remembering ugliness
Telling dirty jokes, giving alcoholic drinks. He always did this to me growing up, took me to parties with him, giving me wine coolers, with all the adults telling jokes I didn't understand.... leaving me to conclude that every stupid joke was about sex. I think I gave this idea to the other kids at school too. I remember feeling stunted, being picked on. They would say something stupid, that didn't even make sense, and I would assume it was a dirty joke I didn't get and would get mad...... and they would laugh.
My father called me a prude. He asked me if I had had sex before I'd even kissed anyone... These things were so invasive, humiliating, embarrassing and confusing that I just wanted to hide inside myself and didn't know what to do with the feelings I had. I remember freshman year...holding your hand, breaking up with Peter, who'd I'd gone out with for one whole day (worn a pretty new outfit and everything) BECAUSE HE'D TRIED TO KISS ME. How pathetic and sad is that? But you held my hand through it and understood and sympathized.... what a wonderful sister-friend! I also remember my serious anxiety freshman year, when I landed the lead role of the female private investigator in "That's no Lady, That's a Private Eye" and I had to pull Ms. Leckie aside and ask, terrified, if I would have to Really Kiss J.P. at the end of the play (b/c I'd still never been kissed)....
It saddens and bewilders me now to think of the terror I felt inwardly about all these things and how my father figured into my feelings about my sexuality. I remember my resignation at Ben's inability to involve himself with me and diving into chaos with CJ. After then it was such an ugly stream of stupid guys that I would attach myself, and why?
I remember fights between my dad and your mom, screaming at her, drunk, about how she favored you guys over us.... Even though I look back and think of those years on Foster as some of the highest-potential-happiness times of my life, I was lost... I couldn't understand the swirling of events around me. I clung to drama, to church, to Mrs. Paulus, anything to keep from going home...
And yet, going down this path leads me to remember worse tragedies than my own. Rachel's and Tony's lives were even more chaotic. Idaho. The house in lompoc with those people....the house that burned down... I just can't imagine a life in which I would be attached not to the Taylor/Kriegs but to Billie and her family.
I will say it again.... how did my father come to this? The man who brought us through hell and high water? The slim, attractive, basketball-playing, poetry-reading, guitar-playing, song-writing, opinion-speaking, thinking man that I worshipped in my youth? How.... why....
My father called me a prude. He asked me if I had had sex before I'd even kissed anyone... These things were so invasive, humiliating, embarrassing and confusing that I just wanted to hide inside myself and didn't know what to do with the feelings I had. I remember freshman year...holding your hand, breaking up with Peter, who'd I'd gone out with for one whole day (worn a pretty new outfit and everything) BECAUSE HE'D TRIED TO KISS ME. How pathetic and sad is that? But you held my hand through it and understood and sympathized.... what a wonderful sister-friend! I also remember my serious anxiety freshman year, when I landed the lead role of the female private investigator in "That's no Lady, That's a Private Eye" and I had to pull Ms. Leckie aside and ask, terrified, if I would have to Really Kiss J.P. at the end of the play (b/c I'd still never been kissed)....
It saddens and bewilders me now to think of the terror I felt inwardly about all these things and how my father figured into my feelings about my sexuality. I remember my resignation at Ben's inability to involve himself with me and diving into chaos with CJ. After then it was such an ugly stream of stupid guys that I would attach myself, and why?
I remember fights between my dad and your mom, screaming at her, drunk, about how she favored you guys over us.... Even though I look back and think of those years on Foster as some of the highest-potential-happiness times of my life, I was lost... I couldn't understand the swirling of events around me. I clung to drama, to church, to Mrs. Paulus, anything to keep from going home...
And yet, going down this path leads me to remember worse tragedies than my own. Rachel's and Tony's lives were even more chaotic. Idaho. The house in lompoc with those people....the house that burned down... I just can't imagine a life in which I would be attached not to the Taylor/Kriegs but to Billie and her family.
I will say it again.... how did my father come to this? The man who brought us through hell and high water? The slim, attractive, basketball-playing, poetry-reading, guitar-playing, song-writing, opinion-speaking, thinking man that I worshipped in my youth? How.... why....