I am not your Father
“Daddy” he calls to me. I don’t like it. He plays like an imbecile, turning on his head over and over in the earth like a deranged monkey, a monkey that has been ignored by the tribe, the runt. The other kids are running, flying, they are connected, they run to various adults from all the different families, smiling, taking flight. My wife has her sunglasses on and reads like we used to, come to the park and read. Boring she said it was, repetitive, she cursed, as we sat and saw the dull others. Now we sit to see them all smiling, packed lunches, toys, mats, balls, things, communal things. The kids come and go at their pit of comedic luxury and our son buries his head in the dirt. I pitch an extinguished cigarette butt at him but he doesn’t move. I guess it was a foolish seagull antagony. He does look up, and around, then pushes his forehead into the grass, picks his hind legs up and forces his forehead through the grass. I avert my gaze. Soon he comes back to us, waddling arms outreached, a joyous look on his face, like a triumphant soldier returning home. I deflect him onto my wife who, unnerved, sets down her book face open and allows the child to roam and roll over her. I haven’t rolled on her naked for many weeks, as free and as blatant as that, yet she holds him on her chest, falls to one side only to bear him up again. The boy’s face exuberant, dumb, willingly happy and true. I can only look at the grass and see that it is grass, that it has blades and makes up a small patch of land and looking up there are families and a young girl in a bikini sun baking and I just look at her legs and ass and back and shoulders. The fold of her ass just above the leg, the cease of her cheek, the softness of her skin, her torso, her only clothes – a thin strapped bikini and the earphones – as she lays upon a towel. The boy is up again and on me, trying to kiss me but he is unable to do it, I am turning over and he is on top of me. I push him off and my wife says my name like I am supposed to do something. I pick the child up and brush the grass off him, try to get some dirt of his face. He is pulling against me as I hold his wrist, doesn’t want me to brush him off. I let him go and he ploughs his head into the grass and all I see is his ass and legs pushing and thrashing against the earth. The other kids are playing together, smiling faces, balls are going between them in some type of organised game that the boys care about more than the girls but the ring leader, a slightly older boy who perhaps is used to taking on this role week by week (as the parents in this upper middle class area seem to love, that is, the gathering, the communal annunciation of feats and the resultant reflection these successes have upon their children vis-à-vis schooling, extracurricular extravagances and the like). Watching the three smaller children run eagerly after the ball or end up trying to build a tower out of the quasi-goal posts for me espouses an intelligence that the worst parts of me wishes my head buried son could achieve. A way to affect the environment, change the world, be an influencer. Of course I admire my own sons naturalistic tendencies, in as much as I can only remember that my own childhood was bereft of such freedoms, it’s really only in my imagination that I have ever made a clichéd mud pie. Nevertheless, in this scenario, my child is by far out of the world, out of the playground. He comes back after a while, I put out my cigarette and blow the smoke away from him. Picking up the cloth we were laying on, my wife is giving him water or juice or something and across the park there are dogs running, children playing in herds or as couples, running, chasing (dogs) kicking and laughing (kids) hugging and involved in a back and forth game for each and every family I can see. My wife says that my son has a cut on his arm. I want them, I want those other kids, I want to be sitting there on a mat holding half a beer like that fat idiot husband with his back to everything, safe in the knowledge that his progeny is wilfully happy and involved, learning social stigma whilst he asserts his social standing, tides, circles, the beer drank, the child won, the others thanking Christ they are so lucky and in whispers after they all leave behind the backs of that one couple “that asshole drank all our beers again”.
“No problem” he says, turning to leave the office. What an idiot. Trying so hard to be the ambassador of The Solution, going on to pass his many needs on to others, going on to ‘manage’ these things; people, work, actual work, as in, the worker’s who work to do things. Nothing but a person in a suit, not a cheap suit, these pricks, they have learnt from TV and movies to wear proper suits, can’t fault them that anymore. Young up-and-comers wearing two thousand dollar suits. Talking big, using the words they have been taught; encumbered, exposed, sureties, endgame. Their eyes give them away at last, too open, too keen, too wanting, looking for the lead, the open, the chance. It’s funny, we all say, these kids are just gaping (an inside term, meaning, their open stupid mouths) for anything, they’d swallow the load we’d give them, and they do, they take it on; they work weekends; they work nights; they are virgins in two thousand dollar suits and they can afford to buy drinks, we afford them that. They can buy drinks but they are all little cunts in expensive suits looking at one another like pathetic scraggy mongrels. They have their early twenties girlfriends who like that they get off late, ten pee em, and meet them in the city to buy them and their friends a bottle of fifty dollar wine, they like that. They like wearing the clothes, buying the things, kissing asses and being little butler bitches day in day out to get that pay off. There is no pay off. There is more and more money and more and more bars and more and more women who sit there and smile and like it. There is me sitting in my office in a suit that is getting softer and softer and cufflinks I want to throw in the bin (they have a chess motif) and a pen that cost someone four hundred dollars sitting on my desk, unused. They do not know what it’s like to die inside and have to do this for years, they have not learnt yet that this goal is repetitive, mundane and that whole parts of our life are given over to duty, repetition and safety in the same way our investors trust us to deliver on similar perfunctory promises. Sleep four hours at night, shut the fuck up, soundly. Hungry idiots, smiling at an alcohol bar at 1 or 2 ay em. They don’t make it hard: “Fuck that guy, man, you know, he ain’t even half as fucking on to it as you…and I know, man, I know…you have this shit in the BAG man…IN…THE …BAG, I’m telling you…”
There’s nothing. He’s sitting there, touching the TV screen, putting his little hands on the screen for fuck’s sake. There’s nothing there. I am not his father, I am a person in the god damned room. I go over there and sit next to him but, nothing, he is laughing and clapping to the yellow blue screen so I block it with my body and he freaks out, crying, clawing at me to move. I get back up and go outside, smoke a cigarette and watch him watching the TV. He is dead, he doesn’t want me, his mother will be here soon and tell me not to speak or move him on to another TV show or else clean his arse and change his clothes, or wade into the deep first through the shallows. We are letting them decide from a few paths as soon as they are born, we are giving them a future, implanting a future, telling them the future. I keep smoking and watch her take him up in her arms and out of view, like I am a pervert, like my little son should be ashamed and should go to private rooms to undress. His face is blank, his gestures are meek, and maybe sometimes mute. His mother, my wife, reads the books, gives me the chills. I can’t argue, I am not there, but still, I can see he is not alive, my son, my son who has been taken over, who has been extradited into a new world, who now is sick and is being taken away while I sit on the lounge and am supposed to care and by caring drink beer, watch the game, drink beer, fall asleep, forget anything, trust my wife, drink a beer, forget everything.
Shirts, I sit there judging shirts, it’s all about the quality of the shirt. I took a car in today, air conditioned all the way, from my home into a car into the office, thick ironed shirt, starched collar, cuff links, the rest, tired, haggard, used, worn all the way on from out of town or even fifteen minutes into town, had a coffee, wandered around, open to one another, got their stories straight, these ill-equipped teenagers, faces starved for me, but they don’t have teeth, they don’t know what teeth are. The best is when they tell me their real true life and I look like I care, you know, human style. The devil told me to use that, to use their openness, the fact that they think by telling me I will be softer, that they tell the females the same story is insulting, like they imagine these hard working women have a maternity streak that extends being their own cubs, a caring for all humans. We talk, we laugh, we see them as they are, in ways they are unaware, because, sure, their lecturers told them they were great, ready.
In the yard (“The Yard”) it’s true, they name it, my child is drawn towards the corner, as in the chained in fenced corner filled with chip-bark and, dirt, really and he plays with a doll and he’s using it to plow into the dirt but then rubs the durst on its legs, rough, like he is painting her legs with dirt. “That yours?” a young mother says, seen them before; blonde, still compose outfits, have a large bag on their hip filled with all the things to attend to a child, drinks, toys, books, just anything they may want or in their head need and to deprive them of anything they need educationally or developmentally is such a travesty or more so in their head child abuse and in this world a worse thing that is: disadvantage. “Yeah, and can I tell you, he is a weird child” and of course she looks at me like I have raped him in private so I have to follow up with “the best kind, you know. A real original, it’s what you ” and I do go on and say it “pray for, in some ways”. I am right, she smiles too widely, tells me she won’t like me taking out my cigarettes and smoking them, tells me everything really: she has taken part time job (related to her previous career path) or is still on maternity leave and believes in tradition and having her mother near to help her out, takes this advice, likes this advice but tempers it with her own modern rationale, things like psychoanalysing your child based on their playing techniques, encouraging their skills, subtly guiding them to correct more deficient areas of their development…simple stuff that I could easily employ for the mother’s own benefit, nevertheless…”he’s gorgeous” “Yeah he is, such a bright little boy, that’s why, you know, he just does his own thing…he can’t, you know, get into the whole communal thing, it takes a toll on his individuality, to give something away to the group…you understand?” “Oh yeah I do, but Emily is just so, I mean look at her, she’s already made a new friend” “Well that’s good…hey you want a coffee?” “Yeah, yeah why not” “Ok, wait here…oh wait, what do you want?” “Skim latte” “No problem”. There is noting there, she is an idiot, she is a mother, she loves her little girl who is just another one of them. I feel proud of my son for a second, even if it’s only because he is not one of them. I can’t remember what I was as a child. I think about my Monday meeting and the three things I need to fuck the others over with, makes me feel better to have that ready to go early on a Saturday. Cunts. “Flat white and skim latte please” “Sugar?” “No way”.
“Fucking hell, why are we such morons?” “Tell me about it” “No seriously, why the fuck do I have to deal with this shit after, what, six months of arrogant, idiotic, basically poor business, from these coked up fuck head sales people, really?” “You don’t have to” “That’s right, and, I won’t, how’s that. How about fuck them, they can go and get fucked. Heh. Good fucking thing none of them get their comp checks this quarter. Fucking hell. Good luck telling your wife you fucked your kids’ education for three months. God damn I hate those cunts” “Because no one gets pay rises now” “Yeah…yeah. Because NO ONE get pay rises now.” “So what now then” “Quit” “Quit! Yeah of course” “Nah fuck ’em. They put so much respect and ‘resources’ into these, these morons, really. These drunken fucking douchebags. Jesus, you tell me. Sales reps, fuck. It’s the same everywhere though really, they bring in the money, they are gods. For fuck’s sake…what year is it? I feel like I’m in nineteen eighty nine!” “Fuck working in sales though” “That’s not the point” “But those bonuses…” “Oh fuck don’t get me started…fuck!” “Yeah. Last year…” “Shut the fuck up man…shit” “Fuckers”.
He hits his truck into my outstretched foot again, looks at me for a reaction, I stare at the ceiling. He hits me again, looks at me, I stare at the ceiling. He hits me harder and harder, the same ritual. He tries to hurt me, he tries for a reaction. I try to get him to take his rage to the limit…will he draw my blood, his father’s blood? That will be the next level, when he wants and is able to make his beloved father bleed, without fear, without remorse. The poor boy, bashing his truck into his father’s foot with such ferocity and eagerness, just to get a pat on the head or at least a gaze. He gives up, ashamed, scared, not wanting to bash a corpse. Morals from somewhere, instinct I’d say, youthful instinct to not hurt for no reason. Religious people tell you that it comes from a deity, this child knows to not hurt excessively from shame, from knowing his own power and curbing it, compassionately. That I am his god is unimportant, that he will no longer test his own god is magnificent. Cherish it while it lasts, son, because soon you will gladly put someone you know in the pit of hell to get a ten percent pay rise. I take him up and hold him towards the ceiling, look at his vacant eyes as they avoid mine. “Son” I say and he doesn’t care, “My Son” I say again, like an actor from a grandiose film (Ben-Hur or similar), “My Son, Be Great” I make a wish on his small, bored, complacent face…”Be Great” but he won’t, no one will. There is no such thing anymore. Be a banker, buy money, control money, be in charge of lots of money, own the government, tell the lawyers and judges what to do. Am I supposed to tell this child that?
Everyone is dressed and sitting at their desks. They get up and move about in their social groups: coffee drinkers, tea drinkers, those who like certain shows that are on television, those that read books and despise the TV watchers, those who drink together some nights of the week and sometimes on the weekends, those who are single and want to get together, the athletes, the after work gym junkies with ideas on nutrition and up-early healthy living, the dead tired late night artist types droning through the day regretting every single step of the day, the parents, the soon to be parents, the middle aged singles looking for marriage, the bosses acting in every interaction, the disconnected accountants looking at everyone as cost-benefit drones, the new employees trying to talk to anyone, the well-interned casually walking around not after anything other than a survey of every other god damn poor miserable soul that is still lucky enough to have any hope that their role or future is in any way important or valued or has any meaning in the grand scheme or inter-cultural complexity of this particular place of business. There are no priests/evangelists/soul-savers, those faces you met in orientation are gone, they have subsumed into the body corporate, they are again faceless, the enthusiasm wanes fast.
