Wanting The Oppressor or He Who Looks like Him
Some people think he's the same person, but I know better. My father contracted an exotic, mystic disease many years ago. Maybe it was from Europe, maybe the Amazon. This disease slowly ate him in a literal sense. He very slowly vanished from being whole and hard and present, to transparent, then wholly a ghost. Once, a year or so ago, I thought I saw him by the picture frames in the hall. He was washed out and frail as rice paper. But when I neared the ghost faded. Back then I missed him terribly; it felt like picks gouged under my ribs, all bloody and sore. I returned to that spot everyday.
So that man who picked me up from work yesterday wasn't my father. He's a trickster. He's a man who realized he very closely resembles him, and he's come to take his life. That's why I won't say hello. Why I won't hold his hand.
He doesn't fool me. I see the differences.
That man came from a swamp. He's some ten years older. His voice is frail and trembling. Face tragic. Hair long, unkempt. Lives out of his van. He doesn't think anything he does is wrong--and I despise him for it. I hate him more because he wants my mum, yeah barging in, recounting past feelings toward my real father, seducing her clumsily with false words. He's got the skill and mind of a teenager. He has nothing to offer her, but promises the world. He admits he stays with other women when the van's too cold. Like a stray, like an incubus. He says it's her fault he was away. He wants us all to love him but give no love in return. And mum's so sad she believes him. She's like an abused pet in so many ways; she won't leave the oppressor or he who looks like him.
So when he asks why I don't respect him like a father, I reply. I say, because you're not.
