chemistry terms until he was sure I was ready for the next test. He shamed me and pushed me into an armchair every time I got a question wrong. After that he would fight with Mom every other day over bills and Mom needing another loan to cover his “fucking kid’s” medical bills. I remembered sitting up on the stairwell clinging on to the railing until they stopped or he pushed me aside on his rampage. I remembered all of this as I sat at the dinner table and all I could think was, why now? Why now did he decide to be my dad?

He told me the day he stopped traveling was the day he realized how much he wanted a kid. I didn’t know how to take that at first. A man who I doubted was now telling me how much he missed me and how much he wanted me to call him while I was away. Some part of me didn’t and still doesn’t believe him. In many ways I still feel like the silent and confused cabin boy stuck on an eternally swaying ship of a father. Dad had his depression and mood swings. I had my anxiety. His weed cheered him up. Books and videogames cheered me up. He was an antisocial trust baby that never wanted friends. I was an ascetic socialite that desperately wanted friends. He was lost in the sea of himself and I was trying to be the light that brought him home.

That moment in the restaurant he was looking at his grown up lighthouse and trying to keep it from leaving. Maybe he was afraid that I would go out the moment I left him. That would be able to find his way back without me waiting at home. Some part of me wanted to only focus on our differences. Another part of me wanted to stay home. I didn’t want to leave him. I didn’t know who was the lighthouse and who was the ship at that point but I knew I didn’t want to leave.

I suppose I’ll always remember just how much I liked it when he told me his wild stories and I’d see his face light up with mirth. I’ll always remember meeting Coleman, Tony, and Bill when they were drunk and watching boxing. I’ll always remember how they sat me down and told me that every happy tall tale about Dad was true. I’ll always remember grabbing Bill’s glasses off his face and stomping them when he told me all the violent tales were true too. I already knew they were. I remember Bill forgiving me before talking to Dad about the night he was arrested for throwing shit at Mom. He told him to remember why he started a family and why he loved Mom. After that night I remember Dad finally apologized to her. Dad still made his idle threats here and there but he never left after that night at Bill’s. He wasn’t there mentally, at least not all the time but again he needed me to bring him home again.

Dad still calls me. We’re miles apart and he still has my number on his dumb phone’s speed dial. He wants to know how I’m doing and what I’m up to. I call him back and we talk. It is so simple now with us. We still piss each other off to be sure but it isn’t as bad as it used to be. Bill died a long time ago so he can’t call Dad anymore. Coleman is Dad’s Brian so the times he does call it’s just to reminisce about all that pussy they had, the beer they drank, and the shit they smoked. Eventually though Dad will veer off into pity party territory now that he’s losing money, at which point Coleman will affectionately call him a bum and hang up. As his friend he has the luxury to hang-up. To give up on calling him seeing as how he won’t call back. I don’t have that luxury.

I will always bear the scars Dad gave me. My right hand knuckles in particular will bear some door hinge shaped scars. I can still hold a phone though. I can still call him and really why wouldn’t I? He’s changing more and more everyday. I doubt he’ll ever lose that temper but I doubt that I’ll ever lose mine. If nothing else he told some good stories. If nothing else I learned how to tell tall tales of my own. I don’t know if mine are any good but neither does he. He just keeps talking and gets mad when someone shuts him up. Dad and I have our stories, and things always seem to come back to our stories.

© 2014 Jared I. Steinberg. All Rights Reserved.

#nonfiction