My 61-Year-Old Single Father Teaches Us How To Find Love (In A Hopeless Place)

On Monday morning at 8a, I will enroll in my first set of grad school classes, officially beginning my journey toward becoming a licensed psychotherapist. This date, and July 11, the official start date for classes, have loomed ominously in the background over the past few months, as I’ve juggled the many things that I do. I’ve always expected to go to grad school, but I hadn’t the faintest idea for what until earlier this year. Well, maybe I had the faintest idea. I knew I wanted to do something to help my community while simultaneously avoiding a major pay cut. Stripping is good money, for all of my criticisms. It’s consistent, accessible, and easily the most flexible job I’ve ever worked. I didn’t mind sacrificing some of my freedom if it means greater long-term security. At any rate, I’ve kept this development from my parents out of a place of spite. I didn’t want them to be proud of me, and yet, they are always finding reasons to be proud. My parents were mean, emotionally abusive people when I was a child, but as an adult, they can’t help but look at me and appreciate what I’ve made of myself. They would both say that it’s in spite of their parenting, and I would agree.

I told my father the news, casually as I tend to with these things, making sure he promised not to breathe a word of it to my mother.

“Wow. That’s a surprise,” he said.

If my father was a nurturing father, this response would likely signal nothing more than, well, surprise. But I know my father and the unspoken rivalry he feels with me. For comparison, when I told him I was a stripper, he chuckled and said, “I’m surprised I’m not upset about this.”

My time spent slinking through the underworld thigh high stilettos was a kind of equalizer. My father has always called himself a “fuck up”. He was the family fuck up, or at least he was until I went lower. I sensed some relief in his voice as he processed my decision, fighting between a sense of relief and his quieter “concerned father” impulse. I’ve never cared one way or another what my father thinks of what I do, which is perhaps why it was so easy to disclose my occupation to him. But as I disclosed my enrollment decision, I sensed I was upsetting the gentle balance my wayward lifestyle had given him. He gave me a stiff congratulations and changed the subject of our conversation to my sister (they/them), the next in line for the title of “family fuck up”. I listened as he went on, lamenting my sister’s unstable state, how sorry he felt for ruining my sister’s life—rendering them “unable to find real love,” his words not mine. It was a safe return to comfortable territory. My sister texted me shortly after, fuming.

“What is wrong with our father???”

“Uhhhh, most things?”

“He messaged me yesterday about like his same old same old ‘sorry for fucking up as a dad,’ but

this time, ‘Because you're incapable of finding someone to love you for life.’ And so I’m like *wow* I’m not going to comment, just going to leave

that one.”

I watched the elipses ripple, like thoughtful fingers tapping on a table.

“So he sends me a whole novel he wrote up trying to retroactively educate me about how to pick

someone.”

I cackled.

“In an email.”

My sister was going through a difficult moment. A real, “it be like that sometimes” breakup. I want to clarify, they aren’t the “family fuck up,” they’re not the kind of person to take a traditional path, but I wouldn’t characterize anyone in my immediate family as particularly capable of conforming or pursuing traditional avenues. We’re “adventurous” (with a healthy dose of trauma-based mental illness fueling our adventures). But more to the point, it was an absolute laugh riot to imagine my father giving anybody advice on love or relationships to anybody. If he has one skill, it is the ability to sabotage any relationship.

Because I’m related to this negro, I have made many excuses through the years for his choices. When he left my mom, sister, and me in Oklahoma and disappeared for a year, I didn’t take it personally. While I knew it wasn’t a good choice, but I also could understand why. My father had never wanted to be a parent, he’d fallen into it, the way people do. My mother refused to treat her mental illness. They fought constantly. While some people strongly believe parents have a duty to stick around, as an adult who has no aspirations of parenthood, I do not. And sure, my father may have locked me in a bathroom with the light off as a toddler—some cruel version of time out, but for context, my mother was there, yelling at him, telling him to do it. Is abuse extreme peer pressure? I even forgave him for the time he took my sister and I out to South Korea for the first time, got mad and decided to abandon us for a day. We were in our teens. It was several years before iPhones became ubiquitous, so we were wandering Seoul with slide phones and Google Maps printouts. Sure, we may have found ourselves ducking for cover in the middle of a monsoon, only to later get stalked by a middle aged man, who held his wallet out to my sister, likely trying to buy sex, but I remember it as a fun day. I wouldn’t say that I came away scarred by that experience. He apologizes for everything, At length. Frequently. But my father has a way of consistently making the wrong call when navigating emotionally nuanced situations.

Yes, my sister was going through a painful, yet somewhat glamourous, they/them international breakup, but did the man need to escalate the situation into calling them “incapable of finding love”? And in what world would it make sense for a 61-year-old bachelor to be the author of a how-to guide to romantic partnerships?

“If this wasn’t terrible, it would be a great illustration project,” I said, unhelpfully.

My sister is a talented illustrator (and they’re looking for work, so hmu). While they were clearly in a fragile, grieving place, I couldn’t help but see the potential.

My 61-Year-Old Single Father Teaches Me How To Find Love (In A Hopeless Place)

“I really don't know what his deal is, but he severely knows how to send me to hell immediately.”

I could hear them internally screaming like a boiling tea kettle, all the way from Oklahoma where they were hiding out with my mother and stepfather recovering. My sister has been subjected to the bulk of my father’s stellar emotional intelligence. My sister doesn’t intimidate him the way that I do. I look at my parents with the dead eyes of the carefree child they jointly killed. As a result they regard me with what I consider to be a healthy degree of discomfort and guilt.

While my sister is still somewhat financially dependent on our father, and thus avoids “poking the bear”, I am not and do not. In fact, there are few things I love more. One of my favorite moments of stirring up trouble occurred when our father accidentally sent a Facebook message, intended for one of his lovers at the time, to my sister. My father is very private about his romantic life. I’m not sure whether it’s a result of him being a commitment-phobic-geriatric-fuccboi, or if it’s just because he can’t seem to pin a woman down, but I digress.

The letter could be best described as very cringe. My father goes on at length about wanting--nay! needing a woman named Tatiana, so much that he might be willing to take care of her child and move to Turkey to be a family. He wrote prose about her unrivaled beauty, and his desire to make it work, even though he hurt her and did not deserve her forgiveness. He groveled, begged, pleaded. Talked about how he is getting older and she is so young and full of life. How lamented how he years to provide the life she deserves, but tragically may not be able to. I was surprised to read this level of devotion from my father. It seemed out of character. I was snooping through his private business, catching a glimpse of him as a man, rather than my dysfunctional dad. Ignoring my sister’s request to keep the letter private, I immediately texted him.

“Who’s Tati?”

In my head, I taunted him with a singsong voice like a child on the playground.

“Tati? Who’s that?”

“The woman you’re seeing.”

I imagined a gasp erupting from every child as a hum of “ummummmummm’s” ricocheted off of a plastic slide.

“I’m not seeing anyone. Your informant have you faulty information, because we broke up ages ago,” my dad replied, his message flanked by a row of laugh-crying emojis, “How did you find out about her? Was it Maxine?”

“No.”

“Don’t tell him it was me!” Bella pleaded from a separate chat.

“Was it Regina? You all are always talking about me behind my back, having your little fun, laughing at me. Well HAHA, JOKE’S ON YOU. ALL OF YOU.”

“It wasn’t Regina.”

I could sense his paranoia building.

“Then who was it? Did you all hack into my accounts, just to go through my messages? Hope you had a great time, making fun of Blambu. Bet I’m a real laugh riot!”

“Nope. No hacking, lol.”

“Well, for your information, I broke up with Tati. She was just a fling. You can tell everyone that! And you all can stay out of my business, for future reference. Goodbye!”

He followed this final message with a stream of emojis that could be best characterized as conveying that he was both laughing at the pettiness and not at all phased. Except that it effectively conveyed the opposite. He was indeed very phased.

“Damnit, Anna! You know he’s just going to come for me next,” my sister snapped.

“He doesn’t know it was you. Just pretend you don’t know anything.”

My sister sent me a series of eyeroll emojis.

I’d had my fun at my father’s expense, which is I suppose the flip of what he did at my expense as a child. The wheel of petty retribution turns. Did taunting my father feed the yearning in my soul for an uncomplicated parent/child relationship? Did my micro retaliation do anything to finally settle the score?

Fathers are complicated characters. Not all of us get a top tier pick. I certainly didn’t. But that’s life, and I suppose I’m grateful. What god didn’t give me in fathers, she sure made up for in daddies.