This is an excerpt of my book-in-progress. The following is part of a chapter tentatively titled A Good Father.
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“Whipping out your dick again, I see,” a friend remarks as I flash my credit card to pay for our drinks.
“Yup,” I say, feeling the tension drain out of me as I insert my card into the square reader’s mouth. Until this moment of release, I’m drowning inside, dragged by the undertow of memory into the rooms of a dozen odd restaurants in Manhattan and North Jersey where I watch as my family sits in the aftermath of a meal in public with Grandpa.
Who’s won this time? I wonder as I survey the familiar faces around the long table where dirty plates and mangled napkins lie strewn with abandoned cutlery. Has Grandpa excused himself under the guise of a trip to the restroom only to sneak up front and pay the bill? Did the waiter bring the check to the table for the menfolk to haggle over? Did my father insist on paying this time or did he acquiesce to his father’s whims, resolving to pay for the next one?
Who is going to pay for the meal? The question mounts in me whenever I go out with friends. I can’t relax until it’s answered. I am bewildered now that I am grown and the world is no longer divided into those who whip out their dicks and those expected to receive them. I am lost without a polis to determine who’s supposed to finance this leitourgia.
I’ll pay this time. You can pay next time. Or maybe I’ll just keep paying every time for all those years I wasn’t given a choice.
I’ll pay because when you love people you throw money at them. When you love someone, you pay for the clothes on their back and the food in their stomach. You set up a college fund for them and deposit money into it each year. You buy them coats at Christmas and mail a card on their birthdays.
And all you ask in return is that they laugh at your jokes, don’t talk back, and that they call you once or twice a year to talk for three minutes. You don’t need them to say ‘I love you’ because you already know–you’re family, after all. Flesh and blood.
I’ll foot the bill because I can’t stand the suspense of obligation, the social debts piling up waiting to be paid. I’ll be the father almighty, doling out cash and receiving nothing but honor and the satisfaction of being a self-made man beholden to no one.
You can talk back as much as you like and you don’t have to laugh at my jokes, just please don’t think for a second that I need you. I’ll let you drink me dry before I’ll let you see me thirst.