Justin Halpern: Sh*t My Dad Says

For the first time in my life, I was homesick. “How’s it going up there?” my dad asked me over the phone when I called home after about a month to say hello.

“Oh, you know. Pretty good,” I said, not wanting him to see what a sad sack I felt like.

“Bullshit, you’re lying. I can tell by your voice.”

“It’s not going so great, Dad.”

I told him everything that had been going on, just poured out all of the emotions that had been building up.

“From now on, when I ask you how you’re doing, I appreciate you being open, but don’t tell me stories about you jerking off to your gay neighbors,” he said, laughing. “Listen, you’ve only been up there a month. This shit takes time. Steven Spielberg didn’t become Steven Spielberg in a month. He was probably just some asshole who’s a lot fucking uglier than you, I might add.”

He talked to me for a few more minutes about the Padres and the Chargers, how my brothers and my mom were doing, and afterward I felt a lot better. So I plugged away, and a couple months later I got a job waiting tables at a place called Crocodile Cafe in Old Town Pasadena. It was basically a lower-key T.G.I. Friday’s. Landing the job was a minor victory, but my dad thought otherwise.

“Bullshit, you done good. It’s hard to get a waiter job in L.A. All these fucking actors, they got all the jobs. Your mom and I are proud of you. We’re gonna come up and take you out to celebrate,” he said.

“That’s really not necessary, Dad.”

“Bullshit.” (My dad loves the word bullshit and delivers it with many different inflections. This particular time, his delivery said to me, “This is not something you can argue against.”)

My parents wanted me to feel good about myself, and they knew that I wasn’t going to have a shot at being successful unless I did. I wasn’t Charles Bukowski; my misery was not going to translate to literary genius and royalty checks. My dad ended the phone call with one emphatic sentence.

“I’m taking you to Lawry’s Prime Beef!”

Lawry’s is mostly known for its seasoned salt, which you can purchase in almost any large grocery store, but they also have a famous steak house, Lawry’s The Prime Rib Restaurant, in Los Angeles, which my dad loves. Shortly after our phone call, he had my mom (who had broken him down and gotten Internet on her computer in the house) create an e-mail address for him just so he could send me an e-mail with a link to the Lawry’s Web site. The subject heading was “Lawry’s” and the body simply said, “This is fucking prime beef!” with the link to their menu.

The next Friday, my parents picked me up in my brother’s Chevy Blazer, which he had left with them since venturing to Hawaii to start his scuba diving career.

“Who’s ready for some fucking prime beef?!” Dad said as I stepped into the car.

Then he proceeded to ask me questions about my writing, life in Los Angeles, and pretty much anything else he could think of on the twenty-minute drive to the intersection of La Cienega and Wilshire boulevards, where the restaurant sat. I had invited Patrick, who met us in the restaurant’s lobby. The four of us sat down at a table and as soon as we had our drinks, my dad called for a toast to me and Patrick.

“To you guys. For sticking your asses out on the line and going after it. And to Justin for getting a new job.”

I never would have thought a person could so energetically toast a job that paid minimum wage, but my dad’s pride was completely genuine.

The waitress who was covering our table was blond with big blue eyes. Even in the unflattering Lawry’s waitress uniform, she looked very attractive. As usual, my dad went into full flirting mode. He started asking her every conceivable question about Lawry’s history, the prime beef, the seasoned salts, and then moved on to questions about her personal life—where she lived (Hollywood), what she did (actress)—and so on. When my mother made the mistake of trying to order the only seafood dish on the menu, my dad used the opportunity to crack a joke.

“Aw, Joni, you’re killing me. KILLING me. This is Lawry’s. This is prime beef. You can’t come here and order seafood,” he said, a little too enthusiastically, to my mom. “Am I right, or am I right?” he added, gazing up at our waitress.

Though my dad likes to say he’s not a flirt, his way with women is a big family joke. Whenever we call him on it, he replies with, “Oh please, I’m a married man. I’d never cheat on your mother, and she’d cut my nuts off anyway if I did, so there’d be no point in cheating. She’s Italian, she’d do it.”

In addition to loving women, my dad has always had a great affection for waiters and waitresses. He thinks they’re hard workers who often get treated poorly by customers, so any time he eats out, he tips 30–40 percent, no matter what. I glanced at the bill and noticed it was around $220, which was definitely the most expensive dinner he had ever taken me to. We almost never went out to fancy meals, so I could tell this meant a lot to him. As I stared at the bill, I saw him jot down $80 for the tip.

Now, having worked in the restaurant industry for eight years—as a waiter for five of them—I can tell you that we operate the same way a stripper does: Give us money, and we’ll pretend we like you. After our waitress saw the tip, she sashayed back to the table and began chatting us up even more. When my dad found out she was single, he pointed at me and said, “That one is single, too. He lives up here now. You two should get together.” (Because if there’s any indication that two people should begin having sexual intercourse, it’s that they live in the same city.)

Ten minutes later, we finally got up from the table. My dad thanked each and every employee he saw on the way out as if he were walking offstage after winning an Oscar. Then he grabbed a toothpick from the dispenser at the hostess desk, popped it in his mouth, and strolled out the door. My parents and I bid farewell to Patrick, and when the valet brought our car around, my dad jumped in the driver’s seat, my mom in the passenger’s, and me in the back. After a few moments of silence, he looked at me in the rearview mirror and said, “That waitress, she was sweet on you. She was chatting you up for ten minutes.”

“No, you gave her a huge tip, so she was being nice. You asked her to describe in-depth the beef preparation, and that took eight of those ten minutes,” I replied.

“You don’t know shit. I know when a woman is sweet on someone, and that girl was sweet on you.”

Our argument escalated, with him insisting she liked me and me refusing to believe that, until finally it ended with my dad yelling, “Fine, she thought you were a jackass! You’re right, I’m wrong!”

Silence filled the car for about fifteen seconds, until my mom turned around, looked me in the eye, smiled, and said, “I think you’re handsome!”

“So there you go. Your mother thinks you’re handsome. This should be an exciting day for you,” my dad barked.

We rode the rest of the way home mostly in silence. A few times my dad pointed out landmarks he recognized from when he had lived in Los Angeles in the late sixties. We arrived at my apartment, and he parked the car on the street in front.

“You can just drop me off. You don’t have to park,” I said.

“Bullshit,” he replied, jerking the emergency brake into place.

Both my parents got out of the car, and my mom gave me a big hug and told me how much she loved me and how proud of me she was. Then my dad grabbed me and enveloped me in his standard bear hug, which consisted of squeezing the life out of me while simultaneously patting my back with his right hand.