Which leads me back to my stepfather, I’d taken mushrooms, tripped balls at a Grateful Dead show. (At this juncture, my friends and I had moved from metal to grunge to classic rock).
At the Dead show we scored primo shrooms in the parking lot. Actually, me and another guy had gotten real ones, while my other friends, in another part of the parking lot, had lamentedly gotten fakes.
It was an incredible show, however, and we had shit-tons of weed to smoke. We saw the Steve Miller Band open the show, and The Dead, still with Jerry Garcia, played “Casey Jones” live for the first time in over a decade. The place erupted.
The whole concert was beautiful. Not only musically, but it had such a peaceful vibe. Everyone was grooving, chilling. There were Deadheads, stoners, hippies in hacky sack circles; everybody was having fun.
Buffalo Bangkok: Juvenile Delinquent There were no fights. No guns. No aggro-bullshit, just happy friendly people. Only negative, besides my friends getting ripped off with those fake shrooms, was these two older girls, twenty-somethings, seeing my friends and me smoking weed and chastising us for being too young to smoke weed. They weren’t wrong.
Probably.
It was nonetheless an amazing evening that lasted way into the early morning. I’m not sure how I got home, but when I did, my mother was angry at me for something, what, I don’t know, but I’m sure I deserved it. I still wasn’t a normal human being…
I was ranting, groggy, high off the shrooms, and I began cursing about my stepfather, who was downstairs, listening to loud classical music, banshee shriek opera. It’s not until this moment that I realize the irony of a kid’s cavil complaining about his parents’ loud music!
(Usually it was them forcing me to turn down the Motley Crue or NWA and lamenting my taste in oeuvre!)
So I was screaming about my stepfather and his shitty opera and he came storming upstairs, burst into the room with my mom and me and angrily declared that I ought to “say what I’m saying to his face.”
And I did. Years of pent up rage seethed out. It was the end of détente.
We’d not even talked in years, since the incident where he slammed me to the floor. He’d given me the perpetual cold shoulder. We’d pass by each other in the kitchen, hallway, and he’d not say a single word to me, or me to him.
But he was talking to me then. And I talked back. I stood up to him, was ready to fight him, told him so directly, raised my voice to him, threatened him. Told him, in no uncertain terms, “fuck you.”
He was no large man, maybe 5’8, not muscular or anything, and I was about the same height, but skinny. If I were a betting man, I’d put my cash on him to beat my ass, in all likelihood.
He didn’t, though. He completely backed down. With a look of utter shock, he said, meekly, in a cracking voice, that he’d “call the police” if I touched him. It was quite the reversal.
Buffalo Bangkok: Juvenile Delinquent He sulked away and our détente resumed. It was, to this day, and probably will forever be, the last time we shared words.
A couple years later, he and my mom split up, and he left the house.
Around when he moved, he’d recently bought a new cat (his previous one, called
“Gidget” had died. Gidget, a super furry Maine Coon Cat, an adorable looking cat, was the meanest fucking animal I’d ever come across. She would hiss, scratch, run away from anyone who came near her, except my stepfather and stepsister. My stepsister said it was because my stepbrother had tormented the cat when it was a kitten. Perhaps he enjoyed chasing cats as much as me! But given what a sadistic prick he was, I believe it was more sinister...) My stepfather’s new cat was raised by me. And I took good care of it. Never chased it. I loved it!
She, the cat, was a gem. An Abyssinian cat, a purebred. She was muscular, lean, not an ounce of fat on her. That cat was more like a dog. She could actually play fetch! She was a cute, loving, amazing little creature, loyal, and caring. My favorite pet I’d ever had.
I’d wanted to keep her, but my stepfather, who’d never paid much attention to the cat (not that I blamed him for that; he worked like crazy, with crazies) but I’d raised the cat and wanted to keep it. I offered to buy the cat, then my mom offered to buy the cat from him, but he refused. Basically, it was his possession, and that was that.
I remember when the movers arrived to collect his things. The movers caging and removing the cat. I remember seeing her face full of fear and hearing her whimpering cries. I felt so impotent, not able to do anything to save her. It was traumatic, having her ripped away. It was like losing a family member, which a beloved pet is, when you think about it...
He didn’t remarry, my stepfather. Or my mother, she didn’t, either. They both saw other people. My mother brought home a string of weird, annoying men, one of whom had this terrible facial scar from skin cancer and would sit in his boxers at the kitchen table, making me terribly uncomfortable.
Buffalo Bangkok: Juvenile Delinquent In their later years, they reunited, adhering to the popular “Living Apart Together”
movement.
They live in separate houses, in separate cities, but talk almost daily, and see each other for extended visits every couple of months.
My stepfather had moved to Maine, which, intentionally, is as far up the US coast as one can get from Miami, and he lived, worked at a mental hospital there for many years, wishing to escape the heat and pressure of Miami, and live in an idyllic, quiet place. Finally see the snow he’d dreamed about seeing.
(Apparently, he’d loved snow, after seeing it in Christmas movies. But he never saw it, being a Miamian. Aside from those like me, who’d visited NYC, seen cold and snow, to many Miamians, snow is this exotic, beautiful thing… So he wished to live somewhere it snowed, somewhere the absolute polar opposite of Miami, somewhere he could enjoy the white Christmases he’d seen in movies, I guess…
Back when he was in Miami, I remember that every Christmas, if not working, he’d celebrate the holiday by checking into a hotel, alone, and locking himself in the room and not coming out until Christmas was over. Not sure if he still does that…)
As of this writing, he’d moved to California, was living in San Francisco, renting an apartment, a garage apartment, in the back of his ex-wife’s, his first wife’s, house.
Nearly 83, it’s been tough for him, in a place where he has no friends, no roots, not much to do.
He moved there to be with his daughter and her children, to be the grandfather, help raise the kids. Perhaps he’s doing it to make up for the lost time, the time he missed while working, tending to other people’s issues instead of his own issues and his kids’.