David Wallace - Brief Interviews with Hideous Men

Now it gets even weirder, because I finally, the day my father took a half day off, and we went down and rented a van for me to pack and move out with, I, finally, in the van, on the way home from the rental place, brought it up, and asked him about the memory. I asked him about it straight up. It is not like there is a way to gradually lead up to something like that. My father had put the rental of the van on his card, and he was the one driving it home. I remember the radio in the van did not work. In the van, out of (from his perspective) nowhere, I suddenly tell my father I just had recently remembered the day he came down and waggled his dick in my face when I was a little kid, and I sort of briefly described what I had remembered, and asked him, ‘What the fuck was up with that? ’ When he kept merely driving the van, and did not say or do anything to respond, I persisted, and brought the incident up again, and asked him the same question all over again. (I pretended like maybe he did not hear what I said the first time.) And then what my father does — we are in the van, on a brief straight away on the route home to my folks’ house, so I can get ready to move out on my own — he, without moving his hands on the wheel or moving one muscle except for his neck, turns his head to look at me, and gives me this look . It is not a pissed off look, or a confused one like he believes he did not quite hear. And it is not like he says, ‘What the hell is the matter with you,’ or ‘Get the fuck outta here,’ or any of the usual things he says where you can tell he is pissed off. He does not say one thing, however, this look he gives me says it all, like he can not believe he just heard this shit come out of my mouth, like he is in total disbelief, and total disgust, like not only did he never in his life waggle his dick at me for no reason when I was a little kid but just the fact that I could even fucking imagine that he ever waggled his dick at me, and then like, believe it, and then come into his own presence in this rental van and, like, accuse him. Etc., etc. The look he reacted and gave me in the van while he drove, after I brought up the memory and asked him straight up about it — this is what sent me totally over the edge, where my father was concerned. The look he turned and slowly gave me said he was embarrassed for me, and embarrassed for himself for even being related to me. Imagine if you were at a large, fancy, and coat-and-tie dinner or track banquet with your father, and if, like, you all of a sudden got up on the banquet table and bent down and took a shit right there on the table, in front of everybody at the dinner — this would be the look your father would be giving you as you did it (took a shit). Roughly, it was then, in the van, that I felt like I could have killed him. For a second, I felt like I wished the van would open up and swallow me whole, I was so embarrassed. But, just split seconds later, what I felt was I was so totally pissed off I could have killed him. It was weird — the memory in itself did not, at the time, get me pissed off, but only freaked out, like in a shocked daze. But, in the rented van that day, the way my father did not even say anything, but merely drove home to the house in silence, with both hands on the wheel, and that look on his face about me asking about it — now I was totally pissed off. I always thought that thing you hear about seeing ‘red’ if you get mad enough was a figure of speech, but it is real. After I packed up all my shit in the van, I moved away, and did not get in contact with my folks for over a year. Not a word. My apartment, in the same town, was maybe only two miles away, but I did not even tell them my phone number. I pretended they did not exist. I was so disgusted and pissed off. My Mom had no clue why I was not in contact, but I sure was not going to mention a word to her about any of it, and I knew, for fucking-‘A’ sure, my father was not going to say anything to her about it. Everything I saw stayed slightly red for months, after I moved out and broke off contact, or at least a pink tinge. I did not think of the memory of my father waggling his dick at me as a little kid very often, but barely a day went by that I did not remember that look in the van he gave me when I brought it up again. I wanted to kill him. For months, I thought about going home when nobody was there and kicking his ass. My sisters had no clue why I was not in contact with my folks, and said I must have gone crazy, and was breaking my Mom’s heart, and when I called them they gave me shit about breaking off contact without explanation constantly, but I was so pissed off, I knew I was going to go to my grave never saying another fucking word about it. It was not that I was chicken to say anything about it, but I was so fucking over the edge about it, it felt like, if I ever mentioned it again, and got any kind of look from somebody, something terrible would happen. Almost every day, I imagined that, as I went home and was kicking his ass, my father would keep asking me why I was doing it, and what it meant, but I would not say anything, nor would my face have any look or emotion on it as I beat the shit out of him.

Then, as time passed, I, little by little, got over the whole thing. I still knew that the memory of my father waggling his dick at me in the rec room was real, but, little by little, I started to realize, just because I remembered the incident, that did not mean, necessarily, my father did. I started to see that maybe he had forgotten the whole incident. It was possible that the whole incident was so weird and unexplained, that my father, psychologically, blocked it out of his memory, and that when I, out of (from his point of view) nowhere, brought it up to him in the van, he did not remember ever doing something as bizarre and unexplained as coming down and threateningly waggling his dick at a little kid, and thought I had lost my fucking mind, and gave me a look that said he was totally disgusted. It is not like I totally believed my father had no memory of it, but more like I was admitting, little by little, it was possible he blocked it out. Little by little, it seemed like the moral of a memory of any incident that weird is, anything is possible. After the year, I got to this position in my attitude where I figured that, if my father was willing to forget about the whole thing of me bringing up the memory of the incident in the van, and to never bring it up, then I was willing to forget the whole thing. I knew that I, for fucking-‘A’ god damn sure, would never bring any of it up again. When I arrived at this attitude about the whole thing, it was around early July, right before the 4 thOf July, which is also my littlest sister’s birthday, and so, out of (to them) nowhere, I call my folks’ house, and ask if I can come along for my sister’s birthday, and meet them at the special restaurant they traditionally take my sister to on her birthday, because she loves it so much (the restaurant). This restaurant, which is in our town’s down town, is Italian, kind of expensive, and has mostly dark, wooden decor, and has menus in Italian. (Our family is not Italian.) It was ironic that it was at this restaurant, on a birthday, that I would be getting back in contact with my folks, because, when I was a little kid, our family tradition was that this was ‘my’ special restaurant, where I always got to go for my birthday. I somewhere, as a kid, got the idea that it was run by The Mob, in which I had a total fascination, as a little kid, and always bugged my folks until they took me on at least my birthday — until, little by little, as I grew up, I outgrew it, and then, somehow, it passed into being my littlest sister’s special restaurant, like she had inherited it. It has black and red checkered table cloths, and all the waiters look like enforcers for The Mob, and, on the restaurant’s tables, there are always empty wine bottles with candles stuck in the hole, which have melted, and several colors of wax run and harden up all over the sides of the bottle in lines and varied patterns. As a little kid, I remembered having a weird fascination in the wine bottles with all the dried wax running all over them, and of having to be asked, over and over, by my father, not to keep picking the wax off. When I arrived at the restaurant, in a coat and tie, they were all already there, at a table. I remember my Mom looked totally enthusiastic and pleased just to see me, and I could tell she was willing to forget the whole year of me not contacting them, she was just so pleased to feel like a family again.