It's Fun to Be in the I-O-OH-P (Not): The Dictionary of Self-Loathing

Of all the faux profound psychological games one is forced to play in either group or individual therapy, the one I hate most is the Positive / Negative game.

The idea is to write down. on one side of the paper, all the negative messages you've received about yourself from family, peers or other outside sources since your earliest days of childhood, and then to write down, on the other side of the paper, counter-balancing positive messages to tell yourself.

This is the second time we've had to play this sort of self-loathing game in the Eye-Oh!-Pee. The first time it just depressed and humiliated me. The second time, last night, resulted in one of those moments where if there had been a loaded gun in the room I would surely have turned it on myself, pulled the trigger, and blown my brains out in front of the whole class.

By the time I was done with the exercise, I had a list of negative messages as long as your arm -- but nothing at all in the positive category. There simply is nothing. It's no good putting on s smiley face and just Making Shit Up. 


Of course we were then expected to read our lists to the whole damn class. Of course. You can't express anything privately in these sessions. My head was downturned and I would not meet anyone's eyes, so I was called upon last. I said, "I don't have any positives." The instructor said, "Well, start with the negatives and maybe we can help you with the positives." I said, "I'd rather not." Seriously, who wants to read out a litany one one's flaws and failures when that is all you have? 


Next we were told to pick one of our positives and write it out in big letters. I did mine in block letters with shading. I wrote:

NOTHING.

ZERO,

The instructor saw this and said, "Doug, if you're really stuck you can use one of the messages on the blackboard." 


I had read the positive messages on the blackboard earlier. It was all Complete Bullshit like "I am a Caring Person."


Well, no, honestly, I'm not. I mumbled something to the effect of, "I don't believe it," and went right on shading my Nothing and my Zero. 


The instructor said, "Doug, I'm concerned. . . " and before I could even think "Bully for you" B____ chimed in from across the table. B_____ is a big, loudmouthed junkie who is just the sort of person who used to push me around on the playground when I was in school, but he leapt in with, "Yah, I'm concerned, too; you're a good man an' --"


I guess my expression told him to put a sock in it. I wanted to tell him, "What do you know? You don't know me from shit."


I was down for the rest of the evening, right up until bedtime. I didn't sleep well. I guess that it's remarkable that I wasn't tempted to take a drink, not that any stores were open where I could have bought the stuff. But I have to wonder if some of these social worker/instructors really know what they are doing sometimes. Do they know what cans of worms they are opening? Do they know that they are playing with fire?


-- Freder.

What's Wrong with Detox?

Well, folks I did end up in Detox last week, for the second time in my life, the second time in two years. And I can tell you that the process is Deeply Flawed on a number of levels, and many of those levels I'm not prepared to discuss here, because I'm not a professional, I don't know Jack Shit about the subject, and beyond that I am an Asperger's patient who, uhm, kind of has trouble with the whole Reality experience, and beyond THAT I'm still stupid enough to believe that Ginger Ale Tastes Like Love.

OK, I know that some of you are going to be WAY too young to get that joke.

But here are two, I think legitimate, points that I want to make.

1) There are no Public-Access computers available in Detox, and believe you me, a Detox patient is not allowed within fifteen feet of any kind of computer at all.

Here's the funny part: You ARE allowed access to a public cell phone.

Now, most of y'all probably think this is great. But I don't own a cell phone, never have, never will -- I don't even use my LAND LINE unless I have no other options, I don't have ANYone's telephone numbers memorized (some of them I have written down, but I keep them here on my computer or on a notepad next to my Land Line). 

So, if you put a cell phone into my hand, my immediate instinct is just to toss it out the fucking window, 'cuz honestly, I can't even figure out how to USE the damn things.

I am a person who communicates with the outside world by means of the internet. And if you say to me -- "No, you can't have access to the internet" -- that's exactly the same thing as saying to me, "Sorry, you just dropped  off the face of the planet, and nobody will ever know what happened to you, nobody will ever know where you've gone, Sorry, but you've just Ceased to Exist as  Human Being."

And not only is this Unfair, but it genuinely created some problems for my friends and family and people who care about me. It was, literally, as if I had vanished.

2) There are No Pussycats in Rehab.

You think I'm joking? I'm not. Not only was I deprived access to my OWN pussycats, who I desperately needed and I feared (as it turns out, correctly) needed me -- but I was deprived access to ANY pussycats at all. And you know what? I think that pussycats are really therapeutic. I kow that some people don't like them, but guess what? Pussycats are smart enough to know who doesn't like them and smart enough to know to stay away from folks who don't like them.

I  think every Rehab ward should have at least eight or ten pussycats living on the  premises, all of them available for adoption, all of them available to Go Home with a patient who really takes a liking to one of them. I think that this would be one of the most Amazing Healing things that any Detox Ward could do. God damn it: just give them a pussycat to pet and (if they mutually wish) Snuggle Up to.

In fact, I think that I just Invented a job that I would be the first one to apply for: 

Detox Ward Pussycat Wrangler.

Don't those of you who know me think that that job and me would be the perfect combination?

-- Freder

Grrrrrrrr!

Y'ever have one of those days when you're feeling just plain cranky and mean for no reason at all and you want to punch someone in the mouth just because they're standing there taking up space in your life? That's where I am today.

In E.C. Segar's great Thimble Theater comic strip, whenever Bluto or Popeye or anyone else is in this kind of a mood and spoiling for a fight, they walk around with a scowl on their face, and "GRRR!' GRRR!" sounds fly out of them. I can't afford to scowl or grrr at the customers, but I sure want to.

Rule number one in Customer service: Never Punch Out a Customer.

Patches (my cranky quat in the picture above) has long known herself to be the Queen of the Universe, and whenever I pick her up and hug her and smooch on her and she's not in the mood to be hugged and smooched on, she will grrrrr quite loudly. If that doesn't work, hatpins sprout from her paws, and if that doesn't work her whole body explodes in my face and she vanishes in a puff of smoke.

I wish I could do that stuff.

It's probably why Wolverine is the most popular of the "all new all different" X-Men. Rub him the wrong way and ka-SHINNNG! out come the claws, and who's going to argue with you when you can stick three foot-long razors under their chin at a moment's notice?

I often think that, as super-powers go, the Radio Shadow's mysterious power to cloud men's minds so they cannot see him is a little bit under-rated. Think of how useful that could be when performance review time comes around, or when people come up to you with looks on their faces that say, "I'm going to ask you a completely idiotic question that you've answered a hundred times already this week."

A lot of you already know that the Radio Shadow was different from the Pulp Magazine Shadow, although they were ostensibly the same character. About the only things they had in common were a fondness for night work and a tendency to laugh their heads off at things that aren't funny. The Pulp Magazine Shadow didn't have any super power at all. What he did have were two ginormous .45 automatics that he never hesitated to use. Piss off The Shadow and you could end up pushing up the daisies.

I guess there are a lot of characters in fiction and the movies who we love because they don't take crap from anyone. Humphrey Bogart played most of them. Edward G. Robinson played the rest. I don't count Actual Monsters like Dracula or the Wolf Man, although you want to stay on their good side, too.

People seem to know when I am feeling cranky and then go out of their way to push my buttons. This is not surprising, as most neurotypicals are trained to sense the invisible Target signs that often superimpose themselves over the backs and faces of people like me. I no more than got off the phone with a person who spoke like they had a mouthful of marbles, when a woman came up to me and asked a question -- in a whisper. This isn't a church, lady -- it's a bookstore. Speak up or feel my wrath!!

No, what really gets me is that most inanimate objects seem to know, too. The books and boxes and bits of furniture all seem to be in communication with each other. They begin throwing themselves into my path or refusing to stay where they are put. This causes me to get flustered and frustrated in addition to being cranky, which in turn causes me to become even clumsier. The next thing I know, the whole closet shelf is coming down on my head. If you ever walk by and hear me swearing like a sailor at some inanimate object, now you know why.

I guess it's not a good thing, overall, to be this cranky -- but it's better than some other emotions I could be feeling.

-- Freder.

Here's to Stillness

I have much less to blog about now that life is becoming, thank goodness, less "interesting" -- as in the old Eastern curse "May you live in interesting times." Even though my disease sometimes causes me to dread what may be lurking, unknown, in the months ahead, it feels good to metaphorically bury the last twelve months. I'm going to try not to look back on it for at least a while.

This means my blog posts will most likely grow fewer and farther between as my focus shifts somewhat to things like reading and working on the new website. I'll still be here when I feel like Mister Ed and have something to say, but I'm not going to add to the internet's White Noise by just typing in search of a subject.

But I'll make an exception today.

*

The rain this week didn't just slant the skies with non-stop gloom: it created jungles of grass in the yards along W_______ Avenue, and probably frustrated the hell out of homeowners who care about this sort of thing. I hadn't mowed my yard in two weeks, so I can sense my neighbors seething and obsessing about the grass -- The grass! The GRASS!! It's two inches high! Must -- mow -- NOW!

Whatever the reason, on this Sunday morning when it would have been my pleasure to sleep in, instead the pent-up compulsion to mow that must have been building up in my neighbors over the past few days caused them to fire up their mowers on both sides of me at the ungodly hour of 8:30 in the morning, which in turn caused me to drag myself, rumpled and fuzzy-headed, to the computer and fire off an Indignant, venting post.

With no other option, I fed my cats and surrendered to the suburban mores and went out there to tackle my own lawn.

It seems so awkward and phony to smile widely, wave loudly back at my neighbors just because that's what they do to me. Especially when I am thinking such dark thoughts about them and their lawnmowers, usually something about throwing them under one. It's a part of the life-long game of "Let's Pretend" that I've had to play.

Another thing: Both couples on the two sides of me seem to spend a lot of time sitting on their porches or standing in their yards, talking to each other.

It seems to me that, if this is normal, it's probably the reason why I've never been able to sustain a relationship.

What can they find to say to each other? What can they be talking about for an hour? What language are they speaking?

I've always been pretty quiet and in my relationships I have been the listener. I never know what to say; if I do I never feel at ease saying it. First, I have to determine what she's really saying, or, if her words are clear to me, what she really means. Then I have to decide how I feel about it. Then I have to think about how to frame it back into understandable words. This can take a while. Sometimes, she has gotten indignant by then, and is saying something like, "Why can't you tell me what you're thinking?"

Well, I'm trying, but you're making it harder by stressing me out with your impatience for a quick response.

Oftentimes, whether I am with women or with my small circle of friends, the conversation moves on without me. I'm always finding the perfect words when the time for them has come and gone.

Shortly before she dumped me, my next-to-last girlfriend Lorna complained to me about our relationship. I could see that she was really upset, but I didn't know what to say to her about it. She said, "All we ever do is go to the movies and have sex!" -- as if that was a bad thing.

To me, she was describing the perfect relationship!

Looking at the normal couples that now bookend me on two sides, I begin to understand for the first time. Oh -- you have to be relaxed with each other, and you have to talk.

But those are the two things that I'm desperately bad at.

Looks like it's me and the quats, and my books and DVDs, for the indefinite future.

-- Freder.

The End is Nigh!

Ah, so tomorrow there is to be Rapture.

I didn't learn about any of this until just this afternoon. Yeh, it's true -- The Rapture is coming tomorrow and millions of Christian Bible Thumpers are going to be taken to Heaven, leaving the rest of us down here in an Apocalyptic setting to duke it out with the Devil and his Minions.

Who decided this?

I did a little (and I mean a little) research and discovered that it was decided by some evangelical cracker who plans on watching the whole thing tomorrow as entertainment on the telly.

Well, you know, if he's right, then I'm fine with that. In the year just past, the year that began for me on 14 May, my world has come to an end at least three times. There was losing Mom, then having the auctioneers come into my house over a period of three days and freakin' rape the place, then having it sold out from underneath me just when I was restoring some order.

So, you know, for me this would be just One More Thing.

In fact -- it would be good, because it would mean that I wouldn't have to make any more decisions about work, about the car, about the plumbing problem in my basement that I made worse by trying to fix it myself, about ANY damn thing. All I'd have to do is duke it out with Demons, and Baby, that is something I feel that I would excel at.

My message to God and the Devil at the End of the World would be, you guys have been feeding me shit for so long, and you expect me to go quietly into that not-so good night? You got a little bit of a surprise on your hands, you Cosmic Bullies! I've been bullied by the best of 'em, and you clowns have created a Right Angry Dude! Bring it on!

Unfortunately, the world is not going to come to an end tomorrow, and I'm going to have to focus and make some decisions sooner or later. I'm going to have to come to grips with the future and try to make a new life.

One of the posts that I haven't written, because I've been avoiding it, is titled "Gifts my Mother Keeps on Giving Me."

One of those gifts was a sign that she painted to hang outside our home at Turkey Hill Farm in Cape Elizabeth, all those years ago.

It was hung outdoors for a long time and is badly worn. It hangs inside my back entry hall now. It reads "D. Thornsjo" under a picture of a Phoenix being reborn. Of course the D. Thornsjo that she painted it for was my father, and she could never have imagined the significance that the sign would one day have for her then eight-year -old son.

There's a reason why the Phoenix is reborn in flame.

Starting over again hurts.

Thanks, Mom.

The end of the world? Been there, done that. Bring it on. I'm ready.

-- Freder.

Evil in Plain Sight

This afternoon I was both shocked and saddened when a Facebook friend -- and not just a Facebook friend, but someone that I went to High School with, all those moons ago -- posted a link to a YouTube video making the outrageous claim that President Obama's birth certificate was a fake. He not only posted the link, but made a personal comment calling for an investigation.

I was all over that. By the time I was done with that fool, he had deleted the link from his Facebook profile.

I don't care what party you belong to. This is nothing but racist bullshit. No other president has had to endure this kind of treatment.

It's time for the right wing to pull its head out of its own asshole and come to the table with REAL issues and REAL arguments -- instead of just Making Shit Up and getting the gullible members of their class to fall into lock-step with it.

Hmm. I guess it's time that I revealed the shocking secret that Donald Trump was actually born in Pakistan, is a secret terrorist, and had a major part in the planning of 9/11.

I mean, if I say it's true, it must be true, right?

What's so disturbing is not so much that some cynical, evil person would put this pile of crap out there before the public, but that so many people, people who appear to be otherwise rational and functional, would actually swallow it.

I can't even take reassurance in the fact that, without exception, the people posting in support of this "theory" are obvious fruitcakes and morons who are incapable of spelling even simple words like "lemmings" correctly. Every single angry post that I read calling the President's birth certificate a fake looked like it had been typed by a monkey with one hand tied behind its back.

This comment is quite typical:

Anyone that thinks it is NOT PLAUSIBLE for the Whitehouse to do such an amaturish job at forgery must first realize that this man as shown that he is an Incompetent Fool , Second that he beleives that all us non-elitists ( normal people ) are too stupid to catch it and thirdly that anyone not realizing this to be an Obvious attempt at Fraud that he is Complicit in makes you nothing more than a Leeming ….


I followed the link to this cracker's website. There the ravings grew worse. At the same time that he is claiming that the death  of Osama bin Laden is a fraud, he publishes a picture -- I don't know how or where he got it, but it is very grisly and convincing and I deeply regretted scrolling down -- of bin Laden's bloody corpse with its left eye shot out, with the following caption underneath it:

Dead! Dead! DEAD!

I know that it takes all kinds, but these Lunatic Fringe Nut Jobs are getting louder and louder and people are listening to them. The very fact that the President released his birth certificate to the public -- an unprecedented and, I think, ill-advised event, because it kowtows to people whose opinions should not even be acknowledged -- is proof that this culture is being drawn down into The Way of the Wacko.

Longtime readers of this blog know that I take pains not to name names. This one time, I will make an exception. William Higgins, my schoolmate, you should be ashamed of yourself. There are real issues out there that deserve discussion, debate and resolution.

This is nothing more than what Justice Thomas called (although I disagreed with him at the time) a "High-Tech lynching."

--Freder.

Meet the Neighbors

I barely know any of them, have only lived here three and a half months, yet I already have bones to pick with all of my neighbors.

My east-side neighbor looks like a Nazi. He's definitely at type A personality. He has extensive gardens in his back yard, and is building a garage (apparently, all by himself) on a parcel of land that used to go with my house. His gardening style is particularly Aryan. He doesn't tend his garden, he attacks it, as if it were the enemy. He never gets down on his knees, but stands and really puts his back into it, stabbing with a pitchfork. He might as well be bayonetting the ground. The other morning I spotted him in a patch of wild, wooded ground that I thought still went with my house. I could be wrong. He was attacking the trees with a gigantic set of pincers, snapping off all the lower branches as far as he could reach, and also snapping at any shrubbery that was growing from the ground. I wanted to holler at him, "Stop it! You're turning a nice wild area into something tame!"

But I held my tongue. Direct confrontation is something I've always had trouble with.

The next time I saw him, he was stalking around his new garage-in-progess with a tool belt around his waist, driving screws into door and windowframes. I wanted to say to him, instead of doing that, why don't you use some of that Germanic energy to get up off your butt and put some siding on that eyesore? Even the backside of his house has bare unsided walls. Let your poor garden grow and do something to beautify the community, Kaspar!

Worse are my Western neighbors. To use the terminology of my new Mutant Brethren, they are obvious neurotypicals. Normal People with a capital "Nor!"

They're so damn friendly, and they love to make small talk. Over Easter weekend I was working in my yard, minding my own bidniss, when I was hailed -- by name -- from their porch.

I've met them twice and I can't remember their names. I'm no good at that.

It was the woman of the house. I would have been perfectly happy with a wave and a "Nice day, isn't it?"

But no. Every time I see these folks we have to stand around and talk about nothing at all. Before I knew it, her husband came out to join in. Then her mother came out.

I do not know how to interact with these people. We must have "talked" for ten minutes and none of it was worth saying. They said that if they had known I was alone, they would have invited me to Easter dinner.

No, no, no, no, no, NO! Easter dinner with people I know only from two casual meetings-in-passing? Talk about a stranger in a strange land! Just because we, by chance, live next to each other does not make us intimate. Leave me alone! 


"That's a lot of house for just one guy," quoth the husband. That's getting into the realm of too personal a comment for someone that I don't know at all.

Worse yet, are my Northern neighbors. It was this family that had the medical emergency a while back. The father came through it all right, and I'm glad for them. In fact, I really had nothing against these people -- a casual hello here and there, they minded their business and I minded mine.

Until yesterday, when I saw that they had chopped down one of the lilac trees that separated their yard from mine. I would have sworn that it was my lilac bush -- but let's assume that it was on their property line . . . I certainly don't know for certain where it falls.

Even so -- why would anyone cut down a perfectly good little lilac tree that was just starting to send out some leaves for the spring? Especially when it was one of the very few things that was shielding you from your neighbor?

I just don't get such a random act of cruelty. I regard lilac bushes as one of the better things in life. Anyone who would maliciously chop one down like that needs a punch in the snoot.

Everyone kept a low profile during the winter, but now the fur is starting to fly!

My neighbors had better start to Shape Up and Fly Right, lest they set off the notorious ire and Ill Will of the Amazing Aspergian Boy!

-- Freder.

Fuck all

Spent my whole damn life pretending to be normal. Got so that I was pretty good at it, when in public. Never understanding why it didn't seem so hard for everyone else. Never understanding how everyone else could be so easy and relaxed when I was tearing myself apart inside. Pretending to be social when all I ever wanted was to find a hole and crawl into it. Never knowing the reason why I preferred the company of animals to that of people.

All a joke, all a fake, all for Show, a Command Performance, see the Amazing Retard Pretend to be a Real Boy. No matter what I told myself or how hard I tried, I was never going to be normal and I never had a chance. No wonder I could never sustain a relationship with a woman. I could never figure out what it was about me that frustrated them so much. I tried so hard, but trying had its limits.

Whenever I had to make a cold phone call to anyone, for whatever reason, I always had to have a written script in front of me, and even then I was so panicked that I could hardly bring myself to dial. Start to dial, hang up. Start to dial, hang up. Calling to ask women out was pure torture, and I guess they sensed it, they always said no.

Always doing things because that was how normal people did it, that was how it was done, I forced myself even though I was screaming inside.

I learned that I could be the life of the party if I recited from Bill Cosby's comedy albums, which of course I knew by heart, or from Monty Python (ditto). I learned that I could make a hit in a play if I faithfully imitated the actor from the original Broadway cast album.

Even when it came to writing, I learned by aping the style of other writers. I have no style of my own. It's all written to sound like what I've read elsewhere.

My whole life has been a bad joke, a game of "Let's Pretend," a game of "Follow the Leader." No wonder I never left home, until I was forced out. I really am all those things the other kids called me on the playground. And now I'm angry that I've spent my life trying to please them, without hope of success.

"Gooble-Gabble, One of Us. . ."

It's not so much that it explains so much of my life. It's that there's no part of my life that it doesn't explain. My habit of quoting other people all the time (my friend H_____ once ragged on me, "Take away Monty Python, take away [something else], take away Doug." I thought it terribly cruel at the time. Now I see that he's right). The impulsive ripping of skin off of my fingers. The fact that all my girlfriends dumped me, seemingly for the same reason, and yet it always came as a surprise. The always keeping as much to myself, by myself as possible, and taking everything so personally. My problems with certain subjects in school. The fact that I can't stand up to anyone, except on paper, and then usually in an explosion of pent-up rage that has more to do with past events than what's really in front of me. The fact that I can't seem to get through my morning chores without moaning, "help, help" all the time, because the simplest things seem so difficult. My trouble focusing at work (like, I'm writing obsessively on my blog right now instead of doing something that I should be doing). All that depression and anxiety -- that turns out to be just a part of it.

On the one hand, it makes the last five years and what I've been through during that time look almost heroic. If it's true, how did I get through it? No wonder Mom sometimes found me difficult.

On the other hand, I've always suspected that I was a freak. Now I know that it's true. "One of us, one of us, gooble-gabble, one of us," Christ, even most of my post titles are quotes.

I don't feel at all relieved to finally know that it has a name. Instead, I'm in despair because now I know that it's never going to get better, that I'm always going to be like this, that it may even get worse as I get older, that I could possibly wind up in one of those god-awful "assisted living" places.

That I'm incapable of creating anything truly original.

That, most likely, I am probably going to be alone for the rest of my life.

I wonder if I should tell my boss. On the one hand, her brother has Asperger's and she might be able to point me in the right direction for getting a proper diagnosis. It might explain some of my behaviours to her. On the other hand, she is my boss and the potential for her to use this against me is quite real.

Oh, yeah, the minor paranoias. That, too.

I can't think of anyone else I could talk to about it.

I'm not sure that learning about this is a great big help to me. Right now, it seems to be making things worse.

Period, End of Story.

Dear Dad;

I'd bet folding money that you're going to see this, which is why I'm posting it here instead of putting it in an email to you.

I guess that what I've been trying to say in my recent angry posts is actually quite simple.

I'm not your confidante and you're not mine. For once in your life, respect somebody else's wishes and stay out of things where you are not needed or wanted.

There. Now I'm done with this subject.

-- Freder.

Thanks but No Thanks

I just sent this email to Dear Olde Dad, in response to yet another demand for money, yet another request that the full results of the second auction be disclosed to him:


Joann's office will soon issue you a check (if they haven't already) for the items you inserted into the auction (which in retrospect I shouldn't have allowed you to do. Just a bad idea all around, but I was still in a state of shock, and the whole auction process was an Act of Violence being perpetrated on me at a time when I was not ready for it -- I couldn't think straight). 

But as for the auction results, Joann and Sue and Carole and I are all in agreement that it does not fall into your Circle of Concern, and we will not disclose this information to you. Get over it.

Like you, Claudia cannot stop haranguing the estate for money, and Sue tells me that, somehow, she has a pretty accurate notion of what is in the pot. 

It seems that in the whole family, I am the only one among us who is not interested in reducing Mom's life to a dollars and cents amount.

I  should never have taken money from you -- not that, honestly, I was given much of a choice. I do love the house, but if this didn't pan out, something else would have, and it wouldn't have come at such a cost.

Somewhat more calm, no less angry, in need of moving on. . .

While casting around for some images of Bad Dads on the internet, I found this quite funny British blog post:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/filmblog/2010/feb/10/clip-joint-bad-dads

So that made me smile a little bit. There hasn't been much of that going on at my place over the past couple of days.

I wanted to write about Adaptation and The Frighteners, both of which crossed my eyeballs earlier in the week. I wanted to write about the progress I'm making on the new website (not much) and in setting up the new house (somewhat better).

Instead, I've been stewing in hatred, restless, unable to focus, gnawing on the bone of my father's latest betrayal, angry at myself for ever thinking that, just perhaps, he might have grown a vestigial sense of personal responsibility in recent years.

That he hasn't, and I fell into my own trap, that's my fault.

It didn't help matters that he sent he sent me three emails, one of them labeled "humble apology," and there wasn't anything humble or apologetic about any of them. Instead, it was the same old self-justifying crap that he always does, the same crap he pulled on mom all those years ago when he justified his affairs by telling mom all about them, as if that made it all right, because he was being honest, you see, he wasn't keeping a secret.

When I was seven years old I came home from school one day and found mom sobbing. Now I know why.

Last night I got drunk and flamed him from the bottom of my heart. I said, Do you know what you did? Do you know how bad this is?

 I said that this blog is just for me, it's my therapy, the only therapy I have, and what you did was the same exact thing as if you hid out in my therapist's office and eavesdropped on the sessions.

I said And then, and then, you had the unmitigated gall to write and tell me that my feelings, my own personal thoughts and feelings, where you were not even invited, were not valid.

I believe I then launched into a string of obscenities.

But it's true -- it's just as if he leapt out of hiding in the middle of the session and "corrected" me in front of the therapist.

.I should get over it. I need to get over it, this is just one more violation in a series. But right now I can't stop kicking myself, can't stop wishing that I could kick him. This is as big a betrayal as he's ever committed against me, but I gave him the opportunity to do it, knowing that nothing ever changes, knowing that you can't put a bottle in a drunkard's hands and expect him not to take a swig.

I have to pretend to work now. Maybe that will help me climb out of this bitter soup that I'm sitting in. My goal for tonight: take a few more deep breaths, and write that post about The Frighteners. . .

-- Freder.

P.S., Dad. . .

I especially hope that M_ reads my last post and I especially hope that she reads this one. I want her to know that, as per your usual past behaviors, you are constantly trying to make me complicit in keeping secrets from her.

I want her to know that you wrote begging, pleading emails to both me and my lawyer asking for early repayment of the loan that she she made to me (and, incidentally, that I never asked for).

I want her to know that you can't get over shitting all over Mom every chance you get, including in your last email to me. Where in hell do you get off, constantly criticizing her? She had her faults, but many of those faults were CREATED by YOUR behavior.

You fucked anything that would hold still long enough for you to do it, including men.

I want M_ to know that every time we have lunch, it's you who wants to go to McDonald's and that you always wolf down TWO big hamburgers and a large order of fries (I can't eat two of those things and I don't know how you can).

I want her to know how you have used me as your personal confessional over the years, to keep secrets from people I loved.

Y'know what? I really didn't want to know how you discovered Masturbation.

But you told me anyhow.

Y'know what? I really didn't want to know that Mom knew you were cheating on her when she told you, while you were having sex, "Getting your love somewhere else, huh?"

You son of a bitch, Stay out of my blog and stay out of my personal life.

I want M_ to know how you made me complicit when you were cheating on Mom, when I came to visit you in New York, you not only didn't have the decency to put your affair on hold for the brief duration of my stay, you flaunted it in my face and then asked me not to tell, you made me a co-conspirator.

YOU SON OF A BITCH!!!

And now you do the same damn thing with M_.  And it IS the same damn thing, even though, to my knowledge, you aren't fucking another woman, still you are trying to keep secrets everywhere along the way.

I am SICK of this shit. I hope you read this and I hope your wife reads this. I hope she divorces you. You dick.

Oh, have I got a juicy one for you tonight. . .

We interrupt our regularly scheduled blog post tonight to present a rant against my Pig of a father.


As soon as they found out that I was keeping a blog, my father and his wife wanted to read it. For reasons that should be obvious to anyone out there who might have been paying attention, I wanted them not to read it. Knowing that they had access to these pages would seriously undermine my ability to express myself freely.


My father kept pressing me for the URL, and I kept ignoring him, hoping that he would get the message. He did not. "Still can't figure out how to find your blog," he would say, and I finally replied in no uncertain terms that I didn't want him to read my blog, that it was quite personal, very much a diary, "and you wouldn't read my diary, would you?"


In addition, I tried to satisfy their morbid curiosity by emailing them some of the more harmless posts, the ones that a) might interest them and b) were within what HR people call "their circle of concern."


Over the weekend I posted a link to the blog on my temporary page at www.ducksoup.me; this had to happen sooner or later, as the blog must play a part in my Grand Scheme for the new website. I cringed when I sent them the link, and hoped that for once -- just once, once, ONE TIME in his life that my father would respect my wishes.


Who was I kidding?


Around noon EST today, the hits on the blog started to go through the roof. I knew exactly what was happening, and sure enough, when I got home there was the email sitting in my inbox. 


I present it here, in full, unedited in any way:

Well, have just spent hours and hours on this material. Wish I had taken notes but then it would be tomorrow. My thien is on a rare solo trip to Flagstaff to use some bonus money she ended up with to buy, a rare event, cosmetics. So I have the time to poke around in your material. Impressions (at least the few that I can remember in my foggy old age): Loved the graphics; Vastly impressed with the terrific, creative, high energy, originality of the whole thing - clearly talent you got from your Mom not me; wonderful depth of perception in your analysis; effective use of software to organize, cross reference, provide moving pictures, etc. Wish we could have been close enough so that you could have shared your hard fight with the drinking and your apparent success - all alluded to only briefly here and there - but only intensified our (both My thien and I) pride in you! Had no idea that you so (apparently) resented My's help in vetting your nomination of that house that now is yours. In all those hours I think there was only one thing I really must disagree with. My thien would kill me for saying this, but I really feel I must. She will never know. You make the statement at some point that you owe it all to your Mom. (Referring to the new house.) Now I will credit her with giving birth to you; to giving you your wonderful talent; but major credit or sole credit for your new house, sorry old Son, that just won't wash with me. She spent literally millions of dollars (collectively from her folks and from me) so the fact that a little was left in the estate for you, which I had urged her to make 100% to you,  to use to afford it is hardly to her credit. Furthermore, YOU EARNED IT, EVERY PENNY OF IT, taking care of her. Further, had you to wait until proceeds from auctions and sale of Albion (that I bought) came in, you never would have ended up with 87 Western. Possibly you would have ended up with something better, that I grant you. One cannot play the "what if" game to any benefit. But without My thien fronting the money, it never would have happened. You have the credit to have picked the place. My thien has the credit to vetted it and fronted the money to have it happen. You have the credit to have made it happen. My opinion - which I know you value little - is that your Mom takes NO credit for this one. If this only enhances your negative feelings for us, so be it. Dad

I have pretty much been ballistic ever since, all evening long. I shot back this reply:

See, I asked you not to read the blog, and this is WHY I asked you not to read the blog.

Later, while dinner was in the oven, II expanded upon it thus:

I don't know where you get the notion that I resented My's participation. I never felt nor wrote anything of the sort, and I just went back and checked.

This is why you can NOT read the blog!!!!!

You pull this stuff out of your ass, and it's your own damn fault. You were asked not to read the blog, and I gave you my reasons. And yet the first chance you got, you went shooting right on over there,

Stop. Reading. Now. I will continue to provide the posts to you that I think could be of interest to you, or that are within your circle of concern.

If you continue to read, be warned that I am not going to feel responsible for your reactions and feelings. You were warned.

I feel just like you went into my bedroom and took my diary out of the drawer and read it without permission.

My father has made it his business to betray everyone in the family at one time or another, sometimes multiple times, and this is just another instance. I know very damn well that he will compound this by putting it all in one of his "Friends and Family" letters, and, you know, fine, whatever. 

Actually, I hope the son of a bitch does read this one. 

Actions have consequences, Dad. . . and it's shit like this that has caused us so much trouble over the years.

-- Freder.